A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety (30 page)

I have addressed numerous threats to peace on behalf of The Carter Center. As examples, let me describe some that occurred in 1994. For three years, President Kim Il Sung of North Korea requested that I come to Pyongyang to help resolve some of the antagonism between him and the government of the United States, but I had an initial aversion, derived from the Korean War, to accepting his request. I was eventually convinced that my services might be helpful, but my normal requests to the White House for approval of a visit to North Korea were rejected.

There was a crisis in the spring of 1994. North Korea disavowed its commitment to the Nonproliferation Treaty, expelled international inspectors from their nuclear facility, and began processing spent uranium rods into plutonium. The U.S. government refused to talk to the North Koreans and went to the UN Security Council to secure a condemnatory resolution. Some Chinese friends told me that North Korea would attack South Korea if their government was branded an international outlaw and their worshiped leader a criminal. Having developed a strategy that I was convinced would defuse the crisis, I decided that I needed to go. When President Bill Clinton rejected another request to approve my visit to Pyongyang, I wrote him to say that I was going despite his disapproval. However, Vice President Al Gore intercepted my message and convinced me to modify the wording. He then sent the message to Clinton, who was in Europe, and he gave his approval. My one caveat to Kim Il Sung was that we not be routed through Beijing but enter North Korea directly from South Korea. He responded that even the secretary-general of the UN came through China, but he finally relented. Rosalynn and I were the first persons in forty-three years to travel directly from Seoul across the Demilitarized Zone and on to Pyongyang.

With my knowledge of nuclear engineering, I was able to discuss the issues competently. We found Kim Il Sung to be congenial and surprisingly familiar with all the topics. During a long boat ride from Pyongyang to the sea, we reached agreement on about a dozen important subjects, including the nuclear problem and the return of international inspectors, summit talks with South Korea, withdrawal of troops from proximity to the DMZ, and recovery of the remains of buried Americans.

I reported these agreements to the White House. Kim Il Sung died soon after I was there, and I received a message from his son Kim Jong Il that he would honor his father’s commitments. Official talks in Geneva resulted in approval by both sides of what we had negotiated, and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright visited Pyongyang in October 2000, to strengthen the mutual commitments. The U.S.–North Korea agreement was disavowed in 2002 by President George W. Bush, who branded North Korea an “evil empire,” and since that time Kim Il Sung’s successors have expanded their development of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. The United States now avoids almost all contact with North Korea, and strict economic sanctions are still imposed on the often starving people.

Later in 1994 an emergency developed in Haiti. The elected leader, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, had been forced into exile in 1991. He was replaced by General Raoul Cédras, and both leaders had asked me to serve as mediator. I was very knowledgeable about Haiti and had a longtime personal relationship with both men. For years President Bush and then President Clinton had wanted to try other means for returning Aristide to power, but none of these had worked. By September 1994, President Clinton had decided to assemble thirty thousand American military personnel as an invading force. I, meanwhile, had asked former senator Sam Nunn of Georgia and General Colin Powell to join me in a peace effort, and we had conveyed our proposal to President Clinton. He approved our plan to go to Haiti and make a final effort at negotiation before sending in the military.

In Port-au-Prince we negotiated for two days with the assembled generals and found Cédras reluctant to accept any of my proposals. I called Rosalynn to tell her of our failure, and she said, “I have been informed
that Cédras’s wife, Yannick, is extremely influential. Why not talk to her?” I took her suggestion, and the general’s wife was indeed the key to his improved attitude. We knew Cédras as a competent and admirable leader. He had been Haiti’s universally respected military commander who maintained security while Rosalynn and I headed Carter Center observers who had monitored Aristide’s previous election, and he had saved Aristide from an assassination attempt when he was deposed.

After long and intense negotiations, Cédras was finally ready to accept our proposals, prepared to stand alongside the American general and welcome U.S. troops if their arrival was peaceful and if the Haitian military personnel were treated with respect. I agreed to find an acceptable place in another country for him and his family to live. At this moment of apparent agreement, one of his subordinates, Brigadier General Philippe Biamby, rushed in and announced that President Clinton had launched fifty-two airplanes from U.S. military bases loaded with paratroopers, headed to invade Haiti. Biamby had received this report from a Haitian who worked at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. At this time there were thousands of angry demonstrators surrounding the building in which we were meeting.

Both negotiating teams rushed out a back door and drove to the office of the president, Emile Jonassaint, an elderly retired chief justice. General Powell got on a phone line and finally connected to the White House while Cédras and I presented our written agreement to the president. After reading it, he said, “I understand and agree, but it will have to be translated into French before I sign it.” This was done rapidly, and he and I signed the document. By this time the American planes were halfway to Haiti, but Clinton ordered them to return to their base and the crisis was resolved. As agreed, General Cédras and his family moved to Panama. Aristide returned to Haiti, proved a disastrous leader, and was again forced into exile in Africa, this time by pressure from Washington.

My last duty as a mediator that year involved the Bosnia-Herzegovina conflict with Serbia, after its declaration of independence from Serbian-controlled Yugoslavia. I was initially contacted by Radovan Karadži
ć
, who expressed a desire to resolve differences peacefully between the Bosnian
Serbs, which he led, and the Bosnian Muslims and Croats, the two other major ethnic groups. He made a series of commitments about peace, human rights, and a comprehensive cease-fire if I would agree to come to Sarajevo. I informed President Clinton and UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali and got their approval for the mission. I arranged for Karadži
ć
to repeat all his commitments on CNN. Serbian president Slobodan Miloševi
ć
asked that I meet with him during my visit, and I agreed. My goals were to orchestrate a cease-fire with guarantees of human rights and clear demarcation of geographical control, and to discuss some key constitutional issues.

On December 18 I met first in Zagreb with Croatian President Franjo Tudjman, who supported the mission, and then proceeded to the Sarajevo airport, wearing and sitting on flak jackets because snipers had been firing from both sides. I was grateful for Karadži
ć
’s promise to refrain from attacks during my visit. I had a long talk with Alija Izetbegovi
ć
, the president of Bosnia and Herzegovina, who was seeking independence from Serbia and whose small territory was surrounded on three sides by Serbian forces. He supported my mission but limited any cease-fire to three months. I awoke early the next day, wrote out my most hopeful proposals, and then Rosalynn and I made a drive of almost two hours to reach Pale, a distance of only nine miles through a beautiful mountain area, site of ski racing competitions in the 1984 Winter Olympics. It seemed that there was a military checkpoint around every curve in the road. Karadži
ć
met us, accompanied by the top leaders of the Serbs, including General Ratko Mladi
ć
, army chief of staff, and they gave me an official welcome witnessed by a large news media contingency. In our private negotiations with Karadži
ć
, he insisted on a twelve-month cease-fire, and I finally got him down to four months in an attempt to accommodate Izetbegovi
ć
. I agreed to request a lifting of economic sanctions against Serbia from the United States and UN but could not promise any positive results.

I witnessed the signing of my document by Karadži
ć
and Mladi
ć
. Its basic terms were cessation of hostilities on December 27, 1994, UN forces to be stationed along the line of confrontation for four months or for a longer period if mutually agreed, both parties to negotiate a
comprehensive peace agreement, unrestricted movement of relief convoys, unimpeded use of the airport at Sarajevo, and the protection of human rights. The White House was pleased with the draft agreement but stipulated that Izetbegovi
ć
would have to approve. When I called Sarajevo to tell him that all his demands had been realized, he refused to talk to me.

We drove back to Sarajevo and discussed the issues with Vice President Ejup Gani
ć
, and the next morning we returned to Pale with a few minor amendments. After some intense arguments with his subordinates, Karadži
ć
agreed to a final statement, which now had the cumulative approval of Izetbegovi
ć
, Karadži
ć
, Mladi
ć
, the United States, and the UN. We returned to Sarajevo and boarded our plane, shielded from ground fire by a large UN truck. The previous plane had taken four bullets through its left side. We took off with our flak jackets on, but I also wrapped an extra one around my hard disk and its documents and copies of the signed documents.

After proceeding through Zagreb to Belgrade, we met with Serbian President Slobodan Miloševi
ć
, who, like everyone I met, had first to recite a history of the region. I was thankful that he began with World War I instead of the twelfth century. I showed him a copy of the agreement, and he approved, but he was vituperative in his condemnation of Karadži
ć
, his competitor for Serbian leadership. I asked him repeatedly what it would take for them to be reconciled, and he finally said that if the parliament voted for the “Carter Plan,” this would be adequate.

The cease-fire went into effect the following week and prevailed for four months, but it was not extended. Conflict erupted again, and the international community supported Bosnia-Herzegovina and condemned Serbia. War crimes were committed by both sides, most terribly by the Serbs, and NATO dispatched sixty thousand peacekeepers and launched more than 3,300 bombing sorties against Serbian forces, mostly with American planes. Another more permanent cease-fire was signed in Dayton, Ohio, in December 1995, approved by Miloševi
ć
, Izetbegovi
ć
, and Tudjman. After Miloševi
ć
conceded defeat, war crimes charges were leveled by the International Criminal Court against him, Karadži
ć
, and Mladi
ć
. Miloševi
ć
was arrested in 2001, and the trial continued for five
years, until his death in 2006. Karadži
ć
was arrested in 2008 and Mladi
ć
in 2011, and both are still on trial for war crimes. I have often pondered what might have happened if the basic terms of the 1994 cease-fire agreement had been fully supported by the international community.

A preeminent foreign policy goal of my life since I became president has been to bring peace to Israel, which of necessity means peace for the Palestinians and other immediate neighbors. This also became a key commitment of The Carter Center, which maintains full-time offices in Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Gaza and has monitored the three Palestinian elections. The first was held in 1996, when Yasir Arafat was elected president and members of the Palestine National Authority were chosen. After Arafat’s death, Mahmoud Abbas was elected in 2005 to replace him as president, and then in January 2006 there was another election to choose new members of the parliament. Fatah, the Abbas party, and Israel did not want the election to proceed because candidates of Hamas were predicted to win up to 35 percent of parliamentary seats. However, the United States insisted that the already overdue election take place. The problem with Hamas was that it had not subscribed to the terms of the Oslo Agreement, which provided the basis for the Palestinian Authority.

It was an honest election, and Hamas did much better than expected, winning 74 of the 132 seats. The elected candidates included doctors, lawyers, educators, business executives, and previous holders of local office. I carried a request from Hamas to President Abbas to remain in office and to appoint Fatah members to some of the choice cabinet seats. While willing to remain in office, Abbas resisted the option of including Hamas in a unity government. I returned home to Plains, changed clothes, and flew back to London to attend a meeting of the International Quartet, comprising the United States, United Nations, European Union, and Russia. They allowed me to make a brief appeal to support the election results and then voted without debate to nullify them by making demands that
Hamas would not accept. Nevertheless, in March a Hamas-nominated cabinet was accepted by President Abbas, and during the summer there was movement toward a unity government. Israel arrested eight Hamas cabinet members and twenty members of parliament who lived in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and a number of these officials were imprisoned for several years.

I wrote a book that analyzed the situation in the Occupied Territories and spelled out a workable plan for a comprehensive peace in the area, compatible with long-standing official policies of the United States and the United Nations.
Palestine Peace Not Apartheid
made it clear that without a “two-state” agreement with the Palestinians, Israel would inevitably become committed to a one-state solution. This was a prospect that Israeli prime ministers had described as potentially catastrophic. With Israelis controlling the area from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, they would either have to give Palestinians equal voting rights and ultimately relinquish Jewish control of government affairs or treat non-Jews as secondary citizens, without equal rights. My book was condemned by the pro-Israel lobby, AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), and a number of prominent political leaders, primarily because of its title, in which I was careful not to mention Israel. Within a few days of its publication, I received 6,100 letters, a strong majority supporting my position, with many writers identifying themselves as Jewish. Despite my attempts at book signings and other public events to reiterate my lifelong support for Israel and its security, this altercation has been very painful to me. A full-length film,
Jimmy Carter: Man from Plains,
was made of the book tour, directed by Jonathan Demme.