ambassador rudolf v. perina - Association for Diplomatic Studies and ...

tried to quite smoking and complained of how difficult it was. He later started the habit
again and smoked quite a bit by the time I was leaving Belgrade.
It took a while for someone to really see evidence of how strange he was. He was very
skilled in ole playing. At first he would try to impress visitors with what a regular guy he
was—drinking, smoking, and being very informal. He would stress his background as a
banker and his contacts with American bankers when he visited the United States. He
would drop names of New York bankers he allegedly knew and ask how they were. But
then gradually, one could see that he was very strange. He rarely showed any emotion,
even when discussing immense human suffering and tragedy. This was not only in
relation to discussion of Muslims or Croats, but also to Serbs. I remember seeing him at
the time the Serbs were expelled from the Krajina in Croatia, and there were these
caravans coming into Belgrade of displaced Serbs with all their possessions on wagons
and no place to go. I remember meeting with him, and he did not appear particularly
concerned about them. There was no emotion about the tragedy and enormity of the
conflict going on next door. In part, he wanted to show that he was very tough. But there
was a genuine lack of compassion that was truly frightening and that Warren
Zimmermann also described in his book.
The other unusual thing that I soon learned about him was that he never flinched. Some
of the demarches that I had to deliver during that first year were very, very tough as
compared to normal diplomatic exchanges. In most countries I would probably have been
expelled if I said those kinds of things to a president. The gist of some of these messages
was that we think you are a war criminal and we’re going to bomb the hell out of you
unless you stop doing so and so. I am of course exaggerating, and they obviously did not
use that language, but that was the unmistakable gist of the messages, particularly as
Washington got more and more frustrated and angered with Milosevic. And I always
delivered the full and exact text of the demarche. I summarized it orally and then gave
him the written text, which he always read before responding. No matter how tough or
threatening the message was, he would always just look up after reading it and say calmly
“Well, you know, this is not true,” and begin discussing it as though we were discussing
the weather. He would never flinch and never get angry or show emotion. I think the
intent again was to give the impression of being tough and unafraid himself. He would
also look directly into your eyes when speaking or listening, and lean forward very close
to give the impression of listening intently. It was a fairly intense look, and his eyes never
wandered, but it was not a threatening or angry look but rather a type of “I am not afraid”
look.
Q: You could almost say he was a psychopath.
PERINA: Well I am not a psychiatrist but he was certainly strange and unlike any other
person I have ever dealt with. There were a couple of other strange things that later on
became even more apparent. There was never any staff that you could see around him. I
would come to his office, and the only people I ever saw were his bodyguards and one
assistant named Goran Milinovic. I never saw anyone else—not a secretary, a
receptionist, or any staffer other than Goran. Goran was this large muscular fellow with a
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