Retired US General Wesley Clark, former NATO commander for Europe, has said he regretted that the international community did not militarily intervene in Bosnia earlier and stop ICTY indictee Ratko Mladic, whom he described as a sadist and a mass murderer full of ideological fanaticism.
Clark said that in an interview with Sarajevo-based daily Dnevni Avaz published on Friday.
It is always difficult to make such a military intervention and to make it on time. And then those horrible things happened. And I believe that people around the world regretted those events. We regretted not doing something before, said Clark, who was director for strategic planning and politics at the US Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time the gravest crimes were committed in Srebrenica in 1995.
Clark said he met Mladic on two occasions.
Without a doubt, Mladic was full of sadism, full of ideological fanaticism for the idea of Serbian nationalism. He was a mass murderer and he showed it in the worst way possible in Srebrenica, Clark said.
According to him, former US President Bill Clinton tried to create peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina since 1993 and presented a peace plan to Mladic which he refused to sign in 1994.
An intervention was inevitable, said Clark.
He added that last week's arrest of Mladic was the result of a European Union message to Belgrade.
Eventually it became clear to the people in Serbia as well as that, unless they responded to the call for justice to be served, there would be no progress in the desired EU integration, said Clark.
He expressed concern about political developments in Bosnia, saying he did not believe that there would be more war conflicts.
