Transcript of Paddy Ashdown interview

PLEASE NOTE "THE ANDREW MARR SHOW" MUST BE CREDITED IF ANY PART OF THIS TRANSCRIPT IS USED

Andrew Marr interviewed former Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown on June 5th 2011.

ANDREW MARR:

General Ratko Mladic was known as "the butcher of Bosnia" for his alleged role in the deaths of thousands of Bosnian Muslims and for directing the long and agonising siege of Sarajevo during the Balkan Wars of the 1990s. Paddy Ashdown made Bosnia his cause. He ended up in charge of the place when the peace deal was finally broken and he joins us now from his home near Yeovil. Good morning.

LORD ASHDOWN:

Morning, Andrew. Nice to be with you.

ANDREW MARR:

Can I ask about Ratko Mladic, first of all. You dealt with General Mladic when he was in his pomp and when he is said to have overseen the deaths of huge numbers of men and boys at Srebrenica and then the terrible events around Sarajevo. Who was the man that you met? What opinion did you form of him?

LORD ASHDOWN:

I didn't really deal with him, Andrew. My responsibilities in Bosnia came later.

ANDREW MARR:

Sure.

LORD ASHDOWN:

I was Leader of the Lib-Dems at the time and I was simply visiting Bosnia. So I saw him as a visitor, not somebody dealing with him.

ANDREW MARR:

Sure.

LORD ASHDOWN:

My view was always that the view taken by far too many Western leaders that Milosevic, Karadzic and Mladic were the solution to the problem - i.e. people to deal with, as you said - was always wrong; that they were in fact the origin of the problem, not the means of resolving it. But he was a classic Serbian Nationalist of an extreme sort. He believed that he came from a generation whose task it was to revenge the serfdom of the Serbs, not least under the Turks, and he used to refer to the Bosnian Muslims as Turks. He was a very … He was a bull of a man. He was loved by his soldiers. He was always quite close to the front of the frontline, but he was utterly, utterly, utterly implacable when it came to war. On one occasion, I remember, he said to me rather boastfully - he was bombarding Sarajevo at the time - that he could "take Sarajevo any time he wanted". And I said, "Well why don't you?" And he said, "Because I was trained as a Russian. If I'm given the choice between shooting a man dead or shooting him in the testicles, I'll shoot him in the testicles because a dead man takes ten minutes to bury, but somebody who's wounded takes many men many weeks to mend. And whilst Sarajevo is starving, the whole of the international community is expending its effort trying to keep the city alive and not stopping me doing what I want to do", which I think shows the nature of the man.

ANDREW MARR:

Yuh, an attractive individual. What did you make of his appearance in the Hague so far?

LORD ASHDOWN:

Well the astonishing thing is how much these guys are diminished by suddenly being taken out of their context. You know if you saw him - and I wasn't there, but I've seen the films and I have spoken to many who were there at Srebrenica - he was an arrogant, posturing man in charge of events and making it clear to everybody, including the international community, that he was going to have his way. By the way, in my view the Dutch soldiers and the UN have rightly been criticised for this. But the international community leaders, including some of our own who allowed it to happen, have not, and that's a story still to come out. And then suddenly you see this vastly diminished figure. And yet, and yet in the course of that appearance before a court, the old Mladic re-emerged from behind the sixteen years of sunken disappearance.

ANDREW MARR:

Can I just follow up on what you said there. You're saying that British and other European leaders could have stepped in more effectively and stopped some of the appalling things that happened in Bosnia and didn't?

LORD ASHDOWN:

Yes. Yes is the direct answer to that, as we saw. I mean when at last the international community realised that the cost of inaction was greater than the cost of action, the whole thing ended in a matter of weeks, you will remember.

ANDREW MARR:

(over) And so who was responsible for that, do you think?

LORD ASHDOWN:

Well, look, I remember speaking to Prime Minister Major at the Easter of 1995 - that is four, five months before Srebrenica. At that stage the Prime Minister announced that we were going to reinforce the troops in Bosnia. I had a sense that he was reinforcing so that he could be prepared to withdraw and I said to him that in our telephone conversation. And I then said that I believed then and before the debate in the House of Commons that the international community had formally taken the decision, after certain British soldiers had been killed in the other enclave of Goradze, not to protect the safe havens. Subsequently it has been proved to be true that General Janvier did indeed discuss with the international leaders of the troop-contributing nations. They did indeed take a policy decision, a secret one, not to protect the safe havens. And I remember warning both Mr Major and Malcolm Rifkind that the consequence of that would be a tragedy somewhere else, and so it occurred.

ANDREW MARR:

Do you have confidence in the ICC, the court? I mean it's taken a very, very long time in the past. I don't know whether you expect to go as a witness as well?

LORD ASHDOWN:

I may do. I've given evidence three times, including against Milosevic of course. I may do, but that's up to them. Yes I do have confidence in the Hague tribunal. I mean the wheels of justice grind slow, but, Andrew, you know it's really important that we take the steps to do this right. Of course it's the case that Mladic has, Karadzic is … sorry Milosevic has, Karadzic is, and Mladic no doubt will use the court as a theatre for him to replay nationalism back to Serbia and it will still have an effect there. But that is not a reason not to let the process of justice take its course. And here's the point, and I remember seeing it during the Kosovo War when I was in the villages south of Pristina being bombarded by the main battle units of the Serb Army; that when I went to see the Serb artillery commanders the following day - this is before the war started - they were more frightened of being indicted by the Hague than they were of being bombed by NATO, a message which you might well think has particular application in places like Libya and, for that matter, Sudan as well.

ANDREW MARR:

Yuh. Let me turn if I may to a domestic issue or two. House of Lords reform is splitting your party at the moment. David Steel's made quite a powerful point in one of the papers today, the Observer I think, saying that actually a 20% appointed, 80% elected House of Lords eventually is by no means the best answer. This has been going on since 1911, trying to reform the House of Lords. Is it a quagmire, you think, that the party should perhaps avoid?

LORD ASHDOWN:

No. Look, it is an affront to our democracy to have a House of Lords which is appointed on the basis that you're either a friend of the Prime Minister or your great-grandmother slept with the king. The truth of it is that we're a democracy and power should appear from the ballot box. I've always been … I went into the House of Lords to get rid of the place and to … because that's the only place you can cast your vote to make sure that it becomes an elected second chamber. Nick Clegg has grasped this, the Prime Minister has said he is fully behind it. They are prepared to use (as they are indeed entitled to) the Parliament Act, since this appeared in both parties' manifestoes and by the way in Labour's who are now turning tail and betraying that manifesto promise as fast as they can. So this should be driven through. Of course there'll be the old dinosaurs, the back woodsman of the Tory Party and the old guerrillas of Labour who will be opposing this, but the reality of it is that in a democracy power and parliament should devolve from the ballot box and from nowhere else. Now David Steel's dead right - if there's 20% elected, that would not be enough. I want to see a 100% elected House of Lords. If someone said to me Paddy, let's have 20% who are appointed by a commission completely independent of the Prime Minister, well I'd probably shrug my shoulders and say okay. But less than that, not.

ANDREW MARR:

You'd go with that. Okay. Lord Ashdown, thank you very much indeed for joining us this morning.

INTERVIEW ENDS

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