Ratko Mladic quotes

"If humankind were to follow my advice and if it were in my power, I wouldn't allow the word 'war' to be uttered in any language, I would ban all weapons, even in the form of toys." From interview with Robert Block, 1995

"There are so many! It is going to be a feast. There will be blood up to your knees." Nedzida Sadikovic, as quoted by Roy Gutman, Newsday News Service, August 9, 1995.

"They went running around to jewelry stores, banks, and well-stocked super-markets. There is not a single hill that they kept or liberated. On the other hand, the soldiers and officers in the army lead modest lives." Commenting on war profiteers in interview with Robert Block, 1995

"Here we are, on the eleventh of July of the year 1995, in Serbian Srebrenica. On the eve of yet another great Serb holiday we present this town as a gift to the Serb nation. The moment has finally arrived that, after the revolt against the Dahijas, we will have vengeance against the turks in this place."

"Don't be afraid of anything, just take it easy, easy. Let the women and children go first. Thirty buses are coming, we're send you off toward Kladanj. Don't be afraid of anything, nobody is going to do anything to you. Thank you, thank you. Thanks, be safe. Nobody knows anything. Everything is done on my order."

General Ratko Mladić is a living 100 kg contradiction ... His large and compact face is almost always painted with a smile. He inspires trust at first sight, but the same senior UN functionaries, those who spent the most time with him in, are divided in their judgement.

As a confused old pensioner or retiree, Mladic is in danger of arousing local sympathy in rather the same way John Demjanjuk did but of doing so within a few years of the original atrocities and not several decades. Moreover, Mladic was a director and organizer of the mass slaughters at Srebrenica and Zepa (as of the obscene bombardment of the open city of Sarajevo), and not a mere follower of orders. The new and allegedly reformist Serbian government bears some responsibility for this moment of moral nullity and confusion, since it seems to regard the arrest of Mladic and his political boss Radovan Karadzic as little more than an episode in the warming of Belgrade's relations with the European Union. You don't have to be a practicing Serbo-chauvinist to find something a bit trivial and sordid in that calculation. (And what if it doesn't prove possible to stretch the increasingly inelastic Eurozone to accommodate Serbia's pressing needs and add them to those of Greece and Ireland? A possible hostage to fortune here.)

"Krle, Krstić, come on. Record that flag. Tear that flag down so it doesn't fly any more. Pull it down. Bravo! Towards Potočari! Towards Potočari and Bratunac! Don't stop, come on! Go in front of me the whole way, come on. Come on, boys, forward!"

"When I guarantee something, it's the same as the word of the Almighty." Quoted by Laura Silber in the Financial Times

I wonder, if France really wants to create a Muslim state in Europe, why don't they empower them to do this in Paris or Britain?" Interview with Gaspari di Sklafani in DJente, Han Pijesak, 1994

"We are fully aware that war is not the only way to defend our values. But if those values are fundamentally endangered, as is the case today, then war is the only way to defend them. Everything that hinders us in our effort to defend ourselves is an injustice. We did not want this war, it was thrust upon us, like all others. Defending one's people is a holy duty," From interview with Robert Block, 1995

"I think it is time for all peace-loving people of this world to start pondering where all this leads. I think it's high time that the weapons in this part of the world, and all over the world, were silenced." From interview with Robert Block, 1995

"It would have been better if we had fought in Italy and Austria which are really at war against us, instead of allowing them to use our unfortunate Slovenians, Croats and Moslems as bait and cannon fodder." From interview with Vreme, May 24, 1993