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novine.1 .bale.,
======================================================================== ======================================================================== VREME broj 49, 30.09.1991. ======================================================================== ************************************************************************ ***************** SAMO ZA ONE KOJI OVO VOLE DA CITAJU ****************** ************************************************************************ Corava kutija RODOLJUB BENZINSKOG AKCIONARA ----------------------------- Braca Bajic: "Aoj, Franjo, dodji malo na poselo u Borovo Selo" Pod petrolejskim utiskom da je benzin, de facto, jedini opijum za goloruki narod koji brani ognjista s unutrasnjim sagorevanjem, na malim ekranima, granuliran do poslednje celije surove nafte, iznenada se pojavio g. Dragan Tomic, direktor veslackog drustva "Jugopetrol", da iz ruku usnulog patrijarha Pavla primi komplet pravoslavnih bonova za ekskluzivno putovanje autostradom po carstvu nebeskom (cetvrtak, 19. septembar, TV Bjeletic; "Dnevnik 2"; 19:30); pomolivsi se Gospodu za izobilje blagodetnih naftnih isparenja, g. Tomic se pred kamerama elegantno prekrstio nogom (kako su ga, uostalom, ucili na casovima veronauke u crkvi Socijalistickog saveza radnog naroda Beograda) i u iskrenom, religioznom transu, shvativsi da je konacno ideoloski osvecen, iz dzepne benzinske pumpe prisutne svestenicke casnike zalio penusavim dizelom s prepoznatljivim bukeom; kad se, na licu mesta, svojim naocarima & kovrdzavim okoglavcem uverio da velecasni Pavle ne reaguje na kvalitetno "crno zlato", g. Dragan se odlucio za miroljubivu taktiku, primerenu srpskom nacionalnom bicu s dvotaktnim motorom: klececi ispred svog omiljenog patrijarha, u znak postovanja, g. direktor je glavom, iznenada, snazno udario u armirani beton, u cugu iskopao petsto hiljada kubika etnicke srpske teritorije, na brzaka izgradio rafineriju i, totalno drogiran oktanskim aditivima, umazan tecnom sirovinom, zapevao koliko ga grlo nosi: "Pogledajte, drugovi, na pumpama redovi, jer je nase pune kante ispraznio Ante." Kako ni ovi skroz tuzni socijalni stihovi brace Bajic nisu probudili Pastira Svih Srba Kosmosa, koji je stojeci spavao, g. Tomic - odlucan da dokaze da je, ipak, cuo za krsnu slavu - poceo je nezno, nekako izokola, da ljubi presvetlu ruku g. Pavla; palacajuci jezikom kao zedni mravojed, g. Dragan krenuo je s prstiju na saku koju je, zatim, u slast oglodao, potpuno gluv na apele svekolikog srpskog naroda, koji je uzasnut gledao kako mu novopeceni vernik jede patrijarha. U stanju duboke hipnoticke uspavanosti spiritistickog medijuma, akcionar "Jugopetrola" odgrizao je lakat Svetom ocu i, trijumfalno podizuci lovacki trofej uvis, porucio da srpski automobili, ako se naredi, mogu bez frke da idu na spricer i bozu, jer je samo opticka zabluda & cista neprijateljska propaganda da smo, je li, zavisni od nekakve glupe nafte. Da je, u biti, busotina toliko duboka da ni osisani dr Budimir Srnetic nema vremena da se obrije bas za svaki estrdni nastup, nehotice je dokazala baletska emisija "Nagradna igra: Politika ekspres" (utorak, 24. septembar; TV Bjeletic III; 21:15), u kojoj je definitivno & neopozivo, zahvaljujuci poduzetnickom mentalitetu Kontraobavestajne sluzbe JNA, razotkriveno pakleno spijunsko gnezdo u tzv. muzici; po svedocenju TV lica koje se pojavilo na ekranu, namignulo i zaverenicki prosaptalo da mu je mama bolesna, tacno je utvrdjeno "da se emitovanje pojedinih pesama ili muzickih spotova poklapa sa pocetkom napada ili dejstava hrvatskih formacija. Ovakve muzicke sifre istovremeno se salju i preko radio-talasa, pa je to jos jedan dokaz koliko se umesno Hrvati koriste svojim informativnim sistemom u koncepciji rata i ostvarivanju svojih suludih operacija." Realizacija ovog podlog plana zbilja je toliko lukava & jednostavna da se iste veceri pokojni Rihard Zorge nekoliko puta od muke prevrnuo u svom inace udobnom grobu: jer, cim hrvatski muzicki saradnici emituju skladbu "Aoj, Franjo Tudjmanu, dodji malo na poselo u Borovo Selo", drogirani bojovnici po komandi se penju na silose i odatle se "svete zivotinjama, ubijajuci citava stada"; oni koji "ponavljaju bestijalna klanja srpske nejaci, nemocnih staraca i nejake dece, pod drsko i s ponosom isticanim znamenjima genocidnog ustastva", najopasniji su kad cuju svoju koljacku himnu "Hajde da ludujemo ove noci" od koje se Srbima ledi krv u zilama, znajuci da pojava Tajci sluti na domoljublje s okusom horora; po svedocenju intervjuisanih zrtava koje su, pacifisticki naivno, slusale muziku, uverene da je sve rok-en-rol, najzloglasniji pokolji se pripremaju kad se iz etra cuje glas Mise Kovaca i grupe "Bijelo dugme"; vec prvi taktovi obavestajne numere "Proplakat ce zora", Srbe sirom sveta teraju u zbegove, dok refren konfederalnog hita "Tako ti je, mala moja, kad ljubi Bosanac" vraca grozomorno, kolektivno, istorijsko secanje na zlocine muslimanskih ustasa. Otkriveno je, takodje, da svaki napad na slobodarsko Tenje pocinje pesmom Zdravka Colica "Pjevam danju, pjevam nocu"; vec se zna da je Cobijeva "Tike, tike tacka" pocetak minobacackog uzasa za Srbe u Vukovaru, a glavom bez obzira valja bezati cim "Novi fosili" krenu s hadezeovskom "Suti, moj djecace plavi" ili, jos gore, s provokativnom "Moj prijatelj Anu ljubi"; pakao u Drnisu najavljuje Arsen Dedic zloglasnom "Moderato kantabile", a vrhunac jeze - pricaju retki preziveli - simbolizuje glas Dzonija Stulica i njegove "Fa-fa-fafala si mi ti, hvala ti" nakon koje, uredno, sledi masakr pravoslavnog zivlja. Da i Srbi konje za radio utrku imaju, pokazuju srpski The Walker Brothers, braca Bajic, ciji sofisticirani stihovi puni nostalgije "Aoj, Stipe, Stipice, ostaces bez bradice" & "Pitaj ljude, Kucane, cime da se prehrane, na Triglavu nece zito, neka seje Tito" u panicno bekstvo teraju demoralisane ustaske formacije, koje, u ocajanju, za sobom ostavljaju lanc-pakete zajedno sa fasistickim salvetama. Ocigledno dobro raspolozen saznanjem da su i Bajici presli na CD format i tako, zauvek, rascistili s "Jugotonovim" hrvatskim vinilom, u Pancevu se - osvetljen samohodnim reflektorima TV Bjeletic - pojavio g. Borisav Jovic da na tribini "Always The Serbia" demonstrira nesto iz svog bogatog operskog repertoara (ponedeljak, 23. septembar; "Dnevnik 3"; 23:20); ariju "Srbije ce uvek biti i to, moguce je, vece", g. Bora otpevao je cistim falsetom, izazivajuci freneticne ovacije u gledalistu krcatom penzionerskim zivljem prikljucenim na "Croatia" baterije; dirnut ovolikom paznjom svojih devedesetogodisnjih vrsnjaka, Boki se ohrabrio da poruci obozavaocima: "Jos sam drug i tako cu ostati". Povici iz publike: "Budi drug, daj nam jedan krug" nisu izazvali ocekivanu reakciju, jer je g. Jovic morao da smislja analiticki odgovor na vrlo gadno pitanje: "Da li smo blizi kraju gradjanskog rata ili pocetku treceg svetskog rata?". U dramaticnoj pauzi, u kojoj se moglo cuti kako u Beogradu g. Tomic s uzivanjem mljacka, Borisav je skinuo naocare, obrisao ih nogavicom, naocare potom znacajno vratio na svoje plave, batocinske oci, i nehajno, gotovo lakonski, manirom iskusnog strelca, upitao: "Koji rat?". Tragicno svestan koliko je dr Boki uvijek u pravu, pred gledaocima TV Ujvideki, nasmejan kao obicno, s nestasnim cuperkom koji mu u kombinaciji s obrstelom kravatom daje tako prepoznatljiv "image" svetski uspesnog muskarca ciji je moto "I posle Kostica - Branko", pojavio se g. Jugoslav Kostic da procita nekoliko najnovijih kitica iz svoje zbirke koju je on licno, iz glave, posvetio onom nesrecniku & muceniku kome u nalogu za hapsenje pise da se zove Ante Markovic (ponedeljak, 23. septembar; "Dnevnik 3"; 23:10); odlucno gledajuci u kosmatu celu g. Nedeljka Sipovca koji je, za svaki slucaj, unapred klimnuo glavom, lepsa polovina dueta Kostic & Kostic upozorila je da onaj zlocinac, koji nas stalno iritira tim, kao sneg belim, kosuljama i svilenim kravatama, treba da "ode sa ove funkcije da ga ne bi fizicki odstranili, kakvih vec zahteva ima". Mnogo pomirljiviji bio je 22 sata docnije (utorak, 24. septembar; TV Vucelic; "Dnevnik 3"; 22:55) zlatousti vojvodjanski delegat Danilo Pantovic, koji je obecao da ako "legalne institucije nece Markovica da gone, gradjani treba da se organizuju i da ga hapse". Polemiku je hladnokrvo smirio delegat Skupstine SFRJ Obrad Jelic, koji je u studio uleteo sa sekirom i uzetom za vesanje; vadeci iz kilota serifsku zvezdu, a sve vreme znacajno udarajuci usima u usicu hladnog oruzja. Jelic je, u lokvi krvi, stalozeno & principijelno objasnio gledaocima da je covekoliki Markovic "svesno vodio zemlju u ekonomsku i politicku krizu: svima je jasno da je on glavni razbijac Jugoslavije i da zbog toga mora da stane pred lice pravde". O svom najdrazem antisrpskom junaku, u Subotici je, u toplom SPS ognjistu, progovorio dr Budimir Lanetic (TV Bjeletic; utorak, 24. septembar; "Dnevnik 3"; 23:20) urednik Petar "Ni ja ne perem kosu" Trajkovic); prethodno je, kako valja, upozorio onog Madjara Antala da se ne zeza sa Srbima, jer ce osetiti "zeleznu srpsku snagu", a zatim se, da bi bio uverljiviji, popeo na plafon, skinuo sako, kosulju, kravati u potkosulju, od koje se ne razdvaja jos od osnovne skole, i u toplesu publici pokazivao misice, apelujuci da svaki Srbin & Srpkinja mogu da ga pipnu i zakljuce da je misicavo tkivo potpredsednika vlade direktno u vezi sa stihom: "I kosuta srnu mazi dok je ne pregazi". Malkice zbunjeni scenom u Skupstini opstine, Suboticani su pedesetominutnim aplauzom pozdravili vest da g. Srna putuje u New York kako bi na Ist Riveru citavom svijetu objasnio golgotu srpskog naroda kojem smrtonosnu zamku sprema bas inzenjer Ante. Viseci o kristalnom lusteru, g. Kosuta skruseno je priznao da mu je na "sednici Ustavne komisije postalo jasno da su Ante Markovic i SIV centar izjave" i da je provalio podatak da u Beogradu "postoje sredstva informisanja ciji su novinari na platnom spisku stranih obavestajnih sluzbi". Razdragani Suboticani, koji se ovako lepo nisu zabavljali jos od slavnih dana cirkusa "Moira Orfei", u brisucem letu napustili su veliku salu Skupstine opstine, ostavljajuci iza sebe coveka koji je pobedio gravitaciju, ali jos - za sada - nije savladao tehniku padanja na parket sa dvadeset metara. Cuje se da je, s kombijem punim tek napisanih i neprodatih knjiga, Kosuticu u pomoc krenuo neumorni Radomir Smiljanic, koji, trenutno, s "kalasnjikovim" u jednoj, i narudzbenicom u drugoj ruci, stoji nasred brze pruge Dimitrovgrad - Subotica i odusevljenim putnicima, pod pretnjom tihe likvidacije, prodaje komplete vrlo povoljno. Da li je Srnetic skinut? Moze li luster izdrzati najmasovnijeg Srbina u kosmosu? Hoce li s dobrovoljcima u Suboticu stici kondukter Zelenovic? Ima li coveka koji je procitao makar jednu Smiljanicevu knjigu i ostao ziv? Sta je ostalo od patrijarha? O svemu tome, u iducoj epizodi "Corave kutije"... PETAR LUKOVIC ======================================================================== ======================================================================== ========================================================================
novine.2 spantic,
The New York Times, Oct. 1, 1991. ETHNIC CONFLICT IN YUGOSLAVIA TEARING APART ITS ARMY, TOO by David Binder Belgrade, Sept. 27 The colonel suddenly wept. He was recounting the dilemma of a Serbian officer flying combat missions against Croatia. The pilot's Croatian wife had called him from Zagreb demanding that he take off his uniform and desert, or she would jump from their 14-th story apartment with their child. The pilot then called his Serbian mother in Novi Sad, who told him that if he took off the uniform of the Yugoslav Army, he could never cross her threshold again. He flew that night. Families Falling Apart "Excuse this display of emotion," said Col. Ivan Matovic, a big, rough-hewn man, wiping his eyes with his fingers during the course of an interview. "But these are bad times. Army families falling apart. Divorces. We are supposed to defend ourselves. But we can't defend ourselves. Our hands are tied." As ethnic warfare mainly between Serbs and Croats tears this country of 23 million apart, it is also tearing at Yugoslavia's last remaining federal institution, the armed forces, once rated the third strongest in continental Europe, after those of Germany and France. Col. Matovic, an army spokesman and editor of the military journal People's Army, spoke of widespread desertions, mutines and draft dodging that have depleted the 180,000-member military, of mounting casualties and of a vacuum in political leadership that has left field commanders in a state of confusion over their orders. Commanders Being 'Patient' "They are ordered to open fire and then to cease fire" he remarked. "They are ordered to liberate blockaded garrisons in Croatia and then to stop. For now, they are being very patient." How the Yugoslav crisis plays out will hinge in large measure on the Yugoslav military's effectiveness and unity, or lack thereof, and the extent to which it continues to back Serbian militias in Croatia. It now appears that the military, led by Defense Minister Veljko Kadijevic, has become increasingly reluctant to tie its fortunes to the Serbian political leadership, particularly after recent battlefield losses and the siege of many of its garrisons by Croatian forces. General Kadijevic took the lead in bringing about the most recent tenuous cease-fire, which took effect Sept. 22. He negotiated it directly with Croatia's President, Franjo Tudjman, apparently without the involvement of the Serbian President, Slobodan Milosevic. As Yugoslavia's federal structure crumbled during the summer, the army, whose officer corps is mainly Serbian, increasingly took its cue from political leaders in Serbia who, like the generals, are remnants of the central Communist order created by Tito after World War II. As a result, since July the army has backed Serbian irregulars in Croatia who have seized Serbian-populated areas in opposition to the republic's June 25 independence declaration. Croatian leaders and foreign diplomats have assailed the army's role as clearly aggressive, while the military has defended its actions as being in the interest of national order. More than 500 people have been killed. With a shaky truce in place and cracks in the generals' resolve in evidence, a sizable portion of the Yugoslav military today finds itself in the position of a Gulliver tied down by thousands of Lilliputian strings. This Gulliver is stretched across virtually the entire republic of Croatia. Col. Matovic said 40 army garrisons had been blockaded in Croatia by that republic's recently formed defense forces, "some of them without water, food, or electricity or telephone communication for 25 days." Other units are still trapped in Slovenia, the republic that declared independence on the same day as Croatia. Slovenian militias dealt the army its first embarrassment in the civil conflict as they resisted a short-lived attempt to reassert federal control through force. Describing the huge garrison in the Croatian capital, the military spokesman said:"I am sure they are strong enough to take Zagreb if ordered, and for the blockaded garrison in Vukovar, to take Vukovar, to take all of Croatia. But no officers are going to shoot at their own people." The high command's problems have been complicated by the fact that much of the ground action oh the Serbian side in Croatia was carried out less by the army itself than by Serbian militias of Krajina and eastern Slavonia. The militias, and other Serbian formations gathering strength in Bosnia- Herzegovina, are acting along the lines of President Milosevic's unpublicized declaration on March 16 that "it is the legitimate right and the interest of the Serbian people to live in one state - this is the beginning and the end." There were 600,000 Serbs in Croatia at the beginning of the fighting and more than a million in Bosnia-Herzegovina. With army protection from the air and armored columns on the ground, the militias in Croatia have seized huge chunks of the republic, leaving it more or less in four pieces. The Croatian control authorities acknowledge that the Serbs control about 35 percent of the republic's territory. Thus the tail, in the form of the Serbian militias, has been wagging the dog, the Serbian-dominated federal army. If all went the way of Mr. Milosevic's dictum, the outcome would be a greater Serbia comprising the heartland, the former autonomous provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina, large chunks of Bosnia- Herzegovina and pieces of Croatia inhabited largely by Serbs. He might still choose to call such an entity "Yugoslavia". Milosevic Plan Discounted But many Serbs are skeptical these days that the Milosevic dream can be realized or that the army is able and willing to achieve it. Milos Vasic, the military specialist of the independent weekly Vreme, said the Milosevic plan, vague as it may be, "has prohibitive costs in money an manpower." He added that Serbia was already short on fuel for army planes and tanks and that supplies of spare parts formerly turned out by factories in Slovenia and Croatia were also in short supply. "Time is working for the Croats", he said. "Their National Guard is getting better armed, and more important, they are gaining combat experience." Col. Matovic acknowledged that the Croatian forces had acquired valuable equipment by stopping trains loaded with hundreds of armored vehicles and artillery pieces and munitions and seizing the arms. In addition, the Croats acquired 120 armored vehicles including T-55 tanks when they seized the army garrison at Varazdin. This suggests that renewed, full-fledged combat would be far fiercer than any seen up to now in Yugoslavia. While Croatia has clear war aims - securing independence and regaining all of its territory - the battlefield aims of the Serbian leadership remain opaque, apparently deliberately so. Mr. Milosevic declared again this week in a television interview that "Serbia is not at war", although he has ordered the partial mobilization of draft-age youth in Serbia. So for many of the 9.5 million Serbs, this is a shadow war. "is there a patriotic duty for Serbs to fight?" a Belgrade radio reporter asked a Serb on a talk show. "yes, if Serbian war aims were defined", he replied, "but they are not defined". Despite the remaining multi-ethnic character of the federal armed forces, most of those now fighting against the Croats are Serbs. The Croatian authorities assert that 11,467 soldiers have either gone over to their side or turned themselves in as prisoners in recent weeks - the overwhelming majority presumably being non-Serbs. Among the recent defectors is Gen. Anton Tus, former commander of the Yugoslav Air Force, who is now functioning as Mr. Tudjman's new commander of Croatian forces. Resistance to military service is widespread. Col. Matovic said that draftees in the republics of Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina had refused en masse to serve in Croatia, and that the armed forces had decided on their own to forgo taking in 20,000 ethnic Albanians from the restive region of Kosovo in Serbia. The principal problems of the army, however, appear to lie in the Serbian heartland, where draft dodging and desertion have become rampant. On Thursday, a closed session of the Serbian Parliament was told that 50 percent of the men called up in the republic's partial mobilization had failed to report to their posts. Mutinies have been reported in many heartland towns and cities. In the absence of a functioning federal government, the chain of command now flows down from Defense Minister Kadijevic through the supreme command staff including Gen. Blagoje Adzic, chief of the general stall, and General Kadijevic's deputies, ADm. Stane Brovet and Gen. Marko Negovanovic. Is the Army Unified? "The army still hasn't lost all its multi-ethnic character," Col. Matovic said, pointing out that General Kadijevic is a Croat and Adm. Brovet a Slovene. "They are unified," he said of the high command. "There is no reason to say they are not together, at least not so far". But last month, Adm. Brovet was quoted by an Italian paper, La Stampa of Turin, as saying peace could be achieved simply "if Milosevic and Tudjman were eliminated," This week, Gen. Kadijevic was also reported to have condemned both republic Presidents. That would imply that divisions exist in the high command. Asked what the army is fighting for and how the rank and file is being motivated, Col. matovic said, "At first the motivation was to separate the sides fighting in Croatia, to keep peace and to make possible a democratic discussion of the future of Yugoslavia." "Now," he continued,"the only motivation we can give them is to liberate their friends and comrades in the blockaded garrisons, which are like ghettos." As an afterthought, he added, "A very strong motive is to defend Serbian people so that 200,000 refugees can return to their homes in Croatia." In fact, the Serbian refugees from Croatia, officially numbered at 105,000, have become a serious economic burden for Serbia and a morale problem as well because many of them are youths of draft age, some of whom have taken jobs of heartland Serbs who are serving at the front. Another factor motivating the officers is the retention of their pay, pensions and privileges, all of which are considerable. Col. Matovic and his colleagues are loath to discuss the topic. "We are very much for Yugoslavia, a new Yugoslavia, to be formed," Col. Matovic said. Mr. Vasic, the military specialist, said,"This is why after resisting for some time, the army is riding with Milosevic."
novine.3 spantic,
(Without permission from The Washington Post:) October 10, 1991 CROATS FIELD MILITANT MILITIA Nationalist Party Fighters Invoke Images of Fascist Past By Blaine Harden (Washington Post Foreign Service) ZAGREB, Yugoslavia Besides bayonets, gleaming black hand grenades and late-model submachine guns, militiamen of the ultra-nationalist Croatian Party of Rights outfit themselves with Roman Catholic rosary beads. On the wooden stocks of their automatic weapons, some fighters in the militia have carved the U symbol of Croatia's notorious Ustashi govenment that, in 1941-45, collaborated with Adolf Hitler and forcibly converted Eastern Orthodox Serbs to Catholicism. Hundreds of thousands of Serbs not converted were expelled from the fascist state or murdered in death camps. Television here has been preparing Croats for all-out war against an enemy that it depicts as evil incarnate. In addition to messages about how to treat war wounds at home, Croatian television broadcasts video montages of resolute looking Croatian militiamen, sinister-looking Serbian generals and bomb-damaged Croatian churches. These slicky produced videos are scored to classical music, including Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. As the war intensified, the initials of the wartime Ustashi regime were scrawled on more and more buildings across Zagreb. At a posh hotel wedding reception here on Saturday night, at about the time Croatia's president was ordering a mobilizationof all Croats to fight "the Serbo-Communist hordes", two young men stood at a large table and reised their stiff right arms in the "Seigh Heil" salute of Nazi Germany. A member of the wedding party later explained the salutes, which were popularhere during World War II, as a byproduct of the pressures placed on Croats by the advancing Serbs. "You have to realize how people feel. For some, Ustashi were fighting for free Croatia", said the woman, who did not want to be identified by name. The Catholic Church in Croatia has neither endorced nor dissociated itself from the militia. Against echoes of the faschist past, the independently armed and independently commanded militia of Party of Rights has been able to set up a Beirut-style military head-quates in the heart of old-town Zagreb. The new office in a baroque 18th-century townhouse is equipped with sandbags and hundreds of boxes of ammunition. A six-foot-high Soviet-made antiaircraft missile was shown off to visiting reporters. Militiamen with grenades and beads guard the front door. With no authorization from the elected government, the militia has gone into action here in Zagreb, where it helps other Croatian forces blocade barracks of the Serbian-dominated Yugoslav federal army. The militia has participated in fighting across the republic, particularly in the besieged eastern cities of Vukovar and Vinkovci. "We are the front line of defense. Together with the Croatian National Guard and the police, we make this war," said a Party of Rights militiaman, who would give his name only as Zelko. The elected Croatian government has been at pains to dissociate itself from the genocidal excesses of the Ustashi era and has shown itself to be unconfortable with the Party of Rights. The government is concerned that the party's highly visible militia will give the republic of serbia, as well as states outside Yugoslavia, an excuse to brand the leadership here as "fascist". Croatia's defense minister has said that any militia which is not part of his normal chain of command must be disbanded. Last month, as leaders of Party of Rights addressed several thousand supporters at an evening rally in central Zagreb, the government switched off all the lights in the main The level of government discomfort with the Party of Rights, however, took an exponential leap last month with the shooting death of the party's chief military commander. Ante Paradzik, 48, a lawyer, was vice president of the party and had frequently accused Croatia's elected leaders of corruption, incompetence and cowardice. On the night of Sept. 21, a Croatian policeman shot Paradzik 13 times in the chest, stomack and back at a police roadblock on the outskirts of Zagreb. The death was branded an assassination by the party's president, Dobroslav Paraga. He was schedulled to have been in the car in which his vice president was killed on order of the security apparatus of Croatian President Franjo Tudjman. The Party of Rights, which claims to have 10,000 men in arms, had convened a press conference just 12 hours before the shooting. During the meeting, party leaders - including Paradzik - described Tudjman as a "traitor" for his reluctance to start an all-out war against the Serbian-dominated federal army. Croatian authorities have denied any political motivation, saying Paradzik was killed by police after the car in which he was a passenger failed to stop at two consecutive roadblocks. A suviving passenger in the car, however, said that a Croatian policeman started shooting after their car had come to a full stop at a roadblock. "The particular guy who stopped us, instead of asking for our identity papers, he backed up five steps and started shooting. He shot 40 or 50 times. It was a mafia-like shooting, like in Chicago," said Ivica Orsanic, 52, a Croatian-born Canadian citizen from Toronto, who is a fundraiser for the Party of Rights. "No shots were fired from our car," said Orsanic, although he did say the driver's submachine gun was in the vehicle. The driver of the car was shot and severely injured. "As the shooting started, our driver said, 'Don't shoot, don't shoot, we are one of yours.'" Paradzik, apassionate anti-Communist, was frequently imprisioned during the Communist era in Croatia. That era ended last year with the election of Tudjman But Paradzik viewed Tudjman, a former general in the staunchly Communist Yugoslav army, as a Communist disguising himself as a Croatian patriot. Tudjman's government, Paradzik said in a September interview with the Zagreb weekly Globus, is "formed entirely of former and current Bolsheviks." Besides Tudjman, the head of Croatia's military crisis command, Josip Manolic, was a colonel in counterintelligence for the Communist federal government. In the convoluted politics of Yugoslavia, assassinations have played a pivotal role. That of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914 sparked World War I. Fourteen years later, in Belgrade, a populist Croat nationalist named Stjepan Radic was murdered on the floor of the legislature when he called members of the Serbian dominated cabinet "swine". President Tudjman, who has a doctorate in Yugoslav history, has referred to that assassination in explaining his need for a large corps of bodygards. An eerily simillar killing to that in Zagreb on Sept. 21 took place in Belgrade on Aug. 4. There, a number-two man in a paramilitary group that is independent of the Serbian leadership was gunned down near his home. The top leader of that group immediately accused the hard-line Socialist (former Communist) government of President Slobodan Milosevic of complicity. The government denied it. Charges that Croatia is a fascist state are common across Serbia. Many members of the 600,000 strong Serbian minority in this republic say they believe that an independant Croatia will repeat the anti-Serbian crimes of the Ustashi. The federal minister of defense, Gen. Veljko Kadijevic, who is a Serb, has publicly characterized the Tudjman government as "fascistic." The symbols, rhetoric and territorial ambitions of the Party of Rights provide ample reason for Serbian concern.
novine.4 spantic,
**************************************************************************** Principle Before Action by Sir Alfred Sherman (THE EUROPEAN, Sept. 20th, 1991) SIR ALFRED SHERMAN fears that military intervention by the EC could offer more dangers than answers. European involvement in the Yugoslav conflict was intended as showpiece for the EC's "Common European Policy" but has been counter-productive from the outset. Followed to its logical conclusion of large scale military confrontatio with the powerful Serbian-Federal forces, it would lead to massive destruction, disaffection on the part of European forces and likely Soviet involvement - a high price to pay for the idea of an EC common foreign policy, for which arguments are rhetorical rather than empirical. Geographical continuity does not automatically confer common philosophy and purpose.The present approach excludes long-standing Nato allies which do have 'locus standi', like the United States and Turkey, to pander to French anti- Americanism while giving weight to states which have no commitment either to Western defence or to the West's defence capacity. There are natural limits to the good which European involvement in the Yugoslav imbroglio could do at best, but none to the harm it might do to us and them if it is undertaken without due thought. The EC's political and 'a fortiori' its military involvement in Yugoslavia are shaky under international law. Yugoslavia is a sovereign member of the United Nations: its internal affairs are its own business. The hostilities there look unlikely to spread to any neighbouring state. The Yugoslavs cannot be treated as unruly natives who need a gunboat and expeditionary force to keep them in order. The proposed European "peace making force" would need to be massive in order to match the Federal-Serbian force. German involvement would be politically unthinkable. The Dutch, Luxembourgeois and Italians will call for force while leaving others to provide it. The French sent half a brigade to the Gulf War and could hardly be expected to risk more against their traditional allies, the Serbs. The Spaniards and the Portugese are not military significant. The Greeks value their relations with their neighbour above other coniderations. Britain was put to muster a full armoured division for the Gulf. No British government would consider risking these forces in Yugoslavia for the sake of an abstraction like a common European foreign policy. How a European force would reach the battle area and maintain its communications remains to be explained. The only direct access would be through Croatia's Adriatic ports, but these are blocked by the federal navy, cut off by land by the rest of Croatia and vulnerable to air attack. Neither Austria nor Hungary would be likely to allow their territories to be used for military operations in the face of Belgrade's opposition. And the Slovenes would hardly risk their deal with Belgrade to do battle for Croatia's sake. European involvement must be confined to the search for a political solution which the EC, WEU and maybe NATO could help broker and finance. The original EC refusal to consider recognising Slovene and Croatian independence encouraged the federal/military/communist complex to invade Slovenia, where a bloody nose gave them second thoughts. The EC's subsequent 'volte-face', mooting unconditional recognition for Croatia, ddiscouraged the Croatians from seeking a deal with the Serbs over the Serb minority in the Croatian Marches bordering Bosnia, and with the federal government over orderly dissolution of the federation. Yet this alone could provide the political basis for a solution to remove the cause for Federal forces' involvent. An EC/WEU/NATO peace keeping initiative would have to work discreetly, seeking agreement between the European partners themselves and placing responsibility for peace on the various Yugoslav factions. The EC should outline the conditions und er which it would consider recognising succession-states. European support for Croatia must depend on the Croats abandoning their claim to the predominantly Serbian Krajina (the Marches with Bosnia). There the Croatian penchant for ethnic and religious persecution of the Serbs (and unfairly blaming them for communist excesses into the bargain) was ominously revived in 1990 when the Croats unilaterally declared independence in the whole territory without negotiation. The alternative is a continued Serb-Croat war in which the Serbs will come out on top while the EC issues threats it cannot back up, but which discourage the Croats from seeking a realistic deal. Only when agreement is reached on principle can European ceasefire observers and map makers help broker peace.
novine.5 ivujanic,
╠ The federal minister of defense, Gen. Veljko Kadijevic, who is a ╠ Serb, has Zar??? Ivica
novine.6 squsovac,
╠ The federal minister of defense, Gen. Veljko Kadijevic, who is a ╠ Serb, has > Zar??? NE formalnio se deklariše kao jugosloven!
novine.7 max.headroom,
>> ╠ The federal minister of defense, Gen. Veljko Kadijevic, who is a >> ╠ Serb, has >> >> Zar??? Sta, nisi znao?! ;>
novine.8 .bale.,
------------------------------------------------------------------------ Vreme broj 52, 21. oktobar 1991. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Ćorava kutija TU SE STVORI HARMONIKA ---------------------- Kako pobeći od Branka? Strogo poverljiva naredba ostatka zaklanog Predsedništva da se titula "Muškarac godine" dodeli dr Branku Kostiću - žestoko je odjeknula Cavtatom, gde je oduševljeno & očigledno lepo raspoloženo pučanstvo po podrumima i podzemnim skloništima, bez vode, hrane & zamrzivača, uskliknulo s ljubavlju an ekskluzivnu vijest TV Bjeletić da je Cavtat, hvala ti, Bože, konačno "oslobođen" (utorak, 15. oktobar; "Dnevnik 3"; 23,30); po pravilu službe, odnekud se, opet, stvorila harmonika & čikinim kolom na licu mjesta odbranila Jugoslaviju od nekadašnjih "drogiranih hrvatskih bojovnika" koji su, sudeći po izveštaju reportera/ neuropsihijatra, u međuvremenu postali "raspamećeni", a ostali "krvoločni", kao što priliči "takozvanim braniocima grada". S granatom u ustima & nagaznim minama usred razdeljka koji se, kano klisurina, rascvetao na slobodarskoj lobanji negde oko temena, pred prebledelim gledaocima 180 minuta ranije ("Dodatak Dnevnika"; 20,20) pojavio se užareni Miodrag "Dole šampon" Popov da u stojećem stavu, s pionirskom maramom oko vrata obima 95 cm, odrecituje pjesmicu "Srpsko dete od glave do pete": "U zoru, na moru, dok se sunce radja, pevaju mornari sa Brankovih ladja." Udarajući se pijukom po ušima, Miodrag je brže-bolje objasnio da je lađar Branko, vaistinu dr Kostić, koji je smogao snage da, ležeći na krevetu od eksera, narodu pokloni još jedan interview i tako, s lakoćom, uđe u Ginisovu knjigu crnogorskih rekorda: za poslednjih 216 sati, polupredsednik Predsedništva na televizijskom ognjištu od čipova pojavio se tačno 12.960 puta, u proseku svakih 60 sekundi, čime su se stekli svi uslovi da knjiga "Kako se zaštititi od dr Branka Kostića: istine i zablude" postane pravi bestseler. Nekoliko praktičnih i korisnih saveta nije neuputno citirati: 1. ISKLJUžITI TELEVIZOR: Zabluda. Kao svaki federalni kompjuter, g. Kostić u svom bežičnom tijelu ima ugrađen generator koji u tom slučaju spontano uključuje ostale aparate u domaćinstvu. Recimo: kad primitivni građanin ne poveruje dr Kostiću da "Srbija nije u ratu", i u političkom ludilu sekirom nasrne na neutralni televizor, verujući da je konačno bezbedan - na scenu stupa mašina za pranje veša, odakle svojim sonornim glasom, elokventnim rečenicama i sofisticiranom upornošću drug Branko šalje vodene signale; naročito treba pripaziti na usisivač s kojim naš junak održava tradicionalno prijateljske odnose, iskovane u doba kad je metla bila glavno oružje ideološke higijene; nekoliko građana svedoči da im se g. Kostić javio iz slavine za toplu vodu, a neproverene su glasine da se pojavljuje u tečnom stanju, obično u litarskom pakovanju jogurta sa 12,8 odsto masti, i deluje tek kad se sipa u čašu, odakle poručuje da ovaj narod, je li, neće pristati na "diktat Evrope". 2. ISKLJUžITI TELEVIZOR, & NE IZLAZITI IZ KUĆE: Zabluda. Dr Kostić ima urođen talenat da prolazi kroz betonske zidove brzinom svetlosti i da svakom građaninu, ponaosob, strpljivo & mudro argumentuje živući podatak da Jugoslavija postiji, i da je on, Branko, mada nevidljiv u prugastim košuljama s belom kragnom, njen jedini legalni & legitimni & najlepši predstavnik. 3. ISKLJUžITI TELEVIZOR, NE IZLAZITI IZ KUĆE, BORAVITI U RERNI: Totalna zabluda. Upravo su rerne Kostićev specijalitet, naročito kad se u njima krčka ekološki zdravo korijenje iz crnogorskog Cavtata. 4. ISKLJUžITI TELEVIZOR, NE IZLAZITI IZ KUĆE, BORAVITI U RERNI, ONESVESTITI SE: Zabluda bez granica. Tek kao onesvešćeni idealni ste pacijenti za hirurške rezove dr Branka. 5. ISKLJUžITI TELEVIZOR, NE IZLAZITI IZ KUĆE, BORAVITI U RERNI, ONESVESTITI SE, UKLJUžITI RERNU: Na temperaturi od 270 stepeni, nade ima: jeste da je nada reš pečena, jeste da ćete cvrčati & sustanarima smetati krikovima, ali je odlazak na nebo, u naručje Spasioca, najsimpatičniji način da se, jednom, ako imate sreće reinkarnirani pretvorite u Sejda Bajramovića i postanete dobitnik glavne nagrade na velikoj dubrovačkoj tomboli. Budući da je Branko Kostić sinonim za domoljublje, čini se uputnim zameriti organizatorima potresne emisije "Patriotizam danas" (utorak, 15. oktobar; TV Bjeletić; 21,20) što u studio nisu pozvali makar četvrtinu (slovima: osminu) Predsedništva, ali je urednik Miloš "Nisam prao kosu još od 8. sednice" Marković amortizovao ovaj prljavi propagandni trik vešću da su mu, večeras, specijalni gosti Beli Orao, Zeleni Šumadinac & Ljubičasti Štafelaj, u okolini šibenske katedrale poznatiji kao Dragoslav Bokan, Radovan Radović & Mačva od Milića. Uvodno slovo pantomimom je održao nestašni g. Marković koji već godinu & pol ima zanimljiv tehnički problem: šta da radi s rukama? Prvih nekoliko meseci pokušavao je da gornje udove drži iza leđa, ali je njegov trud naišao na potpuno histeričnu reakciju organizma: skroz slobodne, ruke su samo želele da mašu, da se uvijaju po ekranu, a ponekad, bogami, i da ošamare vlasnika koji je razmišljao o efikasnijim načinima represije, recimo lisicama. Kad ni to nije uspelo, urednici su, jednostavno, odlučili da nesrećnog Miloša privežu za sto, a prošlog utorka, promene radi, zakucali su ga za mikrofon, što je bio dovoljan razlog da Marković poruči gledaocima da u "mirotvorstvu ima hipokrizije, da nam je ljubav prema Jugoslaviji nametnuta" i da, uopće, on tu kategoriju osjećaja ne priznaje u pakovanjima manjim od jednog litra. Na markovićevo rame odmah je doleteo Beli Orao i, kljucajući se po licu oblikovanom po kalupu filma "Jadi mladog Gebelsa", u taku predložio da njegova Srbija odmah izgradi nekoliko konc-logora za "izdajnike srpstva koji to čine pisanjem u novinama, demonstracijama, govorom ili kamerom"; kad mu ovo nije izgledalo dovoljno radikalno, jer g. Miloš nije ni trepnuo, sem što je klimnuo glavom i rukama se udarao po čelu, Nakostrešeni Orao prozborio je da se "iza civilnog odela i demokratije krije - pohlepa ljudoždera i nebriga za vaskoliki sveti srpski narod". Uveren da je dobio prava uputstva, Marsel Marso Bjeletićeve televizije krenuo je da citira Bertolda Brehta, ali ga je Očerupani Orao naočarima u smeđem SA odelu na licu mesta prekinuo ciklonom B tvrdeći da je "taj Breht izdajnik" jer se usudio da progovori koju protiv rata, u kome svaki genetski filtriran Srbin mora po zakonu da uživa. Kad je Izbezumljeni Orao počeo da leprša krilima po studiju i da ženstvenim sopranom urliče kako se ponosi što je "iz mitraljeza pucao na ustaše", iz kosmičkog katapulta u pravoslavnu orbitu lansiran je Ljubičasti Štafelaj: ne gubeći potez kistom, Mačva od Milića podsetila je mučenike/pretplatnike na to da je još 1900. godine u Vatikanu održana Velika biskupska konferencija, kojoj je on, krišom, naravno, prisustvovao, te je u blagoslovenom stanju spreman da nam na brzaka izdiktira sledeće zaključke: (a) u sledećih sto godina glavni cilj Vatikana biće da se onemogući učešće Sejde Bajramovića na tomboli u "Simđeliću", (b) katolički svećenici & hrvatski genocidni narod imaju svetu zadaću da ignorišu ploče Cece Veličković i (c) pravoslavne Srbe & Crnogorce navući na šampon s kojeg ni uz pomoć "metadona" ne mogu da se skinu. žim mu se učinilo da je diskusija dostigla željeni intelektualni nivo na koji je navikao, oglasio se Zeleni Šumadinac, ponosno se predstavljajući kao poslanik srpske skupštine: pevajućim akcentom je objasnio da "Skupština radi pod neviđenim pritiskom: nas, preko televizije, gledaju i Rumuni, i Mađari, i Bugari i Grci", te je, sledom poljoprivredne logike, umno zahtevati da se održavaju tajne & zatvorene sednice; ushićen ličnim podvigom da je u rečenici tek deset puta pogrešio padež, g. Radović brzo je dodao da kod njega, u Šumadiji, do pre šest-sedam meseci na svakoj su se trsteničkoj svadbi mogle čuti "albanske, slovenačke i hrvatske pesme", a danas samo "srpske i crnogorske", uz nezaobilaznu kenijsku "Rado ide Kenijata u vojnike" ili tanzanijsku "Od Njererea dva putića". Pod totalno pogrešnim utiskom da Radovan Radović stvarno zna šta govori, Miloš Marković probao je da izvede klasični štos Isusa Hrista: izvadivši eksere iz ruku & glave, u domorodačkoj ekstazi krenuo je da pleše po stolu, poručujući da je "ljubav slepa" i da, recimo, Filip Višnjić ili Rej žarls o tome nešto više znaju. Prestrašen vizijom da će, daleko bilo, kao pokojni Radomir Smiljanić morati pred kamerama da prodaje slike i tako zarađuje za hleb & bojice, Ljubičasti Štafelaj oštro se usprotivio neprirodno-bludnoj želji da Srbija uđe u Jevropu, i pohvalio dr Branka Kostića na njegovom trudu da neprijatelje drži na odstojanju, naročito onog Bruka koji je bruka za retke poštene Holanđane. Konačno slobodan da pokaže šta sve rukama može da učini a da se ne onesvesti, Miloš Marković počeo je da radi sklekove i preskače preko Milića sa hvataljkama; u zlo doba stiglo je dobronamerno pitanje zabrinute majke koja se odvažila da uključi televizor i, shvativši da Branka nema na vidiku, okuražila da pred srpsko čovečanstvo iznese dilemu: "Draga Saveta, imam sina od 19 godina, koji je odslužio vojsku. Svaki dan mi preti da neće da ide u rat, jer kaže, ne može da puca u čoveka, makar on bio ustaša. Da li je moj sin normalan?" Orao u Toplesu odmah je predložio da mu se donese kućna adresa ovog izdajnika, kako bi mu mitraljezom objasnio principe demokratije; Ljubičasti Štafelaj stidljivo se interesovao ima li mladić nekakvu ljubav prema slikarstvu, u kojem bi on slučaju, u devet rata, mogao da mu proda skicu na pausu; Zeleni Šumadinac pozvao je golobradog dečaka da zajedno krenu na front ("malo dalje od kuće") i dvoglasom zapevaju čuvenu filipinsku "Nema te više, Alija", dok je g. Marković bez stida, otvoreno & muški, pozvao dete da u kafani piju dok ih Vatikan ne zaboravi. Dok su Srbi masovno bežali u rerne & spontano ih uključivali, u studiju se, odnekud, iznenada stvori harmonika: "Sitno veze Mačva od Milića, Bokanu se smuči od pilića, Radoviću nešto milo, Markoviću baš se pilo..." PETAR LUKOVIĆ
novine.9 spantic,
====================================================================== The Guardian, October 21. 1991, page 23 Comment and Analysis AN APOLOGIST FOR HITLER by Richard West (on how Jews are responding to the Croatian president's anti-Semitism) To add to the misery of the Yugoslavs, they are now increasingly caught up in the Middle East conflict, with erbia taking the side of the Jews and Israel, while Croatia is backing the Muslims and Arabs. This new dimension to the already tangled problem of Yugoslavia is certain to come to the fore with Tuesday's bid for independence by Bosnia-Herzegovina, where South Slav Muslims outnumber both Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats. The Serb president, Slobodan Milosevic, has long presented himself as the guardian of Orthodox Christendom against Islam. This began as a propaganda weapon against the largely Muslim Albainians who now form the majority in the south Serb province of Kosovo. He carefully played on Serbian fear of the Turkish Islamic invaders, which goes back to the great defeat at the battle of Kosovo in 1389. In the last three months, Milosevic and some of the other Serb extremists have raised the warning of an Islamic jihad by the far from militant Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Croatian president, Franjo Tudjman, has gone out of his way to flatter and win over the Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina, hoping to make them his allies against the Serbs. But the wise and prudent Muslim president of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Alija Izetbegovic, wants nothing to do with Tudjman or Milosevic, comparing the choice between them to "leukemia or a brain tumour". With his anti-Islamic posturing, Milosevic has found a friend in Israel, where he now has a warm invitation to visit. There are signs that the Jews of Europe and the US are waking up to the viciously anti-Semitic strain in the speeches and books of Tudjman. This has long been known in his native Croatia, where even before his election last year Dr Tudjman said he was happy that his wife had no Serb or Jewish blood. This week the veteran hunterdown of the Nazis, Simon Wiesenthal, has gone to his organisation's Paris branch, where two Serbs have produced translations into French and English from Tudjm,an's disturbing book, Wastelands - Historical Truth. Part of this book offers an explanation, almost an apologia, for the policy to the Jews both of the independent state of Croatia in the second world war, and of Hitler himself. President Tudjman discusses the "final solution" of the Jewish issue "in the sense that they would be definitely excluded from German and European history". He explains this in terms of Germany's search for domination of Europe: "For this reason the establishment of Hitler's new European order could be justified by the need both to remove the Jews (undesirable more or less in all European countries) and to correct the French-British wrongsof the Versailles system." President Tudjman delves into the Old Testament to prove his case that, for the Jews, "genocidal violence is a natural phenomenon, in keeping with the human-social and mythological-divine nature. It is not only allowed, but even recommended," he writes of Judaeo-Nazi genocide of Palestinians. Tudjman, writing in 1989, is generous to the Austrian government, which later became his main political backer and arms supplier:"In the mid-80s, world Jewry still has the need to recall its 'holocaust', even by trying to prevent the election of the former UN secretary general, Kurt Waldheim, as president of Austria." President Tudjman tactfully does not mention that during the second world war, Waldheim served in occupied Yugoslavia, helping the puppet independent state of Croatia, whose declared policy to the almost two million Orthodox Serbs within its borders was to "convert a third, expell a third and kill a third". Even though the Croatian Ustasha leader, Ante Pavelic had no particular grudge against Jews - indeed he was married to one - he went along with the policy of his mentor, Hitler. Although Jews, unlike educated Serbs, could save their lives by converting to Roman Chatolicism and therefore becoming "Croats", probably 30,000 died at the hands of the Ustasha concentration camp at Jasenovac. It is here that Tudjmans book becomes really repulsive. It is certainly true that the number of deaths at Jasenovac has been on occasions exaggerated. Probably most of the roughly half million Ustasha victims, were butchered in their villages, or taken up to the mountains and hurled into crevasses and quarries. It is also unfortunately true that the communist government after the war did not allow a proper investigation of the Ustasha atrocities. The communists did not want to acknowledge that what they called an "anti-fascist" struggle was really a religious massacre on a scale unparalleled in history. So Dr Tudjman is right that we do not have the full knowledge of what went on in Jasenovac. However, the commandant at Jasenovac, the Franciscan Father Filipovic-Majstorovic, otherwise known as "Brother Devil", stood trial after the war. Survivors described how Brother Devil "went off to conduct the slaughtering every night and came back in the morning, his shirt covered in blood". It was from all accounts an extermination camp comparable with Auschwitz, except that the slaughter was done with physical savagery rather than scientific methods. President Tudjman ignores the evidence of the trial to suggest that Jasenovac was largely run by a coterie of its Jewish inmates who used their power to rob and murder their Serb and Gypsy fellow prisoners. President Tudjman's thoughts on the Jews may win him support from bitter Palestinians and from his many admirers in Austria and Germany. They should make the rest of us wary of recognising his new independent state of Croatia. ============================================================================
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Evo kontroverznog intervjua Ivana Đurića u originalu. Onaj isti za koji se on posle kleo da su ga lažno interpretirali. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- La Croix, Saturday, October 18,1991 Yugoslavia A SERB DENOUNCES SERBIA Interview with the president of the Serbian Reformist Party by Beatrice TOULON Ivan Djuric is a rising star of a democratic opposition in Serbia. His statements against the war in Croatia and for a dialogue with the minorities, including Albanians in Kosovo, have already provoked threat on his life by the Serbian right extremists. This 40 years old professor of history is the leader of the Serbian Reformist Party, successors of the Party for Democratic Reforms of Prime Minister Ante Markovic. On his recent visit to France, he was received by the Elysee and by the Quai d'Orsay. Q: Is the real peace possible while the army intensifies its bombardment in Croatia? Ivan Djuric: Unfortunately, no. For this to happen it is neces- sary that somebody backs down. It is clear that this could not be Croatia for she is the attacked country. As far as Slobodan Milosevic, the president of Serbia, and the Army chiefs are con- cerned, by invading Croatian territory they have crossed a (sort of criminal) line from which any retreat is unlikely. Q: In this case, the new initiative to mediate, started by Gorba- chev, does not have much chance? I.Dj.: It is important to make pressure on Serbia. For many reasons the USSR could be very effective in this regard. To start with, the federal army was built by the Red Army and they still keep close connections. Moscow knows a lot. Gorbachev has tipped off on the bombardment of Zagreb. Further, Serbia depends on USSR for most of its exports and for the import of oil. And without oil, there is no war. Finally, and especially, there is evidence that the USA is behind the Soviet intervention and it is clear that a collective pressure by USSR, USA and EC weights a lot. And the solution is to get rid of Milosevic. Gorbachev and Yeltsin will never forget that Serbia was the first country that implicitly approved of Moscow putsch. Q: You are Serb and you accuse primarily Serbia. Why? I.Dj.: Nobody is innocent in this war. I do not disregard Presi- dent Tudjman's sins; he won elections by playing Croatian nation- alism against Serbian minority. But Milosevic was one who deto- nated the awakening of nationalism. I said three years ago that his politics of conquest will take us straight into the war. Milosevic wants to become a czar of Yugoslavia or what ever takes its place, be it called the Great Serbia or something else. And Yugoslav army, identified with the Serbian cause, is now in Croatia. Nothing could justify the bombardment of Dubrovnik, Croatian churches or suffering inflicted on the civilian population. I am ashamed as a Serb. After the war I am going to ask forgiveness from the Croatian people. Q: The opposition is very discreet in Serbia ... I.Dj.: I am not in the minority. In Serbia, a country of warri- ors, the government admits that only 50% of men respond to calls for mobilization; in reality that means even less, and 25% in Belgrade. The Serbs in Serbia do not understand this war. But, a radical minority prevents that this feelings find their way out. The only occasion where the Serbs were able to show their antago- nism to the power was the visit of the prince Alexander, the heir to the Serbian crown. He came to talk about the peace. He received ovations from 300,000 people as a protest against Milosevic and against the Orthodox Patriarch. Q: You talk always about Serbs from Serbia. Are the others dif- ferent? I.Dj.: There is a major difference, although it is usually ignored. Milosevic is surrounded almost exclusively by Serbs from outside, from Bosnia, Croatia, Montenegro. Milosevic himself comes from Montenegro. Among the leaders of the opposition, I am almost the only Serb from Serbia. Serbs from Serbia are on one hand more anticommunists than the other - and Milosevic is a communist - and also more reticent to go to a war they do not want. Milosevic has worked against the Serbian interests because he created a split between the Serbs from Serbia and those from the outside.
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Evo jednog pisma: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- DON'T BLAME THE SERBS Editor - Re: Anthony Lewis' column, "Where Is The Outrage Over Crime Of Dubrovnik?" (Chronicle, November 6). Mr. Lewis' attempt to blame the Serbs for the criminal destruction of Dubrovnik is like blaming the Greeks for the destruction of the Parthenon. Although briefly alluding to the pro-Nazi fascist state set up by the Croatians during World War II, Lewis omits some significant facts, namely that that Catholic Croatians set out to systematically eliminate the Orthodox Serbians. The Croatian policy of genocide proceeded to murder millions of Serbians. This genocide was not anti-Communist, it was anti-non-Catholics. The Croatian army did not have to retreat to Dubrovnik, they are the ones who took the war to Dubrovnik. They could go elswhere or stop fighting. It is a bit much to ask the anti-fascist government to be shot at, but the country of Yugoslavia has a right to prevent the ethnic breakup of its country. DAVID M. WEITZMAN Berkeley
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Washington Post, Saturday, Nov.9. 1991 YUGOSLAV ON BOTH SIDES PRAY FOR PEACE Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croats in Metro Area Seek Resolution By Yasmine Bahrani At the ornate St. Luke's Serbian Orthodox Church in McLean on a recent Sunday, the Very Rev. Milorad Milosevich bowed his head and prayed with about 30 Serbs. "Again we pray for all the people of Yugoslavia. May they find a peaceful solution to the strife and fighting", he intoned. Across the Potomac River in Northeast Washington, about 30 people uttered similar prayers in a room that has become the Croatian Catholic Pastoral Mission. Like Yugoslavs back home, the Washington area's community of about 350 people, according to Yugoslav Embassy estimates, is divided by, and frustrated with - events in Yugoslavia since Croatia declared its independence June 25 and fighting broke out between ethnic Croats and Serbs. "My mother was born in Croatia and my father in Montenegro," George Mihich said after services at St. Luke's. "A lot of us have people on both sides." Both churches follow Sunday services with a coffee hour during which concerned Serbs and Croats separately ask the same questions about their families back home. There are reports of shortages of gasoline, pharmaceuticals and food in both communities. People say that thefts are up, and that armed militia roam the cities. REligious authorities have tried to address the problem, but have not gone far enough, according to members of the local community. Pope John Paul II called the Croatian independence move legitimate and asked for "moral aid" for the Roman-Catholic Croats. The Orthodox Church has appeared ambivalent. "They have not disassociated themselves from the extremists. The Serbian patriarch received all the representatives of all the parties," said one Serb who asked that his name not be used. Many people are afraid to talk openly for fear that their relatives back home will suffer. One Croat, who is not a church member, said that her parents' home was burned. "Where I grew up, around Dubrovnik, is totally burned - all the villages. They killed all our animals, a donkey, pigs; only the chickens are left. My family is now sitting in Dubrovnik with minimal food, no clean water, no heat," said the woman, who was afraid to give her name. Both churches here try to offer support. The Rev. Elia (Ilija) Zivkovic said that as a result of the war, more people are coming to the Croatian Catholic Mission. "Before the war religious people would come for Mass, but now people come to pray for their families," he said. Those people are raising money for food and medical supplies for Croatia. Nearly $4 million in medical supplies already has been delivered to Croatian hospitals and clinics, according to Dwain Schenck of AmeriCares, which is leading the effort. Serbs say their growing church attendance simply reflects a growing parish. Milosevic said the Serbiachurch has collected money from all over the United States for food and medicine for displaced and injured Serbs. "We are sending it through church organizations. I believe a million dollars have already been collected," he said. Some Serbs here said the Serbs back home in Yugoslavia fear what they call the "extreme nationalism" of their Croat neighbors. Roman Sondermayer, a Serbian petroleum engineer who lived in Zagreb for several years, said he tries to understand both sides. "I believe that Croats should have their independence. The only problem is 600.000 Serbs living (among them), because the past experience of those Serbs was ugly - especially in World War II," when many thousands were killed by a Nazi puppet regime that ruled Croatia. Nationalism also has played a role. Ed Cavich, a burly man, born and raised here, said, "I'm Serbian by ethnic origin and Croatian by choice. I believe in what the Croatians are doing and I don't believe in what the Serbian are doing. I don't believe in persecution of innocent people." Margaret Casman-Vuko, an American married to a Croat, has lived in Zagreb since 1972 and is now visiting Washington. She said her experiences show that Croats are not extremists. "After the Jewish community center and the Jewish cemetery were bombed in Zagreb late last summer, there was an enormous demonstration in the main Jelacic Square. Many thousands of Croatian people, including the president of the Republic, expressed their solidarity with the Jewish community. It meant so much to me to have their support," she said. Local religious leaders are frustrated that even here they cannot bridge the gap between the two communities. "I'm disturbed as a Christian that Roman Catholics on one side and Serbian Orthodox on the other side did not find common language to solve this problem," said Milosevic. "Because I feel if they are truly Christians they would adhere to what Christ teaches us."
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Šta kaže Ales Mok? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Wall Street Journal, Editorial, 11/14/1991 ACT NOW IN YUGOSLAVIA by Alois Mock, foreign minister of Austria For months Yugoslavia has been the scene of bloody conflict. Thousands of people have lost their lives; tens of thousands have been driven from their homes as refugees. Towns and villages heve been reduced to rubble and ashes; every day irreplaceable cultural treasures are being destroyed. Even Dubrovnik, one of Europe's cultural jewels, is threatened with destruction. All this is happening in the heart of Europe - in the middle of that "Europe of democracy, peace and unity," to which the heads of state and government of 35 nations ceremonially committed themselves less than two years ago in the Charger of Paris. Day after day I receive innumerable letters from the scene of conflict. What they all have in common is the despairing question: "Where is the New Europe? Why is it abandoning us?" EUROPE TO THE TEST I believe that the dire conflict in Yugoslavia is putting Europe to the test. The EC is now faced with the necessity of translating its often projected aim of a common security policy into concrete practice. Europe's politicians will have to demonstrate what significance they attach to the principle of self- determination, democracy and human rights. And Europe will have to show whether it can take care of its own security. Since the death of the dictator Tito, the people of Yugoslavia have sought freedom. They have demanded their basic political rights and freedoms, and, simultaneously the various nationalities that make up Yugoslavia have demanded their national freedom. Unfortunately, the process of democratic renewal took place only at the level of individual republics - except for the Republic of Serbia, where the communists remained in power, albeit within a somewhat altered framework. At the level of the Yugoslav federation absolutely nothing changed; the undemocratic structures remained unaltered. Yugoslavia's political landscape has for a considerable time shown the tectonic symptoms of an earthquake region: Everything was in movement underground, within the republics, while the overlying federal layer stayed completely inflexible. From the very beginning, Austria has observed the developments in her south- eastern neighbor with the greatest concern. We became alarmed as early as 1990, when the Republic of Serbia erected an initial barrier to the democratic renewal of Yugoslavia by depriving the autonomous provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina of their powers. This action was accompanied by flagrant and continuing violations of the human rights of the Albaninan majority population in Kosovo. As a result, Kosovo is now possibly the most dangerous powder keg in the Yugoslavian minefield. An explosion here could endanger the security of the entire Balkans. Some have accused Austria of pursuing its own interests in Yugoslavia. Some have even voiced absurd allegations of Austrian historical nostalgia. In fact, however, we originally had only one desire: That the peoples of Yugoslavia would succeed by their combined efforts in creating a stable Yugoslavia, a Yugoslavia based on democracy, human rights and social market economy. In the course of the year 1991, however, the centripetal forces in Yugoslavia became weaker and weaker, and finally disappeared. Therefore, in the light of the major acts of aggression at the beginning of May, I decided to make an operational proposal. I suggested setting up a "Council of Sages." This body of European mediators would have kept the lines of dialogue open between the Yugoslav republics and the central government, while developing new security mechanisms to prevent the continual outbreak of local or regional conflict. My reasoning was governed by one consideration above all: As long as people in Yugoslavia continued to talk they were not likely to shoot. Unfortunately, the Yugoslav side politely but firmly rejected this suggestion. Federal Prime Minister Ante Markovic and Foreign Minister Budimir Loncar both held the opinion that it was unnecessary to internationalize the crisis; they wanted to solve it by their own efforts. U.S. Secretary of State James Baker met with a similar reaction in June when he proposed that a group of international constitutional experts draw up proposals for a renewal of Yugoslavi. Similary, efforts by the republics of Slovenia and Croatia to negotiate with the central government had also met with no response. And so Croati and Slovenia finally decided to go their own way. The delarations of independence on June 25 were base on democratic decisions by the peoples of those republics, and are a convincing expression of the right to self-determination. The ensuing military operations by the Yugoslav federal army against Slovenia in fact sealed the fate of the Yugoslav fedration. By now, any attempt to maintain Yugoslavia as a coherent state must be seen as absolutely hopeless. The even bloodier conflict in Croatia - which still remains beyond any form of controll - has only served to confirm this. The so-called "people's Army" has long since ceased to be an army of the peoples of Yugoslavia. It has thrown off any vestige of political control. Time and again it has disregarded armistice agreements negotiated by the political authorities. And Minister of Defense Veljko Kadijevic flatly refused to obey the demand for his resignation expressed by his own head of government, Mr. Markovic. There no longer exists even a formal legal federal authority. The so-called "Serbian bloc" is now acting alone within the collective state presidium, i.e. with the exclusion of Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia. In the manner of a coup d'etat, this group has declared themselves to be the sole authority in Yugoslavia, and accordingly has attempted to assume the functions of both government and parliament. How has the international community behaved in the face of all these developments? Unfortunately, I believe that the international reactions to date can only be described as "too little too late". The international community at first completely underestimated the strength of will among the Slovenes and Croats to take the path of independence. Ignoring all the evidence of clearly escalating disintegration, ignoring all the hostilities, the human victims and the material destruction, the international community continued to believe that "the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia" could be maintained. This, however, would have been possible only on the basis of voluntary consensus among the peoples of Yugoslavia. And all this time the armed conflict neve ceased. The European Community di, in fact, c=succeed in helping to calm the sutation during the intial phase. With the first three "troika" missions and the Brioni agreement the EC succeeded in obtaining the withdrawal of the Yugoslav army from Slovenia. This initial success has often been overlooked in the light of the many setbacks the EC has had to accept in its attempt to mediate in Croatia. But it was shown then that consistent action can produce results. In the meantime, however, the Yugoslav army has learned that it has to fear no practical consequences when it ignores agreements with the EC. Announcements from several EC member countries that they would give diplomatic recognition to Slovenia and Croatia if the fighting were not stopped have remained ineffective. The Community now has agreed on concrete sanctions. However, it remains to be seen whether they will be sufficiently sharp to induce the People's Army to modify its attitude: The nonchalance of the Yugoslav military leaders toward agreements with the European Community has been repeatedly demonstrated. On Oct. 10, the President of the EC Council, Hans van den Broek of the Netherlands, announced that he had negotiated an agreement between the presidents of Croatia and Serbia, Franjo Tudjaman and Slobodan Milosevic, and federal defense minister Kadijevic, on the withdrawal of the army from Croatia. This was flatly contradicted just a few hours later by a communique from the Yugoslav People's Army that stated that a withdrawal was out of the question. END THE KILLING The disintegration of Yugoslavia now seems to be inevitable. At the moment Europe must have one principal aim: To use every possible political and economic means to put an end to the killing, the misery of refugees and the destruction of entire regions. We must not accept that the principles proclaimed by 35 heads of state and government in the Charter of Paris can be openly flouted. With Security Council Resolution 713 the United Nations lent its authority to all internationa efforts to obtain a solution to the Yugoslav conflict - and those of the European Community in particular. It is precisely those actors on the international scene that place special value on democracy, peace and human rights - the U.S., the European Community and the other countries fo the West - that are called upon to ensure the maintenance of armistice agreements in Yugoslavia throught appropriate political and economic measures, and to provide effective international guarantees for the protection of minorities and ethnic groups within the present area of Yugoslavia. They are, however, also called upon to offer international recognition to those peoples of Yugoslavia who have exercised their right to self-determination by democratic means. ==============================================================================
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============================================================================== Foreign Service Journal, Vol. 68, No. 10, October 1991 : ================================================================= Yugoslavia: The Case for the Serbs by Michael Mennard Stephen Sestanovich's article "The Diplomatic Mistake That Made Yugoslavia" (July Journal, pp.11-12) offers a comprehensive picture of the messy Yugoslav situation, a thankless job, to say the least. Unfortunately, the article fails to explain why Yugoslavia's first incarnation, established in 1918 as the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, was such a failure after only 23 years. Instead, the story revolves around the bullying Serbs on the one hand and the poor, suffering Croatians and other Yugoslav ethnic groups on the other. But the problem is not so simple. Sestanovich adopts a somewhat cavalier approach to the entire Yugoslav problem. Without saying so outright, he paints the Serbs as somehow "different" and unwilling to trust the Croatians. Nothing is said about Croatians who sold out to Nazi Germany, helped destroy Yugoslavia, and caused untold suffering to the Serbian minority of about 2 million living in Croatia at the time. The Serbo-Croat problem, though difficult for outsiders to understand, is directly responsible for the current Yugoslav debacle. Plain old nationalism The conflict between the Croats and the Serbs is often presented as a confrontation between the struggling, embattled, democratic forces of freedom-loving and pro-Western Croatians against the Communist, totalitarian, imperialistic, and Byzantine Serbs. It is nothing of the sort. Instead, it is the plain, old struggle known in history as Balkan nationalism. Few people remember that the Serbs were faithful allies of the United States in two World Wars, while the "Western-oriented" Croatians were fighting on the side of Austria-Hungary or Nazi Germany. The Nazi puppet, the Independent State of Croatia, even found it necessary to declare war on the United States, a declaration that was never repealed. The Serbs and the Croats lived foe centuries in Austria-Hungary, side by side and intermingled. As early as the middle of the 15th century, Serbian freedom fighters and their families were driven into the Military Region (Vojna Krajina), or Krajina, as it is now known, before the onslaught of the superior Turkish forces following the fall of Bosnia. The Hapsburgs encouraged both Serbs and Croats to settle in this border region in an effort to establish a zone of defense against the Turks. As they had done elsewhere, the Hapsburgs manipulated the Catholic Croats against the Eastern Orthodox Serbs. The rivalry between the two grew rapidly and at times became bitter and hostile. In the 19th century, Croatian philosopher and politician Ante Starcevic, known for his radical views, denied the very existence of the Serbian people. In two of his many pamphlets, entitled "The Name Serb" and "The Slavo-Serbian Breed in Croatia", Starcevic described Serbs as "Gypsies" and "Albanians" (then, as now, considered insulting terms in Croatian) "an alien stock", "less than human", "a dirty, evil breed". He suggested that "one-third of the Serbs should be killed, one-third converted to Catholicism, and one-third forced to emigrate". Starcevic, whose influence in Croatia in the second half of the 19th century was pervasive, is still regarded as the father of the Croatian nation. He founded the Croatian Party of the Pure Right, which became an inspiration and the ideological home of the 20th-century Croatian Ustashe movement. The Party of the Pure Right still exists and remains active in Yugoslavia. Not surprisingly, Ustashe and a generation of Croatian intellectuals and politicians still use the same terminology as their ideological father. An interview with Croatia's current President Franjo Tudjman published in The New Yorker on March 18, 1991 invoked this scurrilous tradition. Speaking about the Serbo-Croat problem, Tudjman said: "Croats belong to a different culture - a different civilization - from the Serbs ... Croats are a part of Western Europe, part of the Mediterranean tradition ... The Serbs belong to the East. They use the Cyrillic alphabet, which is Eastern. They are an Eastern people, like the Turks and the Albanians. They belong to the Byzantine culture ... Despite similarities in language, we cannot be together." Tudjman has also been widely quoted by Croatian newspapers as saying he is elated whenever it occurs to him that his wife is neither a Serb nor a Jew. Thanks to Starcevic and his disciples, Croatians have never felt comfortable in post-World War I Yugoslavia. As soon as they realized that their Austro-Hungarian experience and cultural background were insufficient to take over the new state, the Croatians embarked upon a campaign of obstruction and non-cooperation. As part of a long-range plan, the terrorist wing of the Croatian Ustashe assassinated Yugoslav King Alexander I in 1934 and collaborated with Nazi Germany in World War II, while butchering the unsuspecting Serbian minority and other undesirables. The Ustashe staged mass slaughters in some 30 concentration camps created across a geographically inflated Nazi dominion named the Independent State of Croatia. More than 700,000 persons were destroyed in those camps only because they were Serbs, Jews, or Gypsies. Although some in the Croatian Catholic Church's hierarchy during World War II tried to stop the genocide (and paid for their courage with their lives), many either condoned and participated in the carnage or saw the panic-stricken Serbian Orthodox population as a promising target for conversion to Roman Catholicism. According to the highly respected historian Victor Novak and other credible sources, some 250,000 Serbs were converted by 1943. Following World War II, Croatian leaders, Communist and non-Communist alike, ignored the Ustashe's beastly crimes. The leadership, ecclesiastical or lay, made no apology of any kind; neither even conceded to recognize the crime publicly, even though the Ustashe's outrageous activities were declared genocide during the Nuremberg Trials. Instead, many minimized the crimes. Croatia's "democratically elected" President Tudjman, for his part, repeatedly makes unwise and uncharitable statements while conducting a Croatization of the republic's governing apparatus, by bringing in only those Croatians who can prove they have four generations of pure Croatian ancestry. Little wonder the Serbs feel unsafe under Croatia's current regime. Democratic traditions The Croats professed their own feelings of insecurity during their tenuous union with the Serbs. From the very beginning, the source of Croatia's alleged fears was the so-called Greater Serbia, an early 19th-century concept designed to provide a more effective Christian challenge to the Turkish presence in the Balkans. Serbian history, however, should have reassured Croatians. Prior to World War I, Serbia was an independent kingdom with a well-developed political, social, and economic life. Its constitution of 1903 was the latest in the progression of Serbian constitutions that started in 1835, all considered very liberal even by European standards. It provided for a constitutional monarchy, a bicameral legislature, and a multi-party system, with free elections. Freedom of the press was guaranteed. It should be recalled that neither Croatia nor Slovenia was an independent state when the two joined the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. Slovenia never had a state of its own; Croatia not since 1102. The creation of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes on December 1, 1918 was by no means a hasty affair. It was the result of dedicated work of the Yugoslav Committee, established in London in 1915, and composed of the Serb, Croat, and Slovene leaders. All but one, a representative from the Kingdom of Serbia, were disgruntled citizens of Austria-Hungary. For their part, Serbs tried to cooperate and coexist with Croatians in the new state, Slovenians played along. There were Slovenians in every single Yugoslav government. Slovene Catholic priest and politician Dr. Anton Korosec became the first prime minister after King Alexander dismissed the parliament, renamed the country Yugoslavia, and introduced a highly centralized system, mainly because of Croatia's non-cooperation. The Serbs also gave ample proof of their willingness to share. For example, reparations due Serbia as compensation for virtual destruction of its property and a 50 percent loss of life among its male population were equally divided with Croatians and Slovenes. This was done even though Croatians and Slovenes fought as allies of the Central Powers and sufferd virtually no loss of property and minimal casualties. As far as Tito's Yugoslavia is concerned, Sestanovich's claim that Serbs had political and military superiority is unfouded. During the past 30 years, no Serbian has held the position of prime minister of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The current prime minister, the foreign minister, and the minister of economic development - the key positions - are all Croatians. Most of the remaining cabinet members are either Croatian or Slovenes. And, the current "collective president", who controls the military forces, is also a Croatian. After all the obstructionism, hatred, and bad faith, the Serbs would be foolish not to want to part ways with Croatians. But so far, nothing has been done to determine how the country's huge foreign debt is going to be paid and by whom. Above all, there are some 600,000 Serbians still living in Croatia, and the Serbs are unlikely to leave them to Croatian extremists as potential fodder for another try at genocide. Old guard To survive, Yugoslavia must achieve some sort of accommodation. For that, however, the Yugoslavs must rid themselves of their present leadership of recycled Communists. Most of these leaders have made cosmetic ideological changes, but they still know little beyond what they learned under Tito. Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, for example, whose political flip-flops are well known, is now a "socialist", although he has been quoted in an interview by Le Monde saying that he has been "a Communist out of conviction since the age of 17". The rest are Tito leftovers: President of Croatia Franjo Tudjman was a World War II Partisan and Yugoslav Army general until jailed for excessive Croatian nationalism. Josip Manolic, until recently prime minister of the Croatian government, was a highly placed officer of UDBA, the Yugoslav version of the Soviet KGB. President of Slovenia Milan Kucan was, for years, the principal ideologue of the Slovene Communist Party, specifically responsible for applying Party doctrine in education. And there are many, many others. Throughout the years since Tito's death in 1980, the Serbian leadership committed an incomprehensible, mind-boggling error. The Croats conducted a foreign media campaign to convince the world that Tito's federalism was nothing more than a subterfuge for Greater Serbia and Serbian chauvinism, or both. Rather than combat the campaign, the Serbs remained quiet. When pressed, they gave a pat answer: "Why bother? Any right-minded person knows that truth and justice are on our side." This may have been innocence or just plain Balkan superciliousness. Recently, the Serbs have made an effort to present their case through the world's media, but it may be too little and too late to recapture some of the good will they traditionally enjoyed, particularly in this country. The crooked straight Assuming that the United States still favors a federation or confederation of Yugoslav states over a broken up, hat-in-hand bunch of "sovereign" states, the largest of them smaller than Indiana, what can the United States do? Precious little, if anything. There is an old folk saying in Yugoslavia: it is like "trying to straighten out the Drina". The Drina is a rapid, meandering river flowing north through the centrally located republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina. That is a fair description of what the United States would face if it interceded. The United States can play a positive role, however, by seeing to it that the cracks now visible in the mediation efforts of the European Community and the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe do not become too great. The United States must realize, however, that Yugoslavia, including Croatia, is the Balkans, regardless of what Croatia's current leaders say. There, nothing as important as nationalistic confrontations can be resolved without some bloodshed. For once, the United States should remain on the sidelines, using its great influence only to make sure that fairness prevails. U.S. allies in Europe are in a much better position both to observe and to act, if need be, to keep the Yugoslav crisis under control. For the United States, antagonizing both disputing sides by remaining strictly neutral may be just what is needed. The friends will be easy to restore when the conflict is over and the country needs its shattered economy rebuilt. Meanwhile, the various Yugoslav emigrant organisations would do well to remain equally aloof. Their ardent support of factions in the "old country" is understandable but unwise, as it only raises unfulfillable expectations. Conspiracies by U.S.-based groups to provide arms, several of which have recently come to light, must be curtailed. The most recent case, in Florida, involved three Croatians who tried to purchase and export illegally military hardware from the United States to Croatia, in the amount of $12 million. The main problem for Yugoslavia will be that, in the Balkans, anything other than a clear-cut victory is seen as defeat and humiliation. Compromise is an alien, virtually non-existent concept. Some kind of a face-saving device will have to be found, and that, in itself, will be a problem. What the Yugoslavs need, other than new and truly democratic leadership, is some quiet, unobtrusive mediation, in a dignified atmosphere, conducted by persons or institutions familiar with the area, the peoples, and the centuries-long history of their conflicts. No television limelight, no day-to-day reports, color stories, interviews, in-depth analyses, and no grandstanding. The less exposure to the media, the better. Only in that quiet, undistracting atmosphere can the feuding parties hope to reach some kind of lasting solution to problems. The solution must be their own, accepted and recognized by all. ======================================================= Michael Mennard, a retired Foreign Service information officer, frequently writes about and visits Yugoslavia. He completed his doctoral dissertation at Georgetown University on "Bishop Strossmayer, the Serbs, and the Croats in the Second Half of the 19th Century". ==============================================================================
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CROATIANISM By Robert D. Kaplan (Robert D. Kaplan has completed a book on the Balkans) Croatia, which impinges on Italy and is only a few hours by train from Vienna, has been the site of the first sustained combat in the heart of Europe since 1945. This particular war, in which Catholic Croats and Orthodox Serbs are battling with tanks, fighter jets, and rifle butts over border enclaves, is so pitched with obscure emotions, and so seemingly void of a governing logic, that it has become opaque to US, almost unreal. However, a document has recently come to light that offers a rare, surgeon's-eye view into the thought processes of the combatants. In 1988 Croatia's current president, Franjo Tudjman, published a book, republished in 1989 and again in 1990, called BespucaQ Povjesne Zbiljnosli ("WastelandsQ Historical Truth"), in which he gives a detailed analysis of the Nazi Holocaust. Tudjman's primary concern is not the fate of the Jews but the role of the Croats in the mass murder of Serbs. Yet the route his mind travels on the way to his destination is telling: "The estimated loss of up to 6 million dead is founded too much on both emotional, biased testimonies and on exaggerated data in the postwar reckonings of war crimes and squaring of accounts with the defeated ... in the mid-'80s, world Jewry still has the need to recall its 'holocaust' by trying to prevent the election of the former U.N. Secretary General Kurt Waldheim as president of Austria!" Tudjman puts the word holocaust in quotations, since earlier in his text he explains how the word ''reminds us" not only of "extermination," but also of the "self-immolation of the Jews in medieval and more recent history," as well as of "group cases of suicide" and "the cult of the victim." He intimates that the killing of Jews--however overblown--would not have occurred if the Nazi armies had prevailed in the Soviet Union, allowing for a "territorial solution" to the Jewish problem, such as a "reservation" in eastern Poland or in Madagascar. Tudjman admits that Jews suffered "terrible hardships" in World War II. But "the Jewish people soon afterward became so brutal and conducted a genocidal policy toward the Palestinians that they can rightly be defined as Judeo-Nazis." He then asks: "What does this small historical step from Nazi-Fascism to Judeo-Nazism indicate?" It indicates that because of "the Judean origins" of Western civilization "as expressed by the biblical God Jehovah--genocidal violence is a natural phenomenon in keeping with the human-social and mythological-divine nature." Tudjman's jumbled word salad, weighted further by long footnotes, leads him into a diatribe against the Old Testament, which sets up the central point of his thesis: "The need to investigate in an objective way all the 'collection' and 'labor camps' and Jasenovac above all." Jasenovac was a World War II concentration camp manned by the Croatian Ustashe in which Jews, Gypsies, and, more significantly, Serbs were murdered. For decades Serbs have maintained that "at least 700,000" people were killed at Jasenovac. Croats have long said the number was more like 60,000. The discrepancy between these two sums is as good a litmus test as any for the vastness of the psychological gulf separating Serbs from Croats. The few useful studies done on this matter indicate that roughly 500,000 Serbs and 200,000 Croats were killed during the war years. Of those 500,000 Serbs, it is thought that a minimum of 100,000 died at Jasenovac. The figure for Jewish and Gypsy deaths at the camp is assumed to be 20,000 and 30,000 respectively. Therefore, 150,000 deaths at Jasenovac represents the lowest respectable estimate. But for Tudjman, the figure of 60,000 given by Croat nationalists is still too high: he reckons no more than 40,000 inmates perished. As he explains it, even the figure of 40,000 overstates Ustashe crimes, since the liquidation apparatus was largely controlled by Jews. Tudjman's principal source for this is the record of one inmate from Bosnia, who reports that the Ustashe placed its "confidence in the Jews" because "a Jew remains a Jew in the Jasenovac camp as well.... Selfishness, craftiness, unreliability, miserliness, underhandedness, and secrecy are their main characteristics." Tudjman admits that the Bosnian's judgment is "exaggerated." But he writes that "similar statements were made by other witnesses." He cites an account where the Jews supposedly participated in the liquidation of Gypsies at Jasenovac, in order to get their gold coins. Therefore, according to Tudjman, the mass murder of Serbs by Croats during World War II is not an issue, since not all that many Serbs were killed in the first place, and those who were slaughtered were mainly done in by the Jews. Case closed. Tudjman is no ex-Ustashe officer. On the contrary, he fought the Ustashe as a general in Tito's guerrilla army. On a strictly personal level, he was an innocent, perhaps even a minor hero. This is not someone trying to justify a hidden past. Nor does it seem that the book was a calculated political act to win over Croat nationalists with fascist tendencies. More likely his feelings are genuine. It is because of this that Tudjman's book helps to explain a war that people in the West find so unfathomable. Holocaust revisionism exists in the West, but only among the most hard-core anti-Semitic and academically marginal elements: kooks, that is. But Tudjman is the elected president of a new country. And though his rash leadership might have led Croatia into an avoidable war, he is by no means the most hard-line of Croatian politicians. In fact, Tudjman has repeatedly come under pressure from more extremist elements within his government for his willingness to negotiate with Serbian leaders. The truth is, this book is well within the mainstream of ideas that have exploded upon the Balkans with the collapse of communism. Reading Tudjman's dense and inflated prose, I felt almost nostalgic: many evenings in Europe's least-known corner I have listened to similar arguments. Whether or not it was about Jews, the mental imagery was the same: a brew of rumor, conspiracies, and old wives' tales leavened with the odd fact or two. Even the subtitle, "historical truth," is common. I have a book in my library by the same name. It is a Titoist tirade against the Bulgarians. You can be sure that when the Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic bares his soul about the Croats it is no less callous than when Tudjman bares his about the Jews. Tudjman, Milosevic, and everyone else in Yugoslavia are victims of history. For centuries their forebears lived in a state of poverty and illiteracy, where rumor filled the vacuum created by the absence of books and documentation. Then came four-and-a-half decades of Communist totalitarianism, when many, many books were published- -all containing lies. The Serb-Croat war in Yugoslavia is the upshot of a few million minds, all collectively disoriented, and all finally granted free expression. Tudjman's is merely one among many. (without permission from The New Republic, Nov. 25, 1991) ==============================================================================
novine.16 spantic,
__________________________________________________________________ SERB AGAINST CROAT The unravelling of the second Yugoslavia Times Literary Supplement, October 18, 1991 by Mark Wheeler ...The Croats' self-aggrandizing version of the war and their self-pitying view of its result stem instead from their continuing inability to come to grips with the enormity of the crimes committed in the name of Croatian sovereignty by the Ustase. The communists' understandable effort during and after the war to confine culpability for the bloodletting to the Axis occupiers and their "bourgeois" collaborators among each of the Yugoslav peoples absolved Croats, in particular, of any real need to make an act of atonement. They were, of course, lectured constantly on the bestiality of the Ustase; just as Serbs were reminded regularly of the sins of their former bourgeoisie in the old Yugoslavia. But repetition of the respective lessons was eventually counterproductive, especially as the communist teachers progressively lost both legitimacy and conviction, and their pupils were never compelled to see themselves among the forces of darkness which were held up for vilification. Having, in any case, cast off all vestiges of collective guilt by the end of the 1980s - and having transferred a good part of their resentment of decaying communist rule on to the 600,000-strong Serb minority in their midst - Croats could neither comprehend the terror nor anticipate the vigor with which the survivors of the Ustasa's attempted genocide of the 1940s would react to the prospect of another independent Croatia. Although Cviic [Christopher Cviic in his new book, "Remaking the Balkans"] endeavors to explain Serb fears, he makes them appear unreasonable by virtue of his relatively anodyne account of Ustase butchery. He refers in an end-note to two recent and sober attempts to calculate Yugoslavia's Second World War death toll, but ventures only that "many thousands of Serbs" - rather than his sources' agreed total of a third of a million - met their deaths in the Ustasa state. He omits to mention forced conversions to Roman Catholicism as the third component of the Ustasa's trinity of death, deportation and de-nationalization, and implies that the bulk of Serb victims died in concentration camps. The reality was less well-ordered, more gruesome and highly relevant to what has been going on in Croatia's Serbian pale these past few months. Frenzied massacres of Serbs in their native villages, not assembly-line executions in death camps, were the Ustase's preferred and technologically preordained means of attaining the "purification" they sought. The Serbs' formation last year of militias to counter the ethnically and ideologically "pure" special forces of the new Zagreb government - and their eager destruction of Catholic churches in this summer's fighting - are direct echoes of their Ustasa experience. Had Franjo Tudjman bent over backwards in spring 1990 to reassure and conciliate the Serbs, Croats might not in recent weeks have been confrontng the might of the JNA and the likelihood of territorial amputations. Instead, Tudjman and his colleagues, flushed with nationalist and anti-communist triumphalism, effectively demoted the Serbs to the status of a barely tolerated minority, which was precisely what Yugoslavia had saved them from being. Croats thereby delivered a veritable fifth column into the hands of their arch-enemy, Milosevic. To have behaved more wisely would have been out of character for a nationalist ideology which, as Djilas [Aleksa Djilas, in his recent book, "The Contested Country"] writes about its nineteenth-century progenitor, Ante Starcevic, regards "all those who have a different national consciousness, or those whose political ideas are a hindrance to the realization of complete Croatian sovereignty, expansion, and homogeneity" as "racially inferior and fundamentally evil beings." Starcevic, of course, intiated no genocide. He simply denied the legitimacy of any Serb or Slovene presence on the territory he was pleased to regard as rightfully Croatian. The former, insofar as they existed, were schismatics to be brought back into the fold; the latter were "mountain Croats" to be weaned from their outlandish dialect. Nor is Tudjman a latter-day Ante Pavelic (the Ustasa "poglavnik" or "Fuhrer"); but he does embody another and peculiarly morose strand in the Croat nationalist tradition which nourishes grievances, eschews responsibility and expects deliverance from abroad. Serbian nationalism is, of course, neither more far-sighted nor more forgiving, even if it has usually demonstrated greater self-confidence and self-reliance. It has tended, moreover, to seek unification and solidarity (or homogeneity) through assimilation rather than exclusion, and to claim lands on linguistic rather than historical grounds. The concomitant worship of state power - a trait of East European nationalism generally - is, perhaps, less unattractive in those cases where there has long been a state to worship. What Milosevic has done, however, is to substitute the chimera of "Greater Serbia" for Yugoslavia. He has thereby unleashed demons potentially as murderous as those which have disfigured Croatian nationalism. Intoxicated now with the vision of gathering in all their number, seizing rich prizes in Dalmatia and Slavonia and cocking a snoot at the outside world, Serbs appear oblivious to the near-certainty that, in the short run, they will be able to maintain "Greater Serbia" only as a garrison-state which represses its several million non-Serbs, impoverishes its citizens and subjects alike and subsists as a European pariah. In the long run, the burden of empire will outweigh its satisfactions, especially among a people far from lacking in genuinely democratic traditions and impulses. ==============================================================================
novine.17 spantic,
Clanak iz Toronto Star-a od 15 Nov. 'Buffer zone" key Serbian peace demand By Alan Ferguson (reprinted without permission) BELGRADE-The government of Serbia appears to be setting conditions for accepting an international peacekeeping force in war-torn Yugoslavia what would reduce the republic of Croatia to a rump state. The demands were laid out to The Star yesterday in an interview with Vice-President Budimir Kosutic. Reading from confidential documents, Kosutic sketched a buffer zone between Croatian and federal army-backed Serbian forces deep inside existing Croatian territory. He said Serbia will accept the peace-keepers only if the force is sponsored by the United Nations-not the European Community-and only if it includes neither German nor Austrian troops. Serbian suspicions of Germany's intentions in the Balkans are close to paranoid and explain the republic's categorical refusal to accept a German role in any peacekeeping force. The Serbian conditions, which Kosutic said are not necessarily final, coincide almost precisely with long-standing demands that an independent Croatia must give up control of territory inhabited by Serbs. It was not immediately clear to observers why EC envoy Lord Carrington, who wrapped up a 24-hour visit to Yugoslavia yesterday, sounded more optimistic than earlier about the prospects for a lasting ceasefire leading to an international peacekeeping role. Although the Yugoslav army said yesterday it agreed to the proposal for a U.N. force, it gave little detail on where the peacekeepers should be stationed, apart from saying they should "separate the warring sides." Kosutic said Serbia had agreed not to make public any details on the progress of the talks until Carrington has an opportunity to brief his colleagues in the Yugoslav Peace Conference in The Hague. But the detailed conditions set out by Kosutic yesterday involved Croatia's acceptance of international "blue helmets" along a line which would sunder the republic from some of its most valuable territory. Kosutic said Serbia will refuse to accept a buffer zone that merely separates the combatants in their present positions in the eastern regions of Slavonia and Baranja. Instead, Kosutic said Serbia wants the peacekeepers stationed considerably further West inside Croatia. Peering over his glasses at a map, the law professor sketched a line from the village of Donji Miholjac, on the northern border with Hungary, south through the Croatian city of Osijek and on to the Bosnian border at Zupanja. For Croatia to accept such a proposal would involve the defacto surrender of the fertile Slavonian territory, including the cities of Vinkovci and Vukovar, where an already legendary battle is still being fought. Despite the virtual levelling of Vukovar, Croatian defenders sheltering in sewers from army shelling have refused to give in. Moving his pen closer toward the Croatian capital, Zagreb, Kosutic circled the area of Ravna Gora, including the towns of Pakrac and Okucani, insisting that Serbia wants peacekeepers to seal the area to protect its majority Serb population. "We are not seeking new territory," he said, "Eventually the Serbs living there may want to move into Slavonia and the land would remain Croatian." The buffer zone envisaged by Serbia then runs westward from Jasenovac, divides the Croatian cities of Sisak and Karlovac, and turns south through Okocak. "We don't want Zadar," said Kosutic, but he insisted that Jasenovac, site of a wartime concentration camp where the puppet independent state of Croatia killed several thousands of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies, should be enclosed within the Bosnian border. At Skradin, east of the port of Shibenik, Serbia wants a buffer zone running due east to the Bosnian border near Cetina, enfolding the Serbian-held city of Knin, capital of the so-called autonomous region of Krajina. In return, said Kosutic, some part of western Herzegovina, where Croats are in a majority, might be ceded to Croatia. He offered no comment on how this could be achieved without the republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina participating in its own dismemberment. "I can't say that this is our final position." said Kosutic. "It is my opinion and it may not be shared by others." Between 600,000 and 1 million ethnic Serbs live within the present borders of Croatia, which has declared its independence from the Yugoslav federation. Kosutic said the peacekeeping force might have to remain in Yugoslavia for 5 to 10 years, during which time the ethnic Serbs would be able to decide in a referendum where their future lay. "We believe in the right of self-determination of peoples," said Kosutic. He said Serbia will be happy to accept the right to secession from the Yugoslav federation of what remains of Croatia behind Serbia's proposed buffer zone. "It would be a great happiness, a present from God, to be without those kinds of Croats," he said. Turning from his dissection of Croatia, Kosutic became suddenly emotional about the alleged fate of Serbs living in Croatia, saying they were victims of a religious war in which the Croatian Catholics "still want to kill" the Orthodox Serbs. Kosutic hinted at major differences between the Serbian government and the Yugoslav army, which for the past several months has been sen as overtly backing Serbian rebels in Croatia, while maintaining the pretence of keeping Croats and Serbs apart. "If we had had a Serbian army, we would have solved this problem long ago," he said. Asked at the end of the hour-long interview what he thinks are the prospects for a peacekeeping force, Kosutic said: "Maybe, if it is a United Nations force, if it protects the Serbs and if there is no role for the Germans." Meanwhile yesterday. the Serbian-dominated forces fighting house-to-house closed in on the centre of Vukovar, the bombed and battered Danube river city where Croat rebels have been under siege for three months. ==============================================================================
novine.18 viktor,
Zdravo, Mislim da bi trebalo primeniti isti princip rezonovanja koji je iskazan u "strucnim konferencijama" i na ove "politicke" konferencije. Dakle, sazeti tekst koji se zeli prikazati i prikaciti ga, ili cak ceo izbor njih kao u primeru kolege Pantica, uz poruku koja ih ukratko opisuje. Daleko je razumnije nego teranje nekih od nas da, ipak, nakon podosta oklevanja stave resign na FORUM. Pozdrav. P.S. Pre nego neko to izrekne, prihvatam kritiku sto to nisam i sam cinio kada sam prenosio poruke sa nekih mreza, primedba je sasvim na mestu, trebalo je da setim toga sam tada, ali tada sam bio novopeceni korisnik. Dakle, svi ucimo ... P.P.S. Malo sam preterao sa ovim stavljanjem resign-a ...svi gresimo ...
novine.19 spantic,
> Mislim da bi trebalo primeniti isti princip rezonovanja > koji je iskazan u "strucnim konferencijama" i na ove > "politicke" konferencije. Dakle, sazeti tekst koji se zeli > prikazati i prikaciti ga, ili cak ceo izbor njih kao u > primeru kolege Pantica, uz poruku koja ih ukratko opisuje. > Daleko je razumnije nego teranje nekih od nas da, ipak, > nakon podosta oklevanja stave resign na FORUM. Mislim da bi ovome vredelo raspraviti, ali recimo u temi RAZNO. Nije da nisam bio svestan moguće primedbe ali mislim da oni koje zanimaju strani tekstovi o YU će to i da prate,oni koji ne će da daju RESIGN. Možda grešim. Inače, mislim da je interesantan prikaz. Ovde kačim sve što nađem a što je iole relevntno na YU (tako da nije reč o izabranom uzorku). Ako se ne slažete sa time recite. Manje posla.
novine.20 viktor,
Zdravo, Nazalost diskusiju ne mogu nataviti jer menjam ... Ostajte mi dobro, pisacu kada se vratim :-( Pozdrav.
novine.21 viktor,
Zdravo, Ostalo je nedoreceno: menjam boju odela i mesto boravka :-( Javicu se kada se vratim. Pozdrav.
novine.22 maleksic,
>> CROATIANISM Kretenizam? :)
novine.23 spantic,
'Garden of death' holds horror story of Vukovar victims By Alan Ferguson Toronto Star, Friday, November 22, 1991 (reprinted without permission) VUKOVAR - "This way to the massacre victims," said Lt.-Col. Miodrad Panic, leading the way down a rubble-strewn path into a garden where rotting fruit clung to the branches of an old apple tree. At least 60 corpses were laid out under the tree on the rain- soaked grass, some partly naked, others bundled under sodden blankets. Some had hospital tags tied to their toes; others were identified only by a number written on a slip of paper. In death, their faces were calm, reflecting none of the horror of the circumstances in which they died. A bullet-scarred alleyway next to the garden was also lined with bodies, laid head to head. The alley led into an open area, where another 20 corpses lay sprawled on the ground. According to Panic, who led the Yugoslav army's seige of the city, they included Serbian citizens who were victims of a slaughter by "fascist" Croatian forces. Among the corpses there were indeed several victims who appeared to have suffered the most appalling injuries, but how there were inflicted, or by whom, it is impossible to say. The garden of death lies directly opposite the street from the ruins of the Vukovar hospital, scene of Croatia's desperate last stand on Monday, the day the Yugoslav army declared the city taken. It was clear from the tags that many of the dead were hospital patients who had died from their wounds and, in the heat of battle, were taken to the garden to await burial. A spade standing on a freshly dug pit of earth indicated an effort had been make. In their crude attempts yesterday to brand Croats as the sole evil-doers in Vukovar, army commanders used a language that appealed more to the emotions than the intellect. "Instead of giving them a proper burial they were taken out there under the clear, blue sky," said Panic, ignoring the fact the bodies still were not buried four days after the army took control of the town. In a day-long series of set-piece speeches to foreign correspondents, Panic and others sought to convince a doubtful media that the almost total destruction of Vukovar was caused by the Croats themselves. "Remember Vukovar after the Ustashe campaign," said Milan Gvero, a defence ministry spokesperson, inviting reporters to regard the blasted hulk of the town's main hotel as the result of dynamite charges placed by Croats. "And remember Vukovar after the reincarnation of fascism in Europe. The Ustashe philosophy is more frightening than one modelled after Nazism. "I ask you - will the Western democracies accept the propaganda of this Goebbels-style ideology?" He might equally well have asked whether the West would accept the army's version of the fall of Vukovar - or of the alleged atrocities committed there. The army began shelling and bombing the town on Aug. 23, after Croatian forces surrounded and attacked its garrison. The army's assault, led by tanks and planes, continued day and night while 40,000 citizens huddled for shelter in their cellars. According to Panic, it was necessary to destroy almost every house because "Croatian armed forces" were firing from almost every house and hiding in the cellars. Reporters were led into on cellar in a street where four dead pigs lay in the gutter around the wreckage of burned-out cars. It was a tiny room with a small table on which stood a vase of dried cornflowers and chrysanthemums. Why, the army also wanted to know, was the truth not told about "the 41 slaughtered children in Borovo Naselje?" A horrific account of the slaughter allegedly committed my Croatians had been provided to news agencies earlier this week by a Serbian photographer, Goran Mikic. Questioned about the massacre early yesterday, Panic assured reporters that it had happened and that by the end of the day they would have "proof of the crime and see the place where it was committed." But there was no proof, and there was no visit to the scene. "We have no information to give you." Panic said later, explaining that the bodies of the children had been cut up into parts by "some kind of special knives" and it was impossible to count them. In Belgrade, meanwhile, the photographer Mikic retracted his story, saying he had not counted nor personally examined children's bodies but had repeated what soldiers told him. He did, however, say he saw what could have been children's bodies wrapped in plastic. In light of this, it was difficult to asses the army's version of the further tragedy visited upon the Croatian citizens it has been attempting since Tuesday to repatriate. After an agonizing 20 hours sitting in buses overnight Monday, between 700 and 1,000 people, mostly elderly women, were sent back to the Serbian town of Sid yesterday. The army said it had tried to take them to Croatia but that the convoy had run into a crossfire in the Croatian-held village of Nustar. After visiting the garden of death, the army took reporters to the wreck of the Hotel Duna and served bowls of hot soup as its spokespeople described how Croatian soldiers allegedly make necklaces out of children's fingers. Driving back through the streets of bombed-out homes, devastated churches, bullet-ridden cars and trees, Panic said he thought the battle for Vukovar would go sown in history "as a victory against genocide, massacre, and fascism." And through it all, he said, the army and various volunteer groups had suffered only 689 casualties, including 104 dead and six missing and presumed dead out of a total force amounting to about 5,000 men. There was no word about the fate of captured Croat forces. A veteran North american magazine photographer said he watched Tuesday as Serbian irregulars shot two men dead in the street. They had their hands up, he said.
novine.24 spantic,
CROATIA'S BORDERS: OVER THE EDGE By David Martin (David Martin is author, most recently, of "The Web of Disinformation: Churchill's Yugoslav Blunder.") ARLINGTON, Va. The European Community, with the support of the U.S., has recommended to the U.N. that sanctions be imposed on Yugoslavia in order to stop the civil war between Serbia and Croatia. The sanctions will go into effect unless both sides agree to a cease-fire and accept the the internal borders that existed when the crisis began this summer. However well-intentioned, the community and the U.S. are misguided in their approach. Yugoslavia's internal borders are the recent inventions of a Communist dictator and have no historical validity. After the German conquest of Yugoslavia in April 1941, a quisling regime was set up in Croatia under Ante Pavelic and his fascist Ustashe movement. The Ustashe declared an Independent State of Croatia, whose greatly enlarged frontiers extended into territory that had belonged to Serbia, and gave Mr. Pavelic power over a third of Yugoslavia's Serbian population. The Ustashe, not the Croatian people, then embarked on a campaign of terror that took the lives of more than 500,000 Serbs. In addition, many thousands of Jews and gypsies were massacred. Franjo Tudjman, Croatia's President and a former Tito general, has done little to alleviate Serbians' fear of an independent Croatia. He said last year that the Ustashe regime which ruled occupied Croatia from 1941 to 1945, "reflected the centuries-old aspirations of the Croat people." A recent article in The Guardian of London quoted Mr. Tudjman as saying he was thankful that his own wife did not have any Jewish or Serbian blood, and that for the Jews "genocidal violence is a natural phenomenon, in keeping with the human-social and mythological-divine nature. It is not only allowed, but even recommended." Mr. Tudjman's treatment of the Serbs has gone beyond his unfortunate rhetoric. Since Croatia declared independence in June, the Serbs in Croatia have been the victims of a campaign of harassment. Serbs working for the Croatian Government were dismissed. Serbian schools were banned. The Victims of Fascism Square in Zagreb was renamed the Square of the Sovereigns of Croatia. Mr. Tudjman's decision to adopt a flag modeled on the Ustashe flag has only made matters worse. Both sides complain that the war has created large numbers of refugees. But it has been forgotten that the existing frontiers between Croatia and Serbia were arbitrarily drawn by Marshal Tito, a Croat, after he came to power in 1944. Though Tito's borders favored Croatia, they were substantially less expansionist than the Ustashe borders they replaced. ************************* Mediators ignore that Tito cheated Serbia. ************************* I hold no brief for President Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia--a Communist apparatchik who now calls himself a "socialist"--or for his decision to embark on military action. Mr. Milosevic would be in a much more defensible position today if he had, instead, embarked on a propaganda campaign focusing on the issue of human rights. The Serbs cannot be blamed for fearing the rebirth of an extremist Croatia. But one must ask the community and the U.S. why frontiers established by a Communist dictator, no matter how much they may violate the more compelling concept of ethnic frontiers, must be considered legally valid for all time. Political stability cannot be achieved by giving Mr. Milosevic ultimatums. Surely there is a more moral, humane and politically acceptable way of delineating frontiers. For example, shouldn't some provision be made for the use of a plebiscite or for arbitration procedures? Even now, it may not be too late for the community to shift its position in a manner that allows for frontier changes in both directions. There is much evidence that the Serbian public would favor a compromise settlement. Among other things there has been little persecution of Croats in Serbia. It would also be proper for the community, the U.N. and the U.S. to address the question of human rights in both Serbia and Croatia instead of ignoring this question while protesting that they are interested only in greater regional stability. (without permission from The New York Times, OP-ED, Nov. 22, 1991) ==============================================================================
novine.25 spantic,
Ovo je placena reklama Hrvata u listu "Morning Journal" Procitajte i dodatak u dnu od redakcije lista. I naravno i dalje pijte Coca Colu ;) ****************************************************************************** HELP CROATIA: DRINK PEPSI While the independence minded Croatia is fighting for survival, it's 1,000 to 5,000 people dead, many more wounded and close to 400,000 displaced from vilages and small towns that are - no more. It's churches, monuments and hospitals destroyed and losing more territory every day to the bestial "Yugoslav Army" and: WHILE THE ARMY GENERALS "INSIST" that the evidence against their rockets and cluster-bombs is fabricated and; WHILE THE PRESIDENT OF SERBIA INSISTS that he is "protecting" the Serbian minority in Croatia and; While the European Community observers continue to tally-up the gruesome realities of the undeclared war on Croatia and; While the resto of teh civilized West at the Hague Peace Conference - drags its feet! SERBIAN leadership, fully aware of its worst ever image, has just singed on one of the best known public relations firms to whitewash the atrocities it is sponsoring in Croatia. SAATCHI and SAATCHI - the internationa PR agency in London signed up Serbia as its client through the Serbian deputy Prime Minister Slobodan Prohaska because of the Serbian worry that Croatia is winning the propaganda war and Western sympathy - so says The European publication of November 1st, 1991. Saatchi and Saatchi is credited with winning three elections for Margaret Thaicher by introducing American-style campaigning into traditionally sober British politics - according to the same source. The Saatchi and Saatchi is looking for any Croatian, military, political or both, fringe group that are wearing any insignia, singing songs, putting up posters that have any connection or resemblance to those in the WW2 and are paying heavy duty bucks to promote film clips of such groups or individuals in Croatia - WHY? AGENDA: Show the Coratian Democracy to look like a Nazi Revival - and no one will care if the Yugoslav Army does burn all of it! If the Saatchi and Saatchi can convince enough people then just maybe, the World will help Serbia and teh Yugoslav Army to kill off every Croatian that voted for democracy, all 94% of them, their children and destroy every church, cultural object and hospital, plough under all of their graveyards and declare a "binding" cease fire in a new "unified" Yugoslavia where the Serb minority will be safe. Saatchi and Saatchi also does all the work for none other then Coca-Cola. If you see Croatian's picketing COca-Cola ro if you see me drinking Pepsi - you will understand. Call Coca-Cola and ask them to find another PR agent. HELP CROATIA - DRINK PEPSI. [small letters at the bottom] *This As doesn't necessarily feglect the opinions of The Morning Journal or its Advertisers. *******************************************************************************
novine.26 zkehler,
Ŕ * This As doesn't necessarily feglect the opinions of The Morning + +--- Ass? Verovatno ovde treba "ass", da bi idiotizam oglasa bio potpun. ZK
novine.27 spantic,
> Ŕ * This As doesn't necessarily feglect the opinions of > The Morning + > +--- Ass? Verovatno ovde treba "ass", da bi idiotizam > oglasa bio potpun. :)) Imaš piće. Ako je bezalkoholno, naravno Coca Cola je to!
novine.28 bojt,
WHAT PRICE VICTORY? Serbs rejoice too early Aleksa Djilas Boston Sunday Globe, p.A21, Nov. 24, 1991 ************************************************************** During the past week, the Serbian dominated Yugoslav army, together with Serbian reservists and irregulars, captured the piles of rubble that were once the town of Vukovar. Even after formal surrender, small groups of Croats continued their fight. They were not expecting to repulse the victors. The Croatian defeat was complete and all too obvious to allow any hope of that. With their struggle, these Croats were bearing witness to the Croatian anguish not only over the loss of this town, but over the loss, since summer of 1991, of a third of the theritory of Croatia. While victorious Serbs were mopping up the last pockets of resistance, their leaders should have asked themselvs if the time had not come to stop their offensive and search for peace. For if the Croats are fighting with such determination over Vukovar - a northern panhandle town of small importance in the Croatian national consciousness and a place where Croats only slightly outnumbered Serbs before the fighting started - how much greater will their resistance be in the Croatian heartland, whose towns have a large Croatian majority and for which Croats have a much deaper attachment. Serbian leaders should also have asked themselves about the price of winning. Both the military and civilian casualtes of the three-month battle for Vukovar were high - a reminder to the world of how really devastating "conventional" war can be in densely populated areas. But arrogant triumphalism prevents these politicians from asking such resonable questions. It is therefore very likely that they will try to seize more Croatian theritory. Irationality on both sides It is, of course, not only the Serbs who are intoxicated with aggressive ethnic nationalism. Even superficial knowledge of Croatia's history and present state of mind leaves no doubt that the Croats would be expanding as ruthlessly as the Serbs if they had the superrior firepower of the pro-Serb Yugoslav army. But although the both groups are equally possessed by chauvinistic hatered and anger, the Serbs have been inflicting much heavier blows for the last four months. It is through the Serbs' greater successes in wrongdoing that the Croatian cause is gaining legitimacy. What started as a war between two equally irrational and equally pernicious ethnic nationalisms might become a just war of defense of Croatia. As the war progresses, Croatian leaders will rally great numbers of the population for the struggle, while the Yugoslav army will use up a large parts of its resources. In this way, the Croats may become more successful. But they must not lose their most important ally. Paradoxically, this ally is in the Serbian camp: It is the Serbian opposition to the war. Antiwar Serbs are still in a minority, but their numbers are considerable and on the increase. Thousands of Serbs from Serbia, for example, are in hiding or in exile to avoid being drafted. And there have been instances of whole units of reservists - in one case, from the town of Valjevo in Srbia, whose soldiers were renowned for thir military valor in both world wars-returning home from the front without permission. Belgrade has a vocal peace movement, and an important section of its media are bitterly opposed to the regime of Slobodan Milosevic and to Serbian Nationalism in general. Had it not be for this antiwar stance of many Serbs, and the lack of enthusiasm for war of even more of them, Croatian defeats would have been greater and would have occured sooner. For Serbs have numerical superiority to Croats - almost 2-1 in the whole of Yugoslavia - as wellas being more martial people. Anti-Serbian extremism Yet if Croats have an ally in antwar Serbs, prowar Serbs have an ally in Croatian anti-Serbian extremism. Anti-Serbian sentiments are strongly present in all parts of Croatia, in particular in the main cities, and have been on the increase for some time. Among many examples, perhaps the most telling is the recent renaming of an elementary school in Zagreb and of a street in Dubrovnik. Both of them bore the names of Serbs who were killed during the World War II - the former by German Nazis and the latter by Croatian fascists. The school and the street now have a new name, that of Mile Budak. Budak was a Croatian writer of some distinction in the inter-war period, who during the World War II became vice fuhrer of the fascist puppet state of Croatia. He earned the sobriquet, "the Croatian Goebbels", because of his fanatical anti-Serbian speaches. Measures like these are forcing Serbs to leave Croatia. It is unthinkable for a Serb to live on Mile Budak Street or to send his child to a Mile Budak School as it would be for a Jew to live on Joseph Goebbels Street or send his child to a Joseph Goebbels School. (For that matter, the name of Mile Budak is no more acceptable to Croatian Jews than it is to Serbs, since Croatia's war time regime, in alliance with German Nazis, extreminated its Jews.) There are also forcible expulsions of Serbs from Croatia. Early this month, at least 5,000 Serbs were ousted by Croatian troops from the district of Bilogora Mountain, 100 kilometers east from Zagreb. Atrocities such as these increase belligerent sentiments among Serbs and augment the mobilizing power of Serbian nationalizm. They also justify, in the minds of Serbs, the otherwise unjustifiable Serbian acquisition of parts of Croatia. These thrritories are then seen as a place for settlements for the Serbs who have been expelled from other parts of Croatia. The Serbs expelled from the district of Bilogora Mountain, for example, are already asking to be granted the land of Croats who left the Vukovar region. The Croatian-Serbian war has already displaced about 400,000 people. Many Croats and Serbs are leaving Yugoslavia, becoming one of Europe's major refugee problems. Germany is particular worried, not lest because of the recen wave of neo-Nazi violence against foreigners. It is this push to the north of Yugoslav refugees, rather than the plans for a new imperialist push to the east (as many Serbs interpret German support for Croatian independence), that is preoccupying German politicians. Nearly all the Croatian and Serbian refugees come from regions where, until recently, they have lived mixed together. Now, these regions are on the way to becoming nationally homogeneous. And this process will almost certainly not be reversed. It is extremely unlikely that any Serbs will return to a region that is under control of present-day chauvinistic Croatia, or that any Croats will return to a region of Croatia under the control of Serbian-dominated Yugoslav army and Serbian irregulars. And in both cases, it is quite likely that more will leave. In this way, Yugoslavia is becoming like the rest of central, eastern and southeastern Europe. Until the present Croatian-Serbian war, Yugoslavia, with its mixture of populations, was a noble anomaly in this part of the world. From the Baltic to the Mediterranean and the Black See, ethnic groups have been expelling, forcibly assimilating or, in some cases, exterminating the members of other groups since the 19th centry. No nationalism, of course, has been murderous as German nazism, but all have been expansionist and intolerant of others. In this way, a reach and complex world in which different ethnic, linguistic and religious groups lived mixed together was destroyed. In its place come nationally homogeneous states, where minorities were mostly small and always oppressed. What are the prospects for peace in Yugoslavia? Considering the depth of Croatian and Serbian dissagreement about the borders, as wellas Croat's extreme intolerance toward the Serbian minority in Croatia and the Serbs' toward Croats in the third of Croatia they are now controlling, they seem bleak. And they will be made even worse by the desire for revenge of hundreds of thousands of refugees. Nor will any side achieve decisive victory. Croatian extremism will antagonize more and more Serbs, and Serbian expansionism more and more Croats. Zagreb and Belgrade will find it difficult to control any other territories not only because hostile guerrilla groups will inevitably appear, but also because local warlords nominally loyal to each capital will become increasingly independent. The war will go on. Croats will continue to regain all of the theritory of Croatia (only temporarily abandoning the dream of a greater Croatia, which would include Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as parts of Serbia and Montenegro) and to oust its Serbian minority; and Serbs will go on fighting for the creation of greater Serbia, which would include large parts of Croatia and at least large parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and in which the non-Serbian minorities would have to choose between oppression and expulsion. Ultimately, probably after a few years, mounting casualties, exhaustion and impoverishment will slow down the conflict. Borders established by that time will still not be accepted by both sides or by international community, but the force will be lacking to change them. The war will die out, but it will probably take decades for it to become a real peace. A wise Frenchman wrote in the 18th centry that passions teach men reason. He was right. But it takes a long time.
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Zanimljivo viđenje. ============================================================================= The New York Times, Sunday Dec. 8, 1991, PAGE A18 GERMANS FOLLOW OWN LINE ON YUGOSLAV REPUBLICS By Stephen Kinzer BONN, Dec. 7 - Chancellor Helmut Kohl's promise to recognize the independence of Slovenia and Croatia before Christmas has provoked a SPLIT AMONG WESTERN ALLIES and has led Bonn into an unusual CONFLICT with Washington. The Presidents of the two break-away Yugoslav republics visited Germany this week, and Mr. Kohl told both of themof his decision to recognize their republics as sovereign nations. Several other countries, including Sweden, Italy, Austria, and Hungary, are likely to follow German lead. Mr. Kohl had previously maintained that his Government would recognize Slovenia and Croatia only if the entire European Community did so. He changed his position when it became clear that some members of the community opposed quick recognition. French officials have criticized Germany for its willingness to recognize the two republics without further DISSCUSSIONS ABOUT BORDERS, HUMAN RIGHTS and other matters. 'Prejudicial for Europe' 'We are striving to make our partners understand, starting with Germany, that it would be prejudicial for Europe as whole,' the French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas, said on Friday. 'THE ATTITUDE OF UNILATERAL RECOGNITION CAN BE DAMAGING FOR THE COMMUNITY'. United States, is that recognition of Croatia and Slovenia should come only as part of overall peace agreement. American officials have said they OPPOSE QUICK RECOGNITION because they fear that it would encourage other Yugoslav republics to press for independence, and perhaps also SET AN EXAMPLE FOR SECESSION-MINDED PROVINCES IN OTHER PARTS OF EUROPE. The United States has imposed economic sanctions against ALL six Yugoslav republics, hoping to force all of them to make concessions, while German sanctions apply only to Serbia and its ally Montenegro. 'Aggression Against Croatia' President Franjo Tudjman of Croatia, who was in Bonn on Friday, said he was amazed by the American position. 'Taken objectively, that equals support for the aggression against Croatia, support for this barbaric war that is unparallel in the world today,' Mr. Tudjman said. For a time, debate over Yugoslavia threatened to overshadow other topics to be discussed at the European Community summit meeting next week in the Netherlands. The issue is still likely to be discussed there, but government leaders have agreed to leave final decission to a meeting of foreign ministers on DEc. 16. At the heart of the dispute are two opposing perceptions of the Yugoslav conflict. American, French and British officials view it as a civil war between rival ETHNIC factions, while Germans and those who support their view see it as an attack by Serbian Communists on peaceful people whose only crime has been to vote democratically in favour of independence. Historical Ties Germany has long historical ties, both glorious and SHAMEFUL, to Slovenia and Croatia. Slovenia was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and many people there still identify with the German-speaking world. There has also been German influence in Croatia, and during WWII, Croatia was ruled by pro-Nazi regime. This aspect of Croatian history, and the fact that the Tudjman Government HAS REFUSED TO DISASSOCIATE ITSELF FROM THE CROATIAN FASCISTS who ruled the republic in the 1940's, has made European leaders unwilling to move quickly toward recognition. German public opinion is strongly pro-Croatian and anti-Serbian. Newspaper cartoons portray Serbia as a giant brute attacking helpless victims, and campaign to raise funds for Croatia have been quite successful. But the enthusiasm in Germany has convinced some Europeans that its ULTIMATE GOAL IS TO REBUILD A SPHERE OF INFLUENCE THAT COULD STRETCH ACROSS THE CONTINENT FROM Tallinn IN ESTONIA TO Zagreb IN CROATIA. When European foreign ministers meet in Brussels on Dec. 16, it appaers unlikely that they will reach a consensus, which would most likely lead Germany and its supporters to act by themselves. Officials in Bonn are already making plans to open embassies in the Slovenian and Croatian capitals and to fashion aid packages for both republics. Germany is not considered likely to supply them with weapons, but the fact that they will have a measure of international legitimacy would make it easier for others to do so. ==============================================================================
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-------------------------------------------------------------------------- Pioneer Press, Thursday, 12/05/91 WOMEN, CHILDREN BECOME HUMAN SHIELDS IN BESIEGED DUBROVNIK DAN STETS, Knight Ridder Foreign Service Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia Croatian officials have banned women and children from leaving this besieged ancient city in an effort to deter further attacks by the Yugoslav Army. The top United Nations relief official in Dubrovnik on Wednesday strongly condemned the move, estimating that up to 4,000 women and children would like to have the opportunity to leave the city, where 120 people were killed in heave shelling last month. "No woman or child should be obliged to be a hero or used as a shield," said Staffan de Mistura, special envoy of UNICEF in Dubrovnik. "It is a major right to decide whether to be a martyr or a hero, not a duty." The six-member Dubrovnik crisis committee decided six days ago that the defense of this coastal Adriatic city required the presence of all remaining women and children. UNICEF was informed of the decree three days ago, and on Tuesday, it was first implemented: 200 people were prevented from leaving the city on a UNICEF relief vessel that had brought supplies to the city. Croatian officials defended the decree as a way to boost morale here, as well as to prevent the attack. "From a psychological viewpoint, it is a great advantage to have these people here because an empty city has no motivation, no soul to defend itself," Col. Milivoj Mimica, deputy commander of Croatian forces in Dubrovnik, said Wednesday. In a surprisingly candid interview, Mimica listed three principal reasons for the decision. First, he said, if the women and children stay, it will mean that the attacking army would be shooting at them and not just at a walled city. Second, he said, their presence might force the army to hesitate before shooting. Third, if there is an attack, the international public reaction to such an attack would be a public relations coup for Croatia, which has been trying desperately for months to get diplomatic and military support from the West. Mimica said he had been "greatly disappointed" by the Western response to fighting in Croatia, charging that the Serb-led Yugoslav People's Army was committing genicide against the Croats, not just killing people, but also trying to wipe out Croatian culture - its historical monuments, libraries, churches and factories. De Mistura of UNICEF characterized the decision by the all-male Dubrovnik crisis committee as cowardly and cynical. "If war is decided by men, then these men should not fight using women and children as shields," he said. "If they don't have the courage to fight this war without shields, then they should call a lawyer and sit down with the other side and work out the settlement." De Mistura said the goverment and military of Croatia were emplying tactic widely condemned when it was used recently by governments in Iraq, Ethiopia and the Sudan. UNICEF has evacuated 6,400 woman and children from Dubrovnik so far. Only 100 to 300 people scheduled to leave on the ship Tuesday were allowed to depart and UNICEF was told by Dubrovnik officials that no one else would be allowed to leave. A large cargo ship scheduled to bring 500 tons of relief supplies Friday has enough space to take away several hundred woman and children. Another UNICEF official said it was apparent that many other people, especially women with children, would like to leave the city. When a relief vessel sailed from Dubrovnik with 788 people aboard last week, another 400 people were on the pier, clamoring to get aboard, he said.
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z The Sunday Times (London), 1 December 1991 BRITISH DOGS OF WAR RECOIL FROM CROATIAN HORROR by Anthony Rogers It had been a brutally successful attack: the Yugoslav army base was smouldering, the defenders dead or captured. Then the victorious Croats debated who would have the honour of executing the fat Serbian commander. In the end, a British mercenary who had masterminded the assault was invited to do the job. "Major" John Ward (he declines to give his real name), a former British Parachute Regiment seargent, had seen his fair share of savagery around the world, but Yugoslavia provided him with his most chilling scrapbook to date. "It was like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest with AK-47s," he said, recalling how the terrified Serbian major cowered before his captors. But Ward hesitated, and an impatient Croat officer, assuming he was reluctant to carry out the execution, shot the Serb through the head. Not wanting to lose face, Ward then fired two shots at the body that was "still twitching." Ward, from Glasgow, is one of three Scottish mercenaries who have returned recently from Croatia. They call themselves "Scots Mercs" and their motto is "kill first, ask later." Yet despite the bravura, the men were appalled by what they saw in Croatia. "The methods are very, very primitive," said "John Thompson", 29, a former Scots Guards lance-corporal who served in the Falklands and Northern Ireland. "It's heavy, heavy stuff," he said, recalling with horror the day he saw the corpse of a baby that had been decapitated, supposedly by Serbs. "I've never been involved in any war like that before." It was clear that the Croats' battlefield behaviour was as gruesome as that of their enemies. The treatment of prisoners - the Britons watched in disgust when one prisoner was shot through both feet to make him talk - had little in common with standards laid down by the Geneva Convention. "I've been on the battlefield and I've been involved in taking prisoners," said Ward, "and I've seen guys getting shot. But not this constant pistol whipping and punching and kicking of prisoners." The Scottish mercenaries saw themselves as a cut above the young adventurers who have flocked to Croatia from all over the world. "I've never seen so many head cases gravitating towards a war zone," said Thompson. He, Ward and former Royal Engineer Dave Tompkins, another pseudonym, said they had been attracted to Croatia by the promise of a "five figure sum" for a few weeks of work, as well as an element of sympathy for the Croatian cause. They say they were hired as advisers to Dobroslav Paraga, leader of the extreme right-wing Croatian Party of Rights. Paraga, impressed with the men's military background, made Ward a major and Thompson a captain in the party's paramilitary wing, HoS. The group has a fearsone reputation in Croatia, yet to the British dogs of war it seemed poorly trained and ill-disciplined. Once, when an HoS convoy escorting an arms shipment came under sniper fire, the Croats froze in terror. "The guys couldn't move," said Ward. One of the Croats "began running around in circles, like a dog chasing its own tail. I grabbed this guy by the hair and pulled him right down on the deck and he was like a baby, so I slapped him right in the face and said shut up. Nutcases." The Britons' bravura quickly earned them the respect of the Croat heriarchy and Ward ended up commanding a force of 500 in the successful assault on the army barracks south of Zagreb. "We got so well known that people started sending for us," said Ward. But their popularity eventually breeded resentment. An Australian-Croat, known as "Falcon," developed an intense hatred for the Britons. One day, after an argument over a lorry, 16 of Falcon's men confronted the three mercenaries, guns raised. "The three of us grabbed our weapons," said Thompson. "If someone had opened up it would have been a complete wipe-out. It was a very, very scary moment. Not a word was uttered." Neither side was keen to shoot first and the Britons withdrew to the Party of Rights headquartes in Zagreb. Things were just as chaotic there, however. The mercenaries were woken one night by the sound of gunshots and shouting. They found Croats interrogating two men who had been seized on suspicion of plotting to assassinate Paraga. Army documents were found on one of the men and his interrogators shot him in both feet. Both prisoners were severely beaten. "After 20 or 30 minutes," said Thompson, "we decided to intervene. We carefully explained that this was unprofessional behaviour. Ward said, 'If you want to kill him, kill him, but don't torture the man.'" The mercenaries resigned and returned to Britain a few weeks later after a pay dispute. Ther protection was sorely missed: a week ago, Paraga was defenceless against police who arrested him on charges of conspiring to overthrow the Croatian leadership. [Caption to accompanying photo : "Flag of convenience: an American fights under the stars and stripes in Croatia - the worst war of their lives, say fellow mercenaries']
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FINANCIAL TIMES December 12, 1991 Republic appeals for western debt relief as fighting makes budget deficit soar to $2.5 billion CROATIA WILL INCREASE TAXES TO PAY FOR WAR By Judy Dempsey in Zagreb The government in Croatia will impose steep increases in company and personal taxation next month to finance a war which has already cost the equivalent of an estimated $70bn (LST38.8bn). Mr Jurica Pavelic, deputy prime minister responsible for the economy, said enterprises will have to bear the main burden of financing the 550,000 refugees, 670,000 pensioners and the 270,000 unemployed from a labour force of 1.2m. A further 100,000 people cannot work because of the fighting. Enterprises would have to pay 1.5 dinars to the government for every one dinar they paid in wages to their workers, Mr Pavelic said. Taxes on personal consumption and luxury goods will also be increased. The tax measures will be accompanied by the issue of government-backed five-year treasury bonds worth DM1bn (LST350m), which falls due to western financial institutions in the new year. He said he feared the costs of the war and any post-war reconstruction will soar over the next year. At the moment, government expenditure is targeted on maintaining the army, whose finances Mr Pavelic did not disclose, and refugees, who cost the authorities DM10 a day each for shelter, food, and clothing. The government has said 2,000 Croats have died in the fighting since Croatia declared its independence on June 25. Red Cross officials say total fatality figures, which include Serbs and federal army soldiers, could exceed 20,000. Around 30 per cent of Croatia's territory is now under federal army or Serbian control and the war has caused enormous material damage. Several bridges have been destroyed, more than 120,000 apartments bombed and nearly 40 per cent of the republic's crops, or 480,000 hectares, located mostly in Slavonia, eastern Croatia, where much fighting has taken place, could not be harvested this year. Mr Pavelic, who took over the economy portfolio a month ago, said the Yugoslav economy was already going through an economic crisis before the war. Because of the war, however, industrial production has fallen by 40 per cent so far this year after a 10 per cent decline in 1990. He said that GDP will fall 30 per cent this year after a 12 per cent decline in 1990. Personal income, which has fallen by 50 per cent since last December, is likely to decline further.
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The Globe and Mail (Canada), November 28, 1991 CROATIA/ Demographic map already redrawn by massive population shift as morale, confidence in government sink DREAMS OF VIBRANT DEMOCRACY FADING By Paul Koring, European Bureau Zagreb Even if the current shaky ceasefire holds until the arrival of thousands of United Nations peacekeepers, the heavy price paid by Croatia in its bid for independence has left deep scars on the republic and its infant democracy. The rows of bodies in Vukovar, the stream of refugees clutching a few belongings and the shattered cities and towns bear horrific testament to the devastation of five months of war. Thousands are dead, and tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands have fled the fighting. The economy verges on collapse, with Croatia's industrial cornerstones such as the refinery at Sisak and a steel works largely in ruins. The Zagreb government ca claim real control over barely half of the crescent-shaped republic. Huge swaths have been lost, occupied by the Yugoslav army. In many places, a shift of population has already redrawn the demographic map. President Franjo Tudjman's government, too, has suffered, ant it shows increasing signs of strain. He is under attack for his conduct of the war, a string of setbacks punctuated by meaningless ceasefires. His response has been to imprison opponents and resort to vague accusations of "dark forces", a style common during Croatia's decades as a Communist republic but a blot on its fledgling democracy. Hard-liners accuse him of failing to order a mass mobilization to redress the huge imbalance in forces that favours the federal army, and of trying to maintain a meaningless pretence, in Zagreb at least, that life is more or less normal. So while the lights blaze in Zagreb and trendy restaurants are busy, much of Croatia is beleaguered. Both morale and confidence in the government have sagged markedly since the fall of Vukovar, the Danube River city that became the symbol of Croatian resistance. Mr. Tudjman has been forced to abandon almost all the conditions he once set for accepting UN peacekeeping forces. The message from Zagreb now sounds desperate. "UN troops should come as quickly as possible and be posted in the crisis areas," Croatia's foreign minister Zvonimir Separovic says. "We do need international help, and we believe, we are sure, we will be getting international help." For Croatia, deploying peacekeepers as soon as possible and anywhere possible to prevent further loss of territory has become synonymous with international help. Gone is any pretense that the blue helmets of UN forces will deploy along the boundaries between Croatia and its neighbouring republics. Gone, too, is the demand that the Yugoslav army immediately withdraw from the territory it controls. "This is a process to be guaranteed by the peacekeeping forces with a parallel withdrawal of the conflicting forces," Mr. Separovic says vaguely. The Croatian hope now is that UN peacekeepers will, over time, replace the Yugoslav army; that the occupied areas will be demilitarized and that it can then persuade Croatians to return - even to Serbian-dominated areas - to shore up its position that its boundaries cannot be redrawn. Any explicit admission by the government that Croatia may not be restored to its former shape - and that this certainly will not happen soon - would be political suicide. Yet the government seems to have no cards left to play and no willingness to confront its population with that reality. This is evident in Mr. Separovic's admission that "more than half a million have left their homes and the demographic picture has been disturbed and distorted," and in his insistence that in any negotiations - even about greater autonomy for Serb-dominated areas - "the demographic maps put on diplomatic tables will be in the shape they were before the war." He may have international law on his side, but he has little else. His scenario presumes that the Yugoslav army will actually withdraw, meekly abandoning what it won in battle, and that displaced Croatians, many of whom have lived through hellish months, will return to flattened homes and ruined farms to live, in many cases among Serbs. It also presumes that Serbia' President, Slobodan Milosevic, will give up his nearly realized dream of a Greater Serbia. The evidence is to the contrary. Already in Baranja, a fertile zone north of the Drava River that is now entirely in Serbian hands, Serbian refugees from other parts of Croatia are being relocated by Belgrade in houses and farms abandoned by fleeing Croatians. Similar plans to rebuild and repopulate the once-mixed city of Vukovar entirely with Serbs are being given wide currency in the Serbian press. It is unlikely that after months of painting the Croatian government as genocidal and fascist, bent on exterminating the 600,000 Serbs living among 3.5 million Croatians, Mr. Milosevic or the Yugoslav army will try to persuade their own Serbian constituency that the fate of Serbs in Croatia ca be left in Zagreb's hands - even under the watchful eye of UN peacekeepers. Mr. Separovic promises new legislation that will give the Serb minority in Croatia broad rights of local autonomy. "They must enjoy full rights but not the right to secede. ... Minorities cannot have the right to self-determination" if it means redrawing borders, he said. That kind of offer will be rejected by Serbs in areas that have already declared themselves independent of Zagreb, and it is hard to imagine either the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army or Mr. Milosevic abandoning them. Mario Nobilo, an adviser to Mr. Tudjman, argues that Serbia and the army have bowed to mounting international pressure, the threat of tougher economic sanctions and a growing anti-war sentiment in Serbia in requesting UN peacekeepers. The opposing view, never voiced in Croatia, is that Mr. Milosevic and the army have largely achieved their war aims; that, as Mr. Milosevic has publicly stated, he can accept an independent Croatia as long as it is shorn of areas he deems to be Serbian. International recognition of Croatia now seems imminent, but embassies in Zagreb and seat at the UN will not restore Croatia to its pre-war boundaries.
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Evo jutros sam uz kafu citao Banjalucke novine "GLAS" pa evo jednog clanka: EKSPLOZIVNI VIKEND ───────────────── EKSPLOZIJA U NOKAUTU U subotu u Uici Nikole Tesle u 3.50 sati dojeknula je snazna detonacija kod kafane Nokaut vlasnistvo Branislave Batar. Eksploziv je podmetnut u neposrednoj blizini kafane. Uvidjajna ekipa je pronasla i plasticnu kantu sa naftom koja se na svu srecu nije zapalila. NA HANISTU U subotu je od podmetnute eksplozije kod kafe-bara EKS ciji je vlasnik Momcilo Dukic u zanatskom centru na hanistu ostecen butik Vere Stanarevic. Od snazne eksplozije ostecen je i nezavrseni lokal namjenjen za zlatarsku radnju i salon obuce ENI U SAKSIJI ZA CVIJECE Oko 3.15 sati u subotu u neposrednoj blizini kafane JETI eksplodirala je saksija za cvijece. Naprava je bila uredno postavljena u saksiji i eksplozija nije nacinila vecu stetu na lokalu jer je bila udaljena 20m. U CEVABDZINICI U nedelju u 1.15 sati aktivirala se eksplozivna naprava kod cevabdzinice Kod Soce vlasnistvo Senada Isica. Od eksplozije su osteceni krov i vrata objekta. Od eksplozije su popucala i stakla svjetlarnika na zgradi preko puta. Osteceni objekti se nalaze u neposrednoj blizini zgrade SUP-a. PETNAEST MINUTA KASNIJE cuje se snazna eksplozija u Ulici brace Alagica od koje je ostecena kuca Dzemila Kobilja. Stambeni objekat koji jos nije useljen, a u cijem se prizemlju nalazi skladiste plasticnih proizvoda, znatno je ostecen. ─────────────────────────────────────────────────── Izvod iz susjednog clanka: Rezervista Milan Balta u kaficu Pijanino lisio je zivota Iliju Cutkovica U Banjaluckoj pivnici pijani rezervista setajuci od stola do stola sa otkocenim kalasnjikovim usmrtio je 30-godisnjeg Ljubomira Ilica. Na hirurgiju je stigao vlasnik kafica Trinaestica, jer su ga za sada nepoznati napadaci divljacki pretukli, pa se ljekari bore za njegov zivot. Eto, nije bilo dosadno preko vikenda, mogao sam ovo i u forum/svedocenja jer sam sve eksplozije licno cuo, a neka mjesta i obisao. Terza
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B00000000000000 B00000000000000 The GUARDIAN, 9.DECEMBER 1991. -------------------------------------------- ------ A GERMAN FINGER IN THE YUGOSLAVIAN PIE ---------------------- Catholic Croatian ties that are binding Bonn, by Ian Traynor Back at the beginning of September, the European Community's mediation effort in Yugoslavia was in its infancy: the Duch-led diplomatic initiative had just brokered another doomed truce. Within hours of the ceasefire being signed Boris Frelec, the Yugoslav ambassador in Bonn, was called in to the German foreign ministry. But it was not for some cautious diplomatic chat. He was told in no uncertain terms that Serbia and the Yugoslav army were guilty of already breaching the ceasefire, and that they would be made to live with the consequences. Hans-Dietrich Genscher, the German foreign minister at whose express insistence Frelec had been summoned, had been on the phone to his ALLIES in Zagreb and received news of the truce colapse before anyone else. The episode illustrates the speed with which Europe's longest-serving foreign minister has beeen prepared to act on behalf of Croatia. It was neither the first nor perhaps the last case of Genscher and Germany sticking their necks out unilaterally on the Croatian issue, despite the fact that the EC is supposed to be conducting a concerted policy. If the protest was warranted - the rest of the Community preferred to give the ceasefire a little longer before delivering its judgment - it was up to the Dutch, as EC chair and organiser of the mediation in Yugoslavia, to table it. But Genscher was, and is, having a private feud with his Dutch opposite number, Hans van den Broek, and could not resist the brinkmanship. Germany, which was Serbia's enemy in two world wars and is at present the bete noire of the Belgrade propaganda machine, last week became the only EC country to severe transport links with Serbia and deny the Yugoslavian airline landing rights. Now that brinkmanship has reached the point where Bonn is about to recognise an independent Croatia whose borders are disputed and over whose contentious status no negotiations have taken place. In the past few days the German resolve to accept Croatia into the community of nations has stirred criticism in Paris, London and Washington, and at the United Nations to whome the EC has more or less passed the mediation baton. The Croatia issue thus leaves Germany isolated among the other world and European powers. Inside the EC, Italy, Belgium, and Denmark look likely to support recognition of Croatia; outside, Germany can bank on strong support from Austria, Canada, Australia, and South American countries (all with substantial Croatian emigre communities). Germany ephasises the primacy of the principle of self-determination, but its argument is inconsistent. Two communist federations in Europe have collapsed. On Yugoslavia, Bonn loudly advocates Croatia's right to secede (the Serbs, of course, reply that they also want the right to self-determination, especially for the 600,000 Serbs in Croatia); but on the Soviet Union, Bonn and Genscher were long the biggest supporters of the centre, of Gorbachev, the godfather of German unification, against the republican centrifuge. So much for principle. Genscher no doubt has a keen eye on the strong public and cross-party support in Germany for Croatia. Chancellor Kohl whose main constituency, the Catholic right, is the natural source of sympathy for Croatia's Catholic (though ex-communist) rightwing President Franjo Tudjman, has been less abrasive than Genscher but has promised Zagreb recognition by Christmas. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, voice of the Catholic right and Kohl's Christian Democratic Union, has been running fervently pro-Croatian and anti-Serbian editorials several times a week for months. The rest of Europe is excoriated for its inaction; the British and Dutch are accused of having taken the EC peace conference into a cul-de-sac; with a strong whiff of bigotry, Catholic Croatia is presented as intrinsically superior culturally to Orthodox Serbia; and Kohl is zealously urged to act even more speedily on Croatia's behalf. Take Saturday's front page editorial: "Only military aid can save Croatia... More than the other, the German government is ready to do something for invaded and tormented Croatia. But even Bonn's steps are so halting and hesitant." The "something" apparently means recognition and arms supplies. But it is Croatia, not Serbia, that is being destroyed by the war, and arms supplies at this juncture look likely to create more problems than they solve. Recognition and legal arms supplies from Germany would so incense the Yugoslav army as to render escalation of the war a virtual certainty. Recognition of states, in the conventional sense, usually applies to "countries" that are able to control their borders and exercise authority over their territory and population. Croatia at present can do neither. The Yugoslavian army's tactics, if it has any, appear to be aimed at destroying rather than conquering Croatia, in order to make secession impossible or to cripple an independent state at birth. Some 40 per cent of Croatia's industrial capacity has been wiped out. If you are intent on occupying a resort like Dubrovnik, you do not first destroy its assets. But that is what the army has done, razing just about every hotel in the port city. Germany may find that by Christmas not much of Croatia is left to recognise; and that what remains is then flattened by a communist army furious at German "treachery". At Maastricht Genscher and Kohl will be among the strongest advocates of a common Euro-profile in foreign and security policy. They will argue that future foreign and security policies should be dictated by Community, not national interests. But in the most immediate crisis facing Europe, Bonn is going it alone. Genscher, of course, does not see it that way. Germany, he says, is only taking the lead that the rest of the EC should follow.
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The New York Times 12/17/91 (1) YUGOSLAVS EXPECT WAR TO CONTINUE By STEPHEN ENGELBERG Special to The New York Times ZAGREB, Yugoslavia, Dec 16 Q Whether European diplomatic recognition of Croatia comes within a week or a month, the two sides in Yugoslavia's war envision continuing and even intensified conflict Senior Croatian officials said today that regardless of when the recognition promised by Germany comes they would not bargain over territory captured by the Serb-dominated Yugoslav Army. They added that their own military forces were prepared to wage a long war of attrition, even without the increase in arms supplies that some here assume will follow foreign recognition of Croatian independence. In Belgrade, meanwhile, a top officer in the Yugoslav Army warned today that the war would only widen if Germany and other European nations went ahead with their announced intention to recognize the breakaway republics of Croatia and Slovenia . Croatians Express Confidence Both sides are working hard to improve the efficiency of their armed forces in a war that has already claimed the lives of thousands of solders and civilians, but senior Croatian officers here expressed the belief that their relatively weaker forces would gain while those of their their enemy declined. Indeed, the Yugoslav Army, once composed of conscripts from all six Yugoslav republics, has been weakened by desertions, and in the last four months has been forced to depend on poorly trained reservists and Serbian irregulars for the bulk of its infantry. Even many of these have refused to fight or have walked away from their posts. Lacking reliable ground troops, the army has pursued a strategy of attacking Croatian cities with long-range artillery. In Osijek in eastern Croatia about half a dozen civilians are reported killed each day from shelling. In the chaotic first months of the war, the disorganized Croatian army lost more than one-third of the republic's territory to advancing Serb forces but more recently it has stopped the federal army's advance and even.reclaimed villages in a few areas. There have been hopes in Zagreb that foreign recognition of Croatia will decisively shift the military balance by allowing the republic of 4.5 million people to buy weapons on the open market. Tighter Embargo Expected But Gen. Anton Tus, Croatia's chief military planner, acknowledged that German recognition would most likely cause the tightening of the United Nations embargo against arms sales to Yugoslavia. With the ban on arms shipments still formally in effect, he said, the countries that do recognize Croatia will be under heavy international pressure to restrict sales. Speaking to reporters on Sunday General Tus said: "Our major problem is with weapons and the embargo is the main cause. Whatever we have we've taken from the enemy." From its performance in the field the Yugoslav Army appears to have severe problems with the command and control of its units. Its air force has occasionally bombed civilian and military targets, but never in conjunction with an artillery assault. In July, when it attempted such an operation, the planes rocketed their own ground troops. More recently, the army apologized for a 10- hour shelling of the historic city of Dubrovnik. Gen. Marko Negovanovic, the Assistant Defense Minister, asserted that the army command gave no order for the shelling. General Negovanovic acknowledged that the army was short of soldiers and said it had been regrouping in recent weeks as it integrated the Serbian irregulars into its ranks. Wider War Suggested "Recognizing Croatia and Slovenia makes these nations international subjects, and they will have rights that go along with that," he said. "This is the German line, and it will mean drawing out the war in Croatia. If there is a forcing of the military option, this will lead to deepening of the war and its spreading." This appeared to be a reference to the possibility of conflict erupting in Bosnia- Hercegovina, the republic that borders on Croatia. General Tus said that his side would gain if a second front was opened in that region, but that such a step had been ruled out because it would lead to tens of thousands of deaths in a republic in which Serbs, Croats and Muslims, co-exist uneasily in armed and villages.
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The New York Times 12/20/91 CROATIA FIGHTING IS ON INCREASE Iceland Becomes First Nation in the West to Recognize Breakaway Republic BELGRADE, Yugoslavia, Dec. 19 (AP) - Fighting increased in the breakaway republic of Croatia today after allegations of atrocities by both sides. International mediators said they saw little hope that the six month civil war would soon end. "The situation is rather grim," Lord Carrington of Britain, a negotiator for the European Community, said after meeting with the Yugoslav Defense Minister, Gen. Veljko Kadijevic. But secessionist leaders were heartened by diplomatic support. Iceland became the first Western nation to recognize Croatia and Slovenia, which declared independence on June 25. Germany and Italy also promised to establish ties soon with the two republics. Fireworks lit the sky and anti-aircraft guns were fired in celebration in Zagreb, the Croatian capital, while guns were fired in anger elsewhere in the republic. Thousands have died since the Serbian-dominated national army and ethnic Serb irregulars began battling Croatian forces in early July. - A military official in Nova Gradiska,70 miles southeast of Zagreb, said the town had seen "one of the worst days" of artillery attacks. European Community officials said they were investigating reports by Croats that retreating Serb-led forces had massacred at least 43 civilians late last week in Vocin, 90 miles southeast of Zagreb, and in three nearby villages. The national news agency Tanyug reported that federal military officials had asserted that the Serbian village of Masicka Sagovina was pillaged and burned today by Croatian forces. Tanyug also said the federal army had supported allegations by ethnic Serbs that Croats recently massacred more than 120 Serbs in eastern Croatia. Allegations of atrocities have often been leveled by each side in the civil war, but they are often difficult to verify. Repeated efforts by the European Community to negotiate a cease-fire have failed, and the community's leaders now appear ready to back Croatian and Slovenian independence bids. Iceland, which is not a member of the community, is extending diplomatic recognition to Croatia and Slovenia because they offered assurances "concerning the respect of human rights," said Gudmundur Eiriksson, a legal adviser to Iceland's Foreign Ministry. The 600,000 ethnic Serbs in Croatia maintain that they would face discrimination if the republic became independent. Croatia charges that the Serbian republic has used that argument as an excuse to annex territory. Serbian-dominated forces have captured more than a third of Croatian territory.
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The Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, Dec 17, 1991 HOW THE WEST CAN BRING PEACE TO YUGOSLAVIA By Richard Nixon (former U.S. president) As the post-Cold War era in Europe begins, the crisis in Yugoslavia has set a profoundly dangerous precedent: While communism has collapsed around the world, the West has mounted a comically tepid response to attempts by Serbian hard-line communists to dismember or even destroy the democratic government of Croatia. As Germany and some other European states understand, the West must recognize Croatia and Slovenia in order to stop the war, to prevent the reversal of peaceful democratic change through military force, and to facilitate a settlement based on the principle of democratic self-determination. Some argue that, to paraphrase Neville Chamberlain, Croatia is small, far away nation about which we know little and should care less. But great stakes are involved that create the potential to transform today's small issue into tomorrow's big issue. A neutral Western position appeases the aggressors in Serbia and the Serbian-dominated federal army. It will give a green light to aggressors world-wide and send a discouraging signal to the world's struggling democrats, not only in the former Soviet Union but even in China. We should not mourn the passing of artificial multinational states, such as the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, that were held together by force under a totalitarian system. In Yugoslavia, civil war resulted from the actions of communist leaders in Belgrade who sought to perpetuate old-style centralized rule and not from those of democratic forces in the republics who sought to decentralize power. The Soviet Union will likely avoid a similar fate because the democrats in the republics, led by Boris Yeltsin, have prevailed politically over the unionists at the center, led by Mikhail Gorbachev. The Yugoslav crisis is not the stereotypical Balkan struggle between equally guilty parties in which benign neutrality is the best policy. In launching the offensive against Croatia, the communist hardliners executed a de facto coup, seizing state power and defying the constitutional orders of Yugoslavia's president, prime minister and four of the country's six republics. Serbian militias and the federal armed forces have committed shocking atrocities against civilians, bombed the offices of the Croatian president, shelled cultural landmarks such as the medieval city of Dubrovnik, razed the major city of Vukovar, and are now poised to level the cities of Osijek and Vinkovci. The West has accepted this communist fait accompli. The idealistic mediation efforts of the European Community and the United Nations have lacked the hard-headed realism needed to stop communist aggression. Even worse, the West engaged for months in a tragic kind of moral equivalency by imposing an arms embargo and economic sanctions that treated the perpetrators and victims of aggression alike. Only recently have some European states waived economic sanctions against republics, like Croatia, that have complied with the mediated cease-fires. In the coming weeks, events in Yugoslavia will follow two possible scenarios. Europe and the U.S. can end the war by recognizing the independence of Slovenia and Croatia and adopting policies to create a balance of power on the ground. Or the West can stand by idly until communist forces commit further outrages on the battlefield that compel our intervention after thousands more have died. While we should not call Gen. Schwarzkopf out of retirement or send in the Marines, we should do the following: ** First, we must grant full recognition to the governments of Slovenia and Croatia. In declaring independence, the democratic governments of both republics were exercising the right to secede set forth in the first sentence of the Yugoslav constitution. Croatia has expressed a willingness to accept the European Community peace plan, but Serbia and the federal army have stonewalled every proposed compromise. Diplomatic recognition would create a powerful deterrent to further aggression and a legal foundation for later actions. ** Second, we must introduce international peacekeeping forces even if a perfect cease-fire has not yet been established. The present policy of premising such a deployment on a total halt to hostilities gives communist forces a veto over international action. As they have done after the 14 cease-fires negotiated so far, they need only to restart the shooting, and international efforts go back to square one. Instead, well-armed U.N. or European-sponsored peacekeeping forces should be deployed both at the current position of the federal army and at Croatia's prewar borders, with subsequent negotiations focusing on the withdrawal of Belgrade's forces from occupied Croatian territory. ** Third, we should provide Slovenia and Croatia with defensive weapons. The U.N. imposed arms embargo on Yugoslavia has had the perverse effect of aiding the communist forces. The Serbia-dominated army has large military stockpiles, and Yugoslavia's munitions factories, all of which are in Serbia, are working overtime. Some Yugoslav generals have boasted publicly that the embargo primarily hurts the poorly armed Croatian militia and have implied that if Croatia acquires sufficient defensive weapons their army would be forced to make peace. It is time for the West to supply Croatia with the mines, anti-tank weapons, and anti-aircraft missiles needed to compel the communists to compromise at the negotiating table. As Germany and other European states move toward recognizing Slovenia and Croatia, the U.S. should not ride in the caboose of the recognition train. In 1776, the Croatian city-state of Dubrovnik became the first country to established diplomatic ties with the U.S. The Croatians had the courage of their convictions then. We should demonstrate the courage of our convictions now.
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The New York Times 12/22/91 THE WEEK IN REVIEW SECTION Serbs vs. Croats YUGOSLAVIA'S DEADLY FRIDAY THE 13TH VOCIN, Yugoslavia THE Yugoslav civil war is turning into a Balkan vendetta. After a generation of living together Serbs and Croats are killing each other with increasing brutality as villager is pitted against villager, neighbor against neighbor. Rumors of atrocities, many false or unprovable, fed the conflict in its initial stages. Now the images have become gruesomely real. In this Croatian village 80 miles east of Zagreb, and in two surrounding towns, 43 civilians - many of them women or elderly peopleQwere buried last week after an act of spite or revenge that occurred when Serb irregulars pulled out. Days before, Belgrade television reported that.120 Serbs had died in the area at the hands of advancing Croats; that claim has not been verified, but other cases of Croat violence have been. Now the stark scene in Vocin - the ruined houses, the destroyed church and the array of bodies on the morgue floor - may have provided a defining moment in the world's understanding of this war. The incident illustrated the dangers posed by the use of irregular troops on both sides and seemed likely to strengthen calls for international intervention to stop the killing. Vocin is a mostly Serbian hill town that was the site of bitter inter-ethnic fighting during World War II. In mid-August, local Serbs told their neighbors they were no longer in Croatia but were instead part of the newly created Serb Autonomous Region of Western Slavonia. Local Militias Rule Yugoslavia's map is dotted with these self-declared local governments, solely with the local militias and Serb territorial defense units. The Serb- dominated Yugoslav Army had no forces nearby. Croats say they lived uneasily, but without incident, under the Serbs for four months. Then, as Croat troops advanced, an order came to abandon Vocin. In the week before last, the Serb civilians became refugees while men in camouflage uniforms moved in and, witnesses said, local Serbs led them to Croat houses. The killing began at noon on Friday, Dec. 13, and continued for at least 12 hours. No one could say exactly who the troops were, but it seemed clear that they were among the thousands on both sides who carry guns without formal training or command. The grisly scene that resulted, and other scenes like it, are the context in which European and other diplomats are debating what they can do to halt the slaughter. Germany's formula - recognition of Croatia - gained momentum last week when the European Community agreed to offer recognition to all the Yugoslav republics on Jan. 15 if they agree to respect minority rights. Whatever the outcome, it seemed evident that after four months of combat and the loss of tens of thousands of lives, Yugoslavia was irretrievably dead as a nation. People on both sides of the civil war were saying last week that it was unimaginable that the pieces could ever be reassembled in even a loose confederation. STEPHEN ENGELBERG
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The New York Times 12/23/91 YUGOSLAV ETHNIC HATREDS RAISE FEARS OF WAR WITHOUT AN END By STEPHEN ENGELBERG Special to The New York Times ZAGREB, Yugoslavia, Dec. 18QThe six-month civil war in Yugoslavia has killed thousands of soldiers and civilians, wrecked Eastern Europe's most promising economy, created half a million refugees and stirred enough hatred to incite generations of future conflict. But it has not yet produced a decisive military result. The Serbian-dominated Yugoslav Army and its allies, the Serbian militias and irregulars, are bogged down after seizing control of a third of the separatist republic of Croatia and have recently withdrawn from several forward positions. Meanwhile, the hurriedly organized Croatian army is beginning to score some minor victories, raising hopes among politicians in Zagreb, the Croatian capital, that the lost lands may some day be regained. Analysts say that with neither side able to land a knockout blow, and with neither apparently willing to negotiate, the elements are in place for a protracted struggle between Serbia and Croatia, the two largest Yugoslav republics. "This is a recipe for war without end," said John Zametica, a fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. "It's going to get much worse. So far, we've had a bit of a tea party compared to what's coming." Many diplomats and observers fear the war could worsen as a result of Germany's successful campaign to extend diplomatic recognition to Croatia and Slovenia, the other republic that declared its independence in June. This week Bonn prodded its more reluctant allies in the 12-nation European Community to agree to recognize by Jan. 15 any independence-minded Yugoslav republic that respects human rights, established borders and the peaceful arbitration of differences. The German Foreign Minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, has argued that sanctions against Serbia, coupled with diplomatic recognition of Croatia and the political support it implies, will slow or stop the violence. Croats generally view recognition as a means to buy better weapons or to obtain military protection from the West. Fears About Recognition American diplomats, among others, said they opposed recognition because it could prompt the Yugoslav Army to begin a fresh offensive before Croatia imports new weapons, or could lead to new clashes in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the republic that shares borders with Croatia and Serbia. Already Croats, Serbs and Muslims are arming themselves in Bosnia, where the ethnic segments of the population are separated village by village and street by street. [Bosnia announced on Dec. 20 that it would seek independence, a step the armed Serbs minority in the republic has declared it will not accept] The Yugoslav Army, on paper, has the weapons to prevail in the battle for Croatia, but it has performed badly, both because of poor leadership and a lack of reliable infantry. The army's strategy has been to blast away an urban areas with long-range artillery and at times with fighter-bombers. Croatian troops, fighting to protect their homeland, are generally seen as more motivated, although they lack air power, armor and long-range artillery to support frontal assaults against the dug-in army forces. Armed with small weapons and whatever heavier weapons they can capture or smuggle in despite a United Nations arms embargo, the Croats are primarily waging a guerrilla struggle in the fields and mountains, using mines, antitank weapons and small-arms fire for house-to-house fighting. They have been increasingly successful at shooting down army planes with Yugoslav-designed antiaircraft cannons. The main issue is geography: The millions of Serbs living outside Serbia live in geographically disparate areas. To link them up in one nation, the army must take large swaths of territory within Croatia and retain control over the Bosnian lands in the middle. The Antecedents Nationalism Is Used For Political Ends Yugoslavia was born in 1918 when the independent nation of Serbia was willingly joined by Croatia and Slovenia, both of which were previously part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. The border between Serbia and Croatia had been the dividing line between East and West for centuries. Serbs lived under the Turkish Ottoman empire, practiced the Orthodox religion and wrote in Cyrillic while Croats were primarily Catholic and rendered their common language in the Roman alphabet. Tensions building throughout the 1930's exploded after the German defeat of Yugoslavia in World War II. A Nazi-installed puppet state in Croatia built concentration camps in which Serbs, Jews and gypsies were killed. Civil war broke out, and massacre followed massacre on all sides. Hatred and distrust linger to this day. Marshal Tito, the partisan leader, emerged as Yugoslavia's leader after the war and subdued nationalist feelings for the next three decades with a combination of adroit maneuvering and repression. Tito's death in 1980 left the country without a successor or system of government, and his former colleagues in the Communist Party began turning to nationalism in the late 1980's as means of winning power. Few Casualties in Slovenia Until this year, Yugoslavia consisted of six republics, each of which had a constitutional right to secede, although procedures for the move have never been spelled out. Two republics, Croatia and Slovenia, unilaterally declared independence on June 25, beginning a breakdown in central government authority and leading to conflict. The Slovenes immediately threw up international border crossings, prompting the Yugoslav National Army to intervene. With compact borders and almost no minorities, Slovenia prevailed in fighting that left fewer than 50 dead. Slovenia's desires for independence will almost certainly be met next month because of the republic's strong ties to the West and the peace that reigns within its borders. Croatia's escape from Yugoslavia, though, has proved far more complicated. Many of the republic's 600,000 Serbs, about 12 percent of the population, have declared that they will not remain as a minority in an independent Croatia. Fears among Serbs living outside Serbia were abetted by Serbia's President, Slobodan Milosevic a former communist who rode to power in the republic's first multi-party elections on a platform of Serbian pride and nationalism. The Croatian President. Franjo Tudjman, won a similarly nationalistic campaign in the spring of 1990 and did little after taking office to ease the Serbs' fears that they would soon lose their jobs and be harassed. By the summer of 1990, the largely Serbian region south of Zagreb called Krajina began an insurgency against the new Croatian government. Serbs in Slavonia, the prosperous agricultural land in the east of Croatia, were less well organized. Still, each Serbian village there had barricades and local militias by April of this year. Initially, the links between the Yugoslav Army and Serbian irregulars were covert. As spring turned to summer, the army became increasingly open its support of the Serbs, fighting side by side with them. The Serb irregulars stormed across the Danube in July, taking the first towns on the Croatian side of the river in a fierce battle. Some Croatian territory nearby fell without a shot being fired. In fall, the Croats took a gamble. They barricaded the Yugoslav Army barracks on their territory and captured significant supplies of ammunition and some tanks when several surrendered. The Army ======= Problems of Funds and Competency One of the main actors in the Yugoslav conflict, the army has perhaps the most obscure intentions. It has at different times announced that its intent is to protect Serbs in Croatia, fight fascism, free comrades in barricaded barracks and preserve Yugoslavia. Most observers believe that the army's true goal is to preserve its pensions and perks. About half of the federal budget went to the army before the fighting broke out, with disproportionate shares contributed by Slovenia and Croatia, two richest republics. Gen. Anton Tus, the former 'army officer who now leads the Croatian army, explained the motivation of the Yugoslav Army this way: "We have a state, if it hasn't been fully recognized, and now we are creating an army. Our enemy doesn't have a state, but they exist as an army trying to create a state to belong to." Relying on Irregular Troops Before the war, the Yugoslav Army had 169,000 regular troops, of whom 70,000 were professional officers and 95,000 were conscripts The fighting in Slovenia in the summer brought a wave of desertions by Croats and Slovenes. The army responded with the mobilization of Serbian reservists, an estimated 100,000 of whom evaded the draft. Those who were inducted seemed to have little stomach for battle, Western correspondents have seen army reservists refusing to leave their armored personnel carriers to engage the enemy. As a result, the army has been forced to rely on irregular troops who are enthusiastic about combat but undisciplined. The army has shown little ability to coordinate its air power, armor and infantry and appears to have growing difficulties in maintaining its tanks and planes. Command and control appear to be weak. On one recent occasion, the army leadership acknowledged that the Croatian city of Dubrovnik was shelled by rogue local units acting without authority. "They are having terrible manpower problems; no one wants to fight," said Milos Vasic, military writer for the Belgrade magazine Vreme. "Practically every day we have incidents of reserve troops coming back from the front on their own." Vukovar as a Symbol The 86-day siege of the Croatian city of Vukovar near the Danube became a symbol of the army's incompetence. While the civilian population stayed below ground in shelters, the army poured in the artillery. The aim was to reduce casualties, but the effect was to create more hiding places for Croatian defenders, who inflicted heavy casualties in house-to-house fighting. General Tus said Vukovar fell on Nov. 17 only when the Croats decided that the amount of ammunition being used to defend the city outweighed its strategic value. [It is not clear exactly how the army will be paid in the coming year. Ante Markovic, the federal Prime Minister, finally resigned on Dec. 19 after rejecting a proposed budget that earmarked 81 percent of Government revenue for the military. Under the proposal, a looming deficit would be bridged by printing money.] The Croats ========== Rejecting Prospect Of Land for Peace Political figures inside and outside the government of President Tudjman agree that his hold on power is safe only as long as he does not give up any of the territory taken by the Serbs and the army. These days, the Croats are eager to offer local Serbs complete political autonomy and other concessions within an independent Croatia Mario Nobilo, a senior adviser to Mr. Tudjman, said talks about trading land for peace were out of the question. "Too many people have died," Mr. Nobilo said. "No one in Croatia would survive politically if they did that." Croatia began organizing its military force only this year. It lacks most of the essentials needed for effective fighting, including an experienced officer corps, air power, trained troops and effective communications. A United Nations arms embargo has severely limited Croatian military options. Some Croatian politicians dream of buying aircraft or tanks once European nations accord diplomatic recognition. General Tus, the commander, has a wish list that is more modest: anti-armor and antiaircraft weapons. The Serbs ========= A Nation Called "Greater Serbia" Most observers agree that the Serbs hold the key to the conflict's duration. Mr. Milosevic faces competitors on the right. Vojislav Seselj, a former human rights advocate, heads a party with hopes for a "Greater Serbia," a nation with borders that would include most Serbs and an outlet to the sea. Mr. Seselj's followers are doing a lot of the fighting and may demand a greater share of political power in return. European.diplomats see in this the seeds of a possible civil war in Serbia. Croatian strategists acknowledge that their best chance for a quick end to the war would be major political unrest in Serbia. Mr. Milosevic is facing other pressures. A trade embargo has led to long lines and severe shortages of gasoline and the fevered printing of money to pay for the war has ignited hyper-inflation. Many Belgrade residents grumble that the Serbs living outside the republic have dragged Serbia into an unwise conflict. Nonetheless, there appear to be sufficient numbers of young men who hate Croats, or believe the government's claims about leading a crusade against resurgent fascism on its borders. Some observers with the European Community argue that the Serbian- dominated army could be deterred by one or two shows of military force. Mr. Zametica, the analyst in London, said such action was unrealistic. "No one in the West understands the Serbs," he said "They have in their collective psyche certain characteristics, such as defiance, and an attitude that 'if necessary we will take on the entire world.' " Even if Mr. Milosevic eventually agrees to a peace treaty, it is not clear that the Serbs in the Krajina region and elsewhere will follow. Two Serbian regions in Croatia have already declared themselves independent republics. The Possibilities ================= More Casualties, But Some Hope Every day after the mist lifts, the Yugoslav Army looses an artillery barrage on the eastern Croatian city of Osijek. The shells fall on the hospital the town square and apartments, typically killing a half-dozen people, usually civilians. The intent appears to drive civilians out of a city that was 66 percent Croatian before the war. Thousands have left, but many stay, living in shelters. At night, small groups of Croatian fighters fan out from Osijek toward the I army lines for hit-and-run attacks. About 100 miles east, the poorly trained troops of Croatia's army begin a frontal assault against heavily fortified positions south of Zagreb. They shoot at the enemy, and one another, taking heavy casualties but little territory. Hope for Peace The outlook is that these two forces will continue to pound each other. Most analysts expect the Croats to improve over time. Their goal of reclaiming the heavily fortified territory held by the army inevitably means fierce fighting and heavy casualties. Mr. Vasic, the military writer, expressed the hope that the economic facts of life might finally hit home. With Serbia's economy in ruins, the Serbs in Croatia may soon decide that it is better to make peace and focus on restoring the tourist industry. "This is the Balkans," he said. "But we cannot rule out the possibility of a rational approach."