Ambassador: Britain Ducking Guilt For Srebrenica

Writing in Wednesday’s Financial Times in response to a letter by General Sir Michael Rose, Robert E Hunter, ambassador to NATO from 1993 to 1998, said NATO failed to stop the Serb carnage in Bosnia because Britain did its best to sabotage collective action on behalf of the Alliance.

“The failure of NATO to reach agreement on serious military action [before Srebrenica] can be attributed to the efforts of one allied nation: Great Britain,” he wrote.

“As the US ambassador to NATO who negotiated the NATO air strike (and other military) decisions, I can attest that the ally that worked hardest to prevent NATO military action was Britain, from July 1993 until after Srebrenica when, in face of the horrendous killings, it finally stopped its obstruction.”

The former ambassador said France and Canada were also often reluctant to join a consensus for military action, but it was Britain alone that had worked “consistently and assiduously to limit the military effectiveness of the NATO decisions”.

Hunter said that when Britain was outvoted and isolated in NATO, it made use of the so-called “two-key” system, authorizing air strikes, to ensure “in New York that the UN ‘key’ would not be ‘turned’.

“The upshot was that Britain kept NATO from acting, from July 1993 until after Srebrenica, when it was pressed, along with the other allies, to respond to the slaughter that had taken place.”

He concluded: “Britain thus has a huge burden of responsibility for what happened at Srebrenica; NATO’s failure before Srebrenica to act militarily lay in London, not either in Washington, at NATO-Brussels, or with the Dutch soldiers with UNProfor at Srebrenica”.

The diplomat’s letter is bound to reopen the debate on British policy towards the Balkans in the 1990s, which has remained controversial to this day. Critics say it was dominated by a policy of “appeasement” of Slobodan Milosevic’s Serbia and his goal of creating a greater Serbia, or even actively colluded in those plans.