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

this took place before Milosevic, Izetbegovic and Tudjman had even gotten together in
one room. There were actually many key issues still left hanging before we ever got to
Dayton. Dayton was not just a paper exercise of filling in the blanks. We knew that there
would be high-level talks as well as much detail to work out. Many people had to be
brought together. For a while, there was talk of doing this in Europe, but Holbrooke
wanted to retain control of it in the United States. Interestingly, Milosevic also wanted
the meeting to be in the U.S. I am not sure how in the end the decision was made for
Dayton but it made sense to do it on a military base where facilities would be available
and access could be controlled. I heard subsequently that Dayton was chosen because it
was Strobe Talbott’s home town and he suggested it.
Q: What was your role in Dayton?
PERINA: I was Milosevic’s keeper at Dayton. Each of the three chiefs of mission came
out with their head of state—Peter Galbraith accompanied Tudjman from Zagreb, John
Menzies from Sarajevo accompanied Izetbegovic, and I came with Milosevic. The job
was to get them to Dayton and be a contact point in dealings with them. I received
permission from the Department to fly to Dayton with Milosevic in the private plane that
carried the entire Serb delegation. There were some Serbs who came separately from
Bosnia, from Sarajevo, but not Mladic or Karadzic who wanted to come but were told
they could not. So the Serb delegation from Belgrade was basically Milosevic and
Milutinovic and then some military people and intelligence types. For some reason,
Milosevic also took this American advisor Chris Spiro to Dayton. During the talks, I
participated in most of the meetings involving Milosevic, though not all because there
were a few meetings just exclusively between him and Holbrooke. As the talks got more
detailed, they broke down into working groups of experts in which Milosevic did not
participate. I spent a lot of time trying to keep an eye on Milosevic and the Serb
delegation, and there was a lot of down time as is usual in these types of negotiations
when people just mingled and chatted in the restaurant or coffee bar.
Milosevic and the other Serbs of course got a little antsy by being restricted to the air
force base, Wright-Patterson. They were always coming to us and asking for permission
to leave the base and go into town. We let them do so only once when I accompanied
them to a shopping mall in Dayton. It was only about a dozen Serbs, but we had to have a
lot of security from the U.S. so the entourage was very noticeable. The Serbs walked
around looking at the stores and buying things. Some of the lower-level people bought
quite a bit of stuff and were excited by all the stores. I remember that Victoria’s Secret
caused a stir and a lot of jokes. Milosevic, as I recall, bought a pair of shoes in a
department store. I am sure he did not need a pair of shoes but he probably wanted to
make the point that he had been off the base and allowed to buy what he wanted. These
were, after all, people who for years had been under sanctions. There was thus something
symbolic for them in getting off the base and buying things—it documented what they
saw as the end of sanctions and of being international pariahs. And of course, there were
Serb journalists and TV crews there to report on this. This was the only time we let
Milosevic off the base. The Serbs wanted to make excursions a number of other times,
but we told them that they could not because of security concerns.
80