A French journalist and former spokeswoman for the Office of the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Florence Hartmann, verbally attacked Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt in Sarajevo on Friday during a ceremony marking the start of the siege of Sarajevo 20 years ago, accusing him of defending Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
After a brief scuffle with Bildt and his bodyguards, Hartmann said on camera: Why is he (Bildt) coming here today, while he did nothing when he had a chance to do something, when he said that Milosevic was a good man?
She accused Bildt of having done nothing as an influential politician to put an end to the siege of the Bosnian capital by Bosnian Serb forces.
Ed Vulliamy, a journalist with British newspapers The Guardian and The Observer, said that the international community, which was represented by Bildt at the time of the war, had tolerated the three years of massacring of Sarajevo, adding that the international community's representatives from the 1990s should sincerely apologise to Bosnia.
Bildt did not respond to Hartmann's accusations, leaving the site of the incident in the downtown Sarajevo.
Hartman, Vulliamy and Bildt were among foreign guests attending today's commemorations of the 20th anniversary of the beginning of the siege of Sarajevo that ended in late 1995 with the signing of the Dayton peace agreement.
Some 11,000 residents were killed during the 44-month siege.
