BOSNIA - REPUBLIKA SRPSKA ATTACKS ON MISSING

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 SARAJEVO 001531

SIPDIS

DEPARTMENT FOR EUR/SCE (FOOKS/STINCHCOMB) AND S/WCI; NSC
FOR HELGERSON; OSD FOR BIEN

E.O. 12958: DECL: 01/01/2015
TAGS: PGOV PREL PHUM PINR KDEM KAWC KJUS BK
SUBJECT: BOSNIA - REPUBLIKA SRPSKA ATTACKS ON MISSING
PERSONS INSTITUTE INTENSIFY

REF: A. SARAJEVO 1520

B. 07 SARAJEVO 1174

Classified By: Michael J. Murphy. Reasons 1.4 (b) and (d).


1. (C) SUMMARY: Republika Srpska (RS) authorities have taken
a series of steps that undermine the ability of the
state-level Missing Persons Institute (MPI) to locate,
exhume, and identify victims of the 1992-1995 war. MPI was
designed to search for missing individuals without regard to
ethnicity (unlike the old RS and Federation bodies for
missing persons). Its work is critical to justice and
reconciliation in Bosnia. A vociferous press campaign in the
RS against MPI began early this year -- not long after MPI
was formally established -- accusing it of bias against
Serbs. In June, RS PM Dodik used these unfounded criticisms
to justify the creation of a parallel organization at the
entity level, the RS Operational Team for Tracing Missing
Persons (RSOT). Despite promises by Dodik to the
international community at the time that the RSOT would work
cooperatively with MPI, precisely the opposite has happened.
The RSOT has recently confiscated property belonging to MPI,
denied it access to it offices, archives, and morgues, and
refused to share information with it. These actions have
made it impossible for MPI to fulfill its mandate or comply
with the 2004 state-level Law on Missing Persons. This will
undoubtedly fuel further complaints from Serbs that MPI is
not doing its job, which will, in turn, be used to justify
the need for the RS to have its own body responsible for
missing persons. END OF SUMMARY

The Long, Slow Formation of MPI
--------------


2. (SBU) In 2003, in an effort to build the capacity of
Bosnia to address the issue of missing persons -- regardless
of their ethnic or religious backgrounds -- the International
Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP),with strong support
from the USG, invited the Council of Ministers (CoM) to
become co-founders of the state-level Missing Persons
Institute (MPI). A law formally establishing MPI was adopted
in 2004. Following significant consultations with the
families of the missing entity governments, the state, and
Brcko District agreed in 2005 that MPI would take over the
functions, staff and operations of entity-level bodies on
missing persons. However, it was not until 2006 that the RS
government, headed by Milorad Dodik, adopted a decision
transferring the tasks from the RS missing persons commission
to MPI and that MPI's three directors were appointed.


3. (SBU) Despite 2004 law and the 2006 transfer agreement,
the CoM failed to appoint MPI's Steering Board, which was to
be responsible for MPI's budget, work plan, and personnel
decisions -- all essential to MPI's operations. Prime
Minister Spiric, who is from Dodik's Alliance of Independent
Social Democrats SNSD played a role in blocking the Steering
Board's appointment (Ref B). It was only after pressure from
the international community that, in June 2007, the Steering
Board was appointed. MPI finally became operational in
January 2008 after signing contract with its staff (personnel
absorbed from the RS and Federation missing persons
commissions). However, funding from the Ministry of Finance
to pay salaries arrived four months later.

Republika Srpska Public Campaign Against MPI
--------------


4. (SBU) Not long after the state began providing MPI with
the funds it required to function effectively a vociferous
press campaign began in the RS alleging that MPI was not
working in the interest of the Serbs. RS victims groups
(some, not all) attacked MPI's performance and accused it of
obstructing searches from missing Serbs. (Note: According to
ICMP, this is untrue. The unofficial breakdown of missing
persons by ethnicity is 85% Bosniak, 12% Serb, and 3% Croat.
Approximately 10% of all DNA matches have been for Serbs,
though the number varies from year to year based on
information provided about the location of mass graves. In
2008, thus far Serb matches have been 5% of the total. End
Note) RS politicians, including members of Dodik's party,
also began calling for recreation of an RS body for missing
persons.


SARAJEVO 00001531 002 OF 003


Dodik Establishes a Parallel Body
--------------


5. (C) Ostensibly responding to the complaints about MPI's
ineffectiveness, Dodik announced in June that the RS would
set up an RS Operational Team for Tracing Missing Persons
(RSOT). OHR and others objected to the proposal,
underscoring to Dodik that it was inconsistent with the Law
on Missing Persons, effectively reversed the competency
transfer he, himself, had signed in 2006, and amounted to the
creation of parallel entity institution where the state had
clear legal responsibility. At the time, Dodik reassured OHR
that this was not his intention and that his aim was only to
respond to complaints he had received from family
associations. In a June meeting with HighRep Lajcak, Dodik
pledged that the RSOT would only engage in information
gathering and coordinating functions within the RS and that
it would cooperate with, not undermine, MPI.

Watch What We Do, Not What We Promise
--------------


6. (C) In practice, however, the RSOT has become a parallel
institution many had feared it would (ICMP contends that it
is illegal),and it has taken increasingly bold steps to
undermine MPI. Even prior to the RSOT's formation,
ethnic-Serb MPI personnel began resigning, with the Banja
Luka regional office leaving en masse, eventually moving over
to the RSOT. In fact, the Banja Luka staff did not go
anywhere; they simply changed the sign on the office door
from "Missing Persons Institute" to "Operations Teams." By
doing so, the RSOT took property (i.e., offices, computers,
files, and cars) that the Law on Missing Persons has
specifically enumerated as MPI property.


7. (SBU) Not least among the items that the RSOT expropriated
in Banja Luka were MPI's archives and the keys to the morgue
where approximately the remains of 600 unidentified persons
are located. Similarly, at MPI's Eastern Sarajevo office,
RSOT obtained the morgue keys and effectively denied MPI
access to the remains, but MPI managed to retain its East
Sarajevo archives. In the third RS MPI office, in Nevesinje,
loyal staff maintained employment at MPI, and held on to
property, archives, and morgue keys. An MPI car was seized
in Nevesinje by police on the order of an RSOT staff member,
but it was later returned to MPI staff there.

We Won't Tell You Where To Look
--------------


8. (SBU) Another effort to weaken MPI has come with the
insistence by RS authorities that MPI sign a protocol with
RSOT, in which the RSOT, using the archives that were legally
transferred to MPI in January 2008, would provide general
location information on mass graves, but no "micro-location
or grid coordinates." MPI knowing, for example, that reports
of possible mass graves "in the general vicinity of
Srebrenica" would be useless, refused to sign. The protocol
also foresees allowing RSOT to withhold information from MPI
"for security reasons." In fact, according to ICMP, the
Bosnian Constitutional Court has issued more than 20
decisions obliging all levels of government to provide all
relevant information on missing persons to MPI.

RS May Have ICMP In Its Sights, Too
--------------


9. (SBU) In yet another problematic development, on September
24 ICMP received notice that its DNA lab in Banja Luka would
have it lease terminated. The building, an RS
government-owned hospital, is allegedly changing ownership
(to the RS Forensics Institute),and ICMP was told that it
must leave the current space it occupies, which it renovated
at considerable cost. Coming on the heels of the
developments mentioned above, ICMP and MPI officials do
believe the planned eviction is a coincidence. We raised
this issue with the RS Minister of Health Skrbic on September
26, who asserted that ICMP had not been asked to leave the
premises. After we highlighted that the letter clearly
referred to the "exact date of the office premises hand over"
Skrbic argued that we (and others) had "misinterpreted" it.
He agreed to meet jointly with ICMP and Embassy
representatives to help resolve the "misunderstanding."

SARAJEVO 00001531 003 OF 003



Comment
--------------


10. (C) The RS attack on state-level institutions continues,
with MPI the most recent target. Political and bureaucratic
roadblocks, some most likely erected deliberately (i.e.,
Spiric's actions n 2007),contributed to the almost two-year
delay in standing-up MPI, but MPI's troubles over the last
several months have clearly been driven by RS actions. The
organized press campaign against it, the creation of a
parallel entity-level body, and then the use of the body to
disrupt MPI's work -- despite "private assurances" that this
would not happen -- fit a clear pattern. As MPI falters in
the face of these assaults, we should expect RS officials to
use this to further justify the need for the RSOT. We should
also expect Dodik to cite MPI as another example of a failed
reform in support of his campaign to "decentralize the state"
(i.e., reverse the reforms of the last 13 years) (Ref A).
MPI's work is critical to our justice and reconciliation
agenda in Bosnia, so its trouble will have consequences for
issues such as war crimes prosecution. Ironically, the
biggest victims of the RS campaign against MPI may be the
ethnic Serb victims associations, since an effective MPI is a
prerequisite to locating, exhuming, and identifying Serb
victims in the Federation.
ENGLISH