Clark takes the stand

The Hague, Netherlands

Retired general Wesley Clark testified against Slobodan Milosevic this week at the former Serbian president’s war-crimes trial in The Hague. Clark, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for U.S. president, was the supreme commander of NATO in 1999. He conducted negotiations with Milosevic and then led a bombing campaign to force Serbia to stop persecuting ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. Clark’s testimony will be available on the international tribunal’s Web site, ICTY.org, only after it has been vetted by the State Department. But he was expected to testify that Milosevic directly ordered the killings and evictions in Kosovo. In his book about the Kosovo campaign, Clark wrote that Milosevic bypassed those underlings who balked at the ruthless ethnic-cleansing programs and gave direct orders to the field. Clark called him “a supremely manipulative liar and a bully.”