Retired Bosnian Army wartime general Jovan Divjak told N1 he met with the controversial Nobel Prize laureate Peter Handke in 1996, when he told the writer that his books burned in the Sarajevo Town Hall when Bosnian Serb forces set fire to it, thus burning the biggest library in the country.

“The fact is that I had the opportunity to tell him about the fire in the Town Hall in August 1992, as well as the three big massacres in May 1992, February 1996 and August 1995 when most of the victims were children. He listened, but whether he thought of something else is beyond me. I just know that his facial expression, the look in his eyes didn't show any compassion with what I said,” Divjak said.

The Süddeutsche Zeitung interviewed the Nobel Prize laureate for literature when he said he met with Divjak and the then1Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic.

“I met him (Karadzic) through Valentin Inzko who was Austria's Ambassador in Sarajevo, who now serves as the international community's High Representative for Bosnia. I live with him back then and he helped me with the papers. I didn't only meet with Karadzic, but with the Serb general Jovan Divjak who fought alongside Bosnian Muslims. When he heard I was at Pale (a settlement near Sarajevo, where Bosnian Serb-leadership was based during the 1992-1995 war), he put his fist next to my nose,” Handke told the German newspaper.