Original subtitles

The Wall had come down in '89.

The Soviet Union was sort of in the process of imploding

and had actually come to an end by the end of '91.

And there was this brave new world

that was supposed to be the end of history -

all the stuff around "Democracy had won, communism had fallen."

And then suddenly, there was this war in Europe.

Back in 1991...

..I'd never heard of Slobodan Milosevic,

and I don't think many of the Great British public had either.

But two guys from Austrian television

turned up at the offices of the small company

Brian Lapping and I had then

and said, "We've got a proposition for you.

"There's this terrible war going on in Yugoslavia" -

I hadn't noticed much about it, we'd been in Russia -

"and the people who are causing the trouble are the Serbs

"and their leader, Slobodan Milosevic.

"But we Austrians are close to the other side, the Croats,

"and nobody will speak to us.

"So we thought we'd have a co-production,

"and you do the Serbs,

"you know, in the same way you've done Gorbachev

"in The Second Russian Revolution,

"getting them to tell you the inside story

"of their strategies and politics.

"And we do a co-production."

Brian said, "Don't be ridiculous.

"When we did Gorbachev, he was in the middle of his reforms.

"The policy of glasnost - openness - was taking off.

"It was the ideal time to ask them that sort of questions.

"But in Yugoslavia, there's a war on!"

GUNFIRE, SHOUTING

"People will never tell you that sort of thing with a war on."

So I said, "Look, we're a small independent company.

"We've done Second Russian Revolution,

"we're in the middle of Watergate, but who knows what comes next?

"This is an interesting commission. Let's give it a try."

So, how do we find out?

Well, Brian had just the right idea.

We send a producer we trust.

He goes there for a couple of weeks,

and he finds out whether they'll talk.

So, off you went! Off I went.

And I got to a meeting with the head of Serb TV,

which, of course, in those countries is such an important place to go to.

And that was the first person we met who we knew spoke to this man,

Milosevic, who was at the heart of the story

that we were trying to work out.

What we wanted to know is that we could tell the story

of how he'd come to power and of how he had stirred

this nationalism in Serbia

that was causing the whole country,

the whole of Yugoslavia, to break up.

ARCHIVE: That night, Serb television created the Milosevic legend.

Serbia saw him embrace the cause of the Serbs in Kosovo.

And this head of television had a very important friend.

Had a very important friend, who was Mrs Milosevic.

Of course, she was an old socialist - just like me -

and she said, "How interesting.

"Do you still call each other comrade?"

And this was the days of Jeremy Corbyn.

I could say, "Yes, yes, we do."

And she said, "That's where we began to go wrong.

"We started to call each other Gospodin, Mr and Mrs,

"and we took the wrong direction."

So, we had a bond. She was the most extraordinary woman.

She talked this Soviet, socialist claptrap,

wearing high-heeled shoes with little pink bows on the end,

in a very girlie voice.

She was extraordinary, wasn't she?

Milosevic could see the writing on the wall for the Soviet Union.

It was two years before it fell,

and he thought, "If I want to be leader,

"I'd better ride this nationalism wave."

And so when he was given the opportunity,

which is the story of the first programme,

he jumped on it.

CHEERING

But the thing about Milosevic is, he was so key.

And the way we deal with people is,

we send them the points that we want to talk with them.

So what do we put in this request

for an off-the-record interview with Milosevic?

I mean, it might be the only time we ever meet him.

There were so many things only he could tell us.

But if we asked anything too tough and nasty,

he wouldn't agree to be filmed.

So we occasionally had some small disagreements

on this long trip to Belgrade, had fierce arguments into the night,

particularly when we got the appointment.

We stayed up till absolutely forever,

trying to get the appointment.

So, off we went with our questions in my large handbag...

..and the head of information took us in.

And you walk in there and you've got your bag, and there's Milosevic.

And it's one of the funniest...

One of the funniest interviews I've ever seen because, normally...

You might have found it funny!

So, Milosevic came in,

and there was this cold, empty marble palace and a big round table,

and he sat down on one end of the round table,

he plonked a clock down on the table,

and I reached into my bag to get out my questions

and he locked me in eye contact.

I'd never experienced this before then,

and I just couldn't look down to get it.

Fortunately, we'd argued so long over the questions,

I had them pretty much memorised.

But I did the whole interview

absolutely with my eyes locked into his gaze.

I don't know how he did it. So, at the end of an hour of torture,

he picked up his clock and he was gone.

It was also extraordinary experience,

because there were two things about it, is...

You and Brian are the only people on the planet who, given this is

the man that every journalist worth their salt wanted to interview,

would say, "We'll just have an off-the-record

"research interview first, sir."

And you go in. And of course, the man, Milosevic,

it was fascinating cos he absolutely locked you,

but he was terrified of you at the same time

because he was constantly expecting to be told,

"Why are you murdering Croats?

"Why are you committing genocide in Bosnia?"

Or whatever the question might be.

"Why have you got blood on your hands?"

Instead, you were asking the gentlest questions,

so as not to put him off,

and he just didn't know how to respond to them.

And of course, it terrified him.

Well, I guess, because he just got up and left

and we never got a chance to say, "We're coming back in November.

"Can you give us a filmed interview?"

That was it. It was gone.

So the filming trip was over and we never got the...

Didn't even get close.

So, our long edit began and we put the programmes together.

But Mrs Milosevic was in there pitching for us.

And Laura Silber, the Financial Times correspondent there,

who was our series consultant, would, every week or so, ring up.

And Mrs Milosevic said...

.."Well, he's agreed in principle,

"but it's like asking him to go to the dentist.

"He says, 'Not this week, dear, not this week.'"

And the edit was getting to an end.

So Laura finally rang, in desperation,

and for the first time, a man answered the phone.

This was his home.

And she said, "Oh, this is BBC.

"We absolutely need an interview with President Milosevic.

"We're coming to the end of our time."

And the man said, "Ah, well, come to my office...

"Sorry, come to President Milosevic's office

"in the morning."

She'd got the man himself.

So we turned up to film.

This time, Laura - who spoke perfect Serbo-Croat -

was doing the interview.

We thought, perhaps, maybe he would be less bemused

by someone who spoke his language.

So we were trailing in for the interview,

and the press guy said, "Oh, by the way, Norma,

"there's just one little condition for this interview.

"You can use it in the five programmes you were making,

"but you have to transmit the whole thing...

"..as he says it, as...the last programme of your series."

And I said, "Sure, sure." If he would have said,

you know, "Can I have your mother for a sixpence?",

I would have said yes. We were so determined to get this interview.

And the interview happened. Again, it was an hour,

in which he told pretty much nothing but lies -

"Me, a nationalist? Never!"

Laura is a really good journalist - tried and tried.

Nothing but lies.

So I went back to the hotel and it struck me.

We'd got this interview after waiting for months,

it's nothing but lies,

and I've made a promise to Milosevic that I can't possibly...

..possibly... I mean, it's not me who schedules BBC Two.

So I said, "Well, what do we do?"

I said, "Well, why don't you call the chairman?

"Brian, why don't you call the controller of BBC Two?"

"Oh," they said, "no, no, no, you do it."

You know, its... "You do it."

So I got the controller on the phone, quaking,

and, in fact, it was a doddle.

He said, "Well, you're in luck. BBC Two's just gone 24 hours

"and we have nothing to put out in the middle of the night,

"so...fine.

"Stick some subtitles on it and we'll put it out."

For me, what was so extraordinary about him was,

both the times we met him -

both the research interview and the filmed interview -

is, he felt to me like...

I don't know, like Macbeth wandering around an empty palace -

quite apart from the fact he had a wife,

so we can blame the women, as always -

but it was just something quite extraordinary about,

you go into places of power and you imagine they're bustling

with noise and people and secretaries,

and it felt like he was in there on his own,

at the heart of this, and this terrible war was going on.

6,000 Muslim men are still missing

after the fall of the Srebrenica Safe Area last month.

The Bosnian Serbs continue to deny charges

that they massacred Muslim prisoners.

But as yet, international agencies have not been allowed into the area

to investigate.

REPORTER: Today, the town is a shambles.

Belongings are strewn over pavements and apartments are wrecked.

Homes stand witness to the hurried exodus

of the town's mainly Muslim population.

The streets are mostly deserted.

The majority of civilians were escorted from the town,

but for men of fighting age, it was a different story.

After gun battles in the hills,

some trekked for days to reach safety

and brought with them stories of atrocities.

One claim was that up to 3,000 men were lined up and shot.

All I could think of is,

we were getting the key character in our story.

It never occurred to me what this person was really like.

And so it was kind of a bit of a shock, later on,

when we were doing our editing and smiling and looked at the dates,

we realised that the moment that we were interviewing Milosevic,

his people were conducting a horrific massacre in Srebrenica.

Yeah, we knew that something terrible

was happening in Srebrenica, we just didn't know the scale of it.

And I remain... Nothing like the scale... And I remain convinced

that he knowingly gave us that interview that day.

I have always believed it.

It certainly fits with his very

"pulling the wings off flies"... Absolutely. ..sense of humour.

Looking back at the series,

the thing that most makes me feel guilty, actually,

is just how second-rate these people were -

the Karadzics, the Krajisniks.

And, you know, I don't want to be rude about local councillors,

but it was like these local councillors

had been put on this great pedestal and they just loved it.

And it was...this extraordinary self-importance.

And there was us, as guilty as the politicians,

because we, as journalists, camped out,

wanted interviews with them and gave their, you know,

genuinely second-rate political abilities

some huge standing at the time.

And you really felt that.

I feel it, watching the programmes.

Karadzic was a therapist, poet.

One of the other people was a Shakespeare scholar

of some not great standing.

Dear old Karadzic is in a British prison to this day.

He is still alive, and he is in a prison on the Isle of Wight

as a result of a sentence passed down by The Hague.

It's an extraordinary reality.

There'd been no war in Europe since the Second World War

till Slobodan Milosevic went into Kosovo

and decided to jump on the nationalist bandwagon -

and look what happened to Yugoslavia.