Clark and Mladic

I have received several gloating e-mails from non-Clark supporters, parroting last week's reports from Drudge and Robert Novak, regarding Clark's meeting with indicted war criminal Ratko Mladic. There's one problem. Novak says that Clark met General Ratko Mladic on Aug. 26, 1994. Yet the first indictment against Mladic wasn't handled down until July 1995. The second one came on November 14, 1995. Was Mladic a nice guy? Absolutely not and he was indicted for crimes that took place between 1992 and 1995, which means many occurred prior to his meeting with Clark. He was also on a State Department "watch" list, as a suspected war criminal. At the time Clark met with Mladic, Clark was director of strategy, plans and policy for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. According to a 1999 Newsweek article, those who knew the general chalked it up to a last bid for a diplomatic solution when the international plan to divide Bosnia appeared destined to fail. Despite Clark's meeting with Mladic, the plan did fail. Yet the US continued to negotiate with Milosevic and, at Milosevic's insistence, Mladic. Clark was a key player in negotiating the Dayton Peace Accords, and it should be noted that no amnesty was afforded to either Milosevic or Mladic for their role in atrocities against Muslims.