novine.1.bale.,
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VREME broj 49, 30.09.1991.
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***************** SAMO ZA ONE KOJI OVO VOLE DA CITAJU ******************
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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
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novine.2spantic,
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.3spantic,
(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.4spantic,
****************************************************************************
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.5ivujanic,
╠ The federal minister of defense, Gen. Veljko Kadijevic, who is a
╠ Serb, has
Zar???
Ivica
novine.6squsovac,
╠ The federal minister of defense, Gen. Veljko Kadijevic, who is a
╠ Serb, has
> Zar???
NE formalnio se deklariše kao jugosloven!
novine.7max.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.9spantic,
======================================================================
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.
============================================================================
novine.10spantic,
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.
novine.11spantic,
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
novine.12spantic,
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."
novine.13spantic,
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.
==============================================================================
novine.14spantic,
==============================================================================
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".
==============================================================================
novine.15spantic,
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.16spantic,
__________________________________________________________________
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.17spantic,
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.18viktor,
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.19spantic,
> 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.20viktor,
Zdravo,
Nazalost diskusiju ne mogu nataviti jer menjam ...
Ostajte mi dobro, pisacu kada se vratim :-(
Pozdrav.
novine.21viktor,
Zdravo,
Ostalo je nedoreceno: menjam boju odela i mesto boravka :-(
Javicu se kada se vratim.
Pozdrav.
novine.22maleksic,
>> CROATIANISM
Kretenizam? :)
novine.23spantic,
'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.24spantic,
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.25spantic,
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.26zkehler,
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.27spantic,
> 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.28bojt,
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.
novine.29spantic,
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.
==============================================================================
novine.30spantic,
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
novine.31spantic,
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']
novine.32spantic,
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.
novine.33spantic,
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.
novine.34terza,
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
novine.35spantic,
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.
novine.36spantic,
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.
novine.37spantic,
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.
novine.38spantic,
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.
novine.39spantic,
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
novine.40spantic,
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."