He also said that President Milosevic bore some responsibility for not handing Mladic and Karadzic over, when it was obvious that he could have exerted pressure on the Bosnian Serbs. I have received an invitation to lunch with Karadzic, which I did not answer Karadzic is still in Pale. He still exercises considerable influence.”He has increased peace patrols in Pale, but said: “That does not mean I’ve established a permanent presence there.”He said that if Mr Karadzic or Mr Mladic turned up when he was negotiating with the Bosnian Serbs on their own territory, he would have to walk out, as his personal protection squad would probably not be strong enough to overpower their men. International arrest warrants for the pair are expected to be ordered in court at The Hague tomorrow.
The commander, Admiral Leighton Smith, said that until he receives specific orders from Nato’s North Atlantic Council, his troops are under orders to arrest war criminals only if they chance upon them.He also said he hoped there would be more pressure on Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic to hand over indicted war criminals, as he had agreed to do when he signed the Dayton Accord.Admiral Leighton Smith, who has led the 52,000-strong peace implementation force since it entered Bosnia in December, and who leaves Bosnia at the end of the month, said,”Mladic is in complete control of his army … The commander of the peace implementation force in Bosnia said yesterday that he was awaiting orders from Nato to arrest Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, adding that in his view they should be detained. But the broader divergence is as wide as ever.At best, Mr Netanyahu is prepared to make modest “confidence-building” gestures, in- cluding a promise to meet the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, and an easing of the restrictions on Palestinian workers crossing from the West Bank and Gaza, imposed after the recent spate of suicide bombings in Israel.But if the Administration is happy to be patient, parts of the Jewish comunity here are not. Now was “not the time for a wait-and-see policy”, the letter said.But the Prime Minister was sure of a warmer welcome from AIPAC, the powerful pro-Israel lobby, and on Capitol Hill where he will today address a Congress controlled by Republicans instinctively more sympathetic to his hardline approach to national security..

A group of 150 rabbis from the Jewish Peace Lobby have written to Mr Clinton demanding that the $1.2 billion annual economic aid Israel receives from the US be suspended if Mr Netanyahu carries out his campaign promise to expand West Bank settlements. Not only Israel, but also an exceptionally pro-Israeli Democratic President in a US election year have a great interest in a smooth working relationship.Israel’s longstanding concern over terrorism, moreover, has suddenly acquired new resonance here, after last month’s truck bomb explosion in Dhahran, which killed 19 US servicemen. Smiling and relaxed, Mr Netanyahu spoke of “productive discussions” during a brief break for a stroll in the White House rose garden.
But behind yesterday’s cordial facade, deep problems still lurked. Washington is ready to be patient and accommodating as the Likud leader elaborates his strategy for negotiating with the Arabs – but not to the extent of dropping the land-for-peace formula that has under- pinned the US-sponsored “peace process” to date.Before leaving for Washington, however, Mr Netanyahu pointedly noted that Jerusalem was “not willing to accept the deterioration of security as an existing and natural situation.” The words were not just a thinly- coded reminder that resumed bargaining with Syria over the Golan heights was out of the question, and of his opposition to a fully-fledged Palestinian state, with its capital in Jerusalem.They underline Likud’s repudiation of the concilatiory policies of previous Labour Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres – for whose re-election this spring the White House wished publicly, but in vain.On that last point, at least both sides will let bygones be bygones. “That’s where most of the immigrants passed through.”Like many, however, Mr Garrety admits that at the end of the day, he hardly cares and is puzzled that New Jersey is wasting money on the issue. “I don’t think this going to be the beginning of the second Civil War, do you?”.

Benjamin Netanyahu met President Clinton yesterday for the first time as Israeli Prime Minister, and put aside a series of differences over the path to Middle Eastern peace in a public show of amity between Israel and its most important friend and ally. In what officials hailed as a sign that things were going well, the Oval Office talks overshot their appointed time by 45 minutes. “New Jersey may have geography as its claim, but it’s not going to happen,” said Jessica Lang, who works for the foundation that restored Ellis Island for tourists in the Eighties. She continues, perhaps less persuasively than she realises: “It’s like Scotland claiming independence; everyone knows it’s part of Britain”.”It has to be New York,” agrees Michael Garrety, who was among hordes of tourists visiting the island as well as the neighbouring Statue of Liberty monument (which is not being contested in the suit).

The immigrant steamships would first dock at Manhattan, before their human freight sailed in small ferries to the island for processing. A third of the 16 million people who passed through it settled in New York. Each state, meanwhile, gained ownership of submerged territory on their respective sides of the island. Early in this century, Ellis Island was expanded to cover 24 acres, with landfill extending towards New Jersey. That, say New Jersey’s lawyers, made Ellis Island theirs.But cultural and sentimental considerations tie Ellis Island more closely with New York than New Jersey. On her side is geography: Ellis Island lies just 1,300 feet from the New Jersey shoreline and a full two miles from Manhattan.The trial will turn on an agreement struck between the two states in 1834, under which New York won control of thebarely three acres that constituted Ellis Island then.

Once the hearings are completed, the burden of making a final decision will go to the Supreme Court’s justices, who may not offer a final verdict for months, even years.”We feel simply that New York has usurped a piece of New Jersey’s property, and the old records prove fairly conclusively that this is New Jersey’s land,” argues Hope Alswang, the director of New Jersey’s Historical Commission. Almost incidental is the promise of tax re-venue generated by the millions of tourists who visit Ellis Island every year and cram the museum, which opened in 1990 More powerful is the site’s symbolism. No fewer than 40 per cent of all Americans can trace their ancestry to a man, woman or child who landed here.Presiding over the case will be Paul Verkuil, a law professor at New York’s Columbia University, whom both sides will present with sheaves of historical documents, including records of the original 400-year-old land grants extended by King Charles II. The litigant is the state of New Jersey, which, in a fit of unneigh-bourly pique, is sueing New York state for jurisdiction of the island.Expected to last for about a month, the trial will be the first to be heard from its original stages at the Supreme Court since 1790. According to the Constitution, the justices of this court alone must be the arbiters of territorial disputes between states – to avert an outbreak of military hostilities.The lure of ownership is not hard to comprehend. For, almost unbelievably, Ellis Island, a small but celebrated speck in the mouth of New York Harbour, has become the subject of a legal dispute: nobody is sure who it belongs to.
Beginning this morning, the United States Supreme Court in Washington will become the venue of a most unusual trial.