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novine.1 .bale.,
CROATS GIVE MUSLIMS ULTIMATUM (from the Fargo Forum, Monday, Sept. 7, 1992 (Fargo, North Dakota)) Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) In another move pushing Bosnia toward partition, Croat forces broke with the mainly Muslim Bosnian army Sunday and threatened to drive Muslim forces from territory around Sarajevo. The move appeared to further weaken the Bosnian governmnet , and it tightened the vise on the Serb-besieged capital, where shelling resumed Sunday night after a day of relative calm in the 6-month-old civil war. There were no immediate reports of casualties. But for the 24-hour period ending at noon Sunday, the Ministry of Health said 10 people had died and 118 were wounded across the republic. More than 8,000 people -- some estimates say 35,000 -- have died since the war began. Sarajevo's already desparate living conditions worsened when the Serbs cut off the city's main reservoir. And presaging the long, hard winter to came, teh first snow fell in the surrounding mountains. Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic has called for a unified, independent country. But Serbs and Croats have taken control of most of Bosnia since the fighting broke out after a February referendum approved secession from the Serb-dominated Yugoslavia. Velimir Maric, president of the Croatian militia for Sarajevo, said Croatian headquarters in Mostar, southwest of Sarajevo, had given the Bosnian government until today to withdraw from six suburbs around Sarajevo. "After the ultimatum expires we will use all available measures to liberate Croatian territories," Maric told reporters in Stup, a western suburb controlled by Croats. "That could imply a conflict." "Lots of blood will be lost ending one state and lots of blood will be lost creating one state," he said. "No one who lives in Bosnia-Herzegovina is a Bosnian. They are Croats, Muslims, and Serbs. First of all, I am a Croat." The six suburbs, most of whose populations are predominantly Croat, were Stup, Bare, Azic, Otes, Dagladi and parts of Nedzarici, all communities along the city's western front line. Bosnian government forces are surrounded on all sides by Serb fighters, and the government has relied on these suburbs for much of its fuel, weapons, and food, which arrive via Croat-Serb cooperation. Mustafa Hajrulahovic, commander of Bosnian forces in Sarajevo, reacted to the Croat ultimatum by saying: "We have to live in one republic, which is un-cantonized. If they don't agree with that, we will fight until we liberate our territory." Maric said he would not help the Bosnian army try to break the siege of Sarajevo unless he received orders from his commander, Mate Boban -- the leader of ethnic Croats in Bosnia and an ally of President Franjo tudjman of Croatia. Maric, a 40-year-old food inspector before the war, read from a statement on stationary of the Croatian headquarters in Mostar. ================================================ Los Angeles Times Saturday, September 5, 1992 by William D. Montalbano Times Staff Writer Rome---... U.N. officials in Bosnia-Herzegovina told reporters that witnesses on the ground said they saw two missiles fired at the Italian 46th Air Brigade aircraft, which Ando said was clearly marked with U.N. insignia. Residents close to the crash site, which is near the town of Jesenic, 20 miles west of Sarajevo, told the British news agency Reuters on Friday that they saw one of the two rockets slamming into the plane from the direction of Konjic, a town in Muslim-Croatian territory, although the area south of it is held by Serbian militiamen. "I was watching the plane flying past toward Sarajevo when two seconds later two rockets homed in on it from behind without a sound," Zahrovic Fohrudin said. Added Dudic Esad, a local Muslim fighter: "One hit the plane in the rear. A wing fell off, and the plane burst into flames. The other rocket missed. The plane spun straight down to the ground." Loggers Mato Javran and Anto Behrcic, interviewed by an Associated Press reporter, told a similar story. They said they saw what looked like a rocket hit the plane; a wing broke off, and the plane begin to spin before suddenly droping out of the sky. The United Nations halted all relief flights to Sarajevo after the crash. Asked when they might resume, Mike Aitchinson, a U.N. official in Zagreb, Croatia, said, "Maybe never." The plane which had departed from Split, Croatia, fell in the heavily wooded mountainous region where Serbian, Bosnian Croatian and Muslim irregulars are skirmishing for control. Serbian irregulars told reporters that Muslims were responsible for shooting it down. They speculated that Muslim fighters had mistaken the Italian plane for one belonging to the Yugoslav air force. Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic, a Muslim, countered that "the missiles came from area controlled by Serbs." He told reporters that the United Nations should either provide military air escorts for future flights or send troops to clear land corridors of heavy weapons and anti-aircraft guns. In Washington, the State Department said it had not yet received official word about the cause of the crash. ... The Pentagon said Thursday that two of four U.S. helicopters were fired upon, but not hit, as they helped search for the wreckage of the Italian plane. On Friday, according to the Associated Press, the report was modified: Pilots of two of the helicopters said they had seen flashes of small-arms fire but could not be sure that shots had been fired at them. But the Financial Times, a London newspaper, reported that a local commander of the Croatian Defense Council admitted that his men had shot at the helicopters. ...In an interview Friday with CNN, Acting Secretary of State, Lawrence Eaglburger said that the helicopter incident illustrated the danger of becoming more deeply involved in the Bosnian conflict. That is "an example of the sort of thing I'am concerned about," he said. "We need to recognize that there is a real distinction between trying to assist in getting humanitarian aid into Sarajevo and getting engaged in trying to make peace amongst the contending factions." He said the limited role of providing and shielding humanitarian assistance is the most appropriate one for the United States now. Eaglburger said he would "hazard a guess...the plane was shot down." "There are a lot of out-of-control people in the area," he said. "It could have been anyone." ...In a speech to the Economics Club of Indianopolis that was broadcast back to Pentagon, Cheney cited potential dangers to U.S. intervention in th eregion, saying: "It doesn't strike me as the type of conflict in which I am prepared to commit young Americans to combat." ... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - [The rest of this article deals with the usual background information and physical description of the site of the wreckage.] ================================================ CNN Headline News Sunday, September 6, 1992 10pm PST [Toria Tolley] "...Ethnic turmoil in Yugoslavia gets even more divisive. Croats announced today that their forces are separating from Bosnian forces which are mainly Muslim. They also threaten to liberate some sections of Sarajevo if Muslims do not pull out from there by Monday."
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CNN Headline News Wed, Sept 9, 1992 10am PST Sarajevo--- ...French call yesterday's attack on relief convoy equivalent to an act of war... [Wounded French soldier]: "...You can't believe that we are here on humanitarian and peace mission..." [French general]: "...There was a fighting between the two sides. After one phone call Serbian side stopped. Bosnians didn't..." Two French soldiers were killed, more wounded. ...As another frustration for U.N. peacekeepers there was a delay in exchange of prisoners. Serbian busses came, and their prisoners were waiting for hours in the scorching heat... [U.N. officer to Bosnian representative]: "...We will wait here two more hours, then..." Bosnian busses never came. It could be seen that most of Serbian prisoners were victims of "ethnic cleansing", women and children. There was just one bus with soldiers. ...Peace neogotiators in Geneva condemned the shooting incident... U.N. does not feel secure even for its headquarter in Sarajevo... The time may be coming when U.N. will not be able to perform its mission any longer..."
novine.3 .bale.,
RFE/RL Daily Report 09 SEP, 1992 Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 14:03:48 +0100 Reply-To: rferl-daily-report-request@AdminA.RFERL.ORG From: rferl-daily-report-request@admina.rferl.org The RFE/RL Daily Report is a digest of lastest developments in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. It is published Monday through Friday (except German holidays) by the RFE/RL Research Institute (a division of Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty, Inc.). Copyright 1992 RFE/RL, Inc. - ---------------------------------------------------------------- F..................................................................M........... M RFE/RL DAILY REPORT No. 173, September 9, 1992 SUCCESSOR STATES TO THE USSR NATIONAL PATRIOTS DEMONSTRATE IN ST. PETERSBURG. "Social Security for Workers," was the slogan under which the extreme nationalist Russian Party held a meeting in St. Petersburg on 7 September, Ostankino TV reported. The meeting was permitted by the mayor's office. The demonstrators condemned Yeltsin's leadership as "criminal and Zionist." The demonstrators also demanded the release of the chief editor of the newspaper Narodnoe delo, who has been arrested and charged with the dissemination of anti-Semitic material. The "red-brown opposition" in Russia plans to hold mass demonstrations on 15 September. The protests will reportedly include the picketing of the St. Petersburg and Ostankino TV centers. (Vera Tolz, RFE/RL Inc.) ATTEMPT TO REVIVE CPSU AS MASS MOVEMENT. On 8 September, Pravda published a draft program aimed at reviving the Communist Party as a mass movement. The program said Communists should hold a conference in Moscow next month. The program also called for a "rebirth" of the Soviet Union and its return to socialist development. It said state socialism experienced "crisis" in the 1970s, but it blamed the "mistakes" and the "treason" of Mikhail Gorbachev and others for turning the USSR toward capitalism. (Vera Tolz, RFE/RL Inc.) EXPORT OF RUSSIAN OIL PRODUCTS HALTED. The major Russian exporter of petroleum products, Rosnefteprodukt, has suspended deliveries to Japan and Western Europe, Reuters reported on 8 September. An official of the company explained that this happens most years because of increased domestic demand during the harvesting campaign and because of the need to ship oil to the Far North before rivers froze. An aide to the Russian Energy Minister was quoted as saying that shipments of crude oil were continuing. Aleksandr Shokhin, the deputy prime minister for foreign economic relations, was quoted by the Financial Times of 9 September as saying that the government had "lost control" over state-owned oil exporters and wanted to recentralize purchases in order to meet obligations to foreign states. (Keith Bush, RFE/RL Inc.) JAPAN AGAINST CHINESE PURCHASE OF EX-SOVIET CARRIER. Japanese Vice Foreign Minister Koji Kakizawa on 7 September advised China not to buy an ex-Soviet aircraft carrier under construction in Ukraine. UPI quoted Kakizawa as warning that such a purchase would destabilize the Asia-Pacific region. There have been persistent rumors that China plans to buy the "Varyag," a sister ship of the Russian Navy's "Admiral Kuznetsov," that was being fitted out in a Ukrainian shipyard at Mykolaiv prior to the breakup of the Soviet Union. The September edition of the "U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings" says that the deal has been finalized, and that Russia will provide twenty-two SU-27 fighters to equip the ship. (Doug Clarke, RFE/RL Inc.) FOUR CIS STATES WANT TO DISCUSS BORDER ISSUES WITH CHINA. Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan agreed on 8 September to raise the issue of mutual troop reductions along their combined 8,000 kilometer border with China, as well as other border issues. ITAR-TASS, which announced the agreement, said that it was reached on the periphery of a meeting of CIS foreign ministers in Minsk. The Russian and Chinese defense ministers discussed troop pullbacks from their mutual border when they met in Moscow last month, but failed to agree on how far back the troops should be withdrawn. (Doug Clarke, RFE/RL Inc.) KRAVCHUK CALLS FOR SPEEDY REFORMS. Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk called for speedy implementation of economic reforms and criticized political groups for engaging in polemics, Western news agencies reported on 8 September. Kravchuk addressed a group of cabinet ministers and other officials on the eve of the opening of a new parliamentary session, saying that the time for political rallies was over. At the same meeting, the new first deputy prime minister, Valentyn Symonenko, outlined a new economic program stressing "mass privatization." Symonenko argued that new legislation was needed for the program to be successful. (Roman Solchanyk, RFE/RL Inc.) DISGRACED SHEVARDNADZE ASSOCIATE MAKES COMEBACK AS VICE PRESIDENT. Soliko Khabeishvili, the former Georgian Communist Party Central Committee secretary for industry, who was sentenced in the spring of 1987 to 15 years' deprivation of freedom for allegedly accepting 75,000 rubles in bribes from three raikom first secretaries, is now Georgia's vice president, according to Die Welt of 8 September. Khabeishvili has been a close associate of Shevardnadze since the late 1950s when both men were members of the Georgian Komsomol Central Committee apparatus. (Liz Fuller, RFE/RL Inc.) CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE UN PEACEKEEPERS KILLED. International media report on 8 September that two French peacekeepers were killed and at least two others wounded in an attack on a UN convoy by as yet unknown assailants. Bosnian Muslims and Serbs each accusing the other of the attack, which UN observers say was clearly deliberate. The 35-vehicle convoy originated in Belgrade and was delivering supplies to UN peacekeeping forces in Sarajevo. The attack occurred near Sarajevo's airport. Fighting throughout most of Bosnia-Herzegovina continues. Cyrus Vance and Lord Owen, cochairmen of the international peace conference on the former Yugoslavia are due in Zagreb today to start a three-day official visit which will also take them to Belgrade and Sarajevo. The envoys are seeking ways of resuming humanitarian aid flights and are expected to press for guarantees from the warring parties to stop the attacks on relief efforts. Sarajevo officials say that the city's food supply will run out on 10 September. (Milan Andrejevich, RFE/RL Inc.) RIFT AMONG BOSNIAN SERBS? Radios Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia report on 8 September that Bosnia's ministry of internal affairs has obtained evidence of a rift between Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and Gen. Ratko Mladic, the commander of the Bosnian Serb army. The document charges that Karadzic is applying a double standard to the army: in the past month he has been praising the army and emphasizing its successes publicly, while privately working toward replacing Mladic and his inner circle. For their part the Bosnian Serb military leadership is unhappy with Karadzic's behavior and handling of policy, particularly over his handing control of Serb artillery over to UN forces, which Mladic feels is being done at an unsuitable time for the Serbian army. Mladic believes that the army now has no chance of holding its current positions and will suffer further setbacks, as in Gorazde. (Milan Andrejevich, RFE/RL Inc.) TENSE SITUATION IN THE SANDZAK. In a letter to the Geneva conference on the former Yugoslavia, the Muslim Council of the Sandzak says that about 70,000 Muslims have fled the region, allegedly because of "Serbian military terror." Council president Sulejman Ugljanin says that the Sandzak has been occupied by the Serbian and Montenegrin army, which deployed 29,000 reserve troops to the area between early February and June. According to Ugljanin, the terror the Muslims are subjected to and the display of military might and combat hardware have been stepped up since the London conference in late August and show no sign of abating. The letter states that 70 explosions have destroyed shops and properties owned by Muslims in the Montenegrin towns of Pljevlja, Bijelo Polje, and Priboj. The Sandzak is a region straddling the Serbia-Montenegro border. Radio Croatia carried the report on 8 September. (Milan Andrejevich, RFE/RL Inc.) VOJVODINA HUNGARIANS PROTEST RESETTLEMENT. Janos Vekas, vice president of the Democratic Union of Hungarians in Vojvodina, said that by forcefully settling large numbers of Serbs in Vojvodina, Hungarian-Serbian relations could be spoiled for a long period of time. According to Vekas, each city in Vojvodina will have to make room for some 4,000 Serbs, and citizens will have to take in the refugees without compensation. The report was carried by Radio Budapest on 8 September. (Judith Pataki, RFE/RL Inc.) CZECH FOREIGN MINISTER ON FUTURE CZECH-SLOVAK RELATIONS. Speaking to reporters in Prague on 8 September, Czech Foreign Minister Josef Zieleniec said that the Czech Republic and Slovakia will exchange ambassadors early next year. He also said that the priorities of Czech foreign policy will remain the same as those of the Czechoslovak foreign policy but that the Czech Republic will wield less international influence and will scale down some of the foreign policy projects initiated by former Czechoslovak Foreign Minister Jiri Dienstbier. The Czech foreign minister further said that attaining membership of the European Community, NATO, and West European Union will be among the priorities. (Jiri Pehe, RFE/RL Inc.) KLAUS REJECTS CZECH-SLOVAK DEFENSE UNION. Speaking on Czech Radio on 8 September, Czech Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus ruled out the possibility that the Czech Republic and Slovakia could form a defense union or have a common army after 1 January 1993, when Czechoslovakia is to split into two independent states. Klaus said that there exists a strong army lobby in Czechoslovakia, consisting of generals and high officers who would like to preserve a federal arrangement for the army even after the breakup of Czechoslovakia. Klaus rejected such a scenario but said that, in physical terms, it may not be possible to separate the Czech and Slovak parts of the army completely before 1 January 1993. (Jiri Pehe, RFE/RL Inc.) POLISH GOVERNMENT FIRM ON STRIKES. Reviewing the strike scene on 8 September, the Polish cabinet restated its basic principles of action. In a statement issued after the meeting, the government reminded the public that Polish law does not permit the payment of wages for strike days; that strikers' pay demands cannot be addressed to the government, which is not a party to wage talks; and that the government will do everything in its power to ensure that no pay increases result from current strikes. Responding to the proliferation of strike "mediators," the government stressed that all official talks with unions must have the labor ministry's approval and that no agreements will be reached with parties or parliamentarians. Meanwhile, President Lech Walesa met with Maciej Jankowski, leader of Solidarity's radical Warsaw region, to discuss his idea of a "confederation of reformist forces." (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL Inc.) ROMANIAN MINERS HOLD PROTEST RALLY. On 8 September some 1,500 miners from Cluj County took part in a protest rally in the city of Cluj. The rally, which was also attended by delegations from other regions, including Maramures, Moldova, and the Banat, demanded state subsidies for the mining industry, cash payments to compensate for recent subsidy cuts in prices for staples and services, and adequate social protection. Radio Bucharest quoted Eugen Tamas, president of the Federation of Romania's Mining Trade Unions, as saying that 90% of union members favor a strike if demands are not met by the authorities. (Dan Ionescu, RFE/RL Inc.) "KING OF ALL GYPSIES" CROWNED IN ROMANIA. Ion Cioaba, self-styled King of all Gypsies, was crowned on 8 September at the Bistrita Monastery in Oltenia. Radio Bucharest reports that thousands of Gypsies cheered as a priest laid a two-and-a-half-kg Swiss-made golden crown on his head. The 57-year-old Cioaba swore to fight to overturn centuries of contempt for Gypsies. Rival Gypsy groups that do not recognize Cioaba as a leader and accuse him of collaboration with Nicolae Ceausescu's regime protested the ceremony. According to the last census, taken in January, 410,000 Gypsies live in Romania, but Gypsy leaders maintain the figure is much higher. (Dan Ionescu, RFE/RL Inc.) [As of 1200 CET] Compiled by Hal Kosiba & Charles Trumbull (END) The RFE/RL Daily Report is produced by the RFE/RL Research Institute (a division of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Inc.) with the assistance of the RFE/RL News and Current Affairs Division (NCA). The report is available by electronic mail via LISTSERV (RFERL-L@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU), on the Sovset' computer bulletin board, by fax, and by postal mail. For inquiries about specific news items, subscriptions, or additional copies, please contact: In USA: Mr. Jon Lodeesen or Mr. Brian Reed RFE/RL, Inc. 1201 Connecticut Avenue NW Washington, DC 20036. Telephone: (202) 457-6912 or -6900 fax: (202) 457-6992 or -202-828-8783; Internet: RI-DC@RFERL.ORG or in Europe: Ms. Helga Hofer Publications Department RFE/RL Research Institute Oettingenstrasse 67 8000 Munich 22 Telephone: (+49 89) 2102-2631 or -2642 fax: (+49 89) 2102-2648 Internet: Pubs@RFERL.ORG Copyright 1992, RFE/RL, Inc. All rights reserved.
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UPI NEWS --- Subject: French say gunfire against soldiers came from Bosnian zone Subject: Conflicting versions of U.N. convoy incident Subject: Bosnian Serb leader claims artillery ready for U.N. supervision Subject: The prisoner exchange that wasn't Subject: Attack on U.N. convoy called 'cold-blooded murder' Subject: Fischer and Spassky started game five of rematch Subject: U.N. says all sides violate human rights in Bosnia-Hercegovina ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: French say gunfire against soldiers came from Bosnian zone Date: 9 Sep 92 09:59:44 GMT PARIS (UPI) -- The French Defense Ministry Wednesday said machine-gun fire that killed two French United Nations peacekeeping troops near the Sarajevo airport came from a zone held by Bosnian forces. ``The logistic convoy coming from Belgrade was hit by light-infantry fire and grenades as it entered a zone held by Bosnian forces south of the Sarajevo airport,'' a ministry statement said. The statement labeled the two dead soldiers ``victims of a deliberate attack, and of a manifest provocation by persons wanting to make war, and who are enormously bothered by the prospects of peace.'' Military officers on the scene said Tuesday's attack appeared deliberate, because it lasted for about five minutes. The slain troops, identified as Frederic Vaudet, 28, and Eric Marot, 21, died from bullet wounds to the head, even though they wore protective United Nations blue helmets, the ministry said. Three other French soldiers suffered slight injuries in the attack. The latest bloodshed raised the total number of U.N. peacekeepers killed in Sarajevo to four. Some 46 other U.N. soldiers have also been injured. Last week, four Italian pilots also died when someone shot down their relief plane as it approached Sarajevo airport. Italian authorities initially claimed the craft had been deliberately targeted by Serbian forces, who allegedly fired two surface-to-air missiles at it. But Wednesday, the British Broadcasting Corp. reported officials now speculate the plane might have flown into the middle of a fight between Serbian and Bosnian forces. In the wake of the tragedy, U.N. officials in Sarajevo said they considered a resumption of humanitarian flights unlikely in the foreseeable future. On Tuesday, U.N. Secretary General Butros Ghali said he agreed ``in principle'' with the idea of providing military air support for humanitarian flights, but said such a step would require a U.N. Security Council resolution. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Conflicting versions of U.N. convoy incident Date: 9 Sep 92 16:10:17 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- The U.N. military commander in Sarajevo insisted Wednesday that Bosnian fighters shot dead two French troops and wounded five others in a U.N. supply convoy. But witnesses said the unprotected column drove directly into a pitched battle. The conflicting versions surfaced a day after the incident occurred on the edge of Sarajevo airport, a U.N.-controlled island set amid shifting battlefields on the western fringe of the Bosnia-Hercegovina capital. Both versions agreed that fierce fighting had been raging outside the airport for three days, with predominantly Muslim Slav Bosnian forces pressingan attac from the suburb of Butmir against the Serb-held settlement of Lukavica. Egyptian Brig. Gen. Hussein Abdel Razek, the Sarajevo sector commander of the U.N. Protection Force (UNPROFOR), contended a cease- fire had been in effect for 20 minutes before the U.N. convoy began moving from Lukavica into the airport complex at about 7:20 p.m. Tuesday. But, witnesses, including French soldiers aboard the convoy, said it drove directly into raging crossfire between Bosnian units and fighters belonging to Serbian forces seeking to carve a self-declared state out of Bosnia-Hercegovina. ``We drove straight into a firefight. The range was very close, about 10 meters,'' said one of the French soldiers interviewed at the U.N.- controlled airport. ``There was no time to fire back.'' Razek said gunfire fire was loosed by ``uncontrolled elements'' at three trucks of the column as it moved into the airport complex. ``It was very clear that the fire came from the Bosnian side,'' Razek told a news conference. ``It was just one or two persons on the ground who were involved.'' ``The accident resulted in two French soldiers being killed and five were wounded,'' said Razek. Razek, however, then became unsure of certain details of the incident and contradicted himself on several key points. He asserted that the head and tail of the convoy were each protected by ``two or three'' armored personnel carriers dispatched from UNPROFOR headquarters. But U.N. sources and witnesses said there were no armored cars, a breach of standing UNPROFOR orders that require them to be sent to accompany all U.N. convoys entering war-torn Sarajevo. Razek denied witness reports that at least one mortar round was loosed at the convoy. He said he supported the French convoy commander's decision to proceed to the airport despite the dangerous conditions. ``I agree with this judgement. The light was enough for anybody to recognize and identify the trucks and the shots came from a very short distance...not less than 100 meters, maybe less,'' he said. Later, however, Razek said: ``If the story (of fierce fighting) had come to my ear a little earlier, I wouldn't have allowed the convoy to proceed to the airport unless both sides could withdraw their elements a proper distance from the road.'' Razek said he received assurances at a meeting with senior Bosnian officials that they would investigate the incident. Officials of the U.N. High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) were among those who said that the clashes were still raging when the convoy entered the airport complex. ``There was an intense battle going on and they (the convoy) tried to cross the runway. The battle was so intense before they arrived that we had gone to shelters,'' said Dag Espeland, the chief UNHCR logistics officer based at the airport. ``I asked myself why they came in,'' he said. In Zagreb, Croatia, Cyrus Vance, co-chairman of the ongoing Yugoslavia peace conference, called the killing of two U.N. peacekeepers ``plain cold-blooded murder.'' ``It simply cannot be tolerated,'' said Vance, who is touring the region for talks with leaders of the warring factions. Serbian forces beseiging Sarajevo and Bosnian defense units clash almost daily in seesaw contests for control of several townhouse and apartment colonies located right on the airport boundaries. Bosnian Vice President Ejup Ganic said the goverment's information also was that the U.N. vehicles drove into a firefight, and he indirectly criticized UNPROFOR for not taking better precautions. ``We are very sorry for those two soldiers...but one should try to program things more carefully. We always asked UNPROFOR people not to travel at night. We always asked them to avoid direct fights,'' said Ganic. The French convoy bearing food, fuel and water was completing a regular weekly supply run from Belgrade to the U.N. headquarters on the western fringe of the embattled Bosnia-Hercegovina capital. The two dead French soldiers were the first fatalities of the 800- member French army contingent of UNPROFOR, which is assigned to protecting the airport and U.N. humanitarian aid operations in and around Sarajevo. The incident brought UNPROFOR's overall casualties in Sarajevo since May to at least four dead and 46 injured. The previous casualties have all been blamed on attacks against UNPROFOR by the warring factions. Last week, U.N. Under-Secretary Marrack Goulding, the head of the United Nation's peace-keeping operations, warned that UNPROFOR could be withdrawn from the war-ravaged city because of the high casualty rate. The latest incident, however, did not affect U.N. humanitarian aid distribution convoys, said Izumi Nakamitsu, the head of the UNHCR's Sarajevo operations. ``We are not going to stop,'' she said, adding that cooperation between the agency and the warring factions was increasing and raising ``the level of confidence.'' She said that the week-old suspension in the U.N.-supervised humanitarian airlift did not threaten the estimated 500,000 people blockaded in Sarajevo as the size of UNHCR truck convoys was being increased. By Friday, she said, daily convoys would be arriving with 180 tons of food and medicines from Croatia's Adriatic port city of Split. The amount is only 20 tons less than what the airlift was providing each day. The airlift was suspended after an Italian cargo plane crashed last Thursday en route to Sarajevo with humanitarian supplies, possibly because it was hit by missiles. Four Italian crewmembers were killed. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Bosnian Serb leader claims artillery ready for U.N. supervision Date: 9 Sep 92 13:58:02 GMT BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (UPI) -- Radovan Karadzic, the leader of Serbian guerrillas in Bosnia-Hercegovina, said Wednesday his forces' artillery would be placed under U.N. supervision before the Saturday deadline. ``At midday today (Wednesday), U.N. observers should be placed on all Serbian positions around Sarajevo, and tomorrow (Thursday) morning they will come to positions around Bihac and Jajce. In this way we have permitted the supervision of our artillery two days before the deadline, '' Karadzic said. Karadzic, the self-styled president of a self-declared Serbian state in newly independent Bosnia-Hercegovina, said he would have talks with Cyrus Vance and Lord David Owen, the co-chairmen of the Geneva peace talks on former Yugoslavia, in a Serbian stronghold near Sarajevo Thursday. Vance and Owen have given Karadzic's forces until Saturday to place under U.N. supervision the heavy weaponry in areas surrounding the Bosnia capital of Sarajevo, and the towns of Bihac and Jajce. Karadzic said he was ready to make ``territorial concessions'' to the Bosnia-Hercegovina authorities, but only after the ongoing war ceases. The Bosnia-Hercegovina government is mostly made up of Muslim Slavs but also includes moderate Croats and Serbs. Karadzic's guerrillas have captured about 70 percent of the republic's territory although Serbs comprise only 32 percent of the population of 4.4 million. Addressing reporters at a Belgrade hotel, he said he may negotiate giving back anything between ``one to 20 percent'' of the territory. Referring to the predominantly Muslim Slav city of Sarajevo, Karadzic said the whole of the capital is ``on the land that is in possession of Serbs.'' ``A large part of Sarajevo will go to the Serbs...the old part of the city would be given to the Muslims, while a part in which Croats live would be an extra-territorial section,'' Karadzic said. He did not elaborate any further. Karadzic reiterated his stand that Bosnia-Hercegovina should be divided into Swiss-style ``ethnic districts.'' A Serbian land-grab campaign, to carve out a self-declared Serbian republic and attach it to neighboring Serbia, began late in March, before the former central Yugoslav republic's independence was internationally recognized early in April. Bosnia-Hercegovina's population is comprised of 1.9 million Muslim Slavs, 1.4 million Christian Orthodox Serbs and 750,000 Roman Catholic Croats. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: The prisoner exchange that wasn't Date: 9 Sep 92 17:49:27 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- This is a tale of arms and men, the evils of drink and of more than 900 people who disappeared in the prisoner exchange that wasn't. It is also the story of a stolid Royal Canadian Mounted Police sergeant from Winnipeg who tried to make it happen, but learned that in the Balkans, things rarely come off the way one hopes. ``I respect these people here, but I don't respect their ability to organize things,'' said Sgt. Jim Hull, the commander of the civilian police unit of the U.N. Protection Force in Sarajevo. U.N. police and troops Tuesday set out to oversee a swap of 470 Serbian and Bosnian war prisoners in Kobiljaca, a town wedged between Serbian and Croatian lines, 15 miles northwest of Sarajevo. The swap was agreed by the warring factions for 1 p.m. It began with U.N. personnel escorting two buses of Bosnian captives from the Serb-run prison of Kula, outside Sarajevo. Things began going awry immediately. The convoy arrived in Koblijaca an hour late because it was held up at a Serbian checkpoint and forced to pick up more prisoners. In Kobiljaca, U.N. personnel found seven more buses of Bosnian captives, said Hull. ``These nine buses were later joined by two more buses containing alleged prisoners.'' Hull said the U.N. unit was then told by negotiators of the two sides that the exchange had grown, with 462 Bosnians to be swapped for 454 Serbs -- who had still not arrived. U.N. officers waited three and a-half hours for the Bosnian side to deliver the Serbian prisoners. During that time, they noticed ``the Serbian military presence in the area appeared to increase and the indulgence of alcoholic beverages was clearly evident,'' Hull said. A U.N. armored car was sent to find the Serbian prisoners, who were discovered 8 miles away in six buses. The buses were escorted by the U. N. vehicle to within less than a mile of Kobiljaca, where they were stopped at a Croatian checkpoint. An argument erupted between the Bosnian negotiators and the Croatian commander that soon embroiled bystanders, Hull said. ``It was learned that Croatian military were justifiably concerned about the presence of many armed Bosnian soldiers who had come with the convoy,'' he explained. ``This in all probability could have caused an armed confrontation (with the Serbs).'' U.N. personnel also objected to the Bosnian soldiers. But, unable to resolve the dispute and growing anxious because of the approaching dark, the U.N. unit tried to coax the convoy to move by proceeding through the checkpoint. Only one bus followed, but ``broke down...and had to be left behind,'' Hull said. The U.N. unit continued into Kobiljaca, where ``it was quite apparent that tension was mounting among everyone present,'' he said. ``With this in mind and the fact that the liquor being consummed during the day was now showing undesirable effects on the Serbian soldiers and civilians present,'' the U.N. contingent abandoned the exchange, Hull explained. The prisoners were left with their captors and ``we have no idea where they are,'' said Hull. That, however, was not the end of the story. More than seven hours after leaving Kula, the four-vehicle U.N. unit set out to return to Sarajevo, but was forced to stop for about two more hours at a Serbian checkpoint. Hull said the halt resulted because a Serbian police chief wanted to arrest the Bosnian prisoner exchange negotiators accompanying the U.N. personnel back to Sarajevo. The U.N. officers refused to surrender the Bosnians, and after ``cooler heads prevailed,'' the convoy was allowed to continue, Hull said. Despite the farcical nature of the incident, Hull was not amused. ``We, under the circumstances, don't find it very comical,'' he said. ``This is too deadly a situation...to be messing around.'' ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Attack on U.N. convoy called 'cold-blooded murder' Date: 9 Sep 92 18:17:31 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- Mediators working to negotiate peace among the Yugoslav republics arrived in the region to assess the chances for progress Wednesday amid continuing confusion over who was responsible for an attack on a U.N. convoy that killed two French soldiers and wounded five. Arriving in the Croatian capital of Zagreb, peace conference co- chairman and former U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance sharply condemned the attack on the convoy Tuesday night, describing it as ``plain cold-blooded murder'' and saying those responsible should be brought to justice. Conflicting accounts continued to cloud the incident, which took place on the edge of Sarajevo airport, a U.N.-controlled island set amid shifting battlefields on the western fringe of the capital of Bosnia- Hercegovina. A U.N. military commander insisted Wednesday that Bosnian fighters deliberately attacked the unprotected U.N. supply convoy, killing two French troops and wounding five others, but witnesses said the column accidentally drove into a pitched battle between Serbs and Bosnians. Both versions agreed fierce fighting had been raging outside the airport for three days, with predominantly Muslim Slav Bosnian forces pressing an attack from the suburb of Butmir against the Serb-held settlement of Lukavica. Speaking upon his arrival in Zagreb, Vance acknowledged it was difficult to know who was to blame for the incident, but he sharply condemned the attack. ``It simply cannot be tolerated,'' Vance said. ``People who commit those kinds of cold-blooded crimes will be apprehended if it is possible to do so and submitted to the courts and be given the penalties...that such cold-blooded crimes deserve.'' Vance and peace conference co-chairman David Owen were in the region to meet with leaders of the warring factions to try to secure humanitarian relief flights and land convoys into war-torn Bosnia- Hercegovina. A key issue is the interrupted airlift, still in abeyance following the crash last week of an Italian Air Force plane on U.N. service, Vance said. Four airmen were killed in the plane that possibly was shot down by missiles. Another major issue was the Vance-Owen demand that Yugoslav army- supplied Serbian heavy artilllery be concentrated in U.N.-monitored locations by Saturday. Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic set for himself a deadline for concentrating the weapons by Thursday, when he expected to meet Vance and Owen in a Serbian stronghold near Sarejevo. In Belgrade, Karadzic also told reporters Wednesday he may negotiate giving back ``one to 20 percent'' of the Bosnian territory captured by the Serbs who are trying to carve an separate nation out of the newly independent republic. Brig. Gen. Hussein Abdel Razek, commander of the Sarajevo sector of the U.N. Protection Force, doubted Karadzic could meet his self-imposed deadline. ``I know there are some difficulties with their local commanders,'' Razek told a news conference. ``Our senior military observers are working with them (the Serbs) to sort out all their difficulties.'' Referring to the fatal attack on the U.N. convoy, Razek said gunfire was loosed by ``uncontrolled elements'' at three trucks of the column as it moved into the airport complex. ``It was very clear that the fire came from the Bosnian side,'' he said. ``It was just one or two persons on the ground who were involved.'' Razek said a cease-fire had been in effect for 20 minutes before the convoy began moving from Lukavica into the airport complex Tuesday evening. But witnesses, including French soldiers in the convoy, said it accidentally drove into a raging battle between Bosnians and Serbs. ``We drove straight into a firefight. The range was very close, about 10 meters,'' said one of the soldiers at the U.N.-controlled airport. ``There was no time to fire back.'' Razek said he received assurances from senior Bosnian officials they would investigate the incident. Officials of the U.N. High Commission for Refugees also said a fight was raging when the convoy entered the airport complex. ``There was an intense battle going on and they (the convoy) tried to cross the runway. The battle was so intense before they arrived that we had gone to shelters,'' said Dag Espeland, chief UNHCR logistics officer at the airport. ``I asked myself why they came in,'' he said. Bosnian Vice President Ejup Ganic said the goverment's information also was the U.N. vehicles drove into a firefight. ``We are very sorry for those two soldiers ... but one should try to program things more carefully,'' Ganic said. ``We always asked UNPROFOR people not to travel at night. We always asked them to avoid direct fights.'' The French convoy bearing food, fuel and water was completing a regular weekly supply run from Belgrade to the U.N. headquarters on the western fringe of the embattled Bosnia-Hercegovina capital. The dead soldiers were the first fatalities of the 800-member French army contingent of UNPROFOR, which is assigned to protecting the airport and U.N. humanitarian aid operations in and around Sarajevo. The incident brought UNPROFOR's overall casualties in Sarajevo since May to at least four dead and 46 wounded. The previous casualties all have been blamed on attacks against UNPROFOR by the warring factions. Last week, U.N. Under-Secretary Marrack Goulding, head of the United Nation's peace-keeping operations, warned UNPROFOR could be withdrawn from Sarajevo because of the high casualty rate. The latest incident would not affect humanitarian aid convoys, said Izumi Nakamitsu, head of the UNHCR's Sarajevo operations. ``We are not going to stop,'' she said, adding cooperation between the agency and the warring factions was increasing and raising ``the level of confidence.'' She said the week-old suspension in the U.N.-supervised humanitarian airlift did not threaten the estimated 500,000 people blockaded in Sarajevo as the size of UNHCR truck convoys was being increased. By Friday, she said, daily convoys would be arriving with 180 tons of food and medicines from Croatia's Adriatic port city of Split. The amount is only 20 tons less than what the airlift was providing each day. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Fischer and Spassky started game five of rematch Date: 9 Sep 92 19:00:11 GMT PRZNO, Yugoslavia (UPI) -- Former world chess champion Bobby Fischer and his longtime rival, former Soviet grandmaster Boris Spassky, started the fifth game of their controversial re-match Wednesday after a two-day break. Fischer is playing white in the game that started 3:30 p.m. in the Maestral Hotel in Przno, near the plush Montenegrin resort of Sveti Stefan in the southern Adriatic. Fischer played the classical Ruy Lopez opening -- the same one he used in game three -- and after the first 20 moves experts said Fischer appeared to have a slight advantage. ``I am satisfied with this opening,'' said Fischer's second, Spanish grandmaster Eugenio Torre. ``Fischer prepared well for this game, and the fight will be very long and interesting,'' Torre added. Spassky, now a naturalized French citizen, defeated Fischer in a previous game Sunday. Monday and Tuesday were days off. The match will continue until one of the longtime rivals achieves ten victories. The result by now is 1:1, with Fischer winning the first game and Spassky the fourth. Games two and three were draws. Under the scoring system demanded by Fischer, drawn games are not counted in scoring. Fischer still demands to be called ``the chess champion of the world'' even though he went into seclusion shortly after earning that title and has avoided public life and chess competition for the past 20 years. Fischer became the world chess champion after defeating Spassky for the title in the 1972 championship in Reykjevik, Iceland. He was stripped of the honor a few years later after refusing to play Soviet grandmaster Anatoly Karpov under the World Chess Federation rules. Fischer, 49, is also in a deep trouble with the U.S. Treasury Department, which said the match with Spassky would violate U.N. sanctions against the new Yugoslav federation of Serbia and Montenegro. The U.N. sanctions ban all financial and economical transactions with two republics because of their involvement in the war against neighboring Bosnia-Hercegovina. Fischer publicly spat on the Treasury's cease-and-desist order at a news conference Sept. 1 on the eve of the first game. He could face a fine of up to $250,000 and a maximum 10 years in prison for defying the order. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: U.N. says all sides violate human rights in Bosnia-Hercegovina Date: 9 Sep 92 18:03:14 GMT UNITED NATIONS (UPI) -- A U.N. human rights investigator charged Wednesday that all warring parties in Bosnia-Hercegovina have committed grave violations and proposed that peacekeeping troops be deployed to cover the whole Balkan republic. Former Polish Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki warned that there is a ``real possibility'' that violence involved in the Serb-led so-called ``ethnic cleansing'' activities will spread to Kosovo, Sandzak and Vojvodina, the other ethnic regions in the former Yugoslavia. Mazowiecki, appointed by the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, visited Bosnia-Hercegovina last month to investigate allegations of mass execution of Muslims and Croats by Serbian forces in their drive to claim large chunks of the republic's territory. The investigator said his visits were limited by time and his assessments were a ``diagnosis'' of the main problems existing in that country with three distinct ethnic populations embroiled in a five- month-old civil war. ``Massive and grave violations of human rights are occurring throughout the territory of Bosnia-Hercegovina,'' Mazowiecki said in a report to the U.N. Security Council. ``Human rights violations are perpetrated by all parties to the conflicts,'' he said. ``There are also victims on all sides. However, the situation of the Muslim population is particularly tragic: they feel that they are threatened with extermination.'' Mazowiecki said he has obtained ``credible evidence'' that Muslims and Croats were subjected to the ethnic cleansing campaign in both Bosnia-Hercegovina and Croatia. But on the other hand, Serbs in Croatia have been also discriminated against, harrassed and maltreated and the importance of human rights violations there cannot be underestimated. ``There is credible evidence that some prisoners have died of torture and mistreatment in both Croatia and the various parts of Bosnia- Hercegovina, and at the present stage of this investigation it cannot be ruled out that executions may have been carried out systematically in other regions,'' he said. But he said allegations of systematic execution of Muslims and Croats by Serbs in detention camps have been ``proven false'' by ``humanitarian bodies'' in the Yugoslav territories. Mazowiecki proposed that the Security Council expand the mandate of the U.N. Protection Force in Croatia to cover the whole territory of Bosnia-Hercegovina. The 14,000-strong U.N. peace force was set up earlier this year to put an end to the civil war in Croatia, but its troops were called to provide security to the Sarajevo airport and to escort humanitarian convoys. At the U.N. headquarters in New York, the death of two French peacekeeping soldiers south of Sarajevo Tuesday was strongly deplored by Secretary-General Boutros Ghali. France has also asked the Security Council to meet urgently Wednesday to discuss the incident, which occurred after a U.N. food convoy was reportedly ambushed. U.N. spokesman Francois Giuliani said the United Nations has ordered an investigation on the incident. He said Ghali may present next week a plan to increase the strength of the U.N. peace force in Bosnia- Hercegovina in order to deal with the war situation in that republic.
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RFE/RL DAILY REPORT No. 174, September 10, 1992 SUCCESSOR STATES TO THE USSR YELTSIN ABRUPTLY CALLS OFF JAPAN VISIT. On 9 September, Russian President Boris Yeltsin indefinitely postponed his long-planned visit to Japan just four days before it was scheduled to begin. Japanese Foreign Minister Michio Watanabe would not confirm whether or not Yeltsin's decision stemmed from Japan's refusal to provide large-scale economic aid to Russia until the Kuril Islands dispute is resolved in Japan's favor, Western agencies reported. On 6 September, Yeltsin had noted that "I have to consider the attitude of 150 million Russians," when considering the Kuril Islands issue, "Novosti" reported on 7 September. Yeltsin also announced that his trip to South Korea would be postponed until December when Yeltsin is already scheduled to visit China. (Hal Kosiba, RFE/RL Inc.) BURBULIS CRITICIZES JAPAN. Russian State Secretary Gennadii Burbulis has warned Japan not to "exaggerate its role and importance to the detriment of other states in the Pacific region." He told ITAR-TASS on 9 September that Russian-Japanese relations "are not the only prospects in this region" for Russia. Burbulis said that according to a recent opinion poll published by Interfax on 8 September, 60 percent of Russians oppose returning the Kuril islands to Japan, and he noted that Yeltsin and government officials must take the opinion and sentiments of the Russian population into account. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL Inc.) ON THE ROLE OF THE SECURITY COUNCIL. Russian President Boris Yeltsin indicated in his phone conversation with Japanese Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa that the decision to postpone his visit to Japan had been made by the Security Council rather than by him personally. If this statement is accurate, it demonstrates the extent to which this recently created committee has become a major collective decision-making body in Russia. However, First Deputy Parliamentary Speaker Sergei Filatov, who is also a member of the Security Council, was not present at the meeting and was unaware of the postponement, Western news agencies reported on 9 September. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL Inc.) RUSSIAN FOOD SUPPLY DOWN. The Russian State Committee for Statistics (Roskomstat) announced on 9 September that food production during the past few months has declined by an average of 22% when compared with the same period of 1991, ITAR-TASS reported. Roskomstat attributed part of the decline to shortfalls in contractual deliveries from other CIS members and from the Baltic states. (Keith Bush, RFE/RL Inc.) SCALE OF RUSSIAN CAPITAL FLIGHT MINIMIZED. The Russian First Deputy Minister for Foreign Economic Relations, Sergei Glaziev, announced on 9 September that Russia has exported some $2 billion to date in 1992, Interfax reported. About half of this sum has been retained abroad legally to purchase foreign goods and materials. The rest has been transferred illegally but has also been used to buy foreign goods. The total sum is far below some Western estimates of capital flight: these Glaziev attributed to Western banks which spread the reports in order to raise their interest rates charged because of the implied risk factor. (Keith Bush, RFE/RL Inc.) FURTHER RAISES FOR RUSSIAN COAL MINERS. Acting Prime Minister Egor Gaidar and coal union officials signed an agreement on 8 September that provides for gradual increases in coal miners' wages, Interfax reported on 9 September. Starting on 1 September, average wages for those working in mining, processing, and transportation of coal will rise by 60%; by the end of the year, the increment will reach 80%. The average monthly wage for coal miners in July was 10,900 rubles. A union official said that the raises will not be funded by means of budget subsidies. Instead, mines will increase wholesale prices of coal by up to 30%--the current average price of coal is 95 rubles a ton--which should cover the pay raise. (Keith Bush, RFE/RL Inc.) RUSSIA ASKS PARDON FOR OFFICER CONDEMNED TO DEATH IN AZERBAIJAN. Russian authorities have asked Azerbaijan to pardon an Russian officer sentenced to death by the Azerbaijan Supreme Court's military collegium on 31 August. According to ITAR-TASS, the Russian Defense Ministry and a public committee concerned with servicemen's social rights appealed on 9 September to Azeri leaders to stay the execution of Lieutenant Evgenii Lukin. Lukin was in charge of the guard at the Baku Military School on 7 September 1991 when it was attacked by an armed group seeking to obtain weapons in the school's depot. When the attackers failed to retreat in the face of warning shots, Lukin ordered his men to shoot to kill. Three attackers lost their lives. The Russians claim that Lukin should have been tried by a Russian court. (Doug Clarke, RFE/RL Inc.) RUSSIAN OFFICER DEFECTS TO FINLAND. ITAR-TASS on 9 September reported that a officer of the border guards defected to Finland on 1 September. According to the press center of the Russian Border Forces, Major Andrei Vykhrystyuk--the commander of a guard unit on the border with Finland--had been on the brink of a nervous breakdown and was drinking heavily prior to the incident. The agency report said that the major's father and wife were insisting that he be repatriated. (Doug Clarke, RFE/RL Inc.) "NEW UKRAINE" CALLS FOR ORGANIZED OPPOSITION. The opposition coalition "New Ukraine" held a press conference in Kiev on 8 September devoted to the current political situation in Ukraine, DR-Press reported on 9 September. Volodymyr Filenko, the chairman of the coalition, emphasized the need to form an organized opposition aimed at gaining a majority in the parliament. Filenko also did not exclude the possibility of "New Ukraine" participating in a government of popular trust. The former economics minister, Volodymyr Lanovyi, told reporters that he intends to establish a National Center of Market Reforms. (Roman Solchanyk, RFE/RL Inc.) UKRAINIAN DELEGATION IN WASHINGTON. A Ukrainian parliamentary delegation led by Ivan Plyushch, head of the Ukrainian parliament, is in Washington for meetings with top American officials, Radio Ukraine reported on 8 September. Members of the delegation are scheduled to meet with Secretary of State Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, senators and congressmen, and other US officials. (Roman Solchanyk, RFE/RL Inc.) TURKEY PROVIDING WEAPONS TO NAKHICHEVAN? According to an unconfirmed report on 9 September by Armenia's Snark News Agency, the military council of the Ninth Corps of the Turkish army has decided, with the Turkish government's consent, to supply considerable quantities of Soviet-made weapons and combat material to the government of Azerbaijan's Nakhichevan Autonomous Republic. To date, the Turkish government has publicly resisted pressure to offer military assistance to Azerbaijan. Turkish Prime Minister Suleiman Demirel visited Nakhichevan last month and promised financial and food aid worth $10 million to counter the effects of the Armenian blockade of the region. (Liz Fuller, RFE/RL Inc.) "DNIESTER REPUBLIC" ESTABLISHES OWN AIR FORCE. The "Dniester republic Supreme Soviet" on 8 September formally approved the establishment of its own air force and a "department of military aviation," consisting of "airplanes and helicopters based on its territory," DR-Press reported from Tiraspol on 9 September. The report clearly refers to the aircraft of Russia's 14th Army. Some aircraft have already been turned over to the "Dniester" forces by that Army, and they took part in the "Dniester" military parade on the anniversary of the "republic" on 2 September in the presence of the Army's commander, Major General Aleksandr Lebed, DR-Press reported that day. An RFE/RL correspondent and the St. Petersburg TV program "600 Seconds" reported on 7 and 8 September, respectively, that the "Dniester republic" had warned that any Moldovan overflight of the area without "Dniester" permission would be treated as a military attack. (Vladimir Socor, RFE/RL Inc.) "DNIESTER REPUBLIC" OFFICIALLY REIMPOSES RUSSIAN SCRIPT ON "MOLDOVAN" LANGUAGE. The "Dniester republic Supreme Soviet" on 8 September voted in a language law reimposing the Russian alphabet on the "Moldovan" (i.e. Romanian) language in the territory under its control. As cited by Radio Rossii, the "law" requires the use of the Russian alphabet for "all situations in which the Moldovan language is used." The measure is likely to force part of the local Moldovan intelligentsia out of their jobs and out of the area. Although the law formally stipulates the equality of the Russian, Ukrainian, and "Moldovan" languages, the "Dniester authorities" promote the old policy of linguistic russification. Moldovans, who comprise 40.1% of the population, are the largest ethnic group in the territory at issue, but ethnic Russians, who form only the third-largest ethnic group (behind Ukrainians), rule the area. (Vladimir Socor, RFE/RL Inc.) CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE UN COMMANDER BLAMES BOSNIANS FOR ATTACK. On 9 September the commander of the UN forces in Sarajevo, Egyptian General Hussein Ali Abdul Razik, said that the two French soldiers were killed on 8 September by bullets fired by "irresponsible elements" who disobeyed orders of the local Bosnian commander. The shots came from positions held by Bosnian government troops, Razik said, "There is no mistake about this because visibility at the time of the attack was good." State Presidency member Ejup Ganic denied that Bosnian forces attacked the convoy. Bosnian Foreign Minister Haris Silajdzic stated that "it's totally illogical" that Bosnian forces would fire on "those providing relief." UNPROFOR headquarters in Zagreb released a statement saying that the Italian relief plane downed on 3 September was shot down in an area controlled by Croatian forces. But the statement adds "exactly how or by whom is the subject of intensive study." The statement also lays blame on Bosnian government forces for the 8 September attack on the convoy. International media carried the reports. (Milan Andrejevich, RFE/RL Inc.) VANCE SAYS RELIEF CONVOYS TO CONTINUE. UN envoy Cyrus Vance told reporters in Zagreb on 9 September that overland relief convoys to Sarajevo will continue despite the recent tragedy, which he described as "cold-blooded murder." Vance, along with EC envoy Lord Owen were in Zagreb for talks with UN, Red Cross, and Croatian officials. They will continue with stops in Sarajevo and Belgrade in an effort to secure further guarantees that overland convoys and air relief flights will not be attacked. (Milan Andrejevich, RFE/RL Inc.) IRANIAN ARMS SEIZED BY CROATIA. Radio Croatia and Western media report on 10 September that Croatian security forces have impounded an Iranian Boeing-747 aircraft loaded with arms bound for the Muslim-dominated government forces in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The incident occurred on 4 September. Officials seized 4,000 guns and more than one million rounds of ammunition and deported about 40 Iranians found hidden in the aircraft. The New York Times on 10 September stated that the interception of arms from Iran is the first documented evidence of military support by an Islamic country to the Bosnian government. (Milan Andrejevich, RFE/RL Inc.) PANIC STRIKES HARD. In his first interview since surviving the vote of no-confidence in the Federal Assembly on 4 September, Milan Panic, prime minister of the rump Yugoslavia, told Belgrade Radio on 9 September that he has replaced the Yugoslav negotiating team at the Geneva peace conference. Panic said the previous team had "lost all battles," a clear reference to the Socialists ,who brought Serbia-Montenegro into virtually total global isolation after being accused of fomenting war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The new team will be led by Ljubisa Rakic, former dean of Belgrade University's medical school. Panic also described the no-confidence motion as a phase of democracy, but said he was surprised at how "few details . . . and lies" his critics presented. Panic also singled out the privatization of the media as one of the most important domestic issues. Turning to the Kosovo situation, Panic said that some laws there are clearly "detrimental to Albanians and they ought to be changed immediately." He also proposed that the state provide financial assistance for classes taught privately in the Albanian language at the university, secondary, and primary school levels. (Milan Andrejevich, RFE/RL Inc.) POLAND'S FIRST POLITICAL PRISONER? On 9 September, Poland's Supreme Court turned down a request by the chief prosecutor to reconsider the case of Roman Galuszko, who was sentenced by a Cracow military court in April to 18 months imprisonment for draft evasion. Galuszko's request for alternate service on moral and religious grounds was rejected; the draft board refused to accept the Catholic faith as a valid argument against military service. This rationale has stirred controversy. In another judicial development, the Bialystok prosecutor announced on 9 September that "criminal arson" caused the fire in January 1989 that killed Stanislaw Suchowolec, an activist Solidarity priest. The communist police had ruled the death accidental. Suchowolec was one of three activist priests killed in mysterious circumstances in the period before and after the round-table talks. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL Inc.) ROMANIA'S ETHNIC HUNGARIANS URGE TOKES TO END HUNGER STRIKE. Magyar Bishop Laszlo Tokes has been urged by his supporters to abandon his week-old protest fast. In a statement read on Radio Bucharest, the Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania, which represents the country's Hungarian minority, urged Tokes to "preserve his strength to fight for the victory of truth and moral values." Tokes began his hunger strike in an attempt to force the authorities to identify the murderers of the 1,033 victims of the 1989 Romanian uprising. President Ion Iliescu offered last week to meet Tokes but has effectively rejected the latter's demands from the outset. (Dan Ionescu, RFE/RL Inc.) ROMANIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH AND THE ELECTIONS. Patriarch Teoctist of Romania said in a pastoral address that the Romanian Orthodox Church "would not express a preference for any candidate or party in the presidential and parliamentary elections" scheduled for 27 September, Radio Bucharest reported on 4 September. However, the patriarch added that this "political neutrality" did not mean "indifference from the moral and social point of view;" he urged the faithful to vote for "belief in God" and the "safeguarding of freedom," in what Reuters reported to be an appeal "for the preservation of Christianity against atheism and Communism." (Michael Shafir, RFE/RL Inc.) REMAINS FOUND IN MASS GRAVE IN ROMANIA. Western agencies report from Bucharest that a mass grave containing about 140 skeletons dating from the 1950's has been found on premises run by the Securitate, the former secret police, an Interior Ministry statement said. The remains, which appear to be from members of peasant families who opposed collectivization, were found at Caciulati, near Bucharest, according to the Association of Former Political Detainees. (Michael Shafir, RFE/RL Inc.) [As of 1200 CET] Compiled by Hal Kosiba & Charles Trumbull (END) The RFE/RL Daily Report is produced by the RFE/RL Research Institute (a division of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Inc.) with the assistance of the RFE/RL News and Current Affairs Division (NCA). The report is available by electronic mail via LISTSERV (RFERL-L@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU), on the Sovset' computer bulletin board, by fax, and by postal mail. For inquiries about specific news items, subscriptions, or additional copies, please contact: In USA: Mr. Jon Lodeesen or Mr. Brian Reed RFE/RL, Inc. 1201 Connecticut Avenue NW Washington, DC 20036. Telephone: (202) 457-6912 or -6900 fax: (202) 457-6992 or -202-828-8783; Internet: RI-DC@RFERL.ORG or in Europe: Ms. Helga Hofer Publications Department RFE/RL Research Institute Oettingenstrasse 67 8000 Munich 22 Telephone: (+49 89) 2102-2631 or -2642 fax: (+49 89) 2102-2648 Internet: Pubs@RFERL.ORG Copyright 1992, RFE/RL, Inc. All rights reserved.
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RFE/RL DAILY REPORT No. 175, September 11, 1992 SUCCESSOR STATES TO THE USSR RUSSIAN LEADERS BLAME JAPAN FOR POSTPONEMENT OF TRIP. Vyacheslav Kostikov, the Russian presidential press secretary, has blamed the Japanese government for the postponement of President Boris Yeltsin's trip to Japan. He told Izvestiya on 11 September that the ruling Liberal-Democratic Party wanted to exploit the issue of the Kuril islands for its electoral campaign. The first deputy parliamentary speaker, Sergei Filatov, told Ostankino TV on 10 September that the "hysterical" approach to the Kuril islands in Japan prevents the constructive resolution of the issue by the two nations' respective leaders. Yeltsin's press department denied reports that the Russian President also plans to postpone his forthcoming trip to China. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL Inc.) REACTION TO POSTPONEMENT OF YELTSIN'S TRIP TO JAPAN. Viktor Alksnis and Vladimir Zhirinovsky, two leading Russian nationalists, celebrated President Boris Yeltsin's decision to postpone his trip to Japan as a victory for patriotic forces, Interfax reported on 11 September. Liberals, such as Russian Minister of Foreign Economic Relations Petr Aven, warned that the postponement could effect negotiations on Russia's foreign debt, since Japan maintained the strictest position in Russia's negotiations with major creditors. Japanese Foreign Minister Michio Watanabe told the Japanese news agency Kyodo on 11 September that Yeltsin had indicated that he plans to visit Tokyo in the beginning of 1993. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL Inc.) RUSSIAN OIL PRICES TO DOUBLE. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin told a news conference after a cabinet meeting on 10 September that the wholesale prices of energy carriers will be raised next week, ITAR-TASS, Interfax, and the Financial Times reported. The price of oil will roughly double, from 1,800-2,200 rubles a ton to 4,000-5,000 rubles a ton. This may be seen largely as a technical correction for inflation: prices throughout the economy have more than doubled since the last price increase for oil. At the current rate of exchange, the new price will represent some 14-18% of the world price. A 50% tax will be levied on income derived from sales at prices higher than the guidelines. (Keith Bush, RFE/RL Inc.) RUSSIAN INDUSTRY HEAD CRITICIZES PRIVATIZATION PLANS. Minister of Industry Aleksandr Titkin has sent a letter to President Yeltsin condemning current plans for industrial privatization, Interfax reported on 9 and 10 September. Titkin claims that the plans are exacerbating chaos in industry and accuses the State Property Commission of engaging in a "self-serving process" inconsistent with national interests. He also outlined his own variant of privatization that envisages an initial stage of industrial restructuring managed by the ministry itself. (Erik Whitlock, RFE/RL Inc.) RUSSIA TO BE SELF-SUFFICIENT IN GRAIN? Russian Vice President Aleksandr Rutskoi told a news conference in Moscow on 10 September that Russia will need to import only 12-15 million tons of grain this winter, Interfax reported. The introduction of modern technology and improved seed should obviate the requirement for grain imports in 1993, in Rutskoi's opinion. Other estimates have put the total grain imports required for calendar year 1992 at around 25 million tons. Rutskoi may later regret having made this prediction, although it is true that a smaller amount of feed grain will be needed as livestock herds have been drastically culled. (Keith Bush, RFE/RL Inc.) CHERNOBYL TO REOPEN FOR A YEAR? The chairman of Ukraine's nuclear power utility, Vladimir Fuks, told The Guardian of 10 September that two of the reactors at Chernobyl will reopen in October. However, Fuks insisted that the plant will be closed down for good at the end of 1993. Subject to parliamentary approval, three pressurized water reactors will be commissioned elsewhere in Ukraine to replace the Chernobyl output. Official pronouncements on the final closure of the Chernobyl reactors have been contradictory. (Keith Bush, RFE/RL Inc.) FIRST JEWISH GYMNASIUM IN KIEV. The first Jewish gymnasium (secondary school) in Ukraine opened in Kiev this school year, Nezavisimost reported on 5 September. The gymnasium, which was formerly school No. 299, has 520 students who will be studying humanitarian subjects, including the history, culture, religion, and languages of the Jewish people. (Roman Solchanyk, RFE/RL Inc.) CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE ANOTHER BOSNIAN CEASE-FIRE; MORE UN TROOPS. International media report on 10 September that UN envoy Cyrus Vance and EC envoy Lord Owen met separately with the leaders of the Muslim and Serbian warring sides in Bosnia-Herzegovina. A new cease-fire agreement was hammered out, and both sides agreed to meet in Geneva on 18 September. Vance said the most important outcome of the talks is that Alija Izetbegovic, Bosnia's President, agreed to attend the conference. Izetbegovic had previously rejected all efforts at getting the Muslims to sit in the same conference room with the Serbs. On 9 September Bosnian Croat leader Mate Boban agreed to participate. Vance said Boban, Izetbegovic, and Serb leader Radovan Karadzic would all be meeting in Geneva for the first time. Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali has formally requested an additional 6,000 peacekeepers for Bosnia and proposed expanding UN relief efforts to an additional 11 regions in the republic. (Milan Andrejevich, RFE/RL Inc.) IRAN DENIES ARMS DELIVERY. At a news conference in Beijing, Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani stated that Iran will consider sending arms to Bosnia's Muslim-lead government if diplomatic efforts fail to end the war. The Los Angeles Times reports on 11 September that Rafsanjani also dismissed as "lies" and "fabrications" US newspaper reports that Croatia had impounded a planeload of Iranian arms headed for Bosnia. However, on 10 September, Radio Croatia reported that Croatia's government officially confirmed that the Iranian arms were confiscated at Zagreb airport on 4 September. (Milan Andrejevich, RFE/RL Inc.) TURKEY URGES ACTION. Turkish media report that Prime Minister Suleyman Demirel, speaking at a meeting of Council of Europe representatives in Istanbul, urged member states to convene a summit to discuss means of ending the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Turkey, which has historic ties to Bosnia dating back centuries, fears that the conflict could touch of a Balkan-wide war. Turkey is especially concerned about the fate of Muslims in Bosnia and has offered 1,000 peacekeeping troops to assist the UN force there. (Duncan Perry, RFE/RL Inc.) IS LIBYA SUPPORTING "REUNIFICATION?" Belgrade media are widely speculating about an alleged proposal by Libya's leader Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi's support for the reunification of the former Yugoslav republics of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia with the rump Yugoslavia, made up of Serbia and Montenegro. Panic reportedly described Qadhafi's idea as "very good" and indicative of the Libyan leader's support of Panic's efforts toward establishing a Balkan economic association. Radio Serbia carried the report on 9 September. (Milan Andrejevich, RFE/RL Inc.) MUSLIM MERCENARIES? Reuters reports on 10 September that Ashark al-Aswat, a London-based Arabic-language daily, carries an interview with one Abu Abdel-Aziz, identified as the leader of foreign Muslim warriors who have gone to Bosnia to defend their faith. Abdel-Aziz (a nom de guerre) would not give his nationality and provided no estimate of the size of the foreign Muslim forces. The story was datelined "Mujahideen Headquarters in Central Bosnia." Rumors of mercenaries and other irregular fighters in Bosnia have circulated before. (Charles Trumbull, RFE/RL Inc.) JOVANOVIC RESIGNS; BLASTS PANIC. Vladislav Jovanovic, minister of foreign affairs of the rump Yugoslavia, submitted his "irrevocable resignation" on 10 September. In a letter sent to Prime Minister Milan Panic, Jovanovic said Panic's approach to resolving the crisis in the former Yugoslavia profoundly clash with Jovanovic's "notion of national duty and dignity," adding that "I find it impossible to continue to remain in a government that is increasingly and openly pursuing a policy opposed to the interests of Serbia and the Serb nation." Panic accepted the resignation saying that he "greatly respects" Jovanovic as a person, but also made it clear that there are differences between the two "in approach and style of conducting foreign policy." Ilija Djukic, Belgrade's ambassador to the People's Republic of China has been tagged as Jovanovic's successor. Radio Serbia carried the report. (Milan Andrejevich, RFE/RL Inc.) SUCHOCKA: FSM STRIKE "IRRATIONAL." Polish Prime Minister Hanna Suchocka issued the government's sharpest warning yet to the strikers at the FSM auto plant. In a written response to a plea for action from one of the Solidarity regions most at risk if FSM were to close, Suchocka called the strike "completely irrational" because it was making a bankrupt of a firm with guaranteed growth prospects. The government will not permit a minority to thwart a majority with economic rationality on its side, she said. The "state of unlawfulness" in Tychy could drive the government to take "harsh measures" to restore the legal order. PAP carried the text of Suchocka's letter. Meanwhile, a two-hour warning strike called for 10 September by the Network (Solidarity locals at large industrial plants) drew only a scattered response. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL Inc.) ROMANIAN HIGH COURT RULES ON ILIESCU'S SENATE CANDIDACY. On 10 September the Supreme Court of Justice rejected an action by attorney Nicolae Cerveni against the Democratic National Salvation Front (DNSF), the party backing Ion Iliescu's candidacy for a seat in the Senate. Cerveni contends that the DNSF's decision to field Iliescu violates the electoral law, which provides that parliament candidates be members of the party they run for. Iliescu, who is also the DNSF's presidential candidate, has no official party affiliation. Meanwhile, Radio Bucharest reports that Iliescu continues his electoral campaign in the provinces. On 10 September he visited the town of Calarasi. (Dan Ionescu, RFE/RL Inc.) ROMANIA ACCUSES DIPLOMATS OF MEDDLING. On 9 September Traian Chebeleu, a spokesman for the Romanian Foreign Ministry, suggested that diplomats in Bucharest are meddling in the electoral campaign. Rompres quoted Chebeleu as saying that his ministry has received several complaints about alleged attempts by foreign diplomats to influence the electorate. Chebeleu, who refused to say which embassies were involved in these actions, insisted that Romania welcomes foreign election observers, including members of the diplomatic corps, on the condition that they observe neutrality. (Dan Ionescu, RFE/RL Inc.) SOLE MAGYAR OFFICIAL IN ROMANIAN GOVERNMENT DISMISSED. Radio Budapest reported on 9 September that Andor Horvath, state secretary for education and the only Romanian cabinet official of Hungarian nationality, has been dismissed from his post. No reason was given for the move. The educational sector is considered crucial by Romania's two million ethnic Hungarians who are fighting for more schools with instruction in Hungarian. (Judith Pataki, RFE/RL Inc.) BULGARIAN SOCIALIST PARTY TO BE EXCLUDED FROM SOCIALIST INTERNATIONAL. The Bulgarian Socialist Party, successor of the Bulgarian Communist Party, reportedly will not be invited to join the Socialist International, a forum for socialist and social-democratic parties around the world. In an interview on 10 September Hans-Eberhard Dingels, chief of the international relations section of the German Social Democratic Party, informed an RFE/RL correspondent that the BSP does not meet the admission criteria. Moreover, one Bulgarian party is already affiliated with the Socialist Internationalthe Social Democratic Party. (Duncan Perry, RFE/RL Inc.) [As of 1200 CET] Compiled by Hal Kosiba & Charles Trumbull (END) The RFE/RL Daily Report is produced by the RFE/RL Research Institute (a division of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Inc.) with the assistance of the RFE/RL News and Current Affairs Division (NCA). The report is available by electronic mail via LISTSERV (RFERL-L@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU), on the Sovset' computer bulletin board, by fax, and by postal mail. For inquiries about specific news items, subscriptions, or additional copies, please contact: In USA: Mr. Jon Lodeesen or Mr. Brian Reed RFE/RL, Inc. 1201 Connecticut Avenue NW Washington, DC 20036. Telephone: (202) 457-6912 or -6900 fax: (202) 457-6992 or -202-828-8783; Internet: RI-DC@RFERL.ORG or in Europe: Ms. Helga Hofer Publications Department RFE/RL Research Institute Oettingenstrasse 67 8000 Munich 22 Telephone: (+49 89) 2102-2631 or -2642 fax: (+49 89) 2102-2648 Internet: Pubs@RFERL.ORG Copyright 1992, RFE/RL, Inc. All rights reserved.
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UPI NEWS -------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Yugoslav's Panic to visit China Subject: Yugoslav foreign minister resigns Subject: Iran denies shiping arms Bosnian Muslims Subject: Vance and Owen open peace talks in Sarajevo Subject: Spassky wins game five against disappointing Fischer ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Yugoslav's Panic to visit China Date: 10 Sep 92 09:25:06 GMT BEIJING (UPI) -- Yugoslav Prime Minister Milan Panic will visit China for talks next week, the Chinese Foreign Ministry announced Thursday. Panic is to spend Sept. 14 to 16 in Beijing on a ``working visit,'' according to Foreign Ministry spokesman Wu Jianmin, who added that officials arranged the visit ``not long ago.'' ``The two sides will exchange views on the situation in the former Yugoslavia, bilateral relations and international issues,'' the spokesman said. He reiterated Chinese calls for a peaceful resolution to the fighting in the former Yugoslavia, saying, ``We hope that a proper settlement will be found through peaceful means.'' ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Yugoslav foreign minister resigns Date: 10 Sep 92 15:07:48 GMT BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (UPI) -- Vladislav Jovanovic, foreign minister of the rump Yugoslav union of Serbia and Montenegro, resigned Thursday after criticizing Prime Minister Milan Panic for ``anti-Serbian policy,'' the Serbian official news agency Tanjug said. In a short letter to Panic, Jovanovic said he ccould no longer stay in Panic's Cabinet, which he said is ``openly acting against the interests of Serbia and the Serbs,'' Tanjug reported. ``Your approach to the Yugoslav crisis and some of your recent moves. ..are deeply against my concept of patriotism and dignity,'' said Jovanovic in his letter. Jovanovic said his resignation was ``irrevocable''. Political observers said that Jovanovic was considered to be closely associated with Serbian hard-line President Slobodan Milosevic, and that his resignation weakens Milosevic's position in the Yugoslav federation. Panic, the Belgrade-born naturalized U.S. citizen and millionaire who promised to bring U.S.-style democracy to the truncated federation and to stop the ethnic war in neighboring Bosnia-Hercegovina, has not commented the resignation. Panic's confrontation with Milosevic began just after the London peace conference on the Yugoslav crisis in late August, when Panic was accused of ``selling Serbia to Western powers'' by Milosevic's ruling Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS). But Panic won a no-confidence vote last week despite the overwhelming SPS majority in the Federal Parliament. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Iran denies shiping arms Bosnian Muslims Date: 10 Sep 92 15:22:37 GMT BEIJING (UPI) -- President Hashemi Rafsanjani Thursday denied a report of Iranian arms shipments to Bosnia-Hercegovina but indicated that Iran would consider future sales to embattled Muslim forces in the war-torn country. ``I would like you to know that they have not yet requested arms from Iran,'' Rafsanjani said, but added his country would give U.N. sanctions a chance to work. He left the door open for future sales if the sanctions do not work. ``If they request arms from Iran, this is something we shall consider,'' Rafsanjani said at a news conference. According to a report in Thursday's New York Times, Croatian officials in the capital of Zagreb confiscated 4,000 guns and more than a million rounds of ammunition from an Iranian Boeing 747. The report, attributed to Bush administration sources, said Croatian officials found the war materiel and up to 40 Iranian nationals on a routine inspection of relief supplies bound for Bosnia. In the past few months Bosnian Muslims have lost much of their territory to better equipped Serbian forces, and Muslim countries are known to be disturbed by the increasingly one-sided civil war. ``The situation right now is very bad,'' Rafsanjani said. ``Only one side has all the arms, and soon the other side will have to get them from someone.'' The Iranian leader, who is on a four-day official visit to China, rejected the New York Times report, saying his government had no such airplane. ``I have not heard of any such thing,'' the president said. ``The report is a mere fabrication.'' Rafsanjani told reporters the main purpose of his trip to China, his first since assuming the presidency, was to cement close ties between the two countries. He denied persistent reports of Chinese arm sales to his country, saying the only contracts discussed were for a new subway system and for the sale of a small nuclear reactor for peaceful purposes. ``We have no military contracts to be signed here,'' Rafsanjani said. An Iranian military delegation led by army logistics chief Gen. Alastu Tuhidi arrived in China Tuesday to discuss ``the further development of friendly relations between China and Iran,'' according to China's official Xinhua news agency. Western reports have said the talks would include co-production of weapons in Iran, as well as future weapons sales by the Chinese. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Vance and Owen open peace talks in Sarajevo Date: 10 Sep 92 16:38:43 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- European Community envoy David Owen Thursday expressed horror at the Serb-inflicted devastation of Sarajevo and vowed that he and U.N. mediator Cyrus Vance would ``slowly, persistently, patiently'' end the war in Bosnia-Hercegovina. The two diplomats arrived in the Bosnian capital as fighting flared on the city's fringes, and Serbian forces loosed sporadic artillery fire into civilian areas. Casualty figures were not immediately available. Owen and Vance, the co-chairmen of the Geneva peace conference on former Yugoslavia, began their visit almost seven hours later than scheduled, driving immediately to the shell-shattered city center for talks with Alija Izetbegovic, the republic's Muslim Slav president, and other government officials. Owen said he was shocked by the devastation wrought to Sarajevo by the almost incessant artillery, rocket and tank fire loosed by encircling hilltop Serbian gunners against what was once one of the most picturesque cities in the Balkans. ``You see the whole wanton destruction. I don't think I have ever seen anything so wanton, so ghastly,'' said Owen as he entered the artillery-ravaged presidency building. ``Tower blocks shot to smithereens,'' he said. ``When you realize so much of it was done from on top and not from street fighting...'' But, he expressed optimism that he and Vance could mediate an end to the war that has left tens of thousands dead and injured, uprooted more than 1 million from their homes and defied all previous international attempts at mediation. ``Slowly, persistently, patiently, we will end this,'' vowed Owen. Among the topics expected to be covered were the deaths of two French U.N. soldiers and wounding of five others Tuesday when their U.N. supply convoy came under fire on the fringe of Sarajevo airport. The U.N. Protection Force (UNPROFOR), France and others blamed Bosnian fighters, although witnesses and French soldiers said the convoy drove straight into a raging battle. After the meeting with Izetbegovic, the envoys traveled to the southwestern Serb-held suburb of Lukavica for a meeting with Serbian leader Radovan Karadzic, the ``president'' of a self-declared state for which extremist Serbs have been fighting for more than five months. Karadzic's forces, backed politically and financially by the neighboring communist-ruled republic of Serbia, beseiged Sarajevo to press a demand that the city be divided into ethnic districts. Bosnian forces dominated by Muslim Slavs, but also including moderate Serbs and Croats, oppose the partition of the former Yugoslav republic, which won international recognition as an independent state in early April. Both Owen and Vance wore blue flak-jackets as they emerged from small, white U.N. armored cars at the entrance of the heavily guarded, shell-pitted presidency building in the center of Sarajevo. They were late because they chose to drive from Croatia's Adriatic port city of Split rather than fly following shelling Tuesday evening near the airport and last week's crash of an Italian humanitarian aid flight, which was widely believed to have been downed by missiles. The envoys' arrival coincided with fierce fighting in several areas of Sarajevo, with military sources reporting a major advance by Bosnian forces into the Serb-held stronghold of Nedzarici. The sources said the advance was marked by the raising of the republic flag on a building in the suburb, a strategic point from which Serbian fighters had been thwarting Bosnian attempts to break through their seige. Serbian gunners persisted in sporadic shelling of the city and blasted mortar rounds into the roof of the already badly damaged television headquarters building. The Bosnian government said its troops attacked Serbian forces when they tried to move heavy weapons from a hill overlooking the downtown to the Serbian stronghold of Pale, east of the city, to avoid detection by U.N. military monitors. Owen and Vance have given Karadzic until Saturday to fulfill an accord to gather in U.N.-monitored locations all of the Yugoslav army- supplied heavy weaponry that Serbian forces have been using to pummel Sarajevo and the towns of Gorazde, Jajce and Bihac. Karadzic said on Wednesday that the Serbs would complete the heavy weapons concentrations by Thursday. But, Egyptian Brig. Gen. Hussein Abdel Razek, the Sarajevo sector commander of the U.N. Protection Force, Wednesday expressed skepticism that the deadline would be met. He also said he believed the Serbs had hidden large amounts of tanks and artillery from U.N. monitors. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Spassky wins game five against disappointing Fischer Date: 9 Sep 92 21:57:57 GMT PRZNO, Yugoslavia (UPI) -- Former Soviet grandmaster Boris Spassky won the fifth game of his controversial re-match with former world chess champion Bobby Fischer Wednesday to take a 2-1 lead in the series. Spassky won the game after 45 moves, after Fischer sacrificed a pawn on his 24th move. Expert observers said that Fischer made the crucial mistake on his 28th move, and he then played on after losing a rook. ``Fischer made a crucial mistake on his 28th move by playing with his knight,'' said Yugoslav grandmaster Svetozar Gligoric. ``After that, Spassky came into the winning position.'' Fischer played on after losing the rook, but there was no way back and the game ended after five hours of play. Fischer began the match playing with the white pieces at 3:30 local time in the Maestral Hotel in Przno, near the plush Montenegrin resort of Sveti Stefan in southern Adriatic. Fischer began with a classical Ruy Lopez start, the same tactic he employed in game three. Spassky, now a naturalized French citizen, defeated Fischer in a previous game Sunday. Monday and Tuesday were days off. The match will continue until one of the long-time rivals achieves 10 victories. The score now stands at 2-1, after Fischer won the first game. The second and third games were drawn, and under the rules of the match, no points are awarded for draws. Fischer, who has lived a secluded life away from competitive chess for the past 20 years, still insists on being referred to as ``the chess champion of the world''. He won that title from Spassky in 1972 championship in Reykjavik, Iceland, but was stripped of it when he refused to play Soviet grandmaster Anatoly Karpov under the rules of the World Chess Federation. Fischer, 49, is also in trouble with the U.S. Treasury Department, which banned him from competing in the match in rump Yugoslavia. The Treasury's order endorsed the U.N. sanctions that ban all financial and economical transactions with the former Yugoslav republics of Serbia and Montenegro for their involvement in the war in neighboring Bosnia-Hercegovina. But Fischer publicly spat on the Treasury's cease-and-desist order at a news conference Sept. 1, on the eve of the first game. He now faces a fine up to $250,000 and a maximum 10 years in jail for ``willingly and knowingly'' defying the order.
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RFE/RL Daily Report No. 176, 14 September 1992 SUCCESSOR STATES TO THE USSR THE DECISION ON JAPAN. State Secretary Gennadii Burbulis said, during an interview on Russian TV broadcast on 13 September, that the decision to postpone Yeltsin's trip to Japan came after "discussions were held within the government, the Supreme Soviet, and finally in the Security Council... It was in line with the collective views of these three bodies that the president made his final decision to postpone the trip." It is noteworthy that Burbulis did not mention any role played by the Russian Foreign Ministry in making the decision. Nonetheless, Burbulis explicitly rejected the idea that conservatives had pressured Yeltsin into canceling the trip. For his part, Yeltsin defended the trip's postponement. Speaking to reporters upon arrival in Cheboksary on 11 September, Yeltsin said that Japan had been "too categorical" on the issue of returning the islands to Japan. "We cannot deal like that," the Russian president said. (Suzanne Crow) AMBARTSUMOV, LUKIN DEFLECT CRITICISM ON JAPAN TRIP. Evgenii Ambartsumov, Chairman of the Supreme Soviet Committee on International Affairs and Foreign Economic Ties, said that Japan had taken too hard a position on the question of the Kuril Islands, and this put Yeltsin in a difficult position. Speaking on the Russian TV program "Krasnyi Kvadrat," Ambartsumov said that the question of guaranteeing Yeltsin's security was not the only consideration in calling off the visit, adding that in Russia, a negative feeling had developed about sending Yeltsin to Japan. Speaking on the same program, Russia's ambassador to the United States, Vladimir Lukin, said that the postponement of the trip could not be viewed as a great tragedy. Lukin also blamed Japan, saying that Tokyo's attempt to pressure Russia for the return of the islands brought the opposite result and stiffened Russian opinion against the move, ITAR-TASS reported on 13 September. (Suzanne Crow) HIGHER RUSSIAN STATE BUDGET DEFICIT. The Russian government is now allowing for a deficit "not exceeding" 950 billion rubles in 1992, Interfax reported on 13 September. The original budget deficit was projected at 300 billion rubles, but parliament insisted on additional expenditures for industrial subsidies and social programs. The new limit represents about 7% of GNP at current prices, and is far above the Gaidar administration's original aims and the IMF guidelines. It looks like an understatement, though because on 24 August the Russian finance minister admitted that the deficit had already risen to almost 1 trillion rubles and was heading towards a year-end total of 2 trillion rubles "which is tantamount to hyperinflation." (Keith Bush) VOLSKY, YASIN WARN GOVERNMENT. Arkadii Volsky, leader of the Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, is turning up the political heat on the government. Speaking at a news conference in Moscow, Volsky announced that he would call a conference of industrial managers by November to pressure the government if it does not alter its economic policy to his liking, the Financial Times reported on 12 September. Evgenii Yasin, chief economist at the institute of Volsky's group, but also an advisor to the government, had warnings of his own during the news conference. Yasin said that hyperinflation was "closer than ever" as a result of disarray in the state's financial and credit policy. He claimed that new credit emission in September will be ten times greater than in March. (Erik Whitlock). UKRAINE DEMANDS REMOVAL OF KASATONOV. The Ukrainian parliamentary Commission on Defense and Security and the Ukrainian Defense Ministry demanded on 11 September that the current commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Admiral Igor Kasatonov, be relieved immediately of his duties, Interfax reported. A statement released by the two agencies reportedly criticized both Kasatonov and the Russian Defense Ministry for resisting efforts by Ukraine to take control of two naval academies in Sevastopol. Moscow apparently wants to subordinate the schools to the CIS command and to keep them under Russian jurisdiction. (Stephen Foye) GENERALS DISMISSED FOR CORRUPTION IN BELARUS. Interfax reported on 11 September that the Belarus military prosecutor could bring charges against several top generals, including the commanders of the 5th and the 7th tank armies--identified as generals Rumyantsev and Ivanitsky--for, among other things, illegally trading military property. The prosecutor denied that Defense Minister Pavel Kozlovsky was involved in illegal activities. He also said that crime within the armed forces had more than doubled this year, attributing the rise at least in part to the disbanding of the army's military-political organs. (Stephen Foye) FIGHTING CONTINUES IN AND AROUND NAGORNO-KARABAKH. Following the total deadlock of the CSCE-sponsored preparatory Karabakh peace talks in Rome on 10 September, Azerbaijan has accused Armenia of violating the agreement on a cease-fire on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border. Armenian parliament deputy Samvel Shakhmuradyan was killed during an Azerbaijani artillery attack in Mardakert on 11 September, ITAR-TASS reported; dozens of Azerbaijanis and some Armenians were reported killed in heavy fighting on 12-13 September in the Armenian-controlled Lachin corridor that links Nagorno- Karabakh with Armenia, according to the press center of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, as cited by ITAR-TASS. (Liz Fuller) WESTERN GEORGIA STILL POLITICALLY UNSTABLE. Six representatives of the Georgian National Democratic Party were kidnapped by supporters of ousted Georgian President Zviad Gamsakhurdia in the West Georgian town of Zugdidi during the evening of 10 September, ITAR-TASS reported. In an interview published in Le Quotidien de Paris on 11 September, Georgian State Council Chairman Eduard Shevardnadze stated that the parliamentary elections scheduled for 11 October have been postponed to a later (unspecified) date in Abkhazia and parts of Western Georgia because the situation there is so unstable. (Liz Fuller) "DNIESTER REPUBLIC" FORGING AHEAD WITH OWN STATE STRUCTURES. Using the breathing room gained through the cease-fire agreement, and under the protective cover of the Russian troops, the "Dniester republic" is creating state structures of its own. On 11 September, Interfax and DR-Press reported that a decree by "Dniester president" Igor Smirnov established "Dniester border troops," subordinated to the "Dniester Ministry of National Security" which was created last week by the "Dniester Supreme Soviet." Tiraspol further announced that it had succeeded in creating the "Dniester republic's" own banking system, fully separate from that of Moldova, and that it is now conducting its own transactions with partners in the other CIS states, bypassing Moldova, DR-Press reported on 13 September. (Vladimir Socor) CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE BOSNIAN UPDATE. International media reported on 13 September that Serbian and Bosnian forces around Sarajevo have begun making their heavy weapons available for UN observation but that the Serbs had failed to take similar steps in three other areas of Bosnia. The republic's president, Alija Izetbegovic, said he will boycott peace talks in Geneva this week because of continuing Serb attacks against Bihac and Gorazde, where Muslims managed to drive the Serbs back just over two weeks earlier. The 14 September Washington Post reports that a UN report backs the Bosnian government's position on the death of two French soldiers at Sarajevo airport the previous week. The report says that the relief convoy drove into the middle of a firefight between Bosnian and Serbian forces, and concludes that the two were not deliberately killed by the Bosnians, as France has charged. (Patrick Moore) ANOTHER NO CONFIDENCE VOTE FOR PANIC? Radio Serbia and Politika report on 12 and 13 September that last week's resignation of the foreign minister of the rump Yugoslavia may bring about a second vote of no confidence in Prime Minister Milan Panic. According to reports, a group of deputies from the ruling Socialist Party and the ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party (SRS) will raise the motion soon, but give no indication when. SRS leader Vojislav Seselj, stated on 10 September that Panic continues "to make mistakes," and specifically criticized Panic's decision to change the rump Yugoslav negotiating team for the Geneva Conference on the former Yugoslavia. Panic described the accusations as childish and rejected the existence of a Serbian foreign policy describing it as "political Mickey Mouse." (Milan Andrejevich)
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----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Security Council allows 6,000 more troops in Bosnia-Hercegovina Subject: China pledges aid for former Yugoslavia despite sanctions Subject: U.N. officials say Serbian unmonitored tanks advancing from west Subject: Bosnian-Serbs blamed for attack, Izetbegovic to attend talks ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Security Council allows 6,000 more troops in Bosnia-Hercegovina Date: 15 Sep 92 02:45:39 GMT UNITED NATIONS (UPI) -- The U.N. Security Council voted Monday to allow Secretary-General Boutros Ghali to strengthen the U.N. peacekeeping operations in Bosnia-Hercegovina by 6,000 trooops and to accept financial contribution from Western countries to the peace force. The 12-0 vote, with three abstentions, by the council also authorized the establishment of a ``no-fly'' zone in the troubled former Yugoslav republic. One U.S. official said in Washington Monday that the European Community wanted to monitor from the ground all military aircraft flights over Bosnia-Hercegovina to thwart any interference with the U.N. -led humanitarian airlift. The United States has insisted that jet fighter patrols be used to enforce the no-fly zone which was agreed upon at the European Community- United Nations conference on the former Yugoslavia in London last month. ``The EC is thinking about ground monitors,'' a U.S. official said in Washington. ``We are looking at it in terms of doing something like (air combat patrols.)'' Last week Ghali asked the Security Council to send up to 6,000 more peacekeeping troops to Bosnia-Hercegovina and to authorize them to use force in self-defense. Ghali said the new troops, possibly to be provided and paid for by NATO countries, will be scattered throughout the war-torn Balkan republic at four or five centers, in Banja Luka, Bihac, Doboj, Goradze, Mostar and Tuzla. Each center will have an infantry battalion, logistical and mine clearing units and medical evacuation groups. Their main duty would be to provide security for humanitarian operations being organized by the U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees, which is spearheading the relief activities in Bosnia-Hercegovina. The 6,000 troops will strengthen the existing 14,000-strong U.N. Protection Force which was sent earlier this year to Croatia in an effort to put an end to the civil war there. There also 1,600 peacekeepers in Sarajevo whose task has been to protect the international airport for incoming humanitarian flights. The resolution said the importance of air measures, ``such as the ban on military flights'' over Bosnia-Hercegovina would reinforce the security of humanitarian activities on the grounds. The request for the additional 6,000 U.N. troops is aimed at increasing security for an expanded food convoys, which the United Nations said would be more effective in bringing larger quantities of food and medical supplies to besieged cities in Bosnia-Hercegovina before the winter than the airlift. The council authorized Ghali to accept financial assistance from troop contributors, which would ease the cash-strapped world organization. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: China pledges aid for former Yugoslavia despite sanctions Date: 15 Sep 92 10:16:21 GMT BEIJING (UPI) -- Yugoslav Prime Minister Milan Panic on his visit to China said Tuesday Premier Li Peng had offered humanitarian aid to his country in spite of international sanctions. At a news conference at Beijing's Great Hall of the People, the millionaire businessman-turned-diplomat said that Chinese Premier Li Peng had thrown his support behind Panic's government and the upcoming peace talks. When pressed on the point, Panic admitted there had been no specific promise by the Chinese, but said they had promised support in principle. ``(Li Peng) said he fully supports the new government, which is trying to solve the problems peacefully,'' Panic said. ``Li said the Chinese government hopes parties concerned will immediately accept a cease-fire and settle their conflicts through negotiation,'' the official China Daily reported Tuesday. Panic said Li Peng had talked of sending humanitarian aid such as cooking oil and food to Serbia and Montenegro in spite of international sanctions. Panic was visiting China on a three-day ``working visit'' to secure the support of China as part of the United Nations. Since limited military and other sanctions have been placed on Belgrade, Panic has seen his country increasingly isolated diplomatically. As one of five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, China holds the power of veto over any decision on sanctions made by the council. While not committing itself to a veto, China has said it is opposed to additional international sanctions and U.N. military intervention. Panic, a U.S. immigrant who prides himself on his close relationship with the Bush administration, is the founder and chairman of the board of the California-based pharmaceutical giant ICN. The neophyte diplomat, who earlier this month emerged victorious from a no-confidence motion in Serbia's parliament and a political test of wills with hard-line Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, has wagered his political life on obtaining a peace agreement in Bosnia and establishing relations with Croatia. He said he was optimistic about the upcoming peace conference, to be held in Geneva beginning this Friday. ``An enormous amount of work has been done in the government of Yugoslavia to prepare for this conference,'' Panic said. ``I think there is no question that Serbs are now prepared to give up territory, to silence the guns, and to negotiate with Muslims and Croats,'' he said. Panic lavished praise on recent Chinese economic reforms, saying that Chinese enjoyed greater political freedoms because of their recent economic growth. ``It is much easier to change politics when you are rich than when you are poor,'' he said, adding ``The only truly free man is an economically free one.'' ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: U.N. officials say Serbian unmonitored tanks advancing from west Date: 15 Sep 92 12:21:30 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- Serbian tanks hidden from U.N. monitors Tuesday methodically leveled houses in a Sarajevo suburb in a thrust that could bring them into positions to cut the U.N.-controlled airport off from the Bosnian capital, U.N. officials said. The situation threatened to create serious problems between the Serbs and the U.N. Protection Force, which is empowered by the U.N. Security Council to use force if necessary to move humanitarian aid from airport warehouses into the city. A U.N. source said UNPROFOR had already asked Serbian leaders to guarantee the unrestricted movement of U.N. vehicles and relief convoys between the airport and downtown Sarajevo should Serbian forces gain control of the airport road. The drive was part of what senior UNPROFOR officers called the most concerted Serbian advance on Sarajevo since the early stages of the more than five-month-old war in Bosnia-Hercegovina. The officers said that at least 10 Yugoslav army-supplied tanks were involved in the Serbian thrust from Dogladi, through Bare and into Adzici, Croat-dominated suburbs about 5 miles to the west of the center of the beseiged city. They said that at about 5 a.m., the Serbian tanks began firing for about 90 minutes on homes in Adzici, methodically targeting one after the other. ``They were raising them,'' said one officer. Local media reports and witnesses said Croatian civilians were fleeing Dogladi and Adzici in large numbers amid widespread destruction of homes. The Serbian advance began Monday, the officers said, coinciding with one of the fiercest bombardments launched against Sarajevo since Serbian forces moved in late March to carve a self-declared state out of the former Yugoslav republic of Muslim Slavs, Serbs and Croats. The division of Europe's newest country is opposed by forces loyal to the Sarajevo government and comprised mostly of Muslim Slavs, but also including Croats and moderate Serbs. Monday's indiscriminate barrages left scores of civilian casualties and came amid reports of an upsurge across Bosnia-Hercegovina in Serbian attacks, including air raids around the Bihac area. The U.N. officers said that just as with artillery used in Monday's barrages, the tanks in Adzici were outside the 11 zones in which Serbian leader Radovan Karadzic had agreed to gather all Serbian heavy weaponry for U.N. observation by noon Saturday. Ten other Serbian tanks, also outside the U.N.-observed ``concentration areas,'' unleashed pre-dawn barrages Tuesday from the Serbian base of Lukavica into Bosnian-controlled Butmir, a housing colony opposite the airport, the officers said. Karadzic consented at least month's London peace conference to place under U.N. monitoring all Serbian heavy weapons around Sarajevo, Bihac and the towns of Gorazde and Jajce. The U.N. officers said they were concerned by the Serbian advance on Adzici because if it continued, it could bring the tank-backed Serbian forces into the mostly Croat suburb of Stup, from where they would be able to cut the road linking the airport and downtown Sarajevo. The airport, which has been under U.N. control since June 29, is the base of the U.N.-supervised humanitarian relief operations for Sarajevo and other areas of the war-ravaged republic. The fall of Stup carries other implications as the suburb has served as a buffer zone in which Sarajevo residents have been able to purchase for hard currency food and fuel from Croats in league with the Serbs. The Serbian advance along Sarajevo's western boundary is apparently aimed at retaking ground lost in recent weeks to Bosnian forces fighting to break through the blockade of the city before the harsh Balkan winter sets in. A Bosnian commander, Zlatko Lagumzia, said he had lost 10 men in fierce fighting Monday against Serbian forces backed by two tanks in the western suburb of Ilidza. He said he was forced to order his units to retreat, although official government statements claimed Bosnian troops had held their ground. Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic on Sunday decided against attending a new round of peace talks set for Friday in Geneva, in part because of what he alleged was the deployment around Sarajevo of 100 new Serbian tanks. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Bosnian-Serbs blamed for attack, Izetbegovic to attend talks Date: 15 Sep 92 12:13:51 GMT GENEVA (UPI) -- The co-chairmen of the Geneva conference on the former Yugoslavia Tuesday accused Bosnian-Serb forces of being responsible for an air attack Monday on the town of Bihac, a U.N. spokesman said. The two chairmen, Cyrus Vance and Lord David Owen, have written to Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic condemning the attack in which four unidentified planes attacked the town with rockets and cluster bombs. U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard told a news conference that Vance and Owen had concluded that Serbian forces must have been responsible. ``Although the co-chairmen recognize that the Bosnian Serbs are not the only source of the current hostilities, they are the only ones with the aerial capability to mount attacks of this kind,'' U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard told a news conference. ``The co-chairmen deplore these attacks and have told Mr. Karadzic so in a letter,'' Eckhard said. ``They have called on him to cooperate in the fullest possible way with the peace process and the agreements signed in London.'' Meanwhile, in an unexpected turnaround, Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic said he will after all be attending the talks in the Swiss capital later this week, the U.N. official said. The Muslim Slav president, who earlier said he would not attend the Geneva talks, has changed his mind after a personal plea from Owen and Vance, Eckhard said. The spokesman said Croatia and the Serbian federal government would also be represented. Radovan Karadzic will also attend the talks, Eckhard said. The conference in Geneva follows the London conference on the former Yugoslavia. It is scheduled to bring leaders of the main ethnic factions involved in the conflict together in Geneva Friday. A news conference by Vance and Owen scheduled for Tuesday was postponed for 24 hours and Eckhard said he hoped they would have more details then.
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Subject: Yugoslav camp detainees arrive in Britain Subject: U.N. general says Serbs ignore weapon requests Subject: Russia drops opposition to barring Belgrade from U.N. Subject: U.N. says Italian relief plane shot down by missile near Sarajevo ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Yugoslav camp detainees arrive in Britain Date: 15 Sep 92 20:11:43 GMT LONDON (UPI) -- Sixty-eight sick and injured detainees from Serb-run camps in Bosnia-Hercegovina were flown into Britain Tuesday in what is planned to be the start of an ongoing evacuation of civilian prisoners from the republic, officials said. The detainees, who flew into Stansted airport north of London before being moved to hospitals in the area for medical treatment, could be joined by their families at a later date, the International Committee of the Red Cross said. The detainees, all men, appeared gaunt as they walked or were carried on stretchers down the airplane steps to be received by a fleet of 25 ambulances. The prisoners were being held at the Manjaca and Trnopolje detention camps near Banja Luka in northwest Bosnia-Hercegovina, an ICRC spokesman said. They were handed over to ICRC officials in the region, before being flown by a specially chartered plane direct to the United Kingdom, an ICRC official said. ``These pepole were examined by ICRC doctors and selected based on their health condition. Some of them were cancer victims or had similar diseases not necessarily caused by the life in the camps,'' said Jack McIver, political advisor at the EC monitoring mission in Zagreb. The British government has agreed to allow the detainees' relatives to join them at a later date, the ICRC said. The airlift was organized in line with an agreement at the London peace talks on the former Yugoslavia, which guaranteed the unconditional release of all civilian detainees. The ICRC said it had not yet received full information about detention camps and prisoners, but added that it ``regards today's operation as the first step in this release process.'' ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: U.N. general says Serbs ignore weapon requests Date: 16 Sep 92 19:13:03 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- Serbian forces have ignored repeated requests to abide by an accord to place all of their heavy weapons under United Nations monitoring as they pursue an advance in Sarajevo's western suburbs, the U.N. commander in the Bosnian capital said Wednesday. ``The Serbs have a military goal and they want to achieve it by all means, and it is very difficult to convince them to put all heavy weapons in concentration areas,'' Egyptian Brig. Gen. Hussein Abdel Razek of the U.N. Protection Force (UNPROFOR) said in an interview. Serbian leader Radovan Karadzic agreed at last month's London peace conference to place all of his tanks, cannons and large mortars under U. N. monitoring in 11 locations around Sarajevo, and publicly guaranteed that he had done so by a Saturday noon deadline. The plan was designed as a first step toward ending the more than five-month war pitting Serbs determined to capture a self-declared state against Bosnian forces comprised mostly of Muslim Slavs, but also including Croats and moderate Serbs, who oppose the partition of the former Yugoslav republic. But, Razek said that Serbian forces failed to abide by the accord, pounding Sarajevo on Monday for nine hours with both big guns gathered in the so-called ``concentration areas'' and others hidden from UNPROFOR. Serbian forces also persisted Wednesday in using secretly retained heavy weapons, including 10 tanks, in an ongoing attempt to smash through Bosnian forces holding the western, mostly Croat suburbs of Dogladi, Bare and Adzici, Razek said. Razek said he had made numerous requests to Serbian commanders to fulfill their London agreement and place all of their heavy weapons under U.N. monitoring. Asked what answers he received, Razek replied: ``The shelling tells you.'' He noted that the Bosnian military was not obliged to place its heavy weapons under U.N. ``supervision'' until UNPROFOR provided a written guarantee that the Serbs had done so with all of their guns of more than 82mm. ``Up until now, frankly, I can't say that,'' Razek said. ``I cannot give them (the Bosnian military) a written statement.'' Razek said he was scheduled to hold talks Thursday with Serbian leaders on the issue at which he would again formally request they observe the London agreement. ``I am going to discuss with them specifically if they are serious in implementing this process or not,'' he said. The talks were to take place a day before the start of a new round of peace negotiations between the warring factions in Geneva under the co- chairmanship of U.N. special envoy Cyrus Vance and European Community mediator Lord David Owen. The Serbian advance in the western outskirts of Sarajevo began on Monday under the diversionary cover of the bombardment of the city, one of the worst of the war. Explosions and machine gun fire echoed throughout the day and into the night Wednesday from the dust-shrouded area, located only about 3 miles west of the center of the capital. On Tuesday, U.N. officials said, Serbian tanks systematically blasted Croatian homes to the ground in Adzici. Razek said he believed the thrust was intended to retake ground captured by Bosnian troops struggling to break the more than five-month- old siege by Serbian forces seeking to divide Sarajevo into ethnic districts. The offensive was being overseen by a Serbian general who was appointed to the Sarajevo area less than two weeks ago, said Razek, who declined to disclose the officer's name. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Russia drops opposition to barring Belgrade from U.N. Date: 16 Sep 92 19:27:39 GMT WASHINGTON (UPI) -- Russia no longer opposes denying Serbia and Montenegro the United Nations' seat once occupied by Yugoslavia, an administration official said Wednesday. The Union of Serbia and Montenegro, the unrecognized successor states to Yugolsavia, claim Belgrade's seat in the United Nations. But the United States and the European Community, as a result of Belgrade's relentless siege of Bosnia-Hercegovina, have pressed the United Nations to deny Serbia and Montenegro the de-facto recognition that would come with representation British Ambassador David Hannay told the opening session of the U.N. General Assembly Tuesday that ``it is anomalous and unacceptable that representatives of...Serbia and Montenegro should continue to participate in the work of United Nations.'' Russian Ambassador Yuli Vorontsov said that denying Belgrade the seat would hurt U.N. efforts to broker peace in the war-torn Balkans, with which Russia has always had close strategic and philosophical ties. Only the five permanent members of the Security Council, to which Russia belongs and thus has veto power over any action, can approve the measure. But an administration official speaking under conditions of anonymity said that the Russians have now dropped their opposition to the plan. ``I don't think they are a problem,'' the official said. ``Their position has evolved. We're working on language to achieve this goal.'' State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Wednesday the United States was consulting on a resolution with the other four permanent members of the Security Council -- China, France, Russia and Great Britian -- to ``achieve our objective of denying Belgrade's claim.'' Boucher said that Serbia and Montenegro should apply for U.N. membership if they want to join the 179-member body. ``We do not consider Serbia-Montenegro to be the continuation or the sole successor to the former Yugoslavia,'' he said. ``We firmly believe that Serbia and Montenegro should be required to apply for membership in the United Nations and should meet the criteria for admission before being admitted.'' The United Nations has admitted the former Yugoslav republics of Bosnia-Hercegovina, Croatia and Slovenia. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: U.N. says Italian relief plane shot down by missile near Sarajevo Date: 16 Sep 92 19:41:51 GMT UNITED NATIONS (UPI) -- The Italian relief plane downed near Sarajevo this month was destroyed by a heat-seeking missile or an improved version of the U.S.-made Stinger missile, the U.N. refugee agency said Wednesday. The preliminary report of the investigation by the Italian government said the destruction of the plane, which killed four crew members on Sept. 3, was caused by a heat-seeking missile SA9, or SA16, or an improved Stinger missile, the U.N. Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva said. The plane, a G-222 aircraft which was carrying blankets for refugees in Sarajevo, crashed 17 miles south of the capital of Bosnia-Hercegovina and witnesses reported seeing at least two missiles fired at the plane, one of which hit it. The downing of the plane forced the suspension of the U.N.-led humanitarian airlift campaign to bring badly needed food and medical supplies to Sarajevo and besieged cities in the Balkan republic before the winter. ``The results (of the investigation) obtained so far suggest without any doubt that the aircraft G-222 had been struck at least by one missile that had probably been provided with infra-red guidance,'' the report said. The report said the crash area was mountainous and there was no evidence of any involvement of radar emissions or sophisticated radio- controlled or radar-based missiles units. It concluded that the missile must have been easily transportable. The report did not indicate which side in the conflict in Bosnia- Hercegovina was involved in the downing of the plane. A news report from Islamabad, Pakistan, suggested last week that a Stinger missile might have been involved in the crash. The report said Muslim elements in Afghanistan may have given the Stingers to Muslim Slavs in Bosnia-Hercegovina. The United States supplied the deadly accurate Stinger missiles to the rebels during the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. The UNHCR said refugee commissioner Sadako Ogata met in Geneva on Wednesday with representatives from the United States, Britain, Italy, Canada, France, Germany, Norway and Sweden to discuss the investigative report and the possible resumption of the humanitarian airlift. Ogata is expected to recommend the resumption by week's end. The agency has increased the number food convoys to Sarajevo and other Bosnian cities since the suspension of the airlift which brought about 200 tons of food in daily. The Security Council on Monday allowed Secretary-General Boutros Ghali to send up to 6,000 new U.N. peacekeeping soldiers to Bosnia- Hercegovina. Their main task will be to provide security for the food convoys. There are currently 1,600 U.N. troops guarding the Sarajevo airport. In a related development, the Bosnian U.N. Ambassador Muhamed Sacirbey said at news conference that he was concerned that a recent statement issued by U.N. forces in Sarajevo was a ``ploy to force my government to negotiate from a position of diplomatic weakness.'' The U.N. statement, released Sept. 9, found Bosnian forces had ``deliberately perpetrated'' four attacks on the U.N. peace-keeping forces in which three U.N. soldiers were killed in the past month. Among the dead were two Frenchmen who were killed in an attack against an unarmed food convoy on Sept. 8 at the Sarajevo airport. Sacirbey called the U.N. statement ``repulsive as well as inaccurate and inconsistent with our obvious objectives.'' He objected that an official statement had been made before all the incidents could be investigated. Sacirbey pointed to reports about the attack on the French convoy that contradicted the U.N. version of the incident. The reports said the convoy had been caught in crossfire between the two militias. ``Clearly our troops were not trying to shoot or kill or injure any U.N. troops,'' Sacirbey said. The ambassador said the statement implied an effort to ``reach a quick negotiated end (to the Yugoslavian conflict) that for Bosnia- Hercegovina could mean capitulation.''
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RFE/RL Daily Report No. 177, 15 September 1992 SUCCESSOR STATES TO THE USSR WARNINGS OF HYPERINFLATION IN RUSSIA. Somewhat belatedly, top Russian officials have been warning of the very real possibility of hyperinflation. President Yeltsin told regional officials in Cheboksary on 11 September that supporters of cheap credits and unrealistic social programs are pushing Russia into the abysss of hyperinflation, according to Reuter. Evgenii Yasin warned on the same day that hyperinflation had not yet arrived but that it was closer than ever before, Biznes-TASS reported. And Sergei Vasiliev, in an interview with The New York Times of 15 September, laid the blame for looming hyperinflation squarely on the acting chairman of the Russian Central Bank, Viktor Gerashchenko. (Keith Bush) PLAUSIBILITY OF WARNINGS. The generally accepted definition of hyperinflation is a rise in prices of 50% or more a month. This can well happen in October, in the opinion of Anders Aslund,quoted in the same New York Times article, "and once you hit hyperinflation, it destroys most economic institutions." Indeed,the imminent increase in the controlled wholesale prices of energy-carriers will cause a substantial leap in the overall price index. But, as the article suggests, these warnings are probably aimed primarily at creating a sense of emergency and at organizing public pressure on the parliament, the Congress of People's Deputies, and the Russian Central Bank to act more responsibly. (Keith Bush) RUSSIA TO RECEIVE MORE US FOOD AID. The Department of Agriculture announced in Washington that the US is makinganother $1.15 billion in loans available to Russia for foodimports this winter, according to Western news agencies. Most of the aid, $900 million, is in the form of loan guarantees for creditors providing import financing. The Los Angeles Times on 15 September said that the Yeltsin government had lobbiedWashington to approve the food aid early, before winter got underway. Last year Russia began urgently appealing for Western assistance only after the winter's food supply crisis hadalready developed. Since the beginning of 1991, the US has reportedly provided Russia with $5.75 billion in food credit. (Erik Whitlock) KHASBULATOV ON POSSIBILITY OF CONFEDERATION. Russian parliamentary speaker Ruslan Khasbulatov said during his trip to Kyrgyzstan that he believes the establishment of an interparliamentary assembly of CIS states, which will become official at the summit of CIS state leaders in Bishtek on 25 September, is the beginning of the creation of a new confederation of former Soviet republics. The assembly is scheduled to become an independently operating organization with the right to dispute decisions made by the leaders of CIS states. Interfax quoted Khasbulatov as saying that Ukraine's absence in no way affects the work of the interparliamentary assembly because Ukraine will join the assembly at a later stage. (Alexander Rahr) "DEMOCRATIC RUSSIA" PREPARED TO FIGHT. The Coordinating Council of the "Democratic Russia" movement has issued an appeal to the Russian people to fight attempts by the old nomenklatura forces to halt privatization and reform, DR-Press reported on 11 September. The St. Petersburg regional section of the Democratic Party of Russia decided to support "Democratic Russia" and to distance itself from the central leadership of the Democratic Party of Russia, headed by Nikolai Travkin, which had formed a coalition with the Civic Union. Meanwhile, the leadership of the Civic Union decided to join a nationwide campaign for the organization of a referendum on private ownership of land. (Alexander Rahr) RUSSIA ASSURES US ON BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS. U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher on 14 September said that Russia had given assurances that it would end "all aspects" of its biological warfare program. Western press accounts of his statement indicated that the pledge had been given during talks between American and Russian representatives in Moscow on 1011 September. Boucher said that on-site inspections were among the measures agreed by both sides. Last month American and British government sources expressed doubts that the Russian program had been terminated despite President Yeltsin's earlier order banning the production of biological weapons. (Doug Clarke) RUSSIANS BALK AT SOME CONVENTIONAL ARMS INSPECTIONS. Richard Boucher said on 11 September that Russia had refused allied arms inspectors access to parts of some military facilities inspected during August and September under the terms of the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty. That treaty became legally binding on the signatories on 17 July 1992. According to Western agency reports, Boucher acknowledged that the treaty was a complex one and that problems during its implementation were "probably inevitable." He indicated that the Russians had barred inspectors from entering some storage, administrative, and other facilities in garrisons said to be housing military equipment limited by the treaty. (Doug Clarke) GORBACHEV TO ATTEND SOCIALIST INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS. Mikhail Gorbachev will attend the next Socialist International as a guest of honor, "Vesti" reported on September 14. (The Congress is scheduled to open today in Berlin.) About 70 parties from various states of the world have applied for membership and are waiting for their application to be reviewed at the Congress, "Vesti" noted. The list includes a number of Russian political parties, among them the Social Democratic Party of Russia, which includes a number of prominent politicians, such as Oleg Rumyantsev, the author of the official draft of the new Russian Constitution and an ardent Gorbachev critic. (Julia Wishnevsky) SUPREME SOVIET TO RECONSIDER DEFENSE LAW. The chairman of the Russian Supreme Soviet Committee on Legislation, Mikhail Mityukov, told ITAR-TASS on 14 September that the "law on defense" will be considered once again by the parliament at its upcoming session. On 10 August, Yeltsin refused to sign the law, which had been approved by the Supreme Soviet on 26 June, because, among other reasons, it limited his authority to appoint the defense minister. Mityukov said that members of his committee supported Yeltsin's proposal that the President be granted sole authority to name the defense minister, the chief of the General Staff, and the commanders of all service brancheswithout the approval of the Supreme Sovietand that the President himself should submit for approval to the Supreme Soviet plans for the composition, structure, and strength of the Russian armed forces and its leadership. (Stephen Foye). KOBETS NAMED TO NEW POST. Army General Konstantin Kobets has been named chief military inspector of the Russian armed forces by Boris Yeltsin, Interfax reported on 14 September. Kobets, 53, was a deputy chief of the USSR General Staff (for communications), and his role in organizing the defense of the Russian government building during the failed August coup catapulted him into a leading role in the post-coup Soviet and Russian armed forces. He subsequently served as chief (and then chairman) of the RSFSR State Committee for Defense and Security, as a military advisor to Yeltsin, and as a Deputy Chairman of the Russian State Commission for the Creation of a Russian Defense Ministry. It is unclear what powers he will exercise as chief military inspector. (Stephen Foye) STATE OF RUSSIAN TANK FORCES. The chief of Russian armored forces, Col. Gen. Aleksandr Galkin, said in Krasnaya zvezda on 12 September that the most modern machinesT-726's and T-80'sconstituted only 25% of the current total Russian tank fleet. He nevertheless expressed optimism that design work in tank production was moving ahead at an acceptable pace, and that the value of the tank forces would not be underestimated during the creation of a new, highly mobile and professional Russian army. Galkin's remarks were summarized by ITAR-TASS on 12 September. (Stephen Foye) "SOVIET PEOPLE"A REALITY? Researchers at the Institute of General Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences claim that the "Soviet people," long the mainstay of the Brezhnev-Suslov nationalities policy, really exist. The researchers say that their studies show that "the Soviet people"a concept despised by many former Soviet citizens and seen by many as a cover for Russification policiesis not an artificial ploy and that there is a single genetic code for the "Soviet people." Consequently, they argue, today's "dispersion in national apartments," that is, the independence of the former republics, is "only a temporary historical-geographical fluctuation." The report was cited by Arkadii Volsky, President of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, interviewed in Pravda of 9 September, in support of his argument that empires like the Russian and the Soviet ones do not disappear "without leaving a trace." Volsky stressed, however, his realization of the fact that "the restoration of the Soviet Union at present is excluded." (Roman Solchanyk) CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE COURT RULES PRUNSKIENE COLLABORATED WITH KGB. On 14 September after three months of hearings, the Lithuanian Supreme Court ruled that former Prime Minister Kazimiera Prunskiene had consciously cooperated with the KGB, the RFE/RL Lithuanian Service reports. The ruling was based on information supplied by the parliament commission investigating KGB activities, including her pledge to cooperate signed on 8 June 1980. The court noted that Prunskiene did not present evidence disproving the commission's documents. The parliament is empowered to suspend her as a deputy and schedule a vote of confidence in her district, but is unlikely to do so since new Seimas elections will he held on 25 October and Prunskiene had announced several months ago that she will not run again. (Saulius Girnius) HEAVY SHELLING OF SARAJEVO. On 14 September the BBC said that Serbian artillery subjected the Bosnian capital to some of the worst shelling of the war. The 15 September Washington Post quoted UN personnel as saying that this showed that the Serbs had not revealed all their big guns to UN monitors and that both sides seem to be fighting a conventional war for strategic advantage before winter arrived in October. Serbian aircraft apparently based at Banja Luka dropped cluster bombs on Bihac, and fired air-to-ground missiles as well on 14 September. Western news agencies also quoted UN sources as saying that the Serbs heavily shelled Gradacac, Brcko, and Bosanski Brod. Meanwhile in Croatia, the 13 September Novi vjesnik gave extensive coverage to the second anniversary of Croatian antiterrorist units. (Patrick Moore) UN TO INCREASE ROLE IN BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA. On 14 September the Security Council voted to send up to 6,000 more troops to protect humanitarian efforts in the troubled republic in addition to the 1,500 UN forces already there. The BBC on 15 September said that the vote was 120-3, with China, India, and Zimbabwe abstaining. Canada, Britain, and France will contribute and pay for the bulk of the new land forces, while the US will offer air and sea support. Washington, London, and Paris failed to agree in time on the modalities of a no-fly zone for Bosnia, so no decision was reached on that issue. UN spokesmen have sa&id that Serbian aircraft shadow UN relief flights to Sarajevo to minimize chances of being shot at by Bosnian or Croatian forces. (Patrick Moore) PANIC IN MOSCOW AND BEIJING. On 13 September Milan Panic, the prime minister of the rump Yugoslavia, began a three-day visit to Moscow and Beijing. Panic is seeking support from both countries in order to prevent a possible vote on expulsion by the UN Security Council later this month. In Moscow Panic met with Deputy Foreign Minister Boris Kolokolov, who told ITAR-TASS that Panic gave him the impression that his government "really is trying to resolve the conflict." In Beijing Premier Li Peng said that all former Yugoslav republics and the rump Yugoslavia "should have their own place within the United Nations and other international organizations," stressing that "Yugoslavia's expulsion would have serious consequences for all." But the Chinese leader did not explicitly say whether China will support the rump Yugoslavia's claim to a UN seat. Li Peng also said China is concerned over the worsening situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina and expressed deep sympathy with the people there. Panic also requested from the Chinese "humanitarian aid with oil." Xinhua and Radio Serbia carried the report. (Milan Andrejevich) CRISIS CONTINUES IN REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA. A team of CSCE experts arrived in Skopje on 11 September to determine whether monitors ought to be posted to the Macedonian-Serbian border in an effort to check the possible expansion of the wars of Yugoslav succession. It is not clear whether the observers would be military or civilian, but the head of the mission, Robert Frowick, an American, noted that posting observers would "demonstrate the support of the international community for the territorial integrity of . . . Macedonia," Reuters and BTA report. The border between the Republic of Macedonia and the predominantly Albanian Kosovo region of Serbia is especially volatile. In a related story, other Western agencies report that the Republic of Macedonia's only oil refinery was shut down on 12 September because 70,000 tons of crude oil were blocked at the port of Thessaloniki, apparently as part of ongoing Greek pressure to force the new republic to drop the word "Macedonia" from its official name. (Duncan Perry) BULGARIA'S EXILED KING SEEKS A COMEBACK. Simeon II, who departed Bulgaria at the age of 6 following the onset of communism, said in a Madrid interview on 14 September that a return of the monarchy is in Bulgaria's best interest. He noted that the legislature could create a grand national assembly and restore himwithout the need of a popular referendum. The former king is a businessman in Spain, where he lives with his family. He has been low-key about pressing for his return to Bulgaria in order to give the legislature and the population time to consider the prospect. Simeon has a following in Bulgaria and a monarchist political party exists; however, he does not seem to have majority popular support and certainly does not have the support of a majority in the parliament. Simeon is married to a wealthy Spaniard and has five children, none of whom speaks Bulgarian. (Duncan Perry) GANEV ASSUMES UNGA PRESIDENCY. Bulgarian Foreign Minister Stoyan Ganev was elected president of the UN General Assembly and takes over that post officially on 15 September, Bulgarian and Western sources note. Ganev has energetically pursued a policy of integrating Bulgaria with Western countries and has succeeded in drawing Bulgaria closer to Europe; it joined the Council of Europe during his tenure in the Foreign Ministry. Ganev is 37 years old, a lawyer by training, and speaks Russian and English. (Duncan Perry) ILIESCU MEETS POPE. Romanian President Ion Iliescu was received on 14 September by Pope John Paul II at his summer residence Castel Gandolfo. Radio Bucharest, which described the private interview as a "tete-a-tete," noted that Iliescu is the first foreign official to see the pope after his surgery in mid-July. John Paul expressed hopes that Romania will completely restore democracy and religious freedom and that relations between the Vatican and Romania will further develop. Iliescu later met in Rome with Italian president Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, with whom he discussed mutual ties and prospects for Romania's association with the EC. Rome was the last leg on Iliescu's three-day visit to Spain and Italy. (Dan Ionescu) ROMANIA'S RUMP COMMUNIST PARTY BACKS ILIESCU. A spokesman for Romania's reborn communist party, the Socialist Labor Party, announced at a press conference on 14 September that his party has decided to support incumbent president Ion Iliescu in the 27 September presidential race. Reuters quoted the spokesman as saying that his party "will not field its own presidential candidate in order to preserve the unity of the left wing." In a press statement the SLP praised Iliescu for alleged "tolerance and transparency" during his term in office, saying he tried "to defuse tension and conflicts and strengthen the role of democratic bodies." Iliescu, a former communist, was a high-ranking party official before falling out of favor with late dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in 1971. (Dan Ionescu) ROMANIAN ASSOCIATION WITH THE EC. On 14 September a Romanian delegation began a new round of negotiations in Brussels on association with the European Community. In an interview with Radio Bucharest, delegation leader Napoleon Pop said that the two-day talks will focus on the text of some 10 articles (out of a 124-points association agreement) dealing with Romanian exports of agricultural products, iron and steel, and textiles to EC countries. (Dan Ionescu) WARSAW SOLIDARITY HOLDS PROTEST MARCH. Several thousand members of Solidarity's radical Mazowsze region marched through Warsaw on 14 September. The protesters said their aim was to pressure the government and the parliament into providing an economic program satisfactory to workers. The Mazowsze region's firebrand leader, Maciej Jankowski, threatened a general strike as a last resort that would determine whether "the elites will send us packing or we will send the elites packing." Other demonstrators claimed that this would be the "last peaceful demonstration" by unionists in Warsaw and shouted, "We want facts, not pacts" and "No more thieving privatization." (Louisa Vinton) HUNGARIANS GET COMPENSATION FOR COMMUNIST SEIZURES. The head of the national compensation office, Tamas Sepsey, told MTI that his agency has ruled on 202,340 claims for compensation for property seized by the communist regime and has paid out some 9.5 billion forint. He reported that only 130,000 of the 830,000 applicants for compensation wish to use the compensation vouchers to buy land; during the first two weeks of land auctions 86 people received land. Sepsey said that Hungarians living abroad are also eligible for compensation but most of them do not know about the opportunity. He promised to provide more information about compensation through Hungarian embassies. (Edith Oltay) [As of 1200 CET] Compiled by Hal Kosiba & Charles Trumbull The RFE/RL Daily Report is produced by the RFE/RL Research Institute (a division of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Inc.) with the assistance of the RFE/RL News and Current Affairs Division (NCA). The report is available by electronic mail via LISTSERV (RFERL-L@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU), on the Sovset' computer bulletin board, by fax, and by postal mail. For inquiries about specific news items, subscriptions, or additional copies, please contact: In USA: Mr. Jon Lodeesen or Mr. Brian Reed RFE/RL, Inc. 1201 Connecticut Avenue NW Washington, DC 20036. Telephone: (202) 457-6912 or -6900 fax: (202) 457-6992 or -202-828-8783; Internet: RI-DC@RFERL.ORG or in Europe: Ms. Helga Hofer Publications Department RFE/RL Research Institute Oettingenstrasse 67 8000 Munich 22 Telephone: (+49 89) 2102-2631 or -2642 fax: (+49 89) 2102-2648 Internet: Pubs@RFERL.ORG Copyright 1992, RFE/RL, Inc. All rights reserved.
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RFE/RL Daily Report No. 178, 16 September 1992 SUCCESSOR STATES TO THE USSR SITUATION IN TAJIKISTAN. Authorities in Kulyab Oblast have accused opposition forces of killing nine people and taking ten hostages in a gun battle on 14 September, ITAR-TASS reported the following day. The invaders apparently came from Kurgan-Tyube Oblast, which has been attacked repeatedly by fighters from Kulyab who support deposed President Rakhmon Nabiev. Ostankino TV's evening news reported on 14 September that Tajikistan's leading Muslim cleric, Kazi Akbar Turadzhonzoda, has protested the decision of opposition-controlled Tajik TV to stop rebroadcasting Russian TV programs. The head of Tajik TV claimed that Russian reporting on events on Tajikistan was distorted. The kazi agreed, but objected to "an information famine." (Bess Brown, RFE/RL, Inc.) SITUATION IN ABKHAZIA STILL "EXTREMELY COMPLICATED". The tripartite commission charged with monitoring the Abkhaz peace agreement met in Adler on 15 September and drew up an accord on the disengagement of Abkhaz and Georgian forces in north-west Abkhazia and a new ceasefire agreement to take effect at midnight on 15 September, ITAR-TASS reported. Addressing the State Council in Tbilisi, Chairman Eduard Shevardnadze said that he had informed Russian President Boris Yeltsin by telephone that Abkhazia was violating the ceasefire agreement. Shevardnadze characterized the situation in Abkhazia as still "extremely complicated" and stated that Georgia's military contingent in the region would be strengthened. (Liz Fuller, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIA REJECTS UN EXPULSION OF YUGOSLAVIA. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Sergei Yastrzhembsky said on 15 September that Russia opposes the idea of isolating rump Yugoslavia by expelling it from international organizations such as the United Nations. He noted that Russia could use its veto power during a vote at the UN to block the expulsion of Yugoslavia, ITAR-TASS reported on 15 September. This statement is in line with remarks made by Milan Panic in late July, apparently based on discussions during the CSCE summit in Helsinki. Panic was quoted by Izvestiya on 31 July as saying: "President Boris Yeltsin promised me that if necessary, Russia will use its veto one hundred times in the UN Security Council to oppose a resolution on the exclusion of Yugoslavia." (Suzanne Crow, RFE/RL, Inc.) CIS INTERPARLIAMENTARY ASSEMBLY OPENS. The Interparliamentary Assembly of the CIS has gone into its first session in Bishkek, ITAR-TASS reported on 15 September. Parliamentary delegations from Armenia, Belarus, Kazhakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan--the CIS states which have signed the agreement on the creation of the Interparliamentary Assembly--are participating. A delegation from Uzbekistan, which also signed the agreement, did not arrive for the first session. The parliamentary delegations are being headed by the speakers of the parliaments of the CIS member states. The Assembly will discuss the development of interstate relations inside the CIS, the role of parliaments in the social protection of the population, and general economic problems. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL, Inc.) KHASBULATOV ELECTED HEAD OF INTERPARLIAMENTARY ASSEMBLY. Russian parliamentary speaker Ruslan Khasbulatov has been elected Chairman of the CIS Interparliamentary Assembly, ITAR-TASS reported on 15 September. Khasbulatov will preside over the work of the Assembly for one year. It has also been decided that St. Petersburg will become the seat of the Interparliamentary Assembly. The statute of the Assembly was adopted and agreement has been reached on the creation of permanent Assembly commissions on cooperation in legal, economic, humanitarian, ecological and military affairs. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL, Inc.) BANKER WARNS AGAINST RUSSIAN DEBT REDUCTION. The managing director of the prestigious Washington-based Institute of International Finance, Horst Schulman, announced at a news conference that offering Russia debt relief would be a mistake. According to a RFE/RL correspondent reporting on 16 September, Schulman asserted that such action would send a very unfavorable message to both creditors and debtors around the world: "in the face of what is clearly [a] very unsatisfactory performance," debt relief would be viewed as "an entitlement program" for Russia. In Schulman's opinion, Russia has not done enough to pay its foreign debts. He cited Russia's reluctance to raise domestic prices for oil, a policy which would restrict domestic demand and free up supplies for hard-currency sales. (Erik Whitlock/Robert Lyle, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIAN FARMERS DEMONSTRATE. Farmers gathered outside the Russian government building in Moscow to demand economic assistance, various Russian and Western news agencies reported on 15 September. In particular, the demonstrators called for more investment in the agricultural sector, tax and debt relief, as well as low-interest loans. Reports variously estimated the number of participants at between four hundred and two thousand. According to ITAR-TASS, the demonstration lasted an hour and a half. The protest follows a similar action in August that was viewed as largely ineffective. Interfax quoted demonstrators as saying that this was their "last soft action," and that they would use more serious methods in the future if the government did not respond to their demands. (Erik Whitlock, RFE/RL, Inc.) VOLSKY CRITICIZES PRIVATE BUSINESS SPECIALISTS. President of the Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, Arkadii Volsky, stated that about one and a half million specialists are duplicating various intellectual and business activities in countless fictitious enterprises, Voice of Russia reported on September 13. Although these people have created an enormous number of foundations, analytical centers, consulting bureaus, and middleman companies, the result of all this activity is next to zero, Volsky was quoted by Voice of Russia as telling Patriot (no.35). Voice of Russia accused Volsky of being a high-level KGB officer, a charge it has made frequently in the past. (Victor Yasmann,RFE/RL, Inc.) COMMUNIST PARTY HEARINGS RESUME WITH EXPERT TESTIMONY. After a six-week recess, the Russian Constitutional Court resumed the hearings on the status of the communist party on 15 September. Opening the session, court chairman Valerii Zorkin said that 13 legal experts would testify on whether the communist party is a true political party and whether the Russian Communist Party (RCP) is independent from the Soviet Communist Party (CPSU), Interfax reported. Zorkin noted that six of these experts have given written opinions supporting the Russian president's ban, while seven other experts contend that the ban was illegal. The court is also expected to examine the question of who owned and disposed of party property. Meanwhile, Valentin Kuptsov, the former RCP first secretary, asked the court to legalize the party temporarily until the court reaches a verdict, Russian and Western agencies reported. (Carla Thorson, RFE/RL, Inc.) NATIONALIST PARTIES RESUME PICKETING OF OSTANKINO. On 15 September, representatives of extreme Russian nationalist parties resumed their picketing of the Ostankino TV station demanding daily broadcast time on Russian TV, ITAR-TASS reported. Their picketing of Ostankino first started this past summer, and it led to the opposition obtaining broadcast time on a monthly basis; now they want more. (Vera Tolz, RFE/RL, Inc.) YELTSIN HOLDS TALKS WITH TATARSTAN PRESIDENT. On 15 September, Russian President Boris Yeltsin held talks in Moscow with the Tatarstan President, Mintimer Shaimiev, ITAR-TASS reported. The agency quoted Yeltsin's press office as saying the two presidents discussed preparations for a draft treaty on the division of functions between the Russian central and Tatar authorities. The RuRFE/RL, Inc.)ar authorities agreed in July to prepare a treaty on Tatarstan's sovereignty and its union with Russia. (Vera Tolz, RFE ORDERS FOR MILITARY HARDWARE TO GROW. ITAR-TASS reported on 11 September that state orders by the Russian government for military hardware in 1993 will be higher than in 1992. No specifics on the orders were provided. The increase was attributed to the need to maintain the scientific and intellectual level of the defense sector, and to reduce the effects of Russia's general economic decline. The decision was reportedly reached at a closed-door meeting of Russian government officials and leaders of the military industries on 10 September. (Stephen Foye, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIA OFFERS TO SELL WARSHIPS TO THE PHILIPPINES. A spokesman for the Philippine Navy said on 11 September that Russia had offered to sell fast attack craft, corvettes, and minesweepers to the Philippines. According to the Chinese Zinhua news agency, the spokesman said that the offer had come during a meeting that day in Manila between a Russian delegation and the chairman of the Philippine Navy's weapons board. The agency also quoted Philippine Air Force chief, Brigadier Gen. Leopoldo Acot, as saying that a proposal to purchase MiG-29 jet fighters from Russia was being "carefully studied." (Doug Clarke, RFE/RL, Inc.) UKRAINIAN PARLIAMENT OPENS. The sixth session of the Ukrainian parliament opened on 15 September against a background of unresolved economic problems and the opposition's determination to force new parliamentary elections and the dismissal of the present government. Western news agencies reported on 15 September that Prime Minister Vitold Fokin, in a message read to the lawmakers, warned that the economy is in an "extremely deep crisis." Fokin said that the government's new economic reform plan was still being discussed and would be presented to parliament no later than 28 September. The lawmakers were met by protesters at the parliament, which has become almost traditional for each new parliamentary session. (Roman Solchanyk RFE/RL, Inc.) BELARUS TO RATIFY CFE TREATY. Belarus President Stanislav Shushkyevich told German leaders on 15 September that his government would ratify the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty by the end of the year. Shushkyevich was visiting Bonn and his remarks were reported by Western agencies. The treaty, signed by the members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the former Warsaw Pact--including the successor states to the USSR--sets limits on five categories of conventional weapons allowed between the Urals and the Atlantic. The agreement came into force on 17 July 1992 even though two of the 29 signatories, Armenia and Belarus, had not yet ratified it. They were given 120 days to complete the process. (Doug Clarke, RFE/RL, Inc.) NAZARBAEV PROMOTES ECONOMIC COOPERATION. Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbaev told a meeting of industrialists in Alma-Ata that political ambition is prevailing over economic rationalism in the CIS, and he will propose to the CIS summit in Bishkek that supragovernmental structures be created in the Commonwealth, Russian TV reported on 14 September. On 15 September, the Russian economics minister, Andrei Nechaev, and the chairman of Kazakhstan's State Economics Committee, Tleukhan Kabdrakhmanov, signed a protocol on economic cooperation between the two countries, ITAR-TASS reported. This agreement provides for prognoses of socio-economic development, cooperation in currency and credit policy, and various joint mining and environmental projects. Nechaev did not lend encouragement to a pet project of Nazarbaev, the creation of a supranational currency authority. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL, Inc.) "DNIESTER" MOLDOVAN TEACHERS TO STRIKE FOR LATIN SCRIPT. Most teachers in Moldovan schools controlled by "Dniester" Russian authorities are protesting against the recent "Dniester" edict on languages, which imposes the Russian alphabet on the "Moldovan" (i.e. Romanian) language in place of the Latin alphabet (see RFE/RL Daily Report, 10 September). The teachers have announced plans for a general strike beginning on 20 September, Radio Rossii and DR-Press reported on 14 and 15 September, respectively. (Vladimir Socor, RFE/RL, Inc.) "DNIESTER REPUBLIC" CONTINUES CREATING STATE STRUCTURES. The "Dniester republic Supreme Soviet" decided to set up a customs system for the would-be republic, Interfax reported on 11 September; it began functioning on 15 September, Nezavisimaya gazeta reported on the 16th. The same source reported that Moldova's television relays located on the left bank of the Dniester have been taken over by the "Dniester" authorities. On 14 September, Interfax reported that the "Dniester republic" intends to introduce its own citizenship. Since 2 September, using the breathing spell gained through the ceasefire and the protective cover of Russian troops, ostensibly in Moldova to carry out impartial peacekeeping duties, the "Dniester republic" has also proceeded to set up a government with full-fledged ministries, including those of Defense and State Security; announced the establishment of its own air force and border troops, and the intention to create its own professional army; it has also formed its own banking system. (Vladimir Socor, RFE/RL, Inc.) MOLDOVA FEELS CHEATED. An unnamed senior official of Moldova's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, representing Moldova on the Joint Control Commission which nominally supervises the Russian peacekeeping forces on the Dniester, "expressed concern over certain activities of that body...The presence of the peacekeeping forces is being used by the Tiraspol leaders to consolidate illegal state structures in the Dniester area." The Moldovan official called for "a rigorous control of the [Russian-Moldovan ceasefire] convention by international bodies...to avoid arbitrary or hostile interpretations," Rompres reported on 13 September. The statement, the first of its kind from Moldova since the convention was signed on 21 July, appears to reflect the apprehension that Snegur's gamble in accepting the deployment of Russian peacekeeping troops in Moldova in exchange for Russian promises to restrain the "Dniester" secession, is backfiring against Moldova. (Vladimir Socor, RFE/RL, Inc.) CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE EC MOVES TO EXCLUDE SERBIA-MONTENEGRO FROM UN. Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, the US, and Islamic Conference member states will apparently join Britain and the EC in taking steps this week to bar Serbia-Montenegro from holding the former Yugoslavia's seat in the UN and related organizations. International media reported on 15 and 16 September that it is not yet clear whether Russia will agree to such a ban. Serbia-Montenegro call themselves "Yugoslavia" but the state remains internationally unrecognized, largely because its creation is widely regarded as an attempt by the Belgrade authorities to claim much of the legitimacy and assets of Tito's now defunct federation. For its part, Serbia-Montenegro says that it does not see how it can continue to participate in a UN-backed peace process if that organization excludes Belgrade from its work, the BBC said on 16 September. (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL, Inc.) "NO-FLY ZONE" OVER BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA? International media also report that the Security Council is expected to consider stetting up a "no-fly zone" on the Iraqi model over the troubled republic. Of the combatants, only Serbian forces have aircraft, and they have been accused of shadowing UN relief flights as a way of obtaining cover on bombing missions against Bosnian and Croatian forces. Peace envoys Cyrus Vance and Lord Owen on 15 September deplored Serb air attacks the previous day on four Muslim-controlled towns in Bosnia, Western news agencies report. UN peace-keeping operations chief Marrack Goulding said that the attacks show how urgent it is to set up the "no-fly zone." Meanwhile, 68 badly injured Bosnian refugees were taken by air from Banja Luka to London for treatment. The Red Cross had selected them from numerous inmates of Serbian "detention centers." (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL, Inc.) CROAT-MUSLIM CONFLICTS IN BOSNIA. Radios Serbia and Slovenia report on 14 and 15 September that there has been a rise of clashes between Croatian and Muslim militia in towns in Herzegovina. In the Bosnian towns of Prozor and Vitez, local education officials decided that instruction in primary schools will be based on those in Croatia. Muslims have protested the decision saying Muslim children would not attend schools modeled on those of another state. The majority population in Vitez is Muslim, but all authority is in the hands of the Croats. On 14 September Radio Bosnia-Herzegovina reported the republic's Constitutional Court passed a decision saying that the establishment of the "Croatian Community of Herceg-Bosna" on 18 November 1991 was illegal. The Bosnian authorities have also earlier condemned successionist moves by Serbian groups. Vecerniji list on 15 September, however, quoted Bosnia's vice president as playing down reports of tensions between Muslims and Croats. (Milan Andrejevic, RFE/RL, Inc) MACEDONIAN BORDER SECURITY TIGHTENED. As a response to the ongoing Bosnian war and fear that it might spread to the Republic of Macedonia, the Skopje government has decided to strengthen security along its 240-km border with Serbia, Reuters and Makpres report. The move came just after a CSCE mission recommended patrols along the border to help head off expansion of the war there. Evidently only main highways until now have had border checkpoints. Military personnel will soon begin construction of defense facilities along the border according to Nova Makedonija. The CSCE patrols, which would augment the frontier guard force, may be composed of civilian observers. (Duncan Perry, RFE/RL, INC.) SERBIAN PREELECTION SCENE. On 14 September round-table talks between the rump Yugoslav government and opposition parties resulted in the adoption of parts of a declaration on the electoral system and the financing of upcoming elections. The adoption of these documents will be placed on the federal assembly's agenda on 18 September. The remaining aspects of the declaration referring to the role of the media are also slated for debate soon. Meanwhile, Zoran Andjelkovic, a leading official in the ruling Socialist Party (SPS) stated on 15 September that Slobodan Milosevic, in addition to his candidature for SPS chairman, will run as "the SPS candidate in the forthcoming elections for the most responsible state functions in the republic." Andjelkovic did not elaborate. Radio Serbia carried the reports. (Milan Andrejevich, RFE/RL, Inc.) DEMONSTRATIONS OVER HUNGARIAN TV PRESIDENT. According to a 14 September Radio Budapest report, two demonstrations are being organized involving Elemer Hankiss, the president of Hungarian TV. Hankiss was dismissed by Prime Minister Jozsef Antall earlier this year, but President Arpad Goncz refused to sign the dismissal order. The first demonstration--against Hankiss--is organized by the Committee for Free Hungarian Information, which includes some journalists, members of the World Federation of Hungarians Fighting in 1956, and some chapters of the Hungarian Democratic Forum and the Christian Democratic Peoples' Party. The demonstration will start next Saturday and, organizers say, will last until Hankiss remains in office. The second demonstration--in support of Hankiss--is organized by artists and reportedly more resembles a picnic than a political event. (Judith Pataki, RFE/RL, Inc.) ROMANIA TIGHTENS VISA RULES FOR THIRD WORLD. Romanian Interior Minister Victor Babiuc announced on 15 September that Romania will tighten visa regulations for 24 countries in an effort to curb illegal immigration. Under the new rules, citizens of those countries need an invitation from a Romanian citizen or firm, and these must assume financial responsibility for the visitors. Albania is the only European country on the list; the others are mostly Arab and Third World countries. Western agencies quoted Babiuc as saying that many foreigners are using Romania as a springboard to the West. There are currently some 30,000 foreigners in Romania who have overstayed their tourist visas. (Dan Ionescu, RFE/RL, Inc.) NATIONALIST PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE BESIEGED IN TIMISOARA. Some 2,000 protesters jeered Romanian presidential candidate Gheorghe Funar in Timisoara. Funar, the mayor of Cluj, is running on the ticket of the Party for Romanian National Unity (PRNU), the political arm of the extreme nationalist Vatra romaneasca ("Romanian Hearth") organization. The protesters shouted "Communist" and "Fascist" and threw fruit and vegetables at Funar while he was laying a wreath at a monument outside the cathedral in Timisoara to honor those killed in the December 1989 revolution. Many carried signs hailing the Democratic Convention, the main opposition alliance. Radio Bucharest carried a PRNU statement condemning the incident. (Dan Ionescu, RFE/RL, Inc.) GORBUNOVS IS LATVIA'S INTERIM HEAD OF STATE. On 15 September the Supreme Council ruled that the chairman of the Supreme Council will serve as head of state until the Saeima (parliament) convenes. Saeima deputies are still to be elected and an election date has not been set, though elections are expected to take place in the fall of 1993. The functions of the head of state are representational. This decision supplements the law on the duties and functions of the Supreme Council that was adopted on 5 August and does not grant new powers to Supreme Council Chairman Anatolijs Gorbunovs, Radio Riga reports. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL, Inc.) PRESIDENTIAL POLL IN LITHUANIA. On 15 September BNS reported on the results of a poll conducted in late August and early September by the Sociological Research Laboratory of the University of Vilnius. The leading candidate for president is parliament chairman Vytautas Landsbergis with 31% of the poll, followed by Lithuanian Democratic Labor Party chairman Algirdas Brazauskas with 19% and Lithuanian chargi d'affaires in Moscow Egidijus Bickauskas with 5%. When asked who they would like to see in the new parliament, 20% of the respondents mentioned Brazauskas, 18%--Landsbergis, and 12%--Bickauskas. BNS gave no margin of error for the poll. (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL, Inc.) IMF APPROVES FIRST CREDIT FOR LATVIA. On 15 September Latvia became the first of the former USSR republics to achieve a full stand-by arrangement with the International Monetary Fund, making it eligible to draw loans of up to about $81 million over the coming year. The credit is meant to support a comprehensive economic reform that includes continued price liberalization and a speeded-up privatization process. The IMF says that without outside help Latvia's "decline in output and employment could be significantly larger than anticipated," RFL/RL correspondent reported on 16 September from Washington. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL, Inc.) DIFFICULTIES WITH LITHUANIA-RUSSIA TRADE AGREEMENT. During a meeting in Moscow on 18 September, Lithuanian Prime Minister Aleksandras Abisala and Russia's acting Prime Minister Egor Gaidar were expected to sign a long-term trade agreement. On 15 September, citing unofficial sources, BNS said that the meeting had been postponed to 22 September at Lithuania's request. Deputy chairman of the Lithuanian Parliament Ceslovas Stankevicius, who heads the state delegation for negotiations with Moscow, had earlier told BNS that although agreements on mutual accounting and payments were ready for signing, Russia's proposals on trade required further discussion since Russia suggested quotas and licenses that would allow it to introduce certain limitations that were unacceptable since Lithuania wanted a real "free trade agreement." (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL, Inc.) EC TALKS ABOUT BALTS. The European Parliament in Strasbourg has delayed a vote on commercial and trade agreements with the Baltic States by one month. Europarliament socialist delegate Gary Titley from the UK told an RFE/RL correspondent on 15 September that the vote was delayed because of concern over Estonia's constitutional referendum, citizenship law, and election law. Officials from the Europarliament Secretariat, however, told the RFE/RL Estonian Service on 16 September that the delay is "purely technical." The draft agreement was submitted to the Foreign Trade Commission, which must approve all agreements before they are considered by the parliament. (Riina Kionka, RFE/RL, Inc.) ESTONIA'S JOBLESS RALLY FOR "HUMAN RIGHTS." About 1000 demonstrators rallied in support of "human rights" in Narva on 15 September, Estonian TV reports. The demonstration, organized by a group calling itself the Estonian Association of the Unemployed, demanded that the government "restore economic ties with Russia and CIS member states in order to cut unemployment" in formerly all-union factories, BNS reports. Unemployment in Estonia is currently at an all-time high of 0.5%. Over 90% of Estonia's current trade is with CIS member states. (Riina Kionka, RFE/RL, Inc.) POLISH GOVERNMENT SAVORS VICTORY IN FSM STRIKE. As the FSM auto plant began preparations to resume production, Deputy Prime Minister Henryk Goryszewski commented that "for the first time, a strike has ended in something other than a victory for the strikers; this time, the public and its democratic state won out." The strikers abandoned all wage demands and accepted the terms of an agreement negotiated between the management and the trade unions on 29 July, shortly after the strike began. This gives them limited raises as soon as Fiat takes over the plant. Workers will also receive loans from local authorities. Management has agreed not to take disciplinary action against strike participants, and to consider rehiring the 347 strike activists fired during the strike. Both sides agreed to help speed Fiat's assumption of control. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL, Inc.) POLAND'S ECONOMY GROWS, BUT SO DOES DEFICIT. Poland's industrial output in August was 6.8% higher than in August 1991, the Main Statistical Office reported on 14 September. Industrial production for the first eight months of 1992 was just 0.8% below last year's level. Economists from the Main Trade School reported that Poland had not experienced the typical summer slowdown in economic activity. Prospects for the rest of 1992 are good: firms and banks report that new orders are up, while indebtedness and inventories are down. Investment in machines and equipment rose in August for the first time in a year. Deputy Finance Minister Wojciech Misiag said on 14 September that the government had already decided to ask the Sejm to revise the 1992 budget to deal with the larger than predicted deficit. Misiag said a 30 trillion zloty ($2 billion) shortfall was likely. PAP reported that the unemployment rate at the end of August was 13.4%. More than one-third of the unemployed are not entitled to benefits. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL, Inc.) POLISH DEFENSE MINISTRY OPPOSES LUSTRATION. Deputy Defense Minister Bronislaw Komorowski told the Sejm's defense commission on 15 September that passage of the "decommunization" laws now under consideration would mean "the loss of virtually the entire command structure of the Polish army." Only two generals--one the military bishop, the other an academic worker--would survive the process. Noting that 14,000 officers had been removed in 1990-91, ministry officials argued that further cuts would undermine Poland's defense capability. Proponents of lustration charged the defense ministry with attempting to remove the army from parliamentary supervision, but a majority of the Sejm commission seemed to agree that the armed forces deserved special treatment. The commission thus asked to participate in deliberations on the six draft bills now before the Sejm. (Louisa Vinton RFE/RL, Inc.) [As of 1200 CET] Compiled by Hal Kosiba & Charles Trumbull The RFE/RL Daily Report is produced by the RFE/RL Research Institute (a division of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Inc.) with the assistance of the RFE/RL News and Current Affairs Division (NCA). The report is available by electronic mail via LISTSERV (RFERL-L@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU), on the Sovset' computer bulletin board, by fax, and by postal mail. For inquiries about specific news items, subscriptions, or additional copies, please contact: In USA: Mr. Jon Lodeesen or Mr. Brian Reed RFE/RL, Inc. 1201 Connecticut Avenue NW Washington, DC 20036. Telephone: (202) 457-6912 or -6900 fax: (202) 457-6992 or -202-828-8783; Internet: RI-DC@RFERL.ORG or in Europe: Ms. Helga Hofer Publications Department RFE/RL Research Institute Oettingenstrasse 67 8000 Munich 22 Telephone: (+49 89) 2102-2631 or -2642 fax: (+49 89) 2102-2648 Internet: Pubs@RFERL.ORG Copyright 1992, RFE/RL, Inc. All rights reserved.
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UPI NEWS, 17.09.1992. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Fischer defeats 'tired' Spassky for 4-2 lead Subject: Philippines to close its Yugoslav embassy Subject: War is hell for dogcatchers, too Subject: Fierce fighting in Sarajevo on eve of Geneva talks Subject: Serbia threatens to topple Yugoslav prime minister ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Fischer defeats 'tired' Spassky for 4-2 lead Date: 17 Sep 92 01:50:09 GMT PRZNO, Yugoslavia (UPI) -- Former U.S. chess champion Bobby Fischer defeated an admittedly tired Russian opponent Boris Spassky with only 21 moves Wednesday, taking a 4-2 lead in their 20th anniversary rematch. Spassky, who is having trouble sleeping and was said by experts to have missed a winning position in a previous game, asked after Wednesday's loss that their next game be delayed until Saturday. ``I feel tired, I will ask for the postponement of the 10th game,'' Spassky said after Wednesday's three-hour contest. ``I need two days rest.'' International chess master Nikola Karaklajic was highly critical of Spassky's play Wednesday. ``This ninth game was unbelieveable,'' he said. ``Spassky blundered.'' Fischer leads by four games to two, with three draws, in the $5 million contest at the Mestral Hotel in Przno, near the southern Adriatic resort of Sveti Stefan in the Yugoslav republic of Montenegro. Spassky, who complained that he has been waking up at 4 a.m., visited a doctor after Wednesday's game and was given medicine to help him sleep. The doctor, Ljubo Zivkovic, also persuaded Spassky to change his diet. Fischer also changed his diet earlier in the series after reportedly realizing his eating habits were hurting his concentration. ``Boris is very tired,'' Spassky colleague Alexander Nikitin said Wednesday. ``The last three games he played far from his shape. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Philippines to close its Yugoslav embassy Date: 17 Sep 92 08:46:09 GMT MANILA, Philippines (UPI) -- The Philippines Thursday announced plans to close its embassy in war-shattered former Yugoslavia to protest alleged human rights abuses by Serbian forces against Bosnian Muslims. ``We deplore what has happened there to the point that...we are going to close down that embassy,'' Foreign Secretary Roberto Romulo told reporters. ``The exact timing has to be worked out, but we will make the appropriate formal notices today.'' The Philippines had previously recalled its ambassador to Yugoslav on Aug. 19, warning that Manila would close the facility altogether if the situation worsened. International groups accuse Serbian guerrillas -- armed by the Yugoslav central army -- of abusing captured troops in Bosnia- Hercegovina, a former Yugoslav republic. Serbian forces have been waging a five-month war against Bosnia- Hercegovina, which declared independence from Yugoslavia earlier this year. The European Community and other groups have labeled Serbia the primary aggressor in the conflict. Earlier this month, the Philippines joined the 108-member Non-Aligned Movement in condemning alleged Serbian abuses against Bosnians. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: War is hell for dogcatchers, too Date: 17 Sep 92 15:32:41 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- Two teen-aged girls watched tearfully as Bambi thrashed in a vain struggle to escape the bite of steel wire snares looped around his throat and rear haunches. But Bambi's heart-wrenching howls and the girls' pleas for mercy failed to deter his captors. They hauled the dog to their truck from his adopted home in the war-ravaged city, a park between two shell-shattered apartment blocks. ``We've lost everything and now they are taking our dog,'' wept Aida, 16. ``We like Bambi.'' The cries of the doomed sandy-haired mutt were muffled behind a door at the rear of the truck. ``Everyone here gives him food,'' said Jana, 17. For Sarajevo's four-man band of dogcatchers, Bambi's capture was a tiny blow in their battle to contain a dangerous population explosion of stray dogs. The strays are potentially potent sources of disease in the besieged Bosnian capital. Aida admitted reluctantly that perhaps it was best the popular neighborhood pooch be put to sleep. ``He has been lethargic lately, and maybe he is sick. We all love him and feed him, but maybe it is better to take him away,'' she said. Aside from shelling and snipers, the canine problem is the most serious faced by the sanitation department in the five-month-old Serbian siege. The blockade has severely restricted food supplies, reducing city garbage by an estimated 45 percent. At the same time, sanitation officials and workers said, the food shortage is forcing residents to loose their pets to forage on the devastated streets. Many dogs, they said, also are finding their way into Sarajevo from outlying villages abandoned by residents who fled the fighting or were uprooted by Serbian ethnic cleansing. Before the war, between 70 and 80 strays were caught each week in Sarajevo and put to sleep by injection, said Vinko Raguz, manager of public sanitation in the municipal sanitation department. ``The weekly average is now about 100 to 110 dogs,'' he said. ``Now, many are running in packs.'' ``The colonies of dogs are forming in the forests and the edges of the town controlled by the Serbs,'' said Mirsad Kebo, the sanitation department director. ``So, we can't go in and catch them.'' Ivan Ilic, a member of the dogcatching squad, said he and his colleagues have been finding many pure-bred dogs among the ratty strays they snag with the looped wire snares strapped on their wrists. ``We've seen valuable dogs, all kinds,'' he said. ``Poodles, cocker spaniels, German shepherds are the most.'' All of the canines, no matter their pedigree, are difficult to handle because of the food shortages, Ilic said. ``They are more dangerous because they are hungry,'' said the 20-year veteran dogcatcher. ``They have had no food, or not the same selection of food as they had before the war.'' ``They are thin, but sometimes we find dogs in good shape, which means they have just been kicked out,'' he explained. Another problem is a lack of manpower. ``Before the war, we had two teams, but less dogs,'' observed Nikola Dodik, another squad member. ``There are at least three times more dogs than there were before.'' The dogcatchers, like the hundreds of thousands of other people in Sarajevo, have not been immune from the ethnic hatreds that led to the war in the former Yugoslav republic. The team is comprised exclusively of Croats because the Serbian dogcatchers all joined the Serbian forces encircling the city. One of them, Ratko Rakic, was seen recently on the television channel of the self-declared Serbian state by his former workmates. He was shown manning an artillery piece, they said. ``I like catching dogs. I would never shoot a gun,'' said Ilic. None of the dogcatchers have been killed or injured, and they are escorted by the police when they have to enter dangerous areas. ``We have to go to such places when people call us,'' explained Ilic. ``The dogs enter the hallways of apartment buildings because they are scared by shelling. But, then people can't get out of their homes.'' ``Also at mating time, as many as 15 of them collect in one hallway,'' said Ilic. The squad spends each day patroling different streets, parks and alleyways in its yellow truck, constantly on the prowl for strays. When one is sighted, the team stops and alights. Each member is armed with a wire snare. They fan out in a circle with studied practice, and then move in on their quarry with ruthless efficiency. Many dogs sighted on a recent patrol proved too wily, slipping quickly between the hunters and darting away. In one case, an irate family refused to allow the team to take away a litter of newborn puppies from an apartment building stairwell. ``I don't want to fight with people,'' said Franjo Ilic, Ivan Ilic's brother and fellow dogcatcher. Bambi posed no challenge, watching unsuspectedly with droopy, bloodshot eyes until it was too late. ``We feel sympathy for these dogs, but now they are disturbing normal life in the town,'' said Ivan Ilic, himself the proud owner of a Macedonian sheep dog, a shaggy 110-pound giant. ``They have gone without vaccinations,'' he continued. ``They are very fertile soil for infections.'' ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Fierce fighting in Sarajevo on eve of Geneva talks Date: 17 Sep 92 17:46:56 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- The U.N. headquarters came under attack Thursday as fierce fighting and Serbian barrages convulsed Sarajevo throughout the day, igniting fires that filled the sky with smoke and darkened hopes for progress on the eve of new peace talks. No U.N. personnel were injured in the fifth attack on their building since Aug. 6. Despite the violence, the U.N. Protection Force (UNPROFOR) announced the international humanitarian airlift into the Bosnian capital may resume with a test flight Sunday by one of its aircraft. Infantry clashes and shelling erupted at about 6 a.m. in several areas less than a mile from the center of the Bosnia-Hercegovina capital, and in western suburbs that have borne the brunt of a 4-day-old attempted advance by tank-backed Serbian forces. UNPROFOR said Serbian forces persisted in using heavy weapons deployed outside 11 U.N.-monitored areas despite Serbian leader Radovan Karadzic's guarantees that all of his Yugoslav army-supplied big guns had been gathered in those zones. The fighting came a day before a new round of internationally mediated negotiations in Geneva on ending the war pitting extremist Serbs bent on carving a separate state out of the republic and Bosnian forces opposed to the division of the newly independent former Yugoslav republic. Bosnian troops mostly comprise Muslim Slavs, but also include Croats and moderate Serbs. UNPROFOR narrowly escaped a major disaster when two shells slammed into its headquarters in a telecommuniations engineering center in the western suburb of Alipasino Polje. A 30 mm anti-aircraft round crashed at about 11 a.m. through a wall and exploded into an empty third-floor office, spraying shattered masonary and wood paneling across the carpet and breaking glass in neighboring rooms. A 122 mm tank round plowed a short time later through the front of the largely glass building, exited a rear window, pounded down a fire escape and rolled into a parking lot without exploding, U.N. officers said. It was later carried a safe distance away and detonated by French army sappers. ``There was a good chance there could have been some casualties had it exploded,'' said New Zealand Col. Richard Grey. ``Once again the PTT building has been shelled. It got direct fire and also has been shelled by tanks,'' Egyptian Brig. Gen. Hussein Abdel Razek, the Sarajevo sector commander of UNPROFOR, told a news conference. He said UNPROFOR has been unable to determine those responsible, and he renewed an appeal to the warring factions to ensure the safety of the contingent assigned to protect humanitarian aid operations. ``I should express my concern to both sides,'' said Razek. UNPROFOR has suffered at least four dead and 46 injured since May. Regarding the fighting, Razek said that U.N. military monitors had observed at least 420 heavy artillery rounds fired between 7 a.m. and 4 p.m., all of them by Serbian gunners. Of the total, he said, only 158 were loosed from Serbian heavy guns gathered in the so-called U.N.-monitored ``concentration areas.'' The rest, he said, came from weapons the Serbs have maintained outside the zones in violation of an agreement Karadzic made at last month's London peace conference to place all tanks, artillery and large mortars under U.N. observation. Razek also said that he had been instructed by UNPROFOR headquarters to inform the warring sides of Sunday's scheduled flight of an ordinary U.N. plane into Sarajevo airport. ``It is a test flight. It would be encouraging for a resumption of the normal flights,'' he said. If the flight goes without a hitch, he said, a final decision will be made on restarting the U.N.-supervised airlift of food and medicines for the estimated 500,000 people trapped in Sarajevo by encircling Serbian forces. The airlift was suspended Sept. 3 after an Italian cargo plane en route to Sarajevo was downed in a missile attack, killing four crewmen. Responsibility for the attack has not been determined. U.N. High Commission for Refugees officials said they were already planning for a resumption of the airlift, saying it was vitally needed as truck convoys on which they have been relying have not been able to meet the city's daily food needs. Much of the fighting and shelling focused on the residential areas of Hrasno and Alipasino Polje and the western suburbs of Ilidza, Stup, Nedzarici, Bare and Dogladi. At one point, at least six different blazes were seen pouring out huge pillars of black smoke, which mingled with clouds of dust drifting slowly over the city's western skyline. Serbian rounds scored direct hits on apartment buildings and the already severely damaged fortress-like television station in Alipasino Polje. The Health Ministry said that during the 24-hour period that began at 1 p.m. Wednesday at least nine people were killed and 60 others wounded in Sarajevo. They were among a total of at least 31 dead and 198 wounded across the republic, the ministry said. Sarajevo radio said Serbian multiply launched rockets and mortar rounds burst on the fringes of the mosly Muslim Slav old city, and in Hrasno, Mojmilo, and Alipasino Polje. U.N. sources said Serbian tanks hidden from U.N. monitoring loosed rounds at the predominantly Croatian suburbs of Stup and Dogladi, the main focus of the ongoing Serbian armor-backed thrust. The advance, which began Monday under the diversionary cover of a 9- hour-long Serbian bombardment of Sarajevo, appeared designed to reclaim land recently lost to Bosnian forces, who are intent on breaking the 5- month-old Serbian siege of the city. The fall of Stup would give Serbian tanks control of the road linking downtown Sarejevo with the U.N.-controlled airport. Thursday's fighting came on the eve of a new round of peace talks slated to begin in Geneva. Foreign countries plan to mediate negotiations between militant Serbs -- who are attempting to carve out a self-declared state -- and Bosnian forces, who oppose partition of the former Yugoslav republic. Most Bosnian troops are Muslim Slavs, but some Croats and moderate Serbs are also fighting on the Bosnian side. Thursday, U.N. Protection Force officials said Serbian forces continued to employ heavy weapons withheld from U.N. monitoring, in violation of an agreement reached at last month's international peace conference in London. Under the pact, Serbian guerrillas agreed to concentrate all of their heavy weapons in areas monitored by the U.N. However, the U.N. Thursday reported Serbians firing tanks and cannons deployed outside the monitored areas. U.N. sources also said Serbian gunners in at least one of 11 U.N.-monitored areas also joined in. Egyptian Brig. Gen. Hussein Abdel Razek, the Sarajevo sector commander of U.N. peacekeepers, was scheduled to meet Thursday with Serbian military chief Gen. Ratko Mladic to discuss the apparent violations. However, U.N. sources said Serbian forces later announced Mladic would be away from the area until next week. In an interview Wednesday, Razek said Serbian leaders had ignored repeated U.N. requests to comply with the weapons-concentration agreement. ``The Serbs have a military goal and they want to achieve it by all means and it is very difficult to convince them to put all heavy weapons in concentration areas,'' Razek said. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Serbia threatens to topple Yugoslav prime minister Date: 17 Sep 92 18:58:27 GMT BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (UPI) -- The battle between the Serbian government and prime minister of the rump Yugoslav federation of Montenegro and Serbia, Milan Panic, intensified Thursday with a ruling Socialist Party leader threatening to call a new vote of no-confidence in Panic's leadership. The move follows Panic's plan to get United Nations membership for the new truncated Yugoslavia, a move seen as threatening the former Yugoslavia's old seat in the world body. Serbian politicians believe the move would destroy any legitimacy Belgrade might retain as the seat of government of a federated Yugoslavia. The Serbian-controlled rump Yugoslavia has not applied nor has it been recognized by the European Community or the U.N., as were the three other former Yugoslav republics of Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia- Hercegovina. Panic, who returned to Belgrade Wednesday night from a ``working visit'' to China with a stopover in Moscow, said he planned to ``propose to the government that it adopt a decision to apply for membership of the new Yugoslavia in the United Nations and other international organizations.'' ``I deeply believe we don't have much choice (but to seek membership in the U.N.),'' Panic told the Belgrade-based news agency Tanjug. Panic said clinging to old Yugoslavia's seat in the U.N. would only lead to humiliation, and that the seat would eventualy be lost anyway. ``The 'verdict' is already prepared and secured,'' he said, adding that Yugoslav membership in the U.N. has already been questioned by the Europian Community and United States. President of the Socialist Party of Serbia, Borisav Jovic, said Panic, by planning to ask for U.N. membership for the new rump Yugoslavia, ``objectively suppports demands by some countries to exclude Yugoslavia from the United Nations.'' Jovic said a ``question of further confidence of the Socialist Party must be placed in the government of Mr. Milan Panic.'' He added that the Belgrade government could not ``give up the policy of preserving the continuity of Yugoslavia.'' In a separate statement, the Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic said Panic's plan would further internationally isolate the new rump Yugoslav union of Serbia and Montenegro. The Serbian Prime Minister, Radoman Bozovic, held an emergency session of his Cabinet Thursday morning and issued a statement warning that ``the revocation of international continuity would lead Yugoslavia to a state of formal isolation.'' The statement recalled conditions that other East European communist countries had to comply with in order to be internationally recognized and said bluntly that it would be ``unacceptable'' for the rump Yugoslavia. Bozovic's government listed a number of ``unacceptable conditions.'' These included a special minority status for Serbia's provinces of Kosovo, Vojvodina and Sandzak where large numbers of ethnic Albanians, Hungarians and Muslim Slavs reside. Panic survived a no-confidence vote in the rump Yugoslavian parliament on Sept. 4, after he warned lawmakers the federation would face further isolation if it fired him. Panic, a Belgrade-born U.S. millionaire, left his Californian pharmaceutical plant and went to Belgrade at the invitation of Serbia after U.N. sanctions were imposed on the republic on May 30. The United Nations slapped the sanctions on Serbia for its involvement in the the ongoing war in Bosnia-Hercegovina. Panic was sworn in as prime minister on July 14 and promised to introduce Western-style democracy and a free market economy to the republic.
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RFE/RL Daily Report No. 179, 17 September 1992 SUCCESSOR STATES TO THE USSR ABKHAZ UPDATE. Georgian troops and Abkhaz National Guardsmen clashed near the Black Sea town of Gagra on 16 September despite the new ceasefire agreement due to take effect at midnight on 15 September, Reuters reported quoting local journalists. Under the terms of the new agreement, all troops subordinate to the Confederation of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus must leave Georgian territory within ten days. The first plenary meeting of the CIS inter-parliamentary assembly in Bishkek issued a statement expressing concern that the armed conflict in Abkhazia could spread to neighboring states and calling for the disengagement of troops and an immediate ceasefire, ITAR-TASS reported. It also called on CIS member states to provide humanitarian aid to Abkhazia. (Liz Fuller, RFE/RL, Inc.) KAZAKH-MEDIATED KARABAKH PEACE TALKS FAIL. A meeting in Alma-Ata on 16 September between Armenian and Azerbaijani working groups ended in deadlock after the Azerbaijani delegation announced that it was not empowered to conduct negotiations and proposed a meeting between the Presidents of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, ITAR-TASS reported. The Armenians agreed in principle on the condition that the Azerbaijani side first respond to the ceasefire proposal made on 25 August by Italian mediator Mario Raffaelli. A further round of talks was scheduled for early October. (Liz Fuller, RFE/RL, Inc.) FALL IN RUSSIAN TRADE VOLUME CONTINUES. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations reports that the volume of foreign trade over the first eight months of this year is 27% less than that of the same period last year. The report, carried by ITAR-TASS on 16 September, indicated that trade with former socialist countries (former members of the COMECON trading group) remains the weakest, down 48%. Trade with developed industrial and developing nations was down 21% and 20% respectively. This year's trade deficit at the end of August was $200 million, which is an improvement over the deficit of $700 billion at the end of July, but way down from last year's January-to-August surplus of $6 billion. (Erik Whitlock, RFE/RL, Inc.) LIBERAL REFORMISTS ATTACK GAIDAR. Two leading Russian reformers have attacked the leadership of acting Prime Minister Egor Gaidar. Grigorii Yavlinski told the Italian newspaper La Stampa on 16 September that the "center"--by which he meant the Russian leadership--has already lost control over the political and economic processes at the periphery. According to him, Russia will soon disintegrate if the executive does not change its policy and reestablish its lost authority in the regions. Meanwhile, the Russian Minister of Economics, Andrei Nechaev, told Ostankino TV on the same day that his ministry has provided Gaidar's cabinet a new economic project because Gaidar has no clear reform concept of his own. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL, Inc.) FORMER SOVIET DISSIDENT'S TESTIMONY STRICKEN BY CONSTITUTIONAL COURT. On 16 September, former Soviet dissident, Pyotr Abovin-Egides, testified as an expert witness on behalf of the communist party (CPSU), Interfax and ITAR-TASS reported. In a rousing defense of the CPSU, he attacked Russian President Yeltsin as well as former Soviet President Gorbachev and the coup leaders, arguing that, thanks to them, "the West won the third world war without a single shot." Abovin-Egides said the ban should be lifted since it "sows cruelty and hatred, intolerance of ideology, extremism, bitterness, confrontation and social disparity." After a short recess, however, the court struck the dissident's testimony from the record because Abovin-Egides had failed to speak about the issues and had abused his rights as an expert witness by making ideological rather than legal arguments. Court Chairman Valerii Zorkin repeated an earlier warning to both parties in the case on the inadmissibility of anti-constitutional proclamations and political evaluations. (Carla Thorson, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIA SUPPORTS PANIC, UN MEMBERSHIP FOR RUMP YUGOSLAVIA. Following talks on 16 September with the prime minister of Serbia-Montenegro, Milan Panic, Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev told reporters that Russia wants "the new Yugoslavia, that of Milan Panic, to receive international recognition and to occupy a worthy place in the family of civilized free peoples." Kozyrev added that Russia fully supports Panic's intention to apply for a UN seat for the "new Yugoslavia," and he stressed that Russia will do everything possible to see "full membership of a peaceful democratic Yugoslavia at the United Nations." (Suzanne Crow, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUTSKOI ON KOZYREV. Russian Vice President Aleksandr Rutskoi is quoted by Interfax on 15 September as saying that Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev will remain in his job. Two months ago, Rutskoi had openly declared that he insists on the dismissal of Kozyrev. But he asserted that other reform-minded government members may be replaced at the next parliamentary session which is opening on 22 September. Rutskoi stated that the atmosphere at the session will be "tense" because of "conflicting opinions over developments in the Russian economy." (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIAN DECREE ON TAIWAN. Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed a decree on 15 September on "Relations Between the Russian Federation and Taiwan," ITAR-TASS reported on 16 September. The decree was issued, according to its text, because of "differing interpretations of the position of the Russian leadership with regard to Taiwan." To clarify the Russian position, the decree states: "In its policy, Russia proceeds from the premise that only one China exists and that Taiwan is an indivisible part of it. Because of this, Russia does not maintain official interstate relations with Taiwan." (Suzanne Crow, RFE/RL, Inc.) CIS INTERPARLIAMENTARY ASSEMBLY ENDS FIRST SESSION. The first session of the newly created Interparliamentary Assembly of CIS states in Bishkek ended with the adoptation of an Assembly statute and the formation of five Assembly Commissions: for legal affairs, economics and finance, social politics and human rights, environmental problems, and security, ITAR-TASS reported on 16 September. Ruslan Khasbulatov said that his election as first chairman of the Assembly demonstrates that the other CIS states trust Russia. He stated that the Assembly is scheduled to become a supranational parliamentary organ which will "neutralize many of the negative processes characteristic of the CIS." (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL, Inc.) CIS SUMMIT DELAYED. The leaders of Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Belarus have decided to postpone the next summit of CIS state and government leaders which had been scheduled for 24-25 September to 9 October, ITAR-TASS reported on 16 September. According to a statement issued by the Kyrgyzstan president's press service, CIS leaders want to further examine some documents which will be discussed at the summit in Bishkek. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIAN BUSINESSMEN CALL FOR PARLIAMENT DISSOLUTION. Speaking at a press conference in Moscow on 16 September, the co-chairman of Russia's Party of Economic Freedom, Konstantin Borovoi, said his party supports the dissolution of the Russian Congress of People's Deputies and the parliament, Interfax reported. He said a constituent assembly should be set up instead. Borovoi accused the congress and the parliament of blocking economic reforms in Russia. He said he believed that at the next session the Congress would try to force Boris Yeltsin to resign. Borovoi said his party supports the idea of holding a referendum on the dissolution of the congress. (Vera Tolz, RFE/RL, Inc.) MINISTERS VISIT NUCLEAR TEST SITE. Pavel Grachev and Viktor Mikhailov, the Russian Ministers of Defense and Atomic Energy, respectively, arrived on 16 September at the nuclear test site on the arctic island of Novaya Zemlya. They joined the Commander in Chief of the Russian Navy, Admiral Feliks Gromov, who had arrived the day before. ITAR-TASS reported that the purpose of the visit was to investigate both the state of the technology at the test site and to inquire into problems facing personnel stationed on the island. Since the shutting down of the Semipalatinsk nuclear testing site in Kazakhstan, Novaya Zemlya has been viewed by the Russian government as the likely main site for any future nuclear arms tests. (Stephen Foye, RFE/RL, Inc.) MORE SQUABBLES OVER BLACK SEA FLEET. Accordin to Interfax reports on 15 and 16 September, a disagreement has broken out between Ukrainian and Russian military authorities over the disposition of two Naval academies in Sevastopol. Ukraine apparently wants to take control of the schools, while Russian officials contend that previous agreements place the academies under CIS jurisdiction. Interfax also reported on 16 September that Black Sea Fleet commander Igor Kasatonov has protested what he says are attempts by Kiev to transfer parts of the Kerchensko-Feodosisky naval base to Ukrainian jurisdiction. On the same day, the commander of the Black Sea Fleet from 1983-1985, Aleksei Kalinin, said on Sevastopol radio that Ukrainian Defense Minister Konstantyn Morozov ought to be dismissed for what he described as illegal actions leading to the weakening of the fleet. (Stephen Foye, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIAN TROOPS TO LEAVE CUBA BY MID-1993. The Cuban government announced on 16 September that the Russian troops still stationed in Cuba will be withdrawn by the middle of 1993. Western agency accounts quoted the official announcement as saying the presence of the troops had lost its meaning. The Soviets had what was known as a "training brigade" stationed in Cuba as well as a number of military advisors and a large intelligence facility. When the formal talks on withdrawing these troops began in September 1991, there were some 8,000 Soviet military and intelligence personnel in Cuba. In February of this year the Russians announced that the "training brigade" had been unilateraly cut from 2,800 to 2,150 men. (Doug Clarke, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIA TO PAY INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC ENERGY DEBTS. Western agencies reported that Russia promised to pay its outstanding debts to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The announcement was made to the agency's board of governors on 16 September at their meeting in Vienna. As the legal successor to the Soviet Union in the IAEA, Russia must also pay outstanding contributions for 1991. The reports said that Russia is responsible for around 13% of the agency's yearly budget of $186 million, or some $24 million per year. Russia would loose its voting rights in the agency should the debts remain unpaid. (Doug Clarke, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIAN AIRCRAFT COMPANY FORGES AMERICAN TIES. The Russian Yakovlev Design Bureau has established a joint collaborative business alliance with an American aircraft engine manufacturer, Textron Lycoming's Turbine Engine Division. According to a 15 September company press release at the Farnborough air show in England, the American company will initially supply turbofan engines to replace the present engines on the small YAK-40 regional airliner. Lycoming could also supply the engines for the next-generation YAK-48 executive business aircraft. (Doug Clarke, RFE/RL, Inc.) "RUKH" LEADERSHIP MEETS. The leadership of "Rukh" met on 12 September and decided to convene a session of its Grand Council on 19 September, DR-Press reported on 13 September. The Grand Council will discuss questions related to the convening of the Fourth Congress of "Rukh," which should be held at the end of October. (Roman Solchanyk, RFE/RL, Inc.) GERMAN "REBIRTH" SOCIETY IN UKRAINE. The "Rebirth" society, which groups together members of the German minority in the former Soviet Union, held its official presentation in Kiev on 15 September, Radio Ukraine reported. The Kiev branch of "Rebirth" works closely with the German Cultural Union, which has forty-two centers in the former Soviet Union. The group's aim is to unite all Germans interested in their history and culture. (Roman Solchanyk, RFE/RL, Inc.) ECONOMIC IMPACT OF WAR IN TAJIKISTAN. The turmoil and fighting in Tajikistan during the last four months has caused a serious worsening of economic conditions in the country. ITAR-TASS reported on 16 September that a lack of fuel in Dushanbe has caused interruptions in public transport and in deliveries of food to the capital. Tajikistan may be in for a difficult winter. Foreign correspondents have reported seeing crops neglected in the fields while rural people were fighting for or against the now-deposed President Rakhmon Nabiev. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL, Inc.) CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA TOPS THE CSCE PRAGUE MEETING'S AGENDA. Representatives of the 52 states participating in the CSCE process convened in Prague on 16 September for a three-day meeting. An RFE/RL corespondent reports that the meeting will hear reports by special investigators on the situation in Serb-controlled detention camps, and on the possibility of the civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina spilling over into the Serbian province of Kosovo and the independent Republic of Macedonia. CSTK reports that Macedonia's application to join the CSCE process was rejected at the meeting. The meeting will also focus on the situation in Moldova and Nagorno-Karabakh. (Jiri Pehe, RFE/RL, Inc.) MAZOWIECKI ON FORMER YUGOSLAVIA. Speaking at a press conference in Prague on 16 September, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, former Polish prime minister and currently a special UN rapporteur for human rights in former Yugoslavia, said that human rights are being widely violated on the territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Muslims in particular are victims of wide-spread human rights abuses as well as of ethnic genocide. According to Mazowiecki, the situation is most serious in concentration camps and besieged towns. Mazowiecki proposed the creation of an independent press agency, which would inform about the situation in former Yugoslavia in an objective manner. He warned that the conflict could easily spread to Kosovo, Vojvodina, and the Sandzak. Mazowiecki ruled out military intervention in Bosnia but suggested that UN peacekeeping troops be strengthened so that they can intervene when needed. (Jiri Pehe, RFE/RL, Inc.) LITTLE-KNOWN SIEGE OF NORTHERN BOSNIAN TOWN CONTINUES. The 17 September Washington Post reports that Serbian forces around Sarajevo continued "their three-day-old tank offensive" against the Bosnian capital on 16 September, despite UN pleas to register the tanks with monitors. The Croatian media in recent days, for their part, have also been reporting on the months-old siege of Gradacac in northern Bosnia, which is on the strategic route connecting Serbia with Serb-held areas of Bosnia and Croatia but where there are no Western correspondents. Croatian military and local Muslims have successfully resisted intensified Serbian shelling, which has destroyed over 80% of the mainly Muslim town, including its landmark medieval tower and central mosques. The local Croatian commander said that the spirit of Croat and Muslim defenders was good. Elsewhere, Slobodna Dalmacija on 16 September said that Cardinal Franjo Kuharic consecrated Herzegovina's new archbishop on 13 September in Neum, with Muslim leaders, including the Mufti of Herzegovina, in attendance. (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL, Inc.) BOSNIAN CROAT LEADER REJECTS COURT DECISION. Mate Boban, president of the self-proclaimed state of Herceg-Bosna and chairman of the Croatian Democratic Community (HDZ) in Bosnia-Herzegovina, said that a ruling by the Constitutional Court of Bosnia-Herzegovina annulling a decision by the Croats to form their own republic in Bosnia-Herzegovina is "completely unconstitutional." The "Community of Herceg-Bosna," established in November 1991 and comprising municipalities in the south of Bosnia-Herzegovina where Croats are the majority population, declared itself an independent state on 3 July. Sarajevo Radio quoted Boban on 15 September as saying that his party will "ignore" the court's ruling. Srecko Vucina, spokesman for the Croatian Defense Council (HVO) in Mostar, indignantly rejected the ruling, which he says "seeks to discredit everything that the HDZ and HVO have done so far in the defense of the area around Mostar and Herceg-Bosna." (Milan Andrejevich, RFE/RL, Inc.) HIGH-RANKING ROMANIAN OFFICIAL IN BELGRADE. Teodor Melescanu, a state secretary in the Foreign Affairs Ministry, arrived in Belgrade on 16 September. In an interview with Radio Bucharest, Melescanu said that he discussed issues of mutual interest with officials in Belgrade, including recent Western initiatives to exclude the Yugoslav rump state from the UN. In a separate development, Traian Chebeleu, a spokesman for the foreign ministry, reafirmed his country's willingness to accept foreign observers to monitor the traffic to and from Serbia and Montenegro. (Dan Ionescu, RFE/RL, Inc.) ROMANIAN FOREIGN MINISTRY PROTESTS LEBED STATEMENT. On 16 September spokesman Traian Chebeleu said a recent statement by Gen. Aleksandr Lebed, commander of the 14th Russian Army in Moldova, may cause serious harm to Romanian-Russian relations. On Moscow's "Ostankino" TV on 14 September Lebed reportedly described the Romanian flag as "the flag of [Marshall Ion] Antonescu and Romanian fascists." Chebeleu said he finds such statements "irresponsible and insulting" to Romania. Romanian Foreign Minister Adrian Nastase summoned the Russian ambassador to Bucharest to protest Lebed's statement. (Dan Ionescu, RFE/RL, Inc.) POLISH PRIVATIZATION MINISTER UNDER FIRE. The Sejm voted on 17 September to consider a motion to dismiss Privatization Minister Janusz Lewandowski, who served in the same post for most of 1991. The motion was submitted by the Confederation for an Independent Poland (KPN) on the basis of a report by the Supreme Chamber of Control (NIK), Poland's central auditing institution. The government coalition parties say they will oppose the motion, and Solidarity deputies condemned the KPN's attack on Lewandowski as "a political game." NIK officials admitted on 16 September that their criterion for evaluating the ministry's performance was the letter of the law, not economic rationality. They also conceded that their inspectors were not experts in privatization. Lewandowski has argued that legal shortcuts were unavoidable in a system where private business was just taking root. The Sejm is also scheduled to debate the government's mass privatization program. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL, Inc.) POLISH GOVERNMENT SETS "PACT" TIMETABLE. Meeting with union representatives on 16 September, labor ministry officials proposed that negotiations on the government's draft "pact on state firms" conclude by the end of the month. Signing would be possible by the end of October. The labor ministry recommended that the unions send a joint representation to the talks; this would be a major departure for Solidarity, which has refused to negotiate in tandem with the former procommunist OPZZ federation. The government's economic committee recommended setting as a target the production of at least 50% of GDP (excluding agriculture) by private firms by the end of 1994. The committee also recommended shutting down seven of Poland's 26 steel mills by 2002, which would eliminate 80,000 jobs. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL, Inc.) HUNGARIAN GOVERNMENT EVALUATES LAST TWO YEARS. In a speech to Parliament on 16 September, Prime Minister Jozsef Antall drew a positive balance of the performance of his government during its first two years in office, MTI and Radio Budapest report. He stressed in particular that the legal framework needed for a state based on the rule of law has been created through the parliament's legislative activity and that the government has successfully adjusted its foreign and economic policy to the changing international environment. Antall admitted that economic problems remain and that the government has to take unpopular measures in switching from a command to a market economy. He stressed, however, that his government has been able to keep the country solvent and has launched the largest and most successful privatization program in all of Eastern Europe. (Edith Oltay, RFE/RL, Inc.) ESTONIAN ELECTION UPDATE. The Estonian Ministry of Internal Affairs plans no special security measures in northeastern Estonia for the 20 September parliamentary and presidential elections. Deputy Minister Juri Kaljuvee told BNS on 16 September that he does not expect any provocations that day because local authorities "have realized that the prospects for international cooperation are better in Estonia than in Russia." Meanwhile, Lennart Meri, a presidential candidate and former foreign minister, has received a positive response from Council of Europe Secretary-General Catherine Lalumihre on the establishment of a special international commission to look into charges against his father, diplomat Georg Meri. Lennart Meri proposed convening a special commission after widespread reports last week that Georg Meri was a KGB operative in the interwar period. In his letter to Lalumihre, Lennart Meri said that the charges brought against his father "are absolutely false, but have been arranged in order to undermine my [presidential] candidacy," BNS reports. (Riina Kionka, RFE/RL, Inc.) LITHUANIAN PARLIAMENT SESSION. At its 15 September meeting the Supreme Council two deputy speakers, Laima Andrikiene and Ceslovas Jursenas, were reelected, Radio Lithuania reports. Two laws--on competition and on the bankruptcy of enterprises--were passed and will go into effect on 1 November. Economics Minister Albertas Simenas noted that the purpose of the competition law is to prevent the formation of monopolies and thus allow consumers. to purchase goods at lower prices. An agency will be formed to monitor prices and a council composed of producer, consumer, and government representatives will apply sanctions when necessary. (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL, Inc.) LITHUANIAN MODERATE MOVEMENT. On 16 September representatives of the Moderate Movement held a briefing at the Parliament, BNS reports. The movement intends to present a general list of 27 candidates for the Seimas elections who will also compete in single mandate districts. The list is headed by parliament deputy Eugenijus Gentvilas and includes in its top ten Albertas Simenas, Minister without Portfolio Stasys Kropas, and Zigmas Vaisvila, a former deputy prime minister. The movement's election program calls for 350 of the largest enterprises not to be privatized. Smaller businesses would be privatized under this plan, and foreign investors would be given the right to purchase the land on which the enterprise stands. (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL, Inc.) STOLOJAN PLEDGES MORE SECURITY IN THE ELECTORAL CAMPAIGN. At a cabinet meeting on 16 September, Romanian Prime Minister Theodor Stolojan ordered increased security for presidential candidates. The move followed an attack on nationalist candidate Gheorghe Funar in Timisoara the previous day. Funar, who runs on the ticket of the Party for Romanian National Unity, had to be rescued by police from a crowd of about 2,000 jeering protesters. In a separate statement broadcast by Radio Bucharest, the government deplored the incident and urged the Timisoara police to identify the culprits. (Dan Ionescu, RFE/RL, Inc.) PARFENOV TRIAL STARTS IN RIGA. The trial of Sergei Parfenov, former deputy commander of OMON units in Riga, opened on 16 September, Radio Riga reports. Parfenov is charged with abuse of power and will have to answer for attacks against civilians by members of OMON, a special force under the jurisdiction of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, in Sigulda and the Vecmilgravis section of Riga in 1990 and Ainazi in 1991. Parfenov, who considers himself a Russian citizen and his supporters in Tyumen region want the case to be tried in Russia, while the Latvian authorities, who obtained his extradition from Tyumen, believe that the trial should be held in Latvia. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL, Inc.) BALTIC COUNCIL APPEALS TO CSCE. Leaders of the three Baltic States have appealed to the CSCE to not let up pressure for withdrawal of Russian troops from their territories because of the recent Russian-Lithuanian agreement for early pullout, BNS reports. In the joint communiqui issued by the Baltic Council after its 16 September Tallinn meeting, council members state that the Helsinki Declaration requirements can be considered fulfilled only when agreements [similar to that with Lithuania] are concluded and the whole of the Russian military has left all the Baltic States. (Riina Kionka, RFE/RL, Inc.) LATVIAN SUPREME COUNCIL ON RELATIONS WITH RUSSIA. On 15 September the Supreme Council adopted guidelines for further negotiations with Russia regarding the withdrawal of troops. Diena of 15 September says the document calls for the unconditional withdrawal of all troops by the end of 1993; the recognition that Latvia has borders that have been fixed and recognized by international treaties (especially the Latvian-Russian peace treaty of 11 August 1922); no naturalization of new citizens as long as a foreign army is present in Latvia; and the necessity of Russian forces in Latvia to act according to regulations approved by the Supreme Council. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL, Inc.) LATVIAN-POLISH DEFENSE ACCORD SIGNED. On 16 September in Riga Polish Minister of Defense Janusz Onyszkiewicz signed a military cooperation accord, Radio Riga reports. Details were not reported. During his three-day visit to Latvia, Onyszkiewicz met with Latvian officials and saw military training facilities at Sigulda and the naval harbor in Liepaja. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL, Inc.) DUBCEK'S CONDITION STILL SERIOUS. Two weeks after the car crash in which he broke his spine, ribs, and pelvis, Alexander Dubcek, leader of the 1968 Prague Spring and former chairman of the Czechoslovak parliament, is still too ill to have further surgery. Dubcek underwent an operation on his spine immediately after the 1 September accident. A statement from the Prague hospital treating Dubcek, released by CSTK on 15 September, says that another operation, as well as long-term rehabilitation, can take place only after stabilization of the patient's condition and after he is transferred to a specialized clinic. (Jiri Pehe, RFE/RL, Inc.) [As of 1200 CET] Compiled by Hal Kosiba & Charles Trumbull The RFE/RL Daily Report is produced by the RFE/RL Research Institute (a division of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Inc.) with the assistance of the RFE/RL News and Current Affairs Division (NCA). The report is available by electronic mail via LISTSERV (RFERL-L@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU), on the Sovset' computer bulletin board, by fax, and by postal mail. For inquiries about specific news items, subscriptions, or additional copies, please contact: In USA: Mr. Jon Lodeesen or Mr. Brian Reed RFE/RL, Inc. 1201 Connecticut Avenue NW Washington, DC 20036. Telephone: (202) 457-6912 or -6900 fax: (202) 457-6992 or -202-828-8783; Internet: RI-DC@RFERL.ORG or in Europe: Ms. Helga Hofer Publications Department RFE/RL Research Institute Oettingenstrasse 67 8000 Munich 22 Telephone: (+49 89) 2102-2631 or -2642 fax: (+49 89) 2102-2648 Internet: Pubs@RFERL.ORG Copyright 1992, RFE/RL, Inc. All rights reserved.
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RFE/RL Daily Report No. 180, 18 September 1992 SUCCESSOR STATES TO THE USSR KULYAB APPEALS FOR CIS TROOPS. The authorities in Tajikistan's Kulyab Oblast, a stronghold of support for deposed President Rakhmon Nabiev, have appealed to the leaders of the Central Asian states and Russia to send CIS troops to stop the fighting in Tajikistan, ITAR-TASS reported on 17 September. Nabiev had asked for a CIS peacekeeping force prior to his fall. The opposition found the request provocative, but in recent days several government and opposition figures have suggested that CIS military help may be necessary to restore stability in the country. On 17 September, the government asked a CIS division stationed in Tajikistan to help local Internal Affairs forces guard important installations; the same day, ITAR-TASS reported that Kulyab guards had taken control of the Nurek dam. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL, Inc.) SHEVARDNADZE CRITICIZES ABKHAZ MONITORING COMMISSION. Georgian State Council Chairman Eduard Shevardnadze travelled to Sukhumi on 17 September, where he criticized as "ineffective" the tripartite commission set up to monitor the 3 September Abkhaz ceasefire agreement, Interfax reported. Shevardnadze complained that fighters subordinate to the Confederation of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus still remain in Abkhazia. Speaking on Georgian television, Georgian Defense Minister Tengiz Kitovani stated that Georgia "will use force" if the troops in question do not leave Georgia within ten days, Radio Rossii reported. A Turkish foreign ministry spokesman stated on 17 September that Turkey will send 15 tons of food aid and medical equipment to Muslims in Abkhazia, Western agencies reported. (Liz Fuller, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIAN DEFENSE MINISTRY WARNS GEORGIA. A statement issued by the Russian Defense Ministry on 17 September charged that Russian troops and civilians in Georgia were being repeatedly attacked by Georgian units, and warned that Russian forces reserve the right to fight back. In particular, the Defense Ministry has blamed Georgia for a helicopter attack that occurred last month on a hydrofoil carrying Russian refugees and vacationers. While the Defense Ministry claims to have "irrefutable proof" that Georgia was behind the attack, Georgia has denied involvement. The exchange was reported by ITAR-TASS and Western agencies. (Stephen Foye, RFE/RL, Inc.) YELTSIN DECREE RAISES ENERGY PRICES. Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed a much-anticipated decree raising basic energy prices, various Russian and Western news agencies reported on 17 September. Prices on oil products will double from the current price of 1,800-2,200 rubles. Coal prices will rise 30%. According to ITAR-TASS, the decree also eliminates the ceiling on oil prices, replacing it with a tax structure that discourages setting prices in excess of 4000 rubles. The report was not clear on details of the new price-setting rules. To soften the impact on consumers, the decree calls on the government to raise price subsidies for household energy consumption, transportation, and basic agricultural goods. Commenting on the inflationary impact of the decree, government economic advisor Aleksei Ulyukaev said that the government predicted an economy-wide increase in prices of 20-25%. (Erik Whitlock, RFE/RL, Inc.) GERASHCHENKO WARNS OF DRASTIC BUDGET CUTS. Outspoken Russian Central Bank Chairman Viktor Gerashchenko claims that the government may be forced to make big cuts in spending in October, ITAR-TASS reported on 17 September. He said that the government had as yet only collected 40% of the revenue planned for the year. Therefore, he asserted, "we may be forced to simply restrict the expenditure side of the budget and keep it within the limits of collected revenues." Gerashchenko suggested that the budget cuts would be across-the-board and include social programs. The government has recently predicted a 1992 year-end deficit of about 1 trillion rubles, significantly higher than the one approved in its original budget. (Erik Whitlock, RFE/RL, Inc.) GOVERNMENT UNDER ATTACK. Acting Prime Minister Egor Gaidar was quoted by the Russian TV program "Vesti" on 17 September as saying that the government has lost its ability to maneuver. Gaidar's first deputy, Vladimir Shumeiko, told journalists that some personal changes will soon be conducted in the government, Ostankino TV reported on 16 September. The right-wing parliamentary opposition bloc "Russian Unity" demanded the convening of an extraordinary congress which would replace the government, according to ITAR-TASS on 17 September. The foreign edition of ITAR-TASS's newspaper 24 reported on 17 September that a decree for the appointment of Vice President Aleksandr Rutskoi as prime minister has already been prepared by President Yeltsin. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL, Inc.) STANKEVICH FOR COALITION GOVERNMENT. Presidential advisor Sergei Stankevich told Rossiiskie vesti on 17 September that he favors the establishment of a coalition government which would include representatives of the Civic Union and the democrats, but he did not rule out the possibility of forming a more right-wing coalition without the democrats. He criticized Gaidar's government for its adherence to macroeconomic theories, and said he supported the more cautious reform approach of the Civic Union. He listed his major political achievements as follows: successfully convincing President Yeltsin to adopt policies that strengthen the Russian state, solving the crisis in the Trans-Dniester region, and drawing greater public attention to the problems which Russians are experiencing in the non-Russian former Soviet republics. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL, Inc.) GAIDAR ON INCREASING ARMS EXPORTS. Prime Minister Egor Gaidar, currently touring various cities in Russia, said in Tula that the government would permit increased arms exports, according to Russian news agencies on 16 and 17 September. Gaidar suggested that weapons producers would be allowed to directly contract with foreigners for the sale of output, as long as the deals in question were not covered by state orders and were approved by the government. He emphasized that increasing the opportunities for sales abroad would not mean weakening government control and supervision of weapons exports. (Erik Whitlock, RFE/RL, Inc.) LAWYER DEFENDS COMMUNIST PARTY IN CONSTITUTIONAL COURT. Speaking on 17 September at the Constitutional Court hearings on the Communist Party, Defense Attorney Boris Lazarev said Yeltsin's decrees first suspending and then banning the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and Russian Communist Party were illegal, since at the time of their adoption only the Soviet Supreme Court had the right to make decisions on the status of political parties. ITAR-TASS quoted Lazarev as calling Yeltsin's leadership "incompetent." Lazarev also rejected the accusation that the CPSU was "unconstitutional." The lawyer argued that there was no legislation in the country defining the "constitutional responsibilities of parties" at the time when Yeltsin's decrees were adopted. (Vera Tolz, RFE/RL, Inc.) CORRUPTION IN RUSSIAN FOREIGN MINISTRY? Vasilii Lipitsky, leader of the People's Party of Free Russia, commonly known as "the party of [Vice-President] Aleksandr Rutskoi," has appealed to President Yeltsin and the Russian parliament, requesting that they investigate corruption in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Writing in the 37th issue of Megapolis Express, Lipitsky says that representatives of his party had been unable to attend the current session of the Socialist International in Berlin, to which they had been invited, because the Foreign Ministry failed to provide them exit visas. Instead, they were advised to seek visas in a private "co-operative" firm, run by foreign ministry officials who sell exit visas for their private gain. The party, Lipitsky writes, refused to be served by such a "co-operative" out of principle. (Yeltsin's decree on the fight against corruption forbids governmental officials from becoming involved in commercial activities.) (Julia Wishnevsky, RFE/RL, Inc.) KHASBULATOV FAVORS GENERAL CIS CITIZENSHIP. The Chairman of the Interparliamentary Assembly, Ruslan Khasbulatov, favors the establishment of a common citizenship on the territory of those CIS member states who support the new Assembly, Nezavisimaya gazeta reported on 17 September. He also suggested that the Russian Foreign Economic Bank should take complete control of all CIS foreign currency accounts. Meanwhile, the Russian first deputy parliamentary speaker, Sergei Filatov, revealed in an interview with Moskovskie novosti (no.38) details on his political battle against Khasbulatov at the most recent Congress. Filatov attacked Khasbulatov for building a personal dictatorship in the parliament, and hinted that the speaker may soon be replaced. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL, Inc.) LUKYANOV SAYS COUP LEADERS SHOULD HAVE BEEN MORE DECISIVE. Former Soviet parliament chairman, Anatolii Lukyanov, who is now in jail on charges of participating in the attempted coup last year, gave an interview to Nezavisimaya gazeta on 17 September. Lukyanov said that he would act more decisively if the August events were repeated today. He said that the Committee for the State of Emergency, which tried to seize power after putting Gorbachev under house arrest in August 1991, was poorly conceived and organized. (Lukyanov was not a member of the committee). Lukyanov said the committee's actions were not a coup but rather an attempt to rescue the Soviet socialist system. He said that he still supports "full-blown Soviet power and a renovated Soviet federation." (Vera Tolz, RFE/RL, Inc.) NO RUSSIAN NAVAL BASE AT NOVOROSSIISK. Black Sea Fleet commander Admiral Igor Kasatonov said on 16 September that Russia has no plans to build a naval base in Novorossiisk because the port there is inadequate for heavy naval traffic. His comments come as Russian access to Ukrainian Black Sea ports is becoming increasingly limited and follows the evacuation of Russian naval personnel from the Georgian Black Sea port of Poti. (Stephen Foye, RFE/RL, Inc.) MOROZOV ON UKRAINIAN MILITARY REFORM. Ukrainian Defense Minister Konstantin Morozov said in an interview in Krasnaya zvezda on 17 September that Kiev intends to build two operational commands on the basis of the three existing military districts in Ukraine. He also said that a new service -- the Air Defense Troops -- would be formed by combining two currently existing force branches (presumably the Air Force and Air Defense Forces. See Krasnaya zvezda, 5 September). The interview was summarized briefly by "Novosti." This past summer the commander of the Ukrainian Air Defense Forces, Lt. Gen. Mikhail Lopatin, had criticized proposals to subordinate his forces to the Air Force (see Krasnaya zvezda, 1 August). (Stephen Foye, RFE/RL, Inc.) UKRAINIAN PARLIAMENTARIANS WANT TO KEEP MISSILES. At a conference in Washington on 16 September, members of the Ukrainian parliament indicated that Ukraine might balk on its pledges to transfer ex-Soviet long range ballistic missiles to Russia for destruction. According to a UPI account of the meeting, parliamentarian Yurii Kostenko said Ukraine must retain these weapons on its territory for "national security reasons." The Ukrainian legislators told the conference that the republic needed the considerable amount of hard currency that the enriched uranium in the warheads would bring on the open market. (The United States has recently agreed to buy the enriched uranium from Russian nuclear weapons in a deal that some experts estimate might ultimately be worth $5 billion.) Other CIS representatives at the conference cautioned that the Ukrainian statements were not those of the government. (Doug Clarke, RFE/RL, Inc.) COMPETING DEMONSTRATIONS IN KIEV. On 16 September, the second day of the new parliamentary session in Kiev, Ukrainian lawmakers arriving for work were greeted by demonstrators and pickets defending opposite points of view. DR-Press reports that in the morning war and labor veterans with red flags and portraits of Lenin were demanding an improvement of their overall situation. They were joined by activists from the Socialist Party of Ukraine and the "Toiling Ukraine" Association. Several hours later demonstrators from "Rukh" arrived with the national blue and yellow flag and stayed until the end of the day. In the meantime, the parliament discussed a package of economic legislation. (Roman Solchanyk, RFE/RL, Inc.) UN OBSERVERS INVITED TO TAJIKISTAN. The UN delegation that arrived in Tashkent earlier in the week in response to an urgent plea from Uzbek President Islam Karimov has received an invitation from the government of Tajikistan to visit that country as well, Khovar-TASS reported on 17 September. Karimov had asked the UN to send representatives to examine the destabilizing influence in the Central Asian region of recent events in Tajikistan. The invitation from the Tajik government promises that the visitors will be given an opportunity to meet leaders of a variety of political parties and movements. The Tajik authorities are presumably eager to present their version of events to the outside world. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL, Inc.) NAZARBAEV MEETS WITH KAZAKHSTAN'S GERMANS. On 17 September, on the eve of his official visit to Germany, Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbaev met with representatives of the country's German population and reiterated promises to do everything possible to make continued residence in Kazakhstan a more attractive option than emigration, KazTAG-TASS reported on 17 September. The German representatives requested that Nazarbaev raise the issue of assistance promised earlier by German government officials which has not materialized; they would also like to be able to travel to Germany without a visa. Nazarbaev earlier said that an autonomous German region would not be set up in Kazakhstan. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL, Inc.) CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE IZETBEGOVIC PROTESTS SERB ATTACKS. The BBC on 17 September said that the Bosnian president urged the UN to take action in the wake of Serb air attacks on four Bosnian cities or towns. The Security Council is expected to discuss soon proposals for setting up a "no-fly zone" over the troubled republic, where only the Serbs have aircraft. Meanwhile, the Serbian bombardment of the Bosnian capital entered its fourth day, and Sarajevo Radio said that it was the worst shelling since the Serbs began the war in Bosnia in the spring. The 18 September Washington Post quotes the UN commander in Sarajevo as saying that "this is not the atmosphere to implement the UN mandate." Both sides seem to be trying to consolidate their positions before winter sets in next month. (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL, Inc.) BOSNIAN PEACE TALKS TO OPEN IN GENEVA. International media report that the latest round of UN- and EC-sponsored negotiations is slated to start on 18 September, with mediators meeting separately with each of the three warring sides. There has been much public posturing in recent days, especially by Serbian and Muslim leaders. The Muslims threatened at one point to boycott the gathering, while the Serbs say they will press for a partition of the republic, which is a nonstarter for the Muslims. Croatian President Franjo Tudjman is known to be mistrustful of the Muslims and supportive of partition, but most Croatian politicians argue that no lasting peace is possible without the Muslims, and that Croatia's own state interests require Zagreb to insist on the sanctity of existing frontiers. (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL, Inc.) IS "ETHNIC CLEANSING" SPREADING TO THE SANDZAK AND VOJVODINA? The 9 September Split independent weekly Nedjeljna Dalmacija reported at length on moves by Serbian irregulars in Montenegro to intimidate local Muslims with the at least tacit cooperation of Montenegrin authorities. Most of the action has taken place in the ethnically mixed Sandzak area, but Muslims and Albanians have also been forced to flee Podgorica, the capital, for safer havens. Serbs blame the tension on "Islamic fundamentalists," but the paper said that the pressures seem to be coming almost exclusively from the irregulars, many of whom are outsiders who drift in and out from the front in Bosnia. Elsewhere, on 17 September Western news agencies carried related stories, with one account saying that 69,000 out of 400,000 Muslims had fled the Sandzak in the face of "provocations." Other accounts told of similar moves directed at the ethnic Hungarians in Vojvodina. (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL, Inc.) ATTEMPT TO EXPORT ARMS TO FORMER YUGOSLAVIA STOPPED. Czechoslovak TV reported on 17 September that a private Czechoslovak firm, Ikona Frydlant, attempted to export five Soviet-made MI-8 attack helicopters to former Yugoslavia, most likely to Croatia. At least one of the helicopters was obtained in Poland. The shipment was stopped by Czechoslovak authorities. An official at the Ministry of Foreign Trade said that under Czechoslovak law the company's officials cannot be punished but the helicopters can be confiscated. (Jiri Pehe, RFE/RL, Inc.) BULGARIAN, MACEDONIAN OFFICIALS MEET. Bulgarian Prime Minister Filip Dimitrov met with a delegation of officials from the Republic of Macedonia led by Vice President Jovan Andonov on 17 September, an RFE/RL correspondent reports. Present for the discussions, which focused on trade and other economic issues, were Rumen Bikov and Aleksandar Pramatarski, Bulgarian ministers of trade and industry, respectively, and Petrush Stefanov, minister of economics of the Macedonian republic. (Duncan Perry, RFE/RL, Inc.) SLOVAK FOREIGN MINISTER TO BUCHAREST. On 16 and 17 September Milan Knazko, minister of international relations and vice-president of the Slovak government, paid an official visit to Romania. Knazko held talks with Foreign Minister Adrian Nastase, Trade and Tourism Minister Constantin Fota, and other Romanian officials. He was also received by Prime Minister Theodor Stolojan. The talks focused on political, economic and cultural cooperation. (Dan Ionescu, RFE/RL, Inc.) GERMANY TO SEND BACK ROMANIAN ASYLUM-SEEKERS. The German Interior Ministry announced on 17 September that Bucharest agreed to take back thousands of Romanian citizens who failed to obtain political asylum in Germany. Western agencies said that German Interior Minister Rudolf Seiters will sign an agreement on the deportation next week in Bucharest. Deportations will begin on 1 November. So far this year, more than 43,000 Romanian citizens--of whom about 60% are Gypsies--have applied for asylum in Germany. Romania declared itself ready to accept even those refugees who had destroyed their identity papers in order to prevent repatriation. (Dan Ionescu, RFE/RL, Inc.) HUNGARIANS PROTEST SOCCER INCIDENT IN BRATISLAVA. According to CSTK, 16 people were injured on 16 September in Bratislava during a European Championship Cup match between Slovan Bratislava and Ferencvaros Budapest. It was not clear how many injuries were caused by police called in to suppress fights between Slovak and Hungarian fans, but CSTK described the police action as "brutal." 250 policemen took part in the action. The Hungarian Foreign Ministry made an official protest to Czechoslovakia. Hungarian Foreign Ministry spokesman Janos Herman told MTI that video films and eyewitness accounts indicate that the Slovak police indiscriminately beat up and seriously injured many of the estimated 7000 defenseless Hungarian fans. Some Hungarian police officials who witnessed the incident, however, defended their Slovak colleagues saying that Hungarian fans provoked the police action. (Jiri Pehe & Edith Oltay, RFE/RL, Inc.) LEWANDOWSKI SURVIVES DISMISSAL VOTE. Voting on 18 September, the Sejm narrowly rejected a motion to dismiss Polish Privatization Minister Janusz Lewandowski. The vote was 189 to 174 with 36 abstentions; the abstentions counted as "no" votes. The postcommunist and patriotic-fundamentalist opposition parties banded together in the attack on Lewandowski. The KPN, which sponsored the motion, had based its charges on a state audit for 1991 that criticized the privatization ministry for undervaluing state assets and overspending on foreign consultants. The KPN did not conceal, however, that its larger aim was to bring privatization to a halt. The close vote reveals the fragility of the government's parliamentary base and suggests that new challenges from supporters of state socialism are likely. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL, Inc.) POLISH GOVERNMENT COUNTERS COALITION SPECULATION. Although cabinet members admit that the government needs 30 more votes in the Sejm to secure a stable majority for its programs, the prime minister's press secretary told Polish TV on 17 September that "the government is not considering expanding the coalition." Jan Maria Rokita, minister for public administration, said the same day that "we aren't going to beg anyone for help." The government has nothing against expanding the coalition to include the Center Alliance or the Peasant Party, he said, but the initiative would have to come from the parties themselves. The Center Alliance, which had walked out on the original coalition at the last minute in July, met outside Warsaw earlier in the week to debate--apparently inconclusively--whether to join the hard-line opposition or parley for a place in the government. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL, Inc.) SAVOV UNDER ATTACK IN NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. Stefan Savov, president of the Bulgarian National Assembly, is under fire from opponents in the Bulgarian Socialist Party and the predominantly Turkish Movement for Rights and Freedoms, an RFE/RL corespondent reports. Savov, who has been accused by his detractors of bias and intolerance regarding those who do not share his views, is currently the head of the Democratic Party, an organization which is part of the ruling Union of Democratic Forces coalition. The proceedings could begin against him as early as 18 September and will likely generate bitter debate. (Duncan Perry, RFE/RL, Inc.) LITHUANIAN-RUSSIAN TALKS ON RETURN OF KGB FILES. On 16 September the two delegations discussed the return of KGB files, the RFE/RL Lithuanian Service reports. The deputy chairman of the commission to return KGB archives, Sajudis chairman Juozas Tumelis, noted that although the talks were long and boring, they were positive since Russia no longer disputes Lithuania's right to have them. Expressing concern that the files on the so-called "national defenders" might be used to prosecute these agents for genocide, Russia said that they should remain in Russia under joint control. Lithuania, however, would only agree to this if they were kept in a third country. Groups of experts are to prepare a protocol on limiting access to the files, especially for journalists, for the next meeting, scheduled for 2 October. (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL, Inc.) WITHDRAWAL OF RUSSIAN TROOPS FROM LITHUANIA. The Lithuanian government commissioner for army withdrawal problems, Stasys Knezys, noted that Russia has started serious preparations for its troops to leave Lithuania by asking permission to take out equipment and other property, BNS reported on 17 September. Household goods are removed first, followed by military cargoes and fighting equipment. Battle equipment has been taken apart and removed only from missile complexes such as those near Klaipeda and Vilnius. Knezys noted that the number of Russian troops has decreased by 12,000 since the beginning of the year due to Lithuania's efforts not to allow new recruits. (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL, Inc.) ELECTION CONTROVERSY HEATS UP. A three-member team of investigators appointed by rival election coalitions in Estonia has found no evidence of KGB collaboration among the four candidates standing for president in the 20 September elections, BNS reports. The investigative commission, however, confirmed the authenticity of documents suggesting that the father of presidential candidate Lennart Meri was a high-level KGB agent. Meri denies charges that his father, interwar diplomat Georg Meri, was a collaborator, but the commission's findings have rocked the Lennart Meri campaign just three days before elections. (Riina Kionka, RFE/RL, Inc.) BALTIC ADMISSION TO CE EXPECTED AFTER ELECTIONS. The Baltic States are expected to be admitted as full members of the Council of Europe after they hold new parliamentary elections. Currently they have a guest status. The decision to admit each country separately came at the request of the EC Executive Commission after it had considered a report critical of Estonia's treatment of its Russian minority, according to RFE/RL correspondent's report of 15 September. Latvian Supreme Council deputy Andrejs Pantelejevs told the press on 16 September that the Baltic States can hope to become EC members sometime in 1993, but not simultaneously, since the pace of political development in each country is different. He also noted EC objections to capital punishment, which is still allowed in the Baltics, BNS reports. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL, Inc.) NATO TO TRAIN BALTIC OFFICERS? An Estonian defense official says that NATO is willing to help train Baltic officers. According to BNS of 17 September, Deputy Chief of the General Staff Col. Raul Luks said NATO officials had issued Estonia invitations for five officers to study at the organization's schools in Rome and Stuttgart. Luks was given the invitations at a NATO seminar held this week in Brussels. (Riina Kionka, RFE/RL, Inc.) LATVIA RATIFIES ACCORD WITH CE. On 16 September the Latvian Supreme Council ratified an accord with the European Community on commercial and economic cooperation. The ten-year agreement signed on 11 May, grants Latvia most-favored-nation status in trade with EC member states and can be renewed every year automatically if neither side objects. On 16 September the Latvian Supreme Council also ratified the 1 March 1954 Hague Convention which, among other things, restricts the use of weapons, BNS reports. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL, Inc.) SKODA PLZEN TO STOP PRODUCTION. CSTK reported on 17 September that Skoda Plzen, the largest heavy-engineering plant in the Czech Republic, will cease production on 1 October because of lack of cash. According to plant officials, the shortage is caused partly by the fact that Czechoslovak State Railways owes the company 1.3 billion koruny that cannot be collected. The company itself owes 4.4 billion koruny and creditor banks have refused to postpone the payment. Earlier this year, Skoda Plzen successfully concluded several joint venture deals with Western companies, including the German firm Siemens. (Jiri Pehe, RFE/RL, Inc.) POLAND'S STRIKE BALANCE. With the resumption of production at the FSM auto plant in Tychy on 17 September, relative labor peace returns to Poland. FSM's management rehired all those fired for organizing the 55-day strike there. Poland's statistical office reports that the August strike wave did not affect the overall level of industrial production, which in August exceeded 1991 levels for the fifth month running. Thirty strikes ended in August, including twelve in the copper mining and smelting industry. Some 30,000 workers took part. Prime Minister Hanna Suchocka met with Solidarity leader Marian Krzaklewski on 17 September to open talks on the "pact on state firms." Krzaklewski said that Solidarity would not negotiate jointly with the former official OPZZ federation, a measure the government hoped would save time. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL, Inc.) [As of 1200 CET] Compiled by Hal Kosiba & Charles Trumbull The RFE/RL Daily Report is produced by the RFE/RL Research Institute (a division of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Inc.) with the assistance of the RFE/RL News and Current Affairs Division (NCA). The report is available by electronic mail via LISTSERV (RFERL-L@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU), on the Sovset' computer bulletin board, by fax, and by postal mail. For inquiries about specific news items, subscriptions, or additional copies, please contact: In USA: Mr. Jon Lodeesen or Mr. Brian Reed RFE/RL, Inc. 1201 Connecticut Avenue NW Washington, DC 20036. Telephone: (202) 457-6912 or -6900 fax: (202) 457-6992 or -202-828-8783; Internet: RI-DC@RFERL.ORG or in Europe: Ms. Helga Hofer Publications Department RFE/RL Research Institute Oettingenstrasse 67 8000 Munich 22 Telephone: (+49 89) 2102-2631 or -2642 fax: (+49 89) 2102-2648 Internet: Pubs@RFERL.ORG Copyright 1992, RFE/RL, Inc. All rights reserved.
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UPI NEWS, 21.09.92. --------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Yugoslav peace chief warns Bosnian Serb leader Subject: Fighting, shelling resume in Sarajevo after day-long break Subject: Serb-organized protests by women, children block aid convoy Subject: Bosnia-Hercegovina rejects ``ethnic cleansing' Subject: Bosnian leader urges U.N. to enforce terms of London peace conference ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Yugoslav peace chief warns Bosnian Serb leader Date: 21 Sep 92 14:58:28 GMT GENEVA (UPI) -- U.N. mediator Cyrus Vance warned Radovan Karadzic, leader of the Bosnian Serbs, during the weekend that continued fighting in Sarajevo may bring peace efforts to a halt, U.N. sources said Monday. Fred Eckhard, spokesman for the U.N., said he could not confirm the report although he said that Vance and Karadzic met in what he described as a ``one-on-one situation'' Sunday. ``But it is clear that if the fighting in Sarajevo continues the search for a political solution is going to intensify as the fighting intensifies,'' Eckhard told a news conference. ``This could be a last spasm of fighting or it could be a renewed and more deadly flareup -- we just don't know. But it is not going to make the climate in the political talks easier.'' Karadzic left Geneva Monday along with other delegates, although all three factions involved -- Serbs, Croats and Muslims -- promised to keep delegations in place to continue talking with U.N. official Martti Ahtisaari. Ahtisaari will continue talks through the week, while Vance and Lord David Owen, the European Community's mediator, will fly to Greece Tuesday for a one-day visit to discuss the crisis in ex-Yugoslavia, Eckhard said. Eckhard said this was part of a program under which Vance and Owen would visit all neighboring states of the former republic to discuss its future in the wake of its breakup. Meanwhile, the U.N. High Commission for Refugees said it was awaiting replies from the 19 nations involved in its airlift to Sarajevo before deciding whether to resume aid flights. All three parties involved in the conflict agreed Saturday that security guarantees would be given to U.N. aircraft flying into and out of of Sarajevo airport. But a UNHCR spokesman said High Commissioner Sadakao Ogata was consulting with the 19 and would not announce when the airlift would be resumed before she had agreement from all of them. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Fighting, shelling resume in Sarajevo after day-long break Date: 21 Sep 92 16:22:20 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- Heavy fighting raged Monday around Sarajevo, shattering a one-day lull in serious strife and cutting power to most of the city in what the Bosnian government charged was a Serbian breach of a new internationally brokered accord. Shellfire and infantry duels began around 8 a.m. across the tree- studded ridgelines and slopes of Zuc mountain, which divides the Bosnian-controlled northern verge of Sarajevo and Serb-held areas around the town of Vogosca, and raged throughout the day. Fighting and shellfire also flared in several neighborhoods near the downtown and convulsed hotly contested western suburbs near the U.N.- controlled airport, witnesses and news reports said. The Health Ministry said that at least 22 people were killed and 64 others injured in Sarajevo during the 24-hour period ending at 1 p.m. They were among at least 55 people who died and 296 others who were injured around the war-torn republic. Shortly after 10 a.m., electricity was cut to most of the town. The Bosnian government blamed the disruption on the destruction of a 110- kilowatt feeder cable by Serbian forces bent on ``using electricity...as a method of pressure against the citizens of Sarajevo.'' There was no independent confirmation of the charge. The allegation was made by Energy and Industry Minister Rusmir Mahmutcehajic in a letter to U.N. special envoy Cyrus Vance and European Community mediator Lord David Owen, the co-chairmen of the ongoing Geneva peace talks. Matmutcehajic said the alleged Serbian act violated an accord reached in Geneva on Sunday in which the warring Bosnian factions agreed to safeguard electricity and water sources. He urged Vance and Owen to work for a return of electricity to Sarajevo, which recently enjoyed a restoration of power after U.N.- brokered repairs to Serb-sabotaged supplies. The clashes and shelling also preceded the resumption in Geneva of the latest round of internationally mediated talks on ending the war that began when extremist Serbs, backed by neighboring Serbia, set out in late March to capture a self-declared state. The division of the newly independent former Yugoslav republic is opposed by Bosnian forces, dominated by Muslim Slavs, but also including moderate Croats and Serbs. But, they maintain an uneasy alliance with Croatia-backed ultra-nationalist Croats seeking an autonomous enclave. U.N. High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) officials were awaiting word from Geneva on a final decision on the resumption of humanitarian aid flights that were suspended when an Italian military plane was shot down Oct. 3 as it approached Sarajevo. Larry Hollingsworth, the chief UNHCR coordinator for the city, said the city's population of an estimated 500,medicines available to the city, which has been under Serbian blockade for more than five months. UNPROFOR sources confirmed serious fighting along the front spanning Zuc mountain, where fierce clashes erupted on Friday as Serbian units apparently sought to drive back Bosnian forces bent on breaking the siege of the city. Nirmin Silajdzic, a Bosnian officer in the frontline suburb of Hotonj on the eastern edge of Zuc, said Serbian gunners laid down intense artillery barrages in advance of a ``wave'' of infantry attacks, which he claimed were beaten back. ``They can't manage to get through our lines,'' he said. Witnesses said fighting then erupted around Stup, a western suburb that tank-backed Serbian units have been trying to capture for just over a week in an apparent attempt to consolidate their grip on the potentially weakest point in their blockade. UNPROFOR officers said artillery rounds flew over the top of their headquarters on the western side of the city. Explosions and gunfire marked outbreaks of clashes in Hrasno, located about a half-mile from the city center, and Sarajevo radio said Serbian shellfire hit parts of the downtown and the suburbs of Mojmilo and Dobrinja. Tens of thousands of people have been killed and injured and in excess of 1 million others uprooted by the war. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Serb-organized protests by women, children block aid convoy Date: 21 Sep 92 15:00:53 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- Local Serbian authorities organized protests by women and children to prevent a U.N. aid convoy from reaching a beseiged Muslim Slav town in a new tactic that has prompted a review of relief delivery plans, a U.N. official said Monday. ``It's easy to stop a convoy with women and kids, and it's very difficult to do anything about it,'' said Larry Hollingsworth, the chief U.N. High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) coordinator in the Bosnia- Hercegovina capital of Sarajevo. ``The implications are very worrying,'' Hollingsworth said in an interview. He said that because of the incident, UNHCR is reconsidering plans to send desperately needed food and medicines this week to Jajce, 105 miles northwest of Sarajevo, a predominantly Muslim Slav town under intense Serbian attack for weeks. ``We have to step back and watch,'' he said. Hollingsworth said that he set out Friday to lead a convoy of seven relief-bearing trucks and nine support and U.N. military protection vehicles to Srebrenica, a Muslim Slav town about 50 miles east of Sarajevo. Murat Effendic, a Srebrenica official based in Sarajevo, said Serbian fighters for more than five months have encircled and bombarded the town, where at least 37,200 people are trapped with little food or medical supplies. Leaders of the self-declared state for which extremist Serbs are fighting agreed to allow the UNHCR convoy into Srebrenica. After driving virtually all night, Hollingsworth said, the convoy was forced Saturday morning to abandon its original route by mines laid on a road outside the Serb-controlled town of Milici. The column detoured via Serb-held Bratunac, where ``we were stopped on the main street by a large group of women dressed in black and children,'' Hollingsworth said. ``They began to shout 'Why no food for us? Why should you feed people who are killing us?' There were about 100 women and children. They blocked the road completely and we just couldn't get through,'' Hollingsworth recounted. He said the protesters demanded they be given the relief supplies carried on half of the aid-bearing trucks. ``We went back to Milici to try again. When we got there, a bridge was absolutely jam-packed with kids,'' he said. ``They were shouting 'Go away, go back.' They were about five-years-old and up. They were being orchestrated by two women in uniforms.'' ``We tried to reason with them, but it was no use and the convoy returned to Sarajevo,'' he said. Hollingsworth said the protests were organized by local Serbian leaders in an unprecedented tactic of the more than five-month-old war to prevent U.N. relief supplies from reaching Muslim Slav recipients. ``We had approval from the topmost Serbian authorities to get in and I have no doubt that they wanted us to get in. The protests were orchestrated by local Serbs,'' Hollingsworth said. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Bosnia-Hercegovina rejects ``ethnic cleansing' Date: 21 Sep 92 17:04:33 GMT Geneva (UPI) -- The government of Bosnia-Hercegovina told United Nations mediators Monday it rejects ``ethnic cleansing'' on its racially-mixed territory and pledged that all racial groups would be proportionally represented in state bodies in the future. The pledge was made in a document handed by the Bosnia-Hercegovina delegation to Cyrus Vance, the chief U.N. mediator in talks now going on here on the future of the former Yugoslavia. Bosnian Foreign Minister Haris Silajdzic told a news conference later the document was proof of his country's good faith in the talks, largely bogged down in mistrust for the past two weeks. ``Bosnia-Hercegovina is an independent, sovereign and internationally recognized state of peoples with equal rights -- Croats, Muslims, Sedrbs and all others,'' he said. ``We all have to live together.'' Silajdzic spoke as Vance and Lord David Owen, the European Community mediator in the talks, continued their round of meetings with representatives of the Serbian community in Bosnia-Hercegovina, the Croatian minority and with the government itself. The talks are a spinoff of the larger UN-EC peace conference which has been going on here since early September. Vance had earlier met with Radovan Karadzic, leader of the Bosnian Serbs. U.N. sources said he had warned no meaningful progress was possible until the fighting stops in Sarajevo. Fred Eckhard, the U.N. spokesman, said it was hard to tell whether the shooting which was going on Sunday night and early Monday was simply the residue of previous fighting or a new outbreak. Meanwhile United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Sadako Ogata continued her consultations with the 19 nations involved in the U.N. Sarajevo airlift, on whether they are prepared to resume regular flights ore not. A test flight by a U.N. plane Sunday made it safely but U.N. sources said despite the fact Mrs. Ogata had won written promises from all three warring factions in Bosnia-Hercegovina on Saturday that they would respect a resumed airlift, some countries are still wary of resuming flights. An Italian plane on U.N. business was shot down, apparently by a missile, two weeks ago, halting the airlift. Mrs. Ogata's office said she was hoping to resume it ``momentarily'' but did not yet have the agreement of all 19 countries concerned. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Bosnian leader urges U.N. to enforce terms of London peace conference Date: 21 Sep 92 21:41:05 GMT UNITED NATIONS (UPI) -- The president of Bosnia-Hercegovina appealed Monday for the United Nations to either enforce the terms of the London peace conference among the former Yugoslav republics or lift sanctions against his country ``to allow us to defend ourselves.'' President Alijah Izetbegovich told the U.N. General Assembly he wanted to create a constitutional commission that would include all ethnic and religious groups in his embattled republic to write a constitution for a multi-ethnic society that would be a ``living and breathing Jackson Pollack painting.'' He rejected the partition of his republic into warring enclaves of Serbs, Croatians and Muslim Slavs as ``impractical and immoral,'' and said if the United Nations could not enforce the terms of the London peace conference ``then I ask you to allow us to defend ourselves,'' a reference to the U.N. arms embargo in the region. Izetbegovich's emotional appeal came amid a day of speeches to the General Assembly by leaders from around the world, including one by President Bush, who joined many other officials throughout the day in discussing issues related to the war in the Balkins. Iranian Foreign Minister Ali-Akbar Velayati, whose Islamic government strongly supports Muslim Slavs in Bosnia-Hercegovina, told the General Assembly that the Bosnian Serb attacks on Muslims were ``crimes...with few parallels in the post World War II.'' Velayati called for the Security Council to put an end to the Serbs' ``aggression'' and urged the Bosnian people to defend themselves. He also said Iran would welcome any move to end the ``fratridical bloodshed'' in Afghanistan and called for talks to settle communal disputes in Azerbaijan and Armenia. President Bush called Monday for the world body to strengthen its ability to ``prevent, contain and resolve conflicts across the globe'' and offered to provide U.S. logistic and training facilities to assist the peace-keeping effort. But Bush, in a 30-minute address to the General Assembly, did not mention whether he intended to pay the $733 million the United States owes to the United Nations, which is facing a severe cash and personnel shortage to carry out its peace-keeping operations. Bush's remarks raised eyebrows in the hall because except for small observer missions, the United States has never taken part in U.N. peace- keeping activities since 1945, in part because the success of the U.N. peace-keeping operations depend upon neutrality. The majority of peacekeepers come from Nordic countries, Canada and non-aligned countries. The U.S. president, making his fourth appearance before the General Assembly, strongly endorsed Secretary-General Boutros Ghali's ``Agenda for Peace,'' which calls for the establishment of a standing army to sent be immediately to areas where a conflict threatens to explode. The standing army, to which each country would contribute one infantry battalion, would be placed under United Nations command. Each country would be called to defray the cost of maintaining the battalion, thus easing the United Nations' cash crunch. ``I welcome the secretary-general's call for a new agenda to strengthen the United Nations' ability to prevent, contain and resolve conflicts across the globe,'' Bush said. ``I call upon all members to join me and take bold steps to advance that agenda,'' he said. The first speaker to the podium Monday was Brazilian Foreign Minsiter Celso Lafer. Brazil has been the traditional first speaker to open the political debate of the assembly, which this year comprises 179 member states. Lafer as well as Austrian Foreign Minister Alois Mock voiced support for Ghali's Agenda for Peace. More than 40 heads of state and government, and scores of foreign ministers have asked the right to speak in the first three weeks of the 47th General Assembly session. The war in Yugoslavia, reform of the United Nations and economic woes in developing countries will receive particular attention from the assembly.
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RFE/RL Daily Report No. 182, 22 September 1992 SUCCESSOR STATES TO THE USSR ISKANDAROV WARNS TAJIK GROUPS TO STOP FIGHTING. On 21 September, the chairman of Tajikistan's Supreme Soviet, Akbarsho Iskandarov, issued a warning to the leaders of armed groups that are still fighting each other in the countryside, ITAR-TASS reported. Iskandarov, who is the acting president of the country, threatened that if the fighting does not stop by 24 September, force will be used to disarm the opposing sides. He did not say what force would be used--Tajik militiamen have been ordered to stay out of the fighting and the country has no armed forces of its own--but in the last week various government and opposition figures have suggested that a CIS peacekeeping force might not be a bad idea after all. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL, Inc.) KARABAKH UPDATE. The situation in Nagorno-Karabakh remains unclear, with Azerbaijani and Karabakh defense officials making contradictory claims over casualty figures in recent days and control of the Lachin corridor linking Karabakh with Armenia. Interfax quoted Armenian President Levon Ter-Petrossyan as stating that a ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh would be "a good prerequisite" for a meeting with his Azerbaijani counterpart Abulfaz Elchibey. Addressing the UN General Assembly, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati criticized the Security Council for not sending observers to monitor Iranian-brokered ceasefire agreements in Karabakh earlier this year. Velayati said the Karabakh conflict can only be solved through negotiations, preserving the territorial integrity of both states involved, according to an RFE-RL correspondent's report. (Liz Fuller, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIA CONCERNED AT ABKHAZ CEASEFIRE VIOLATIONS. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Aleksandr Rozanov told a press conference in Moscow on 21 September that Moscow is "most profoundly concerned" that Abkhazia and Georgia are not complying with the terms of the 3 September Abkhaz ceasefire agreement, ITAR-TASS reported. Georgian deputies to the Abkhaz parliament accused the Abkhaz of "totally ignoring" the ceasefire. Meanwhile Georgian Defense Minister Tengiz Kitovani extended the curfew in Sukhumi for a further month and appointed Colonel Gubaz Urashvili as city commandant to replace Giorgi Gulua. (Liz Fuller, RFE/RL, Inc.) CONFLICT IN PARLIAMENT. Right-wing factions in the Russian parliament, organized in the "Russian Unity" bloc, plan to remove President Boris Yeltsin and his reformist government from power, Western news agencies reported on 20 September. "Russian Unity" intends to form a government of national confidence and hold parliamentary elections next year. The democrats in the parliament prefer to defend Yeltsin and impeach the conservative parliamentary speaker, Ruslan Khasbulatov. The Civic Union seeks a centrist role and opposes the removal of Yeltsin or Khasbulatov. Meanwhile, acting Prime Minister Egor Gaidar predicted that he would survive an expected onslaught at the forthcoming session of the parliament. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL, Inc.) KHASBULATOV ATTACKS GOVERNMENT. The speaker of the Russian parliament, Ruslan Khasbulatov, attacked the government on the eve of the opening of parliament. In an interview with Ostankino TV on 21 September, he strongly criticized Deputy Prime Minister for Privatization, Anatolii Chubais, for "ignoring laws adopted by the parliament." The liberal deputy Viktor Sheinis has warned of a "personal dictatorship" by Khasbulatov. He told ITAR-TASS on the same day that Khasbulatov wants to transform the parliament into a "ministry for adopting laws." The first deputy speaker, Sergei Filatov, accused Khasbulatov of creating a new administrative-command system through the parliament, Radio Rossii reported on 20 September. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL, Inc.) AVEN, MOZHIN ON YEAR-END ECONOMIC FIGURES. Minister of Foreign Economic Relations, Petr Aven, and senior negotiator on debt issues, Alexei Mozhin, told reporters in Washington that Russian industrial production can be expected to fall 30% by the end of 1992, according to Western news agencies on 21 September. The figure represents an accelerated decline from the 13-15% drop from the period between last June and this June, 21.5% from July to July, and 27.5% from August 1991 to August 1992. Aven and Mozhin also said that September's inflation rate in Russia was 20%, much higher than the 7-8% officially reported for July and August. Despite the increase, Aven claimed, by year-end a 9% inflation rate was a "realistic figure." (Erik Whitlock, RFE/RL, Inc.) GAIDAR CALLS FOR STRICTER FINANCIAL POLICIES. Russian Prime Minister Egor Gaidar has added some detail to his call last week for tougher fiscal and monetary policies. According to Interfax on 21 September, Gaidar said at a conference in Moscow that since April, national financial policy has been too lax. He devoted particular criticism to the Central Bank for overly expansionary credit policies, and to Chairman Viktor Gerashchenko personally for interfering in strictly governmental affairs. "I would like the Central Bank president to understand that he is responsible not for investment policies, nor for socialist economy..., but for monetary and credit policies," he said. Gaidar reportedly also expressed his support for requiring Russian exporters to sell all their hard currency revenues to the state at some fixed exchange rate. (Erik Whitlock, RFE/RL, Inc.) GORBACHEV, OTHER LEADERS, TO TESTIFY IN CONSTITUTIONAL COURT. The Constitutional Court has agreed at last to call former CPSU leaders to testify at the current hearings that will decide the legality of President Yeltsin's decree banning banning the activities of the Communist Party and confiscating its property, Russian TV newscasts announced on 21 September. The leaders invited to testify include former CPSU General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, former leader of the Russian Communist party, Ivan Polozkov, former Politburo members Egor Ligachev, Nikolai Ryzhkov and Aleksandr Yakovlev, and the Director of the KGB and former Minister of Internal Affairs, Vadim Bakatin. The "Novosti" anchor reminded the audience of an earlier interview with Mihail Gorbachev, during which the former General Secretary had declared that he would never testify at the hearing, even if he were delivered to the court in handcuffs. (Julia Wishnevsky, RFE/RL, Inc.) YELTSIN COULD SUSPEND BUT NOT BAN THE COMMUNIST PARTY, EXPERTS SAY. Three of the four legal experts who have testified since the Constitutional Court resumed its hearings on 15 September (Boris Lazarev, Yurii Eremenko and Aleksei Mitskevich) have agreed that only the first of the three decrees issued by President Yeltsin on the Communist Party was justified. The decree, issued by Yeltsin the day after the attempted coup against Gorbachev on 23 August 1991, stated that the activities of the Soviet and Russian Federation's Communist Parties would be suspended until the court investigated their involvement in the coup. Two other decrees, dated 25 August and 6 November, 1991 respectively, announced the confiscation of the party's property and a ban of its organizational activities. According to the experts, only the Russian Supreme Court, not the president, who is merely the chief executive in Russia, is entitled by law to ban public organizations and confiscate property. (Julia Wishnevsky, RFE/RL, Inc.) YELTSIN TO SIGN DECREE ON DEVELOPING DISPUTED ISLANDS. Sakhalin regional government chief Valentin Fedorov has told a Japanese newspaper that Russian President Boris Yeltsin intends shortly to sign a decree promoting the development of the four southern Kuril islands claimed by Japan. Fyordorov's interview was carried by the Asahi Shimbun on 21 September, and was reported by UPI. He told the newspaper that Yeltsin's decree would allow firms on the islands to dispose independently of their products and would simplify the procedures for setting up corporations, including joint ventures, on the islands. On 18 September Nagao Hyodo, an official of the Japanese Foreign Ministry, warned Russia that a plan for a Hong Kong firm to develop tourist facilities on one of the islands was "unacceptable." He also expressed concern about a reported deal in which an Austrian company would build a golf course on another of the disputed islands. (Doug Clarke, RFE/RL, Inc.) "GORBACHEV" CAR STOLEN. One of the three "Volga" cars of the Gorbachev Foundation has been stolen, according to "Novosti" of 20 September. The "Novosti" anchor cited a Moscow police official as suggesting that the crime must have been an inside job, perpetrated by a person familiar with the workshift of the Foundation's guards. (Julia Wishnevsky, RFE/RL, Inc.) JOUSTING OVER BLACK SEA FLEET CONTINUES. The press center of the Ukrainian Navy in Sevastopol said on 21 September that 50 officers from the Higher Naval Academy in that city had taken the oath of loyalty to Ukraine, bringing the number of officers that have sworn loyalty to Ukraine to about 50% of the total. At the Sevastopol naval engineering school, the rate was reported to be over 60%. The figures were reported by Interfax. It also reported that Russian and Ukrainian working groups were scheduled to resume negotiations concerning the fleet on 23 September. On 18 September, Interfax had said that the talks were scheduled to reopen on 21 September. (Stephen Foye, RFE/RL, Inc.) MEETING OF UKRAINIAN AND RUSSIAN FOREIGN MINISTERS. The foreign ministers of Ukraine and Russia, Anatolii Zlenko and Andrei Kozyrev, met in New York on 20 September, ITAR-TASS reported. The two diplomats exchanged views on world affairs and problems confronting the current session of the UN General Assembly. Special emphasis was placed on preparation of the Ukrainian-Russian treaty and economic relations between the two countries. (Roman Solchanyk, RFE/RL, Inc.) EDUARD SHEVARDNADZE (AGAIN) THREATENS TO RESIGN. Having threatened in late July to resign if Georgian troops used force to quell armed resistance in Mingrelia by supporters of ousted President Zviad Gamsakhurdia, Eduard Shevardnadze again stated on 21 September that he would step down if ongoing violence threatens to jeopardize the parliamentary elections scheduled for 11 October, according to Radio Tbilisi. Shots were fired during the night of 21-22 September at the State Council headquarters in Tbilisi but noone was injured, ITAR-TASS reported. (Liz Fuller, RFE/RL, Inc.) PONTIC GREEKS FLEEING ABKHAZIA. Ethnic Greeks, of whom there were 14,664 in Abkhazia at the time of the 1989 census, are fleeing Abkhazia and other southern regions of the former USSR in whole families to escape persecution, according to a statement released in Athens by the Pan-Hellenic Union of Pontic Fugitives and summarized on 21 September by ITAR-TASS. The homes of many Greeks in Sukhumi have been attacked by Georgian troops. The Greek government has so far ignored repeated requests from the refugees for assistance. Greek emigration from the USSR last year stood at approximately 2,000 per month. (Liz Fuller, RFE/RL, Inc.) ACTING PREMIER APPOINTED IN TAJIKISTAN. Tajikistan's acting President Akbarsho Iskandarov has appointed Abdumalik Abdullodzhanov acting Prime Minister to replace Akbar Mirzoev, who resigned in August, ITAR-TASS reported on 21 September. Mirzoev was a native of Kulyab Oblast and a close associate of deposed President Rakhmon Nabiev. The 43 year old Abdullodzhanov is apparently one of the new Tajik entrepreneurs--he has been general director of a holding company called "Non" (Bread). (Bess Brown , RFE/RL, Inc.) NAZARBAEV IN GERMANY. On 21 September, the first day of his official visit to Germany, Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbaev told KazTAG and TASS correspondents that he had met not only with German President Richard von Weisacker, but had discussed financial help to German-populated regions of Kazakhstan with Economics Minister Juergen Moelleman, and technical assistance in reorganizing Kazakhstan's banking system with the head of the Deutsche Bank. The bank is interested in investing in extractive industries in Kazakhstan. An agreement was signed with Siemens to build medical equipment and telecommunications equipment factories in Kazakhstan. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIAN-MOLDOVAN TROOP TALKS. The second round of bilateral talks on the status and terms of withdrawal of Russia's 14th Army from Moldova, held on 16 and 17 September in Chisinau, "ended without any results," Interfax reported. Moldovan delegation head and ambassador to Russia, Petru Lucinschi, told the Moldovan media that future negotiations will be "lengthy and difficult" and that the chief gain thus far is Russia's consent to negotiate at all and recognition that its troops are based in a sovereign state. Lucinschi indicated that Moldova would agree to a withdrawal of Russian troops by 1994 but that Russia would not discuss any dates as yet. President Mircea Snegur assured the Russian delegates that the Moldovan army would welcome in its ranks officers and NCOs of the 14th Army after the latter's withdrawal. Snegur also urged the inclusion of "Dniester" Russian leaders in the talks since they will eventually have to persuade their people to accept the Army's withdrawal. (Vladimir Socor, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIA LINKS WITHDRAWAL T0 ADDITIONAL ISSUES. Russia's ambassador to Moldova and chief delegate to the troop talks, Vladimir Plechko, told the Moldovan media on 17 September that the talks are based on the Yeltsin-Snegur convention of 21 July on settling the conflict in eastern Moldova and on "other issues pertaining to interstate relations." The statement confirms earlier indications that Russia seeks to link an eventual withdrawal of the troops to the Dniester conflict and other issues and obtain concessions from Moldova on those issues. Russia also confirmed the decision, taken at the first round of talks in August, to withdraw a pontoon unit (nominally a regiment but currently down to battalion strength) from Bendery on the right bank of the Dniester. (Vladimir Socor, RFE/RL, Inc.) MOLDOVAN PRESIDENT REACHES OUT TO GAGAUZ. In a conciliatory gesture of a kind that has previously been spurned, Moldovan President Mircea Snegur travelled to Comrat raion to meet with "Gagauz republic Supreme Soviet Chairman" Mikhail Kendigelyan and with the chairmen of the Soviets of the three raions in which the Gagauz form majorities or pluralities of the population, Moldovapres reported on 18 September. While the agenda of the talks was kept confidential, Moldova's Presidential Office told a RFR/RL Research Institute correspondent that Snegur offered the Gagauz administrative-territorial autonomy in the form of a "national county" within Moldova. The concept has been under discussion for some time by a special joint commission of the Moldovan parliament and government. Snegur invited Gagauz representatives to Chisinau for negotiations on this basis in the coming days. (Vladimir Socor, RFE/RL, Inc.) GAGAUZ MILITANTS ERECT "BORDER" AGAINST MOLDOVA. The militant Gagauz "self-defense detachments" commanded by Ivan Burguji, which have been armed by ex-Soviet troops stationed nearby, and which conducted several successful guerrilla attacks on Moldovan authorities this year, have begun erecting a "border" to separate the territory of the "Gagauz republic" from Moldova. The armed detachments guard the "border," illegally subjecting travellers to checks and searches. Moldova's Presidential Office feels that the move is an effort to torpedo Snegur's negotiations with the Gagauz. Although politically marginal among their people, the "self-defense detachments" have previously frustrated attempts by Gagauz moderates to reach a compromise with Chisinau. (Vladimir Socor , RFE/RL, Inc.) CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE PANIC AT THE UNITED NATIONS. Western agencies report that Milan Panic, Prime Minister of the rump Yugoslavia, arrived in New York on 21 September and met overnight with the foreign ministers of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. The meeting, arranged by Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev at the Russian Mission, heard Panic discuss a new peace proposal. Panic will be allowed to appeal his country's status to the UN General Assembly on the 22nd. In accordance with the UNSC recommendation of the 20th, however, the assembly is expected to vote in favor of excluding "Yugoslavia." US President Bush addressed the UNGA on 21 September at the start of its three-week debate on the crisis in the former Yugoslavia. Bush called for strengthening UN peacekeeping operations and offered the use of US military facilities for the training of UN troops. (Charles Trumbull, RFE/RL, Inc.) NEW FRAMEWORK FOR BOSNIA PROPOSED. On 21 September Bosnian Foreign Minister Haris Silajdzic proposed a new constitutional framework for the republic to the Geneva conference on Yugoslavia. The plan would preserve Bosnia as a single state but decentralize some functions to different regions. This is an apparent attempt to appease Bosnian Serbs, who have called for partition of the republic along ethnic lines, Western agencies report. Relief flights have still not been resumed into Sarajevo, where severe fighting continues. (Charles Trumbull, RFE/RL, Inc.) NEW CHIEF MUFTI IN BULGARIA. On 19 September Fikri Sali Hasan, the 29-year-old regional mufti for Kardzhali, was chosen as grand mufti of Bulgaria, Radio Sofia reports. His appointment was announced at the conclusion of the National Conference of the Muslim Faithful in Bulgaria, where 665 representatives of congregations from throughout the country selected him. Hasan's appointment brings to an end the conflict between reformers and those who had supported Nedim Gendzhev, the former grand mufti, who had been appointed during the communist years. Gendzhev was accused of working for the state security apparatus and was criticized for his passivity throughout the late 1980s when the government attempted to force the Bulgarization of ethnic Turks. (Duncan Perry, RFE/RL, Inc.) CZECHOSLOVAK FEDERAL ASSEMBLY TO DEBATE BREAKUP. The Czechoslovak parliament is scheduled to debate a draft law on possible modes of division of the Czechoslovak federation. The law provides for four different ways of dissolving the federation, and the debate will proceed along lines worked out by the two republics' leaders, Czech Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus and his Slovak counterpart, Vladimir Meciar. It remains highly questionable, however, that Parliament will approve legislation, which would require the support of a three-fifths majority. Not only are large groups among the opposition expected to vote against dissolution, but individual representatives of the ruling parties are said to favor a nationwide referendum on the future of Czechoslovakia rather than having Parliament decide. (Jan Obrman, RFE/RL, Inc.) REGISTRATION OF SEIMAS CANDIDATES COMPLETED. The deadline for registering candidates for Lithuania's 25 October Seimas elections was midnight 20 September. The chairman of the Main Election Commission Vaclovas Litvinas announced that 8 political parties and 18 sociopolitical movements have formally registered, Radio Lithuania reports. There will be more than 800 candidates competing for the 70 seats distributed proportionally, and more than 400 candidates for the 71 single-mandate seats. Various right-wing coalitions that signed the "Accord for a Democratic Lithuania" on 19 September will at times compete against each other in the single-mandate districts since their component parts have registered 126 candidates. The lists of candidates will be published in the newspapers on Friday. (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL, Inc.) ANTALL DEFENDS CSURKA. Hungarian Prime Minister Jozsef Antall said in a interview with Newsweek that the uproar surrounding recent allegedly racist and anti-Semitic statements by Istvan Csurka, one of six vice presidents of the ruling Hungarian Democratic Forum, has been overblown and it is only a domestic political issue. Antall also said that he does not believe Csurka is a Nazi and that the statement Csurka published in late August represents his own personal opinion. Csurka is a writer, a Hungarian enfant terrible, "a devilish child in political life who has a fancy for taking risks," continued Antall. In the same interview, Antall said that Hungary will do everything possible not to become involved in the Yugoslav crisis but strongly supports autonomy for Hungarians living in the Serbian province of Vojvodina. (Karoly Okolicsanyi, RFE/RL, Inc.) NEW DIRECTIONS FOR HUNGARIAN INTELLIGENCE SERVICES. Tibor Fuzessy, minister in charge of intelligence, counterintelligence, and antiterrorism, said that Hungary is redirecting its attention to neighboring countries instead of the West, MTI reports. This is necessary because these countries are vigorously building up their spy networks in Hungary. Hungarian agents, earlier employed in the West, are being relocated to the neighboring countries, Fuzessy said. Also, despite the cleanup in the security agencies, most staff is left over from the communist past due to the special nature of the work. New personnel in the agencies will come only after years or even decades, Fuzessy said. (Karoly Okolicsanyi, RFE/RL, Inc.) HUNGARIAN PRESIDENT IN ISRAEL. Arpad Goncz met on 21 September with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin during the Hungarian president's four-day official visit in Israel, MTI reports. At a joint press conference Goncz stressed that Hungarian Jews now living in Israel are a most important bond between the two countries and said that, despite the appearance of some "old and dusty ideas," no responsible political force in Hungary tolerates anti-Semitic or racist ideas. Rabin said that Israel is worried about recent extremist and sometimes anti-Semitic incidents in Europe, from which Hungary is not exempt, but expressed hope that they are only the actions of a small minority. Goncz also met with Jerusalem's mayor, and visited the Holocaust Memorial Park, the Knesset, and Bethlehem. In the evening Goncz was received at a reception hosted by Israeli President Chaim Herzog. (Karoly Okolicsanyi, RFE/RL, Inc.) ILIESCU QUIZZED ON RADIO BUCHAREST. As part of his campaign for reelection in the 27 September election, Romanian President Ion Iliescu was interviewed on Radio Bucharest on 21 September by four journalists from some of the country's main dailies. Speaking about his time in office, he described his decision to outlaw the Romanian Communist Party, taken at an anticommunist meeting on 12 January 1990, as "a moment of weakness" (the decision was reversed on the following day). But Iliescu was unrepentant about his role in the wave of violence from mid-June 1990, claiming that he had shown "patience, calm, self-control, and emotional balance." (Dan Ionescu, RFE/RL, Inc.) STOLOJAN MEDIATES LABOR CONFLICT. On 21 September Romanian Premier Theodor Stolojan received members of a commission investigating the labor conflict between the railway trade unions and the board of directors of Romanian Railways. Four union leaders are currently on a hunger strike to protest the signing of a collective labor contract as well as their dismissal after having organized two strikes in May. The four have refused food for more than one month and recently announced their decision to refuse liquids as well; doctors say this may lead to rapid death. The commission informed Stolojan that the decision of Romanian Railways to dismiss the union leaders is illegal, but the railway administration insists it acted in accordance with the law. (Dan Ionescu , RFE/RL, Inc.) 10,000 SOVIET TROOPS STILL IN POLAND. Polish officials announced on 10 September that the withdrawal of former Soviet troops is proceeding according to plan. Some 10,000 soldiers remain, along with 63 armored carriers, 5,000 other vehicles, 4 transport planes, and two helicopters. All combat planes and tanks are already withdrawn. Gen. Zdzislaw Ostrowski, the Polish government's plenipotentiary for the former Soviet troops, said that most conflicts with the Russian forces had ended with the departure of Gen. Viktor Dubynin, now serving as Russian chief of the general staff. Still, the Russian side is failing to keep Poland informed about the exact strength of its forces. The biggest problem, Ostrowski noted, is dealing with the more than 7,000 buildings and bases vacated by the Russian forces. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL, Inc.) HUNGARIANS REQUESTED TO FILL OUT WEALTH INVENTORIES. The Hungarian government is instructing taxpayers to fill out a wealth inventory by 30 November 1992, Nepszabadsag reports. The move was made to clamp down on widespread tax evasion, a main reason for the present growing budget deficit. The wealth inventory will not have direct tax benefits, but rather will serve as a base to establish increases in incomes in the future and make the work of the tax authorities easier. (Karoly Okolicsanyi, RFE/RL, Inc.) LATVIA'S FOREIGN TRADE MINISTER RESIGNS. Latvian Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis announced on 18 September the resignation of Minister of Foreign Trade Edgars Zausajevs. The official explanation is that Zausajevs had taken a new job, although Godmanis did not say what his new job is, Diena reports. It is not known who will replace Zausajevs. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL, Inc.) LATVIA'S ECONOMIC RELATIONS WITH TAIWAN. Upon his return to Riga on 17 September, Godmanis reported to the press on his visit to Taiwan. His delegation focused on economic relations and signed an accord guaranteeing the protection of foreign investments in Latvia. Taiwan expressed interest in using Latvian ports to expand trade in Europe. While Latvia does not expect to upgrade diplomatic relations with Taiwan, consular relations will be inaugurated in the near future, BNS reported on 18 September. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL, Inc.) FOOD PROCESSORS' DEBT TO LATVIAN FARMERS GROWS. According to data from the Ministry of Agriculture, food processing plants under state jurisdiction are badly in debt to the farmers who supply them with milk and meat. On 11 September the debt was estimated at 1 billion rubles and by 18 September the amount had grown to 1.3 billion rubles, Diena reports. Minister of Agriculture Dainis Gegers noted that a credit of 600 million rubles was allocated to food processing plants early in June so that they could repay the existing debts and begin prompt payments to the farmers. Noting that the credit must be repaid by 1 October, Gegers said he is deeply concerned about the situation and does not rule out the possibility of calling for the resignation of some plant directors. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL, Inc.) LATVIAN ELECTRICITY PRICES UP IN OCTOBER. On 11 September the government decided to raise prices on electricity in mid-October, largely due to demands by countries exporting energy to Latvia for payment in hard currency. Prime Minister Godmanis said that Latvia will have to pay 120 million German marks a year to Estonia for imported electricity. He noted that the economic crisis is likely to worsen, since many enterprises are already unable to pay for their energy needs, BNS reported on 14 September. (Dzintra Bungs , RFE/RL, Inc.) LITHUANIAN ECONOMIC STATISTICS. On 21 September Radio Lithuania reported a Statistical Department announcement that for January-August 1992 sales of industrial production decreased by about 45% from the previous year, resulting in losses of about 127 billion rubles. The average monthly wage in August 1992 as compared with the same period in 1991, however, increased more than ninefold to 7,668 rubles with the greatest increase (512 rubles) occurring in the last month. (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL, Inc.) [As of 1200 CET] Compiled by Hal Kosiba & Charles Trumbull The RFE/RL Daily Report is produced by the RFE/RL Research Institute (a division of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Inc.) with the assistance of the RFE/RL News and Current Affairs Division (NCA). The report is available by electronic mail via LISTSERV (RFERL-L@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU), on the Sovset' computer bulletin board, by fax, and by postal mail. For inquiries about specific news items, subscriptions, or additional copies, please contact: In USA: Mr. Jon Lodeesen or Mr. Brian Reed RFE/RL, Inc. 1201 Connecticut Avenue NW Washington, DC 20036. Telephone: (202) 457-6912 or -6900 fax: (202) 457-6992 or -202-828-8783; Internet: RI-DC@RFERL.ORG or in Europe: Ms. Helga Hofer Publications Department RFE/RL Research Institute Oettingenstrasse 67 8000 Munich 22 Telephone: (+49 89) 2102-2631 or -2642 fax: (+49 89) 2102-2648 Internet: Pubs@RFERL.ORG Copyright 1992, RFE/RL, Inc. All rights reserved.
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RFE/RL Daily Report No. 183, 23 September 1992 SUCCESSOR STATES TO THE USSR SITUATION IN TAJIKISTAN. On 22 September deputies of Tajikistan's Supreme Soviet went to the town of Kulyab to negotiate with supporters of deposed President Rakhmon Nabiev, who are fighting opposition forces in the southern part of the country, AFP reported from Dushanbe. The same source had reported the previous day that Dushanbe residents had demonstrated all day in front of the Supreme Soviet building, demanding arms to protect themselves against attacks by pro-Nabiev forces. Also on 21 September the independent daily Charogi ruz criticized the appointment of Abdumalik Abdullodzhanov as interim prime minister, accusing him of corruption and association with Tajikistan's economic mafia. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL, Inc.) ARMENIA, AZERBAIJAN AGREE ON CEASEFIRE. At a meeting in Sochi on 19 September the defense ministers of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Russia signed an agreement on a ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh and along the Armenian-Azerbaijani frontier and a two-month moratorium on military activity in the region, according to Krasnaya zvezda of 23 September. The ceasefire is to take effect at midnight on 25 September after which Armenia and Azerbaijan have pledged to begin the "phased withdrawal" of troops from the area. Observers from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan will monitor the ceasefire. Whether representatives from the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic participated in the meeting and whether Karabakh defense units consider themselves bound to comply with the ceasefire is not clear. A three-day ceasefire along the border between Nakhichevan and Armenia was agreed on 22 September, Azerinform reported. (Liz Fuller, RFE/RL, Inc.) GAIDAR REPORTS ON STATE OF THE ECONOMY. Russian Prime Minister Gaidar presented a dim evaluation of the Russian economy to parliament on 22 September, various Russian and Western news agencies reported. Gaidar said that from August 1991 to August 1992 industrial production had fallen 27%. In the agricultural sector, although grain production is up from last year, cattle and poultry stock have dropped substantially. Milk production is down 17% and eggs 12% from last August's levels. Unemployment was officially 300,000 in August and expected to quintuple by year-end. Gaidar also confirmed that the budget deficit stood at 101.3 billion rubles at mid-year, which is 7.5% of GNP, higher than the 5% promised the IMF. (Erik Whitlock, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUBLE DOWN, INFLATION UP. The ruble dropped 14.7% in value against the dollar on 22 September, according to various Russian and Western news agencies. The dollar reached 241 rubles, up from the 205.5 at the previous Thursday's trading on the Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange. The direct cause of the change was attributed by some observers to the recent announcement of energy price increases. Recent reports have also borne out expectations of increased inflation, a significant factor in exchange rate fluctuations. Russian government officials have said September's inflation rate is running at 20%, up from July-August's 7-8%. Prime Minister Gaidar told parliament on 22 September that consumer prices had risen 15 times between last August and this August. This is significantly higher than the officially reported thirteen-fold increase from June 1991 to June 1992. (Erik Whitlock, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIA SUSPENDS CREDITS TO UKRAINE. Prime Minister Gaidar, speaking before the Russian parliament on 22 September, said that the Central Bank is suspending ruble credits to Ukraine, according to ITAR-TASS. Gaidar said credits would not be forthcoming until the two states worked out an agreement on trade payments. The controversy over Russian credit to other CIS republics erupted earlier this week, when reform parliamentarians accused the central bank of giving away Russia's "national wealth" by lending Ukraine hundreds of billion of rubles. According to Western news agencies, Ukraine government officials are very displeased over the suspension. First Deputy Finance Minister Viktor Ilyin is quoted as saying that "The action will lead to an even greater crisis because Ukrainian firms are likely to stop supplying Russian customers." (Erik Whitlock, RFE/RL, Inc.) MINISTRY OF FINANCE FORECASTS YEAR-END FOOD PRICES. A report published by the Ministry of Finance suggests what the Russian consumer may expect in food prices by the end of 1992. The forecasts of what appear to be retail trade prices were reported by ITAR-TASS on 22 September. Beef is to rise to 160-220 rubles per kilogram as compared to the recent 84 rubles (reported by Ekonomika i zhizn, no. 36). The price of a liter of milk is predicted to increase from 12 to between 15 and 19 rubles. Butter can be expected to rise to 225-280 rubles/kilogram from last month's 189. Wheat bread may cost 37 rubles, up from 24 rubles. The report says that the 23-fold increase in procurement prices for grain over last year is the primary culprit for the general rise in food prices. (Erik Whitlock, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIA TO JOIN IMF BOARD. Russia has gained a seat on the IMF Board of Governors, an RFE/RL correspondent reported in Washington, D.C. on 23 September. Approval for Russia's inclusion in the Board was granted on Tuesday at the annual meeting of the IMF/World Bank in Washington. Konstantin Kagolovsky, an ambassadorial-level official with the Russian government's department for relations with international financial organizations, is expected to represent Russia on the board. (Erik Whitlock/Robert Lyle, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUTSKOI CHALLENGES REFORMERS. Vice President Aleksandr Rutskoi told Delovoi mir on 19 September that although he remains loyal to President Boris Yeltsin, he--together with other leaders of the Civic Union--will put pressure on the executive branch to adopt the Civic Union's alternative economic reform program. Rutskoi said he favors the introduction of a market system through a strengthening of law and order and the reestablishment of economic ties between former the Soviet republics. He accused democrats in Yeltsin's entourage of having made several attempts to isolate him from the president in the months before the Sixth Congress last April, but he indicated that after the Congress, his access to the president has improved. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL, Inc.) KHASBULATOV'S SECRETARIAT. Parliamentary speaker Ruslan Khasbulatov has set up a personal secretariat which consists of former CPSU Central Committee officials. The secretariat is supervising the work of the parliamentary department, the membership and structure of which are almost identical to the staff of ex-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev's chief of staff, Valerii Boldin. Deputies are dependent on the speaker because he has power over foreign travel, apartments, and other privileges. Novoe vremya (no 38) commented that the Russian parliament has become an institution dominated by deputies' group interests. In such a situation deputies care more about preserving their own interests than about adopting laws. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL, Inc.) PARLIAMENT SESSION OPENS. Parliamentary speaker Ruslan Khasbulatov opened parliament with a conciliatory speech calling for "concrete action" rather than confrontation, Interfax reported on 22 September. The parliament rejected the proposal by a number of liberal deputies to force Khasbulatov to give an account of his work to the parliament, and it also rejected the proposed formation of a commission to assess the work of the Director of the Russian Central Bank, Viktor Gerashchenko. The parliament did, however, approve several other proposals by liberal deputies to investigate the performance of the parliamentary presidium. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL, Inc.) KOZYREV CRITICIZES ESTONIA OVER ELECTIONS. In his speech at the UN on 22 September, Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev harshly criticized the recent Estonian elections. While registering his "special discomfort" at discrimination against Russians, Ukrainians, and Jews in some of the former Soviet Republics, he singled out Estonia for violating the rights of its Russian minority. Claiming that 42% of Estonia's population was ineligible to vote in the election, Kozyrev stated that this violated international law and that Russia would raise the issue at the UN. At the same time, however, Kozyrev said that Estonia's action would not affect Russia's commitment to withdraw its troops in the shortest time possible. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIA SUPPORTS STANDING UN ARMY. At the United Nations in New York on 22 September, Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev supported the idea of establishing a standing UN army. UN Secretary-General Boutros Ghali has called for the formation of such a military force, which would be put under UN command and which could be used on short notice in trouble spots, but which would be paid for by those countries contributing forces. This proposal has also received the support of the United States and Great Britain. Kozyrev was quoted by the UPI as also saying that UN peace-keeping forces "should return fire . . . when fired upon." (Doug Clarke, RFE/RL, Inc.) SWEDISH PRIME MINISTER CRITICIZES RUSSIA OVER SUBMARINE INTRUSION. Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt on 22 September stated that he suspected Russia of being responsible for a submarine intrusion in Swedish waters on 21 September, according to Western news agencies. Bildt noted that the incident, in which Swedish forces fired depth charges, grenades, and a torpedo at the intruding submarine, matched the pattern of earlier incidents. Bildt suggested that the failure of the new Russian government to halt the intrusions may indicate that it has only weak control over the actions of its navy. The strong measures taken against the most recent intruder suggest that Sweden is making the cessation of such intrusions a high priority in its relations with Russia. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL, Inc.) VOLKOGONOV SAYS NO AMERICAN POWS ALIVE IN RUSSIA. In an interview with Western news agencies on 21 September, Gen. Dmitri Volkogonov claimed that no evidence has been found indicating that any American POWs are alive or being held against their will in Russia. Volkogonov is an advisor to President Boris Yeltsin and the chairman of a joint US-Russian committee established to investigate reports of US POWs in Russia. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL, Inc.) WHERE IS THE CIS INTERPARLIAMENTARY ASSEMBLY MOVING TO? The newly created CIS Interparliamentary Assembly is scheduled to be moved to the Tavricheskii palace in St. Petersburg, DR-Press reported on 20 September. The palace is now being used by a Russian government personnel education center. In a letter to the St. Petersburg mayor, Anatolii Sobchak, the director of the center protested the decision to move the Assembly into the palace. He recommended to Sobchak that the Assembly be moved into the former House of Political Education, which is still in Communist possession. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL, Inc.) CRIMEAN SEPARATISTS LIST DEMANDS. The Republican Movement of Crimea (RDK) has issued an appeal to the Crimean parliament, which is scheduled to open on 24 September, Radio Rossii reported on 20 September. The RDK wants Crimean lawmakers to defend the Crimean constitution; pass an electoral law based on multiparty participation and laws on citizenship and public associations; repeal its moratorium on a referendum on the Crimea's state status; and set a date for new parliamentary elections. (Roman Solchanyk, RFE/RL, Inc.) NAZARBAEV IN GERMANY. Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbaev and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl signed agreements on the protection of German investments in Kazakhstan and on economic cooperation on 22 September, but the Kazakh president was unable to obtain concrete commitments from the German government to provide financial aid to the Central Asian country, the Munich daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported on 23 September. The German economics ministry has promised to consider a Kazakh request for more credits and expert assistance for Kazakhstan's privatization program. Nazarbaev boasted to a meeting of German industrialists that Kazakhstan could be the world's most important oil exporter in the next century. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL, Inc.) ECONOMIC DECLINE CONTINUES IN KYRGYZSTAN. Price liberalization on 1 September has resulted in a reduction of output at Bishkek's dairy products and flour combine. In addition, industrial and agricultural output throughout Kyrgyzstan has declined 20% this year, and food output is down almost 40%, KyrgyzTAG-TASS reported on 22 September. Although wage rates have risen twice in 1992, they have not begun to keep up with raging inflation; the report estimates that an average salary can cover only half the cost of food for a normal family. In addition, the threat of mass unemployment is looming as 920 firms plan staff reductions. Prime Minister Tursunbek Chyngyshev complained that natural disasters this year have overtaxed the country's budget. Angry citizens have already begun demonstrating against the price rises. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL, Inc.) ROMANIANS IN NORTHERN BUKOVYNA PUBLISH FIRST BOOK IN LATIN SCRIPT SINCE WW II. For the first time since 1944, a Romanian-language book in the Latin script has been published in northern Bukovyna, the Romanian media reported on 17 and 18 September. The book, a literary and historical almanac, was published by the Chernivtsy-based Eminescu Society for Romanian Culture. Moldovans/Romanians in the region are currently beginning to reinstate the Latin script in the native language press, education, and public signs. The Ukrainian authorities' flexibility in this matter contrasts sharply with the attitude of the "Dniester" Russian authorities, who have just reimposed the Cyrillic alphabet on the "Moldovan" (i.e. Romanian) language in place of the Latin script. (Vladimir Socor, RFE/RL, Inc.) CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE "YUGOSLAVIA" EXPELLED FROM UNITED NATIONS. By a vote of 127 to 6, with 26 abstentions, the UN General Assembly voted to exclude the rump Yugoslavia from membership in that body. All Eastern European states (except Yugoslavia itself) and all but three of the ex-USSR states voted with the majority. The precedent-setting UNGA resolution specifies that the rump Yugoslavia may not automatically take over the old Yugoslavia's membership in the United Nations (presumably including the specialized agencies), although the document specifically mentions only exclusion from the General Assembly. The new Yugoslavia will have to apply for membership. In an eleventh-hour appeal, Prime Minister Milan Panic argued that expulsion of his country from the UN would be unjustified and would hamper his efforts to promote peace in the area. Whatever the outcome of the vote, Panic promised, Belgrade will continue its support of UN peace efforts. (Charles Trumbull, RFE/RL, Inc.) SKUBISZEWSKI AT THE UN. Polish Foreign Minister Krzysztof Skubiszewski asked the United Nations to establish an emergency system to address serious human rights violations. Speaking before the UN General Assembly on 22 September, Skubiszewski said that Poland supports Austria's proposal for such a system, which should be discussed at the UN conference on human rights in Vienna next June. Skubiszewski demanded that all detention camps in the former Yugoslavia be closed immediately. He added that Poland will offer one of the former Soviet military bases on its territory for the training of UN peacekeeping forces. In 1993 Poland will put two or three infantry battalions at the disposal of the UN Security Council. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL, Inc.) ROMANIA TO SEEK COMPENSATION FOR IRAQ EMBARGO. Romanian Foreign Minister Adrian Nastase said in an interview with Radio Bucharest on 22 September that his country will seek compensation for losses resulting from the UN embargo against Iraq. Nastase, on his way to New York to attend the UN General Assembly session, claimed that Romania's transition to a market economy and its economic reform program had been seriously affected by the losses in its trade with Iraq, which Romanian sources put to some $3 billion. Nastase added that he would also discuss the negative impact of the UN sanctions against Serbia and Montenegro on the Romanian economy. (Dan Ionescu, RFE/RL, Inc.) US CALLS FOR WAR CRIMES COMMISSION FOR YUGOSLAV AREA. On 22 September the US government gave the UN a report on war crimes in the conflict, the Los Angeles Times reports on 23 September. The document blames all sides for atrocities, but singles out the Serbs for committing war crimes as "part of a systematic campaign toward . . . the creation of an ethnically pure state." The daily says that the text paves the way for eventual war crimes trials. On 22 September the New York Times reported on an alleged massacre of over 200 Muslim men by Serbs at Varjanta, near Travnik, in Bosnia. Western news agencies have carried similar stories, and Acting Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger told reporters that Washington is looking into the reports. (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL, Inc.) LORD OWEN WARNS OVER KOSOVO. The BBC on 23 September quotes the EC chief negotiator in the Yugoslav crisis, Lord Owen, as warning that the conflict could turn into a general Balkan conflagration if it spills over into Kosovo. On a visit to Greece he said that the Albanians in Kosovo should not demand independence but that they should receive back the autonomy that Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic took away from them in recent years. Meanwhile, Western and other media continue to report on the alleged presence of foreign Islamic warriors in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Die Zeit on 17 September said that they number in the hundreds at the most. Stories are already legion about culture shock between devout Muslims from the Middle East who have come to fight a jihad, and the highly secular and European Bosnians who want just to defend their homes. Reuters stated on 22 September that the Bosnians want weapons, not volunteers. The Bosnian authorities reportedly have about 40,000 men who are ready to fight but who lack weapons. (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL, Inc.) FEDERAL ASSEMBLY APPROVES GOVERNMENT REPORT ON BREAKUP. The Federal Assembly has asked the Czechoslovak government to present, by mid-October, a program that would prevent a disorderly breakup of the country. CSTK reports that the parliament approved, "with reservations," a government report on the state of the federation. The government was also asked to prepare a concept for Czech-Slovak relations after the federation's disintegration by mid-November. In a separate development, former Czechoslovak President Vaclav Havel urged Czechs and Slovaks to dissolve the country in an orderly manner, avoiding "chaos and civic conflicts." According to CSTK, Havel expressed his concern that the division might not be carried out "as elegantly, cleanly, and professionally" as possible. (Jan Obrman, RFE/RL, Inc.) POLISH GOVERNMENT COMPLETES PRIORITY PLANS. Prime Minister Hanna Suchocka announced on 22 September that the government will complete work on its five priority action plans by the end of the week. These plans are designed to restructure state industry, fight corruption and organized crime, modernize agriculture, revive public finances, and guarantee a minimum of social security. Suchocka will present the plans to the public, as promised, by 10 October, exactly three months after she took office. Suchocka said the government has worked with great speed and hopes the same will be true of the trade unions and the parliament. Gazeta Wyborcza reported that one of the government plans will substantially expand police powers, permitting freer use of firearms and "sting" operations. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL, Inc.) PARTY LEADERS CALL FOR RESIGNATION OF LATVIAN GOVERNMENT. On 17 September political leaders representing the liberal, conservative, liberal-democratic, democratic labor, and renaissance parties signed a document calling for the resignation of the government of Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis and for the formation of a government of popular accord, Diena reported on 17 September and Radio Riga on 22 September. The signers envisage the new government as focusing primarily on Latvia's catastrophic economic situation and stipulate that such a government would exist only until the election of the new parliament. This call can also be seen as an effort by political parties, with memberships ranging from former liberal communist to national democrat to work together as a coalition. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL, Inc.) TURMOIL CONTINUES AROUND BULGARIAN GOVERNMENT. A Gallup poll conducted in Bulgaria in recent days and published in 168 chasa on 22 September indicates that if elections were held now, 33% of the respondents would vote for the governing Union of Democratic Forces, 28% for the Bulgarian Socialist Party, 8% for the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, and 16% for other parties. Some 15% said they would not vote. Unity in the UDF remains fractured, while the BSP has said it will not support a no-confidence vote in the government, though it still hopes to bring down Stefan Savov, president of the National Assembly. MRF and UDF leaders have evidently not resolved their differences, leaving the effectiveness of their loose coalition in the parliament in doubt. (Duncan Perry & Nick Kaltchev, RFE/RL, Inc.) EX-POLICEMAN TRIES TO SET UP ROMANIAN FASCIST PARTY. Ionica Catanescu announced in Bucharest on 22 September that he will try to set up a National Legionary Party in order to revive the pre-war Romanian fascist movement, known as the Iron Guard or the Legion. Reuters reports that Catanescu appears to be the sole member so far. This move, coming only a week before the 27 September elections, is being interpreted by some as an electoral maneuver by the left to win sympathies by conjuring up the ghost of fascism. (Dan Ionescu, RFE/RL, Inc.) KADAR FAULTS AUSTRIA. Hungarian International Economic Relations Minister Bela Kadar has charged that Austria conducts restrictive trade policies, hindering the growth of Hungarian exports, Hungarian Radio reports. Kadar said that Austria will have to liberalize its foreign trade if it wants to be an EC member and wishes to maintain its position as the country to which Hungary gives most preferential trade treatment. Kadar warned that if Austria does not change its trade policy, Hungary will have to retaliate. (Karoly Okolicsanyi, RFE/RL, Inc.) HUNGARIAN PARLIAMENT ACCEPTS JURISDICTION OF THE INTERNATIONAL COURT. Hungarian deputies voted on 22 September to accept the Hague International Court's jurisdiction, Hungarian Radio reports. Formal acceptance of the court's jurisdiction is a precondition for Hungary to seek adjudication in the Hague. Hungary is planning to ask the court to rule in its dispute with Czechoslovakia over the Gabcikovo hydroelectric dam system. (Karoly Okolicsanyi, RFE/RL, Inc.) JARUZELSKI DEFENDS MARTIAL LAW. General Wojciech Jaruzelski appeared before a Sejm commission on 22 September to defend the imposition of martial law in 1981 as a "lesser evil" that had saved Poland from a "national tragedy." The Sejm commission is considering a motion submitted by KPN deputies to try Jaruzelski and the rest of the Council of State and the Military Council of National Salvation on the grounds that the martial law decree violated the constitution. Senator Ryszard Reiff, the only member of the Council of State to oppose martial law, challenged Jaruzelski's suggestion that he had saved the country from a Soviet invasion. Martial law was a "historical error," Reiff said. The party should have followed the example of First Secretary Wladyslaw Gomulka in 1956, Reiff argued, and persuaded "the Russians that what was good for Poland was not necessarily bad for Russia." (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL, Inc.) DELAY IN SIGNING TROOP WITHDRAWAL FROM LITHUANIA? On 22 September the Russian Supreme Soviet committee on international affairs and foreign economic relations urged President Boris Yeltsin to delay the signing of agreements on Russian troop withdrawal from Lithuania until the interests and rights of Russians there are taken into consideration, ITAR-TASS reports. The committee points out that although three of the seven draft agreements on the withdrawal have been signed, they are not legally binding since the main treaty has not been signed. The committee urges that all agreements with Lithuania be submitted to the Supreme Soviet for approval. (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL, Inc.) LANDSBERGIS COMMENTS ON TROOP WITHDRAWAL. On 22 September the Lithuanian Parliament public affairs office issued a statement by Supreme Council Chairman Vytautas Landsbergis, who is on an official visit to Belgium, noting that the efforts of the Russian parliament committee to terminate the agreements on troop withdrawal are indicative of "representatives of imperial thinking," who are interested "not in peace and cooperation, but in increasing tension and expansion." He said that he does not believe that they would "be able to compromise the policies of the new democratic Russia" by terminating the agreements signed two weeks ago. (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL, Inc.) LATVIAN-RUSSIAN TALKS CONTINUE. On 21 September Latvian representatives met with leaders of the Northwestern Group of Forces to continue discussions of specific issues related to the pullout of Russian troops from Latvia. One point of discussion was the takeover by Latvia of bases vacated by NWGF, but not on the list of facilities to be turned over to Latvia this year. On 22 September another round of Latvian-Russian talks started in Jurmala. The principal point of discussion was also troop withdrawal, and Latvia's comprehensive proposal as to how all troops could be pulled out by fall of 1993, Radio Riga reported on 21 and 22 September. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL, Inc.) SKODA PLZEN TO FIRE OVER 1,200, LAY OFF 2,000 MORE. According to CSTK, Skoda Plzen, the Czech Republic's largest industrial employer, plans to dismiss about 1,200 workers in October and lay off another 2,000 temporarily due to financial problems. Czech Minister of Trade and Industry Vladimir Dlouhy said that most of the employees will be rehired once the company is in a healthier position and announced that they will continue receiving 60% of their salaries as unemployment benefits. Skoda's main problem has been the huge sums owed to the company by the state-owned railways for the delivery of locomotives. Dlouhy ruled out any state subsidies and said that the dispute between Skoda and the railways would have to be settled in court. (Jan Obrman, RFE/RL, Inc.) ROMANIA'S GYPSY KING ASKS GERMANY TO COMPENSATE NAZI VICTIMS. In an interview with German ZDF TV broadcast on 22 September, Ion Cioaba, the self-proclaimed "king of all Gypsies," threatened to launch mass demonstrations if Germany refuses to pay compensation for Nazi atrocities against Gypsies in World War II. The interview was conducted in the Transylvanian town of Sibiu. Germany faces a flood of refugees, including thousands of Romanian Gypsies, which has provoked racist backlash. Cioaba promised to call his fellow Gypsies home if Bonn agrees to pay compensation. Cioaba's authority, however, appears to be rather limited; on 11 September another Gypsy chieftain from Romania, Iulian Radulescu, proclaimed himself an emperor of all Gypsies. (Dan Ionescu, RFE/RL, Inc.)
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UPI NEWS, 23.09.92. --------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Croatians, Muslims at odds over former Yugoslav tourist town Subject: General Assembly bars Serbia-Montenegro federation Subject: Serbian bombardment kills hospital patients Subject: Karadzic condemns U.N. Yugoslav ouster Subject: French soldiers wounded in Sarajevo ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Croatians, Muslims at odds over former Yugoslav tourist town Date: 23 Sep 92 02:08:04 GMT MOSTAR, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- Before the Yugoslav war broke out in April, tourists flocked to this south-central Hercegovina town to take in its distinctly Muslim flavor. Before the war, Mostar was 34 percent Muslim, 33 percent Croat and 10 percent Serb. Now Croatian flags hang on nearly every government building, Croatian currency is circulated and taxes are paid to the local Croatian authorities. Most of the distinctive buildings that once attracted tourists have been leveled or riddled with bullet holes. All but one of the city's 11 mosques have been destroyed. The local Croatian leadership plans to rebuild Mostar and make it the capital of their self-declared republic of Herceg-Bosna, which comprises roughly one-third of Bosnia-Hercegovina. The plans are much to the dismay of the internationally recognized Bosnia-Hercegovina government in Sarajevo as well as area Muslims. ``They want to make Mostar the capital and claim it is a Croatian city, but it's a Muslim city built by Muslims,'' said Faris Nanic, secretary-general for the Party of Democratic Action (SDA) in Zagreb. The SDA supports Alija Izetbegovic, president and Muslim religious leader in Bosnia-Hercegovina. ``They have already organized their canton government, which is not respected in Sarajevo because it is illegal and non-constitutional and has introduced laws in discrepancy with Bosnian-Hercegovina laws,'' said Izmet Hadziosmanovic, president of the SDA in Bosnia-Hercegovina. The Bosnia-Hercegovina government favors a republic with four ethnically mixed regions, all under the authority of a centralized Parliament in Sarajevo. But the leadership of the self-declared state of Herceg-Bosna headed by Mate Boban wants separate Croatian, Muslim and Serbian cantons. Boban is president of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) of Hercegovina and regional commander of the Croatian army (HVO). ``The Muslims are trying to create a mini Yugoslavia but it won't work,'' said Sreck Vucina, Croatian army spokesman in Mostar. ``They would have the majority and it would be the same as the former Yugoslavia when the Serbs had the majority control before.'' Although the Bosnians and Croatians officially are allied against a common enemy -- the Serbs -- their differing political aims threaten to add another destabilizing element to the war-torn republic. ``In this area around Mostar and Stolac, Muslims have around 3,000 fighters and it could have long range consequences for both people if any of the problems go too far,'' Hadziosmanovic said. Rising tensions in the last month already have led to clashes between the Bosnian army and Croatian forces in other central Bosnia-Hercegovina towns such as Jajce and Travnik, which Boban's government claims for the Croatian state of Herceg-Bosna. Recently in Stup, a suburb of Sarajevo -- the Bosnian army attacked Croatian forces in an apparent bid to break the siege of the capital. ``A number of HVO soldiers were killed, but no official number of casualties has been released, said Ivo Primovac, a Croatian army commander in Grude. ''This incident was only between Muslims and Croats and it was really stupid because the Muslims should realize how much they need the Croats.`` The Bosnian government is resentfully dependent on the Croats. Its army is sorely lacking in weapons. Although Bosnia admits to receiving arms from Islamic countries, deliveries have to come through Croatian territory. Primovac, and other HVO officials said the recent seizure in the Croatian capital of Zagreb of weapons on an incoming flight from Iran was a government warning to Muslim forces to respect the HVO command. Officially, the Croatian government has said it seized the weapons to enforce the international arms embargo against all three warring factions. The Bosnian army has very little influence in Mostar or elsewhere in Herceg-Bosna, where the HVO outnumbers it more than two to one. The HVO controls 30 percent of Bosnia-Hercegovina, the Bosnian-Serbs 60 percent and the Bosnian army about 10 percent. ``We cannot afford this,'' said Middhad Hudur, second commander of the Bosnian army in Mostar. ``The Croatian army is stronger and we can't afford to have a second enemy.'' HVO officials say they had to impose their authority over the region because the Bosnian army and the Sarajevo government is too weak to enforce their laws. ``The B-H army can't even liberate Sarajevo and nowhere does it have power. Someone had to take control,'' Vucina said. Nevertheless, Muslim leaders say unless the HVO submits to the command of the Sarajevo government they will demand it. ``Unless they respect agreements they've made, the Muslims are going to take the step of general disobedience to the laws of the HVO. This will make our relationship even worse,'' Hadiosmanovic said. More than 90 percent of the population within 10 municipalities in the southwest region of Bosnia-Hercegovina are Croatian. Croatian forces claim another 20 municipalities with substantial Muslim and Croatian populations in a strip of land stretching northeast through the middle of the republic fall into this Croatian area as well. While the Croatian army holds the southwest Croatian territory, allied Bosnian and Croatian forces still are fighting the Serbs for the other 20 municipalities. Serb forces withdrew from Mostar about a month ago, although they continue to lob artillery shells daily into the city from a nearby stronghold. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: General Assembly bars Serbia-Montenegro federation Date: 23 Sep 92 02:20:31 GMT UNITED NATIONS (UPI) -- The U.N. General Assembly voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to reject the claim Yugoslav federation of Serbia and Montenegro to hold the seat of the former Yugoslavia and barred it from the world body. The assembly voted 127-6 with 26 abstentions to adopt the measure despite a plea by Yugoslav Prime Minister Milan Panic not to expel his government because it is a ``peace-loving Yugoslavia.'' The Socialist Federation of Yugoslavia ceased to exist earlier this year after four of its six republics seceded and are recognized by the United Nations as independent states. The Serbian government in Belgrade and Montenegro then claimed succession to the Yugoslav U.N. membership. The vote to bar a delegation from the General Assembly was unprecedented. The vote was taken at the recommendation of the Security Council, a move disputed by some countries as contrary to the principles of the U.N. Charter. In 1974, South Africa was expelled from the assembly after its credentials were rejected by the same body as a protest to that country's apartheid policies. The assembly did not revoke Pretoria's U. N. membership, however. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Serbian bombardment kills hospital patients Date: 23 Sep 92 11:32:56 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- Clashes in Bosnia-Hercegovina and its capital Sarajevo eased Wednesday only hours after Serbian guerrillas in two separate assaults bombarded a hospital and a Red Cross kitchen, killing at least 14 people and wounding another 48, Sarajevo Radio said. In a separate attack, a Serbian mortar shell Tuesday evening wounded at least 17 people in a downtown Sarajevo street, the radio said. Serbian guerrillas used tanks, mortars and infantry weapons in firing on Bosnian forces positions and civilian targets Wednesday morning, the radio said. ``There were only sporadic explosions early today in Sarajevo,'' a police spokesman said. A lull in clashes came after fighting intensified Tuesday evening following relatively calms spells earlier in the day. A Serbian tank shell hit the hospital in Bihac, a predominantly Muslim Slav town in northwestern Bosnia-Hercegovina. The shell struck a dining room on a lung disease ward while patients had their dinner, Sarajevo radio said. It indicated the attack on the Bihac hospital was in retaliation for the downing of three Serbian air force jet fighters that Bosnian forces reportedly shot down earlier Tuesday in the area between Velika Kladusa, Bosanski Novi and Prijedor. In Sarajevo, the predominantly Muslim Slav city that has been under a Serbian siege since early in April, Serbian guerrillas fired a mortar shell Tuesday evening into a Red Cross soup kitchen in Blagoje Parovic Street, killing three persons and wounding another 28, the radio said. Another mortar shell struck on Cetinjska Street Tuesday evening, wounding at least 17 people, Sarajevo radio said. Squads of workers, accompanied by officials of the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR), Wednesday morning went out to repair high- voltage overhead long-distance electricity cables that were damaged in fighting in the past week. Large sections of Sarajevo, where about 350,000 to 500,000 residents and refugees have been trapped since late in March, were without electric power and water supplies. A U.N.-sponsored humanitarian aid airlift has been suspended since Sept. 3 when an Italian cargo plane was downed on its flight to Sarajevo. U.N. officials planned to reopen the international relief airlift but sought additional guarantees from the warring sides. Road convoys that carried food and medical supplies to besieged Sarajevo were not enough to meet the city's demands of about 200 tons of food per day and the city and the newly independent republic were running short of food and medicines. French Gen. Phillipe Morillon of the UNPROFOR in Sarajevo said U.N. troops, that are to have self-defense rights to fire back if attacked will be posted along corridors in Bosnia-Hercegovina to ensure relief deliveries. Morillon arrived in Sarajevo during the weekend to work out the deployment of 6,000 troops that were authorized by the U.N. Security Council last week as an expansion to the 1,500-member U.N. force to ensure humanitarian aid deliveries as the cold Balkan winter approaches. Serbian guerrillas late in March launched a campaign to carve a self- declared state out of Bosnia-Hercegovina and annex it to Serbia, the dominant republic in the former Yugoslav federation. Militant leaders of the 1.4 million Christian Orthodox Serbs, that make 32 percent of the republic's 4.4 million population, have declared a ``Serbian Republic'' on about 70 percent of Bosnia-Hercegovina's territory. About 1.9 million Muslim Slavs and most of 750,000 Roman Catholic Croats advocate an independent Bosnia-Hercegovina. Serbian guerrillas have been fighting against Bosnia-Hercegovina forces that comprise mostly Muslim Slavs but also include moderate Serbs and Croats. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Karadzic condemns U.N. Yugoslav ouster Date: 23 Sep 92 18:15:40 GMT BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (UPI) -- The leader of Serbs in Bosnia- Hercegovina, Radovan Karadzic, condemned the international community Wednesday for barring the Yugoslav delegation from the United Nations and announced he ``will no longer make one-sided concessions'' in future peace negotiations. ``The exclusion of Yugoslavia from the United Nations, as in the case of our exclusion from the CSCE (Council on Security and Cooperation in Europe), is just the continuation of international community pressure on the Serbian people,'' Karadzic told a news conference in the Serbian capital of Belgrade. He said the U.N. decision, by hitting at only one side, would not end the war in Bosnia-Hercegovina. ``Until all three sides are equally pressured to stop fighting, the war will not end,'' Karadzic said. Karadzic's criticism of the U.N. decision was echoed by ruling party leaders in the new Yugoslav federation of Serbia and Montenegro, who blamed the Western powers and federal Prime Minister Milan Panic for the new Belgrade government losing the right to retain the seat of the old administration. ``The (U.N.) resolution is completely unlawful, and shows that the West has succumbed to the will of Muslim countries,'' said Batric Jovanovic, a Socialist Party of Serbia delegate in the Serbian Parliament. ``Western countries are too dependant on Arab oil,'' he charged. Opposition lawmakers, however, put the responsibility on Serbia's hard-line President Slobodan Milosevic, the federation's most powerful politician whose support for a land-grab in Bosnia-Hercegovina and elsewhere touched off the wars among the Yugoslav republics. ``Milosevic has done the impossible: we are the first country in the world to be kicked out of the U.N.,'' said Vuk Draskovic, the leader of Serbian Renewal Movement. ``Not even Saddam Hussein, Emperor Bokassa or Idi Amin Dada accomplished that,'' he added sarcastically. At his news conference, Karazdic conceded the U.N.- and European Community-sponsored Geneva peace talks were fairly constructive regarding humanitarian aid issues, but he condemned Muslim Slav representatives for not agreeing to divide the newly independent republic into ethnic ``cantons.'' ``There will be no more tolerance and we will not make any more unilateral concessions, since all have been responded to by tougher sanctions,'' said Karadzic. He was referring to Serbian claims they have complied with a London peace conference agreement to put heavy artillery under United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) supervision in several locations, including the beseiged Bosnia-Hercegovina capital of Sarajevo. While some Serbian heavy weaponry has been placed in sites where they can be observed by UNPROFOR, other Serbian artillery in the republic has remained hidden from U.N. inspectors and continues to shell civilian targets. Regarding the Geneva talks, Karadzic said that he was satisfied that Croatia was ready to cooperate to stop the war in Bosnia-Hercegovina. ``The Croatian position is identical with that of the Serbs,'' said Karadzic, referring to the de facto division of Bosnia-Hercegovian between Serbs and Croats, who have established a territory they call Herceg-Bosnia. ``We have recognized Herceg-Bosnia,'' Karadzic said, ``but now we need to stop fighting and begin re-establishing economic relations.'' During the news conference Karadzic put up an ethnic map to show reporters the envisioned configuration of a future Serbian state that comprises nearly 60 percent of the republic. ``These are and will be our borders, whether we become independent or decide to unite with some other nation,'' said Karadzic. He said that he was ready to give up some 20 perecent of Serb-held territories to Muslim Slavs as these areas are not ethnically Serbian but were captured because of their strategic importance. The war in Bosnia-Hercegovina began in late March when Serbian forces launched a campaign to carve out a separate state on nearly 70 percent of the republic. Most of the Serbs want to merge their ``state'' with the new Serbia- dominated Yugoslav union. The two-republic union was forged on April 27, with the aim of inheriting the international status of the former six- republic Yugoslav federation. Bosnia-Hercegovina's 1.9 million Muslim Slavs and many of the 750,000 Roman Catholic Croats want their separate republic to remain independent of the new Yugoslavia. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: French soldiers wounded in Sarajevo Date: 23 Sep 92 17:47:53 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- Two French U.N. soldiers suffered minor wounds Wednesday from a mortar round in sporadic shelling and clashes in and around Sarajevo that prevented work on restoring electricity to the war-ravaged Bosnian capital. U.N. Protection Force (UNPROFOR) officials said the mortar shell was believed to have been a stray round. It slammed into the yard of the Tvornica Armatura factory, located near the U.N. headquarters on the western end of Sarajevo, as the two French soldiers and two local workers were cutting metal sheeting to protect the Sarajevo airport control tower, they said. Ukrainian Col. Viktor Bezrouchenko, the UNPROFOR chief of operations, said one local worker was injured along with the French servicemen. ``None was seriously wounded,'' said Bezrouchenko. The incident brought to at least 48 the number of UNPROFOR troops injured since May. Four others have been killed. Most of the casualties were caused by what U.N. officials have condemned as deliberate attacks by both warring factions. Adnan Abdel Razak, the UNPROFOR spokesman, said the French soldiers were evacuated to Zagreb by a U.N. aircraft that also returned the UNPROFOR deputy commander, French Gen. Phillipe Morillon, to the Croatian capital after a four-day visit to plan a 6,000-troop expansion of the 1,500-man U.N. contingent. U.N. officials said that before his departure, Morillon held talks with Serbian military officials about the possible relocation of the U. N. headquarters to a hotel in the Serb-held western suburb of Ilidza. The move would fit closely with Morillon's stated goal of deploying U.N. troops in Ilidza to secure a corridor through which humanitarian aid could enter Sarajevo through encircling Serbian lines. Serbian forces, backed by neighboring communist-ruled Serbia, have bombarded and besieged Sarajevo as part of their more than five-month campaign to carve a self-declared state out of the former Yugoslav republic of Muslim Slavs, Serbs and Croats. Forces loyal to the government, comprised mostly of Muslim Slavs, but also including moderate Serbs and Croats, are fighting to preserve the republic's newly won independence and territorial integrity. Fierce overnight fighting, during which Serbian barrages of the Sarajevo set several major fires, eased after dawn to intermittent clashes and Serbian sniper fire and shelling of civilian areas, police and news reports said. Skirmishes between Bosnian and Serbian lines along the city's northern battlefront prevented a U.N.-supervised team of civilian technicians from repairing an overhead cable that carries power to Sarajevo, UNPROFOR officials said. ``We made a morning attempt and one in the afternoon. At both times there was fighting in that area, shelling and mortars, and we could not reach the line,'' said Razak. The Bosnian government charged that Serbian force deliberately severed the line on Monday, depriving electricity to most of Sarajevo in violation of an agreement reached Sunday in Geneva on safeguarding utilities. The republic Health Ministry said that at least 14 people were killed and 89 others injured in the capital during the 24-hour period that ended at 1 p.m. Among the casualties were three dead and 28 wounded from a Serbian mortar shell that slammed into a Red Cross soup kitchen on Blagoje Parovic St. on Tuesday evening, Sarajevo radio said. At about the same time, another mortar shell explosion at Cetinjska Street wounded at least 17 people, it said. Heavy fighting, meanwhile, was reported in other areas of the newly independent former Yugoslav republic, including new alleged air attacks by warjets supplied to Serbian forces by the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army. Sarajevo radio said the heaviest clashes raged in the area around the northwestern city of Bihac. On Tuesday, a Serbian tank shell plowed into a dining room of a lung diseases ward at Bihac hospital as patients were eating dinner, killing at least 11 people and wounding 20 others, the radio said. In Maglaj, central Bosnia-Hercegovina, fighting was escalating and dead bodies were reported to be lying all over the streets, according to local radio reports. Local defense in the area is requesting more help from the Croatian Army and the Bosnian-Hercegovina Army to defend the municpality from Serbian infantry attacks, the report stated. ``Children are getting killed; dead bodies are all over the streets, everywhere...There is not a single building that didn't suffer devastation,'' the radio reports said. Despite attempts, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees workers have been unable to reach Maglaj and surrounding areas with relief supplies. ``Access is just not possible... It's just too dangerous,'' Michael Keats, spokesperson for the UNHCR said. ``To get to Tuzla, (a nearby municipality), you have to cross the front lines four times,'' Keats said. If the reports are correct, the Bosnian-Serb army has made substantial advances in the last month in their attempt to secure their recently established corridor through north-central Bosnia which connects the region with Serbia and Montenegro. Bihac, a muslim populated pocket in the northwestern Serbian occupied region of Bosnia Hercegovina, is the last muslim bastion in the area and the local muslim defense has been able to repel Serbian advances. However, Tuesday night and Wednesday morning the region came under heavy attack as well from Serbian positions, Croatian radio reported. In addition, Slavonski Brod, in Croatian on the border with northern Bosnia, suffered some of the worst fighting since the war broke ot in Bosnia-Hercegovina Wednesday. Nine people died and nine were wounded in the center of town by shells fired from Serbian strongholds acrss the river Sava, Erich Ganpe at the Slavonski Brod information centre said. ``The material damage was very bad,'' Ganpe said but he would not elaborate on what was actually hit for fear of informing the Serbian side about the attack. Slavonski Brod is of high strategic importance because the Sava river is the borderline between northern Bosnia and Croatia. The bridge, which connects Slavonski Brod with northern Bosnina is the last one standing along the river and is the life-line for thousands of Bosnian refugees fleeing the war-torn republic. The republic Health Ministry said republicwide casualties, including those in Sarajevo, since 1 p.m. Tuesday totalled at least 25 people killed and 282 injured. Serbian guerrillas late in March launched their drive to capture a self-proclaimed state declared on 70 percent of Bosnia-Hercegovina, where the 1.4 million Christian Orthodox Serbs comprise only 31 percent of the population. Militant Serbian leaders seek to join their territories to Serbia. The 1.9 million Muslim Slavs, most of the 750,000 Roman Catholic Croats and a tiny minority of Serbs oppose the partition of the republic.
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UPI NEWS, 24.09.1992. ------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Zagreb, Sarajevo form joint defense against Serbs Subject: Bosnian president to visit Pakistan Subject: Seven U.N. soldiers wounded in blast ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Zagreb, Sarajevo form joint defense against Serbs Date: 23 Sep 92 21:18:13 GMT UNITED NATIONS (UPI) -- The presidents of Croatia and Bosnia- Hercegovina announced Wednesday to form a joint committee of defense against ``aggression'' and to ask the Security Council to lift the arms embargo imposed on the two Balkan republics. Croatian President Franjo Tudjman and Alija Izetbegovich, president of Bosnia-Hercegovina, made public a document they signed at U.N. headquarters in New York saying that the diplomatic, political and humanitarian efforts by the United Nations ``have not stopped aggression...nor have they substantially alleviated the suffering of the civilian people.'' They said a joint committee will be set up ``in order to coordinate defensive efforts until aggression is stopped entirely.'' ``The republic of Bosnia-Hercegovina and the Republic of Croatia will jointly request the abrogation of the embargo on arms exports'' as decreed by the Security Council last summer when the civil war broke out in Croatia, the document said. The document is an annex to the Agreement on Friendship and Cooperation between the two republics signed on July 21, 1992. It was designed to enhance their ``common interests'' in defending their independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity, the presidents said in a joint news conference. Izetbegovich said he held talks with members of the Security Council in New York while attending the General Assembly session, but none of them supported the request to lift the arms embargo. ``I explained to them the situation and reminded them that our countries have the right to self-defense, but that right was deprived by the international community,'' Izetbegovich said. He said both he and Tudjman will work for the removal of the arms embargo. In addition to the arms embargo imposed on all six republics of the former Yugoslavia, the Security Council earlier this year imposed trade sanctions against Serbia and Montenegro to protest the Serb-led war in Bosnia-Hercegovina. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Bosnian president to visit Pakistan Date: 24 Sep 92 14:38:23 GMT ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (UPI) -- Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic is due to arrive in Islamabad Saturday for a two-day official visit amid reports that guerrillas from neighboring Afghanistan were training Bosnian Muslim fighters. There have been unconfirmed reports that Afghan mujahideen guerrillas were training Bosnian Muslims near Sarajevo and supplying them with U.S. -made stinger missiles. Pakistan is a close ally of the mujahideen who fought against a Soviet-installed regime in Kabul for 14 years from their bases inside Pakistan and toppled it. A government spokesman in Islamabad denied Pakistan is ``giving any military assistance to Bosnia'' but said Islamabad has ``promised $10 million in humanitarian assistance to the Bosnian Muslims.'' Last month a delegation of Islamic scholars from Bosnia visited Pakistan and appealed to local Muslims to ``send arms to their brothers in Bosnia.'' ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Seven U.N. soldiers wounded in blast Date: 24 Sep 92 16:51:10 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- Seven U.N. troops sustained injuries Thursday when an explosion ripped into their armored car hours after Serbian shellfire hit a car and a public bus, killing at least three people and wounding 15 others, officials and news reports said. It was the second consecutive day that the U.N. Protection Force (UNPROFOR) suffered casualties. UNPROFOR officials said they were almost certain a land mine caused the explosion that wounded a Canadian captain and six Egyptian soldiers in the latest incident. Bosnian fighters, however, contended that the armored personnel carrier in which the seven were riding was hit by a rocket launched by Serbian extremists. ``They fired a rocket from a house,'' said one Bosnian soldier, Rusmir Salihspahic. UNPROFOR officials and witnesses said the incident occurred about 4 p.m. in Adzici, a key flashpoint on the embattled western edge of the Bosnian capital, as the armored car was escorting a truck carrying two corpses to a pre-arranged body exchange between Bosnian and Serbian units. ``The APC (armored personnel carrier) blew up in front of our eyes,'' said Eileen Kleinnan, a photographer riding in an armored Land Rover belonging to the British Broadcasting Corp. ``Everyone just abandoned their vehicles and ran for cover.'' She and other witnesses said a firefight then erupted between Bosnian and Serbian units, as the personnel carrier blazed in the middle of the road. Another UNPROFOR armored vehicle was dispatched to rescue the wounded and other Egyptian troops who were unhurt, and take them back to the U. N. headquarters. Meanwhile, the vehicle was left in the road with the bodies inside it. The incident ocurred 24 hours after two French troops were wounded by a mortar shell. It brought to more than 50 the number of UNPROFOR soldiers wounded since May, most of them in deliberate attacks. Four members of the force have been killed. The developments came amid fresh clashes on Sarajevo's northern and western flanks, the main centers of fighting for 10 days, and sporadic skirmishes and sniper fire in several downtown neighborhoods, witnesses said. Sarajevo radio and Dr. Sead Dezdarovic, a surgeon at the French hospital, said a Serbian artillery round smashed at about noon into a passenger car as it crossed an intersection near the former Yugoslav army's Marshal Tito Barracks near the downtown, killing the two occupants. A short time later, he said, another round scored a direct hit on a public bus close to the same location, killing at least one passenger and seriously injuring 15 others. The car and the bus were using a pot-holed backroad that has become a major pedestrian and vehicular route into the city center because much of it is shielded by high-rise buildings from Serbian artillery and snipers. Serbian forces, armed by the Yugoslav army and backed financially and politically by neighboring Serbia, have been bombarding and besieging Sarajevo for almost a half year as part of a campaign to rip a self- declared state out of the former Yugoslav republic. Forces loyal to the Bosnian government comprised mostly of Muslim Slavs, but also including moderate Serbs and Croats, have been waging an uphill battle to preserve the republic's newly won independence and territorial integrity. The attack on the bus prompted an indefinite suspension in the already vastly diminished public bus service, forcing thousands of people to walk home after work, Sarajevo radio reported. It said a total of at least six people were killed and 37 others injured during the day from Serbian shelling and sniper fire in the city. A U.N. official renewed a warning of widespread hunger in Sarajevo unless action is taken to compensate for the suspension of the U.N.- organized humanitarian airlift. The blockade of Sarajevo has left the estimated 500,000 residents and refugees dependent on U.N. relief, which have been severely scaled back since the airlift was halted by a Sept. 3 missile attack on an Italian plane that killed four crewmen. U.N. High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) logistics chief Dag Espeland said a Swiss company has offered to lease UNHCR three giant Ilyushin-76 cargo planes of the Russian airline, Aeroflot, to deliver food and medicines. He said the cost would be a relatively cheap $2 million per month, and that the three aircraft could fly 150 tons of supplies into Sarajevo's U.N.-controlled airport per day. ``I measured everything today and it would be no problem,'' Espeland said, adding that he had informed his superiors of the offer. He said the planes would go a long way to making up for the loss of the humanitarian airlift. Espeland said truck convoys from Croatia's port city of Split had managed only to bring in a daily average of 44 tons of relief, compared to the 183 tons provided by the airlift. ``We are only getting a drop in the bucket,'' he said, and he renewed a warning that ``in three weeks, we will start seeing hunger here.'' Positioned on hilltops surrounding Sarajevo, Serbian guerrillas pounded the city Thursday with tank, howitzer, mortar and anti-aircraft machine gun fire, targeting both civilian and government forces positions. Most of Sarajevo was without electricity or water for its fourth consecutive day with repairmen being prevented from fixing high-voltage cables because of the shelling. Bosnian forces, comprising Muslim Slavs, moderate Serbs and Croats, blamed Serbs for Thursday's attack but Serbian guerrillas said they were responding to fire from from Muslim Slav and Croatian forces. Fighting was reported in the areas of Bihac, Gradacac, Jajce, Doboj, Srebrenica, Bratunac and Visegrad, the radio said. Two French U.N. soldiers suffered minor wounds Wednesday from a mortar round in sporadic shelling and clashes in and around Sarajevo that prevented work on restoring electricity to the war-ravaged Bosnian capital. U.N. Protection Force (UNPROFOR) officials said the mortar shell was believed to have been a stray round. It slammed into the yard of the Tvornica Armatura factory, located near the U.N. headquarters on the western end of Sarajevo, as the two French soldiers and two local workers were cutting metal sheeting to protect the Sarajevo airport control tower, they said. Ukrainian Col. Viktor Bezrouchenko, the UNPROFOR chief of operations, said one local worker was injured along with the French servicemen. ``None was seriously wounded,'' said Bezrouchenko. The incident brought to at least 48 the number of UNPROFOR troops injured since May. Four others have been killed. Most of the casualties were caused by what U.N. officials have condemned as deliberate attacks by both warring factions. Adnan Abdel Razak, the UNPROFOR spokesman, said the French soldiers were evacuated to Zagreb by a U.N. aircraft that also returned the UNPROFOR deputy commander, French Gen. Phillipe Morillon, to the Croatian capital after a four-day visit to plan a 6,000-troop expansion of the 1,500-man U.N. contingent. U.N. officials said that before his departure, Morillon held talks with Serbian military officials about the possible relocation of the U. N. headquarters to a hotel in the Serb-held western suburb of Ilidza. The move would fit closely with Morillon's stated goal of deploying U.N. troops in Ilidza to secure a corridor through which humanitarian aid could enter Sarajevo through encircling Serbian lines. Serbian forces, backed by neighboring communist-ruled Serbia, have bombarded and besieged Sarajevo as part of their more than five-month campaign to carve a self-declared state out of the former Yugoslav republic of Muslim Slavs, Serbs and Croats. Forces loyal to the government, comprised mostly of Muslim Slavs, but also including moderate Serbs and Croats, are fighting to preserve the republic's newly won independence and territorial integrity.
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RFE/RL Daily Report No. 184, 24 September 1992 SUCCESSOR STATES TO THE USSR TAJIK LEADER CALLS FOR VOLUNTEERS. Acting President Akbarsho Iskandarov has signed a decree calling for volunteers to join Internal Affairs troops and Russian units to try to stop the fighting in Kurgan-Tyube Oblast south of Dushanbe, Interfax reported on 23 September. The same day ITAR-TASS reported that about 50,000 refugees from Kurgan-Tyube have gone to neighboring Kulyab Oblast, where 800,000 inhabitants are reported to be already on the verge of starvation. Attempts to send food shipments by road from Dushanbe have been blocked by fighting along the highway. Ostankino TV on 21 September reported having learned that Tajikistan's foreign minister planned to ask the UN General Assembly to authorize UN peacekeeping forces for Tajikistan. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL, Inc.) NEW ABKHAZ CEASEFIRE; Shanibov DETAINED. A new ceasefire agreement was signed on 23 September by Georgian, Abkhaz and Russian representatives, whereby Abkhaz and Georgian troops would be withdrawn from the River Bzyb, which is to become a demilitarized zone, ITAR-TASS reported. The agreement also provides for the creation of a commission which will begin work on 1 October to stabilize the situation in Sukhumi; at that time Georgia will withdraw from the area all its troops except those needed to protect roads and railways. Meanwhile, Yuri Shanibov, the chairman of the Confederation of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus (the body responsible for sending volunteers to fight in Abkhazia) has been detained in Nalchik by investigators from the Russian procurator's office, which last month began proceedings against him for "endangering the security of the state and spreading war propaganda," an RFE/RL correspondent reported from Moscow. (Liz Fuller, RFE/RL, Inc.) AZERBAIJAN CLAIMS STRATEGIC GAINS IN ADVANCE OF CEASEFIRE. Azerbaijani forces retook the Nagorno-Karabakh town of Martuni on 23 September and subjected the capital of Stepanakert to aerial bombardment; fierce fighting was also reported along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, ITAR-TASS reported. Commenting on the 19 September meeting at which the ceasefire agreement was concluded, Azerbaijan Minister of Defense Rahim Kaziev told ITAR-TASS that until a clear mechanism for enforcing the ceasefire is worked out, it is premature to claim that the conflict has been resolved. Russian Defense Minister Grachev told Russian journalists that one reason why Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed to the ceasefire was that they are running out of military hardware. Azerbaijan President Abulfaz Elchibey was quoted last week by ITAR-TASS as claiming that the war was costing each side 25-30 million roubles per day. (Liz Fuller, RFE/RL, Inc.) YELTSIN RETURNS DRAFT LAW TO PARLIAMENT. Russian President Boris Yeltsin has sent back to the parliament a draft law on the constitutional protection of the power of state institutions, arguing that the draft violated the Russian constitution, Interfax reported on 23 September. The parliament's draft envisioned the creation of "parallel power structures." Yeltsin said that these bodies would confer executive power on the parliamentary presidium, a development that he opposed. He recommended that the matter be reviewed by the Constitutional Supervisory Committee. The draft further demonstrates the effort by parliamentary speaker Ruslan Khasbulatov to strengthen his position. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL, Inc.) KHASBULATOV AGAINST REMOVAL OF GOVERNMENT. Although many conservative deputies, such as Communist leader Sergei Baburin, insisted on a vote of no-confidence in the government, parliamentary speaker Ruslan Khasbulatov told the parliament to let the team of Acting Prime Minister Egor Gaidar continue working, ITAR-TASS reported on 23 September. Khasbulatov backed away from a confrontation with the government after President Boris Yeltsin publicly declared that he also no longer sought to abolish the present legislature. Khasbulatov rejected demands by conservative deputies to convene an extraordinary Congress and stated that preparations for the next Congress will start, as required by the constitution, in November-December. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL, Inc.) SHOKHIN ON IMPORTS, WESTERN LOANS. Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandr Shokhin said that Russia is having some problems making use of credits extended by Western nations and international agencies, the New York Times reported on 24 September. Shokhin, in Washington with other high level Russian officials to discuss debt issues, claimed that Russia had not yet drawn on the $1 billion dollar loan approved by the IMF in August because the interest payments, at 7.5%, would be too burdensome. Shokhin also said that at the current low ruble rate of exchange, Western imports were too expensive for many Russian enterprises despite the availability of Western financing. (Erik Whitlock, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIA BUILDS GRAIN RESERVES. The Russian grain reserve, which will total over 20 million tons, is being divided into federal and regional "funds," Interfax reported on 23 September. Regional authorities apparently will send grain procured in their localities in excess of current consumption and local reserve requirements to the federal fund. The federal fund will serve as the reserve for the needs of the army, large cities, and territories with low local grain production. Any shortfalls in building the funds will be made up for with imports. The Russian grain reserve was established by presidential decree in late August. (Erik Whitlock, RFE/RL, Inc.) CIVIC UNION COOPERATES. The leaders of the Civic Union, Arkadii Volsky and Aleksandr Rutskoi, stated at a press conference that they want to cooperate with the government, ITAR-TASS reported on 23 September. Volsky said that the Civic Union's economic program should not be regarded as an alternative program. He criticized the government for refusing to invite leading economists from the beginning to work on its reform plan and for not having learned from the Chinese reform experience, which preserved the state sector. Volsky's economic aide, Iosif Diskin, said that the Civic Union's economic program seeks first of all to protect key industries from economic decline and only at the second stage does it envision measures to stimulate production. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL, Inc.) MINISTRY OF INDUSTRY CALLS FOR INCREASED MILITARY EXPENDITURES IN 1993. According to a Reuters report of 22 September, Russian Minister for Industry Alexander Titkin called for a 60% increase in defense spending in 1993 over planned levels. Titkin reportedly made the suggestion in an internal government memorandum obtained by Reuters. The planned 1993 military procurement budget is reportedly 164 billion rubles, a 10% percent increase over current levels. Titkin argued that expenditures should increase to 263 billion rubles to prevent plant closures and the loss of up to 800,000 jobs in defense and related industries. In the absence of such an increase, Titkin claimed that production of such weapons as the MiG-29, MiG-31 and T-72 tank would have to be halted. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL, Inc.) GROMOV ON RUSSIAN TROOP WITHDRAWAL PLANS. In a speech to the Russian Supreme Soviet on 22 September, Deputy Defense Minister Boris Gromov stated that the 14th Army will be withdrawn from Moldova "only when the situation in the region gets stabilized," according to Interfax. He estimated that this might happen in 2 to 3 years. Gromov also repeated Russian plans to withdraw troops from Lithuania by the end of 1993, and from the other Baltic states by the end of 1994 if withdrawal agreements are reached. All but 6000 troops are to be withdrawn from Poland by 15 November 1992, with the rest leaving by the end of 1993. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL, Inc.) SUPREME SOVIET COMMITTEE CRITICIZES LITHUANIAN TROOP WITHDRAWAL AGREEMENT. The agreement to withdraw troops from Lithuania was criticized on 22 September by the Russian Supreme Soviet's Committee on International Affairs for failing to protect Russian interests and the rights of Russian servicemen in Lithuania, according to ITAR-TASS. The committee requested that the agreement be renegotiated. The committee's reaction, together with the increasing strength of Russian nationalists in the Supreme Soviet, suggests that the treaty with Lithuania, and potential treaties with Latvia and Estonia may run into parliamentary roadblocks and possibly even non-ratification.(John Lepingwell, RFE/RL, Inc.) US-RUSSIAN OFFICIALS DISCUSS GLOBAL DEFENSES. On 21-22 September, US and Russian officials met to discuss potential areas of cooperation in the development and deployment of early warning systems and ballistic missile defenses. In a communique issued on 22 September and carried by ITAR-TASS, they reported positive discussions on topics including the exchange of ideas on global defense systems, cooperative technical development projects, and legal bases for cooperation. There was also discussion of a possible "demonstration experiment" to exchange early warning information. Despite the positive report, however, the indications are that two sides are not close to substantive agreements on joint defenses. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL, Inc.) NEW RUSSIAN NAVAL COMMAND APPOINTMENTS. On 22 September, Krasnaya zvezda reported that to replace retiring officers new personnel were being appointed to the Russian Navy high command. Admiral Valentin Selivanov, formerly commander of the Leningrad naval base, was appointed chief of the main staff. Vice-Admirals Georgii Gurinov and Vasilii Eremin were both appointed deputy commanders of the Navy. Vice Admiral Aleksandr Gorbunov was appointed deputy commander for combat readiness. The announcement indicated that a substantial restructuring and restaffing of the Navy command is underway. Interfax on 23 September reported that the controversial commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Admiral Igor Kasatonov, also may be appointed deputy commander of the Navy. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIA REJECTS SWEDISH SUBMARINE ALLEGATIONS. A spokesman for the Russian Ministry of Defense on September 23 rejected Swedish charges that a Russian submarine had entered Swedish waters, ITAR-TASS reported on 23 September. The spokesman pointed out that the Swedish Navy had been unable to identify the submarine and claimed that Russian submarines carry out their training exercises and combat operations outside the territorial waters of other states. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL, Inc.) PRUNSKIENE DENIES VOLUNTARY COOPERATION WITH KGB. In interviews given to Literaturnaya gazeta, (No. 39) and Komsomolskaya pravda, on 16 September, the former prime minister of Lithuania, Kazimiera Prunskiene, called the verdict of the Lithuanian Supreme Court confirming her collaboration with the KGB a "politically biased decision" (See, RFE/RL Daily Report, 15 September). Prunskiene said that her reports about her scientific contacts abroad that were discovered in the KGB's archives were signed in her own name; the agents of the KGB, however, usually had to sign their "denunciations" (a term that was used in KGB domestic operations) with their KGB cover name. Prunskiene failed to mention that she was accused of collaboration not with the KGB's domestic services, but with the first department of the Lithuanian KGB, which was an element of the Soviet KGB's foreign intelligence service. (Victor Yasmann, RFE/RL, Inc.) KASATONOV FAVORED FOR CRIMEAN PRESIDENCY. Komsomolskaya pravda of 22 September reports that the extraordinary congress of the All-Crimean Movement of the Electorate for the Republic of the Crimea has named Admiral Igor Kasatonov, the commander of the Black Sea Fleet, as its choice for president of the Crimea. The congress expressed its dissatisfaction with the Crimean parliament, calling for its early dissolution and new elections. The congress also demanded that the moratorium on a referendum defining the Crimea's state status be lifted. (Roman Solchanyk, RFE/RL, Inc.) UKRAINIAN GOVERNMENT MEETS ON THE ECONOMY. The Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers has met to discuss steps to intensify economic reform in the country, Ukrainian radio and TV reported on 22 September. The main speaker was First Deputy Prime Minister Valentyn Symonenko, who presented an overview of his plan, which is said to propose that Ukraine abandon the ruble zone in the very near future. According to the report, the plan demonstrates the government's determination to take full responsibility for implementing economic reforms. (Roman Solchanyk, RFE/RL, Inc.) GEORGIAN RADICAL QUESTIONS LEGITIMACY OF ELECTING PARLIAMENTARY SPEAKER. The chairman of the Georgian National Independence Party, Irakli Tsereteli, has demanded that the Georgian Supreme Court rule on whether the proposal to elect a parliament chairman by majority vote with no alternative candidate conforms with the Georgian Constitution, ITAR-TASS reported on 23 September. A court ruling is expected by the end of this week. (Liz Fuller, RFE/RL, Inc.) NAZARBAEV IN FRANCE. Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbaev arrived in France on 23 September for a three-day state visit, Western agencies reported. He signed a friendship treaty with France providing for regular top-level meetings between France and Kazakhstan and also signed the CSCE Charter. Before ending his official visit to Germany and traveling to France, Nazarbaev signed a deal with Daimler-Benz under which the German firm will assemble buses in Kazakhstan and deliver used Mercedes cars and trucks to the Central Asian state. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL, Inc.) BIRLIK, DEMROSSIYA TO ISSUE STATEMENT ON ABUSES IN UZBEKISTAN. The Democratic Russia Movement and the Uzbek Popular Front movement Birlik have prepared a statement on human rights abuses in Uzbekistan, a DemRossiya official told an RFE/RL correspondent on 23 September. The DemRossiya Coordinating Council has asked Russian President Boris Yeltsin and the Russian Supreme Soviet to look into the charges raised in the statement, including the use of violence against the opposition in Uzbekistan, before Russia concludes a bilateral treaty with that country. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL, Inc.) CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE CROATIA, BOSNIA ANNOUNCE DEFENSE PACT. International media on 23 September quoted Presidents Franjo Tudjman of Croatia and Alija Izetbegovic of Bosnia in New York as saying that they have reached a defense agreement covering the territory of the two republics. This follows upon previous understandings and agreements reached earlier this year, but details of the new text are not yet available. Regular and paramilitary Croatian units alike in Bosnia and Herzegovina formally follow a policy of good relations with the Muslims, but there have been some clashes between Bosnian and Croatian regular forces in recent weeks. The Croatian authorities blame agents of the ex-Yugoslav military intelligence for sowing mistrust between what they term "two victims of the same [Serbian] aggressor." Time alone will tell what, if anything, the latest Tudjman-Izetbegovic agreement will mean in practice. (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL, Inc.) SERBS SHELL BIHAC, SLAVONSKI BROD. Western news agencies on 23 September reported that Serbian artillery hit the hospital in the besieged mainly Muslim town of Bihac, killing 11 and wounding 20. Meanwhile in eastern Croatia, almost daily bombardment has continued for four months against Slavonski Brod and the surrounding villages. (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL, Inc.) KOSOVO DEVELOPMENTS. Fehmi Agani, vice president of Kosovo's main party, the Democratic Alliance, told reporters on 18 September that Kosovo's Albanian delegation attending the peace talks at the UN-EC mediated conference on the former Yugoslavia in Geneva will demand recognition as an independent republic. Kosovo, formerly an autnomous province within Serbia, is about 90% Albanian. Agani also said his party received the rump Yugoslav federal government's 14-point draft program on Kosovo and commented that Albanian parties will not agree on Kosovo remaining a part of Serbia. He added that the proposals are only initiatives for future talks. He did say, however, that his party regards the government's proposal on lifting all restrictive measures on the Albanian-language media as encouraging. Belgrade media carried the report on 20 September. Western agencies report on 23 September that street names in Pristina have been "Serbianized," and the city's university has been named after Dositej Obradovic, an 18th-early 19th century Serbian scholar. According to the reports, Albanian children and their teachers have been barred from entering schools by Serbian police. Last month federal Prime Minister Milan Panic ordered all schools opened to Albanians, despite protests from local Serbs and Serbia's government. (Milan Andrejevich, RFE/RL, Inc.) HAVEL SAYS THAT REFERENDUM WOULD NOT HELP SITUATION. Former Czechoslovak President Vaclav Havel said in an interview with the Czech daily Mlada Fronta dnes published on 24 September that it is too late for a referendum on the future of the Czechoslovak federation. Havel, who was one of the staunchest supporters of a referendum on Czechoslovakia's constitutional setup, said that the democratically elected Slovak leadership wants an independent state and will not allow anything but a "ratification" of the republic's independence. Even if Czechs vote in favor of a common state, it will not have any impact on developments. Havel stressed that Slovaks have the right to be independent and that it is in the interest of all involved to carry out the division in a proper way. (Jan Obrman, RFE/RL, Inc.) BULGARIAN PARLIAMENTARY TROUBLES. Stefan Savov, president of the National Assembly and leader of Bulgaria's Democratic Party, faces a no-confidence vote on 24 September. The vote, postponed from 23 September, results from accusations that he has failed to represent the parliamentary coalition majority even-handedly. His ouster is being sought by the leaders of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, Bulgaria's predominantly Turkish party. They issued a declaration on 23 September calling for the removal not only of Savov, but also of Prime Minister, Filip Dimitrov as well as for a restructuring of the government and a new strategy to stimulate economic reform. According to the declaration obtained by RFE/RL's Sofia Bureau, the MRF alleges that the Coordinating Council of the UDF has often forgotten that the parliamentary majority the governing Union of Democratic Forces holds in the National Assembly results from an informal UDF-MRF coalition, which has now all but fallen apart. Meanwhile, the Bulgarian Socialist Party has indicated it supports the idea of a restructured Dimitrov cabinet. (Duncan Perry, RFE/RL, Inc.) POLAND, HUNGARY AGREE ON FREE TRADE ZONE. Poland and Hungary intend to create a bilateral free trade zone, possibly as early as 1 January 1993, Western agencies reported. Polish Prime Minister Hanna Suchocka and her Hungarian counterpart Jozsef Antall reached agreement on the issue on 23 September, during Suchocka's two-day official visit to Budapest. Czechoslovakia had been envisaged as a third partner to the agreement, but its disintegration prompted Hungary and Poland to press ahead with a bilateral arrangement. The final agreement, to be signed in November 1992 in Cracow, is expected to boost bilateral trade, which Antall says has declined such that trade with Poland now only accounts for 1.5% to 2% of Hungary's total. Suchocka and Antall signed agreements eliminating double taxation and facilitating the flow of capital between the two countries. Antall also urged the EC to provide a clear outline of the conditions the "triangle" countries would have to fulfill to become full members of that body. (Louisa Vinton & Karoly Okolicsanyi, RFE/RL, Inc.) VISEGRAD TRIANGLE MILITARY LEADERS TO MEET. MTI reports, quoting government sources, that the Defense Ministers of Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary will meet on 25 September in Tatranske Zruby, Czechoslovakia, to discuss European security issues, including the Yugoslav crisis. (Karoly Okolicsanyi, RFE/RL, Inc.) LIVE FROM WARSAW: WALESA ON RFE. In a 50-minute live broadcast from Warsaw on 23 September, Polish President Lech Walesa took questions from RFE/RL journalists and listeners. Walesa expressed the hope that the borders between Poland and its neighbors will cease to divide and instead begin to bring together different nations. He added that while politicians can create the conditions for international cooperation, they cannot dictate it. The interview with Walesa was broadcast by RFE/RL to Belarus, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, and Ukraine. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL, Inc.) SOLIDARITY REFUSES TALKS WITH POSTCOMMUNIST UNIONS. Meeting behind closed doors in Gdansk on 23 September, Solidarity's National Commission decided to enter into negotiations with the government on the "pact on state firms," but "staunchly refused" to sit at the same table with other trade unions during the talks. A spokesman charged that the former official OPZZ federation is more interested in the legitimacy it could gain from sitting at Solidarity's side than in the outcome of the negotiations. The Solidarity leadership also rejected a demand from its radical Mazowsze region for changes in the union's parliamentary caucus. The region had expressed outrage that some Solidarity deputies had voted against the motion to dismiss Privatization Minister Janusz Lewandowski on 18 September. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL, Inc.) BIG OPPOSITION RALLY IN BUCHAREST. Thousands of Romanians marched through central Bucharest on 23 September to show their support for Emil Constantinescu, the main opposition candidate in the 27 September elections. Constantinescu is running on the ticket of the Democratic Convention (DC), an alliance of 18 centrist parties and organizations. In a rally following the march, DC supporters called for "true democracy" in Romania and denounced incumbent president Ion Iliescu as "Bolshevik." Western agencies report that in his speech Constantinescu stressed the need for "moral rebirth" and the DC's concern for minority rights in Romania. Geza Domokos, a prominent member of the Hungarian minority in Transylvania, also addressed the crowd. (Dan Ionescu, RFE/RL, Inc.) ROMANIA'S NSF LEADER ON POST-ELECTORAL STRATEGY. Petre Roman, leader of the National Salvation Front and former prime minister, praised his opposition rivals at a press conference on 23 September. Roman said that the DC is likely to win the elections and to form Romania's first genuinely democratic government since the 1989 anti-communist revolution. He further pledged his party's support for the DC in the parliament, even if the NSF is not part of the next government; but added that the offer was limited to the period necessary to achieve stability in Romania. Roman declined to be drawn out on press speculations that he could become foreign minister in the new cabinet. (Dan Ionescu, RFE/RL, Inc.) ESTONIA REBUTS RUSSIAN STATEMENT. The Estonian Foreign Ministry has rebuked the Russian government for interfering in Estonia's internal affairs. In a sharply worded statement issued by Tallinn on 23 September, the Estonian government takes issue with remarks made by the Russian government's press spokesman Gennadii Shipitko to ITAR-TASS on 22 September alleging that last weekend's elections in Estonia ignored the interests of Russian-speakers there. The Estonian Foreign Ministry "regards [the statements] as a threat directed at the Republic of Estonia . . . and as an attempt to influence the activities of the newly-elected Riigikogu (parliament) and the soon-to-be elected president." (Riina Kionka, RFE/RL, Inc.) LANDSBERGIS CONCLUDES VISIT TO BELGIUM. On 23 September Lithuanian Supreme Council Chairman Vytautas Landsbergis completed a three-day official visit to Belgium. On 21 September he met with King Baudouin I and Belgian Senate officials. On 22 September he participated in ceremonies opening the Lithuanian embassy and gave a speech at the Royal Institute for International Relations. On 23 September he held talks at NATO headquarters with Secretary-General Manfred Woerner and urged NATO to send observers to oversee Russian troop withdrawals and help the Baltic States establish their own armed forces. He also had meetings with EC president Jacques Delors and European Parliament chairman Egon Klepsch. On 24 September he held a press conference on the visit, broadcast live by Radio Lithuania. (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL, Inc.) LITHUANIA TO ABANDON RUBLE ON 1 OCTOBER. On 23 September Prime Minister Aleksandras Abisala told national television that Lithuania will abandon the ruble as its currency on 1 October, replacing it with temporary coupons that can be exchanged for rubles on a one-to-one basis until that day. Thereafter rubles will be exchanged as foreign currency in Lithuanian banks. The coupons will be valid until the introduction of the litas at some as yet unannounced date. (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL, Inc.) UNEXPECTED SUCCESS OF CZECHOSLOVAK ECONOMIC REFORM. According to Josef Tosovsky, the President of Czechoslovak State (Central) Bank, Czechoslovak economic reforms have been successful and will continue even after the country's disintegration. Tosovsky told reporters in Washington on 22 September that inflation is under control and the rate will remain lower than 10% throughout the year; GDP growth is expected to be higher than last year. Tosovsky said that the country's economy is doing so well that it will not need to draw on the remaining $285 million of its current stand-by loan from the IMF. The IMF reportedly anticipated a $600 million balance-of-payments deficit for Czechoslovakia, but it turns out that the country had a $1 billion surplus for the first eight months of the year instead. (Jan Obrman, RFE/RL, Inc.) ITALIAN CONCERN INVESTS IN POLISH STEEL MILL. On 23 September, the Italian firm Lucchini signed an agreement with trade unions from the Huta Warszawa steel mill. Officials say the agreement paves the way for a $300 million investment in Poland's troubled steel industry. In return for a 51% share in the mill, Lucchini has granted a six-month moratorium on dismissals and promised average monthly wage increases of 2 million zloty ($143) over the coming 18 months. The work force endorsed the agreement almost unanimously, Polish TV reported. Meanwhile, Deputy Prime Minister Henryk Goryszewski told an audience of bankers, managers, and unionists in Poznan that "Poland must be open to foreign capital." Poland's shortage of domestic resources rules out "capital autarky," Goryszewski said. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL, Inc.) FOREIGN CAPITAL FLOW TO HUNGARY CONTINUES. MTI reports that in the first seven months of 1992, $827 million worth of capital came into Hungary. This year's plan calls for $1.5 billion, but present trends indicate that at the end of the year final amounts will be higher. (Karoly Okolicsanyi, RFE/RL, Inc.) ESTONIA: GOOD WORKS FOR THE JOBLESS. The outgoing Estonian government adopted a ruling on 23 September saying that the unemployed may be used in emergency relief works for up to 10 days each month with a maximum of 80 hours per month, BNS reported. Labor Minister Arvo Kuddo is quoted as saying that those who refuse to participate in the program for reasons other than health will be denied unemployment benefits for a two-week period. (Riina Kionka, RFE/RL, Inc.)
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----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Fighting flares in Bosnia amid international peace efforts Subject: Relief supplies won't resume until UN gets security guarantees ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Fighting flares in Bosnia amid international peace efforts Date: 25 Sep 92 12:19:27 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- Clashes flared in the capital of Sarajevo and across the newly independent republic Friday as United Nations and European Community peace mediators planned to investigate reports of ``ethnic cleansing'' in northwestern Bosnia-Hercegovina, officials and news reports said. At least one person was killed and three injured in fighting between Serbian guerrillas and government forces in the predominantly Muslim Slav city of Sarajevo, a police spokesman said. ``Aggression is spreading,'' said the Bosnia-Hercegovina government- run Sarajevo Radio in a reference to Serbian efforts to carve out a self-declared state and annex it to neighboring Serbia, the dominant state of the disintegrated six-republic Yugoslav federation. U.N. special envoy Cyrus Vance and EC peacemaker Lord David Owevn, the co-chairmen of the Geneva peace talks on former Yugoslavia, arrived at midday Friday in Banja Luka, the Serb-held town and a major military base in the northwest of the republic. Vance and Owen expressed ``deep concern over reports...of ethnic cleansing'' in the Banja Luka area and decided to personally investigate these allegations, the Serbian-run Tanjug news agency reported. In Banja Luka Vance said, ``We heard of ethnic cleansing in the area of Banja Luka and we will personally ask questions to clarify the situation.'' Serbian officials dismissed accusations their guerrillas were ``cleaning up'' the Banja Luka area of Muslim Slavs and charged that Muslims were forcing the Serbs out of the region. Fighting went on unabated across Bosnia-Hercegovina and in and around Sarajevo Friday after a Canadian captain and six Egyptian soldiers of the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) suffered injuries Thursday while riding in an armored vehicle outside the capital. The incident, a second one involving UNPROFOR troops in the past two days, occurred at Adzici, on the western outskirts of Sarajevo. Serbs traded accusations with Muslim Slavs of having carried out the attack on the UNPROFOR vehicle. But, witnesses agreed that after the explosion that ripped the U.N. armored vehicle a firefight broke out between Bosnian and Serbian forces. Since the UNPROFOR deployed its troops in Bosnia-Hercegovina in May, four members of the force have been killed and more than 50 soldiers and officers wounded, most of them in deliberate attacks. After sporadic clashes overnight, fighting intensified Friday morning with Serbian guerrillas blasting mortar and howitzer rounds on downtown Sarajevo and its suburbs. Shortly after 9 a.m., a mortar shell killed a man in a Sarajevo street and injured three other people, the radio said. Large sections of Sarajevo remained without electricity and drinking water as repair squads could not fix damage due to ongoing fighting. In a report from the western Bosnian town of Bihac, close to the border with Croatia, another former Yugoslav republic, Sarajevo Radio said one person was injured in a Serbian attack on a hospital. It was the 14th attack in the past month on the hospital in the predominantly Muslim Slav town of Bihac, the radio said. On Tuesday, a Serbian tank shell hit a lung disease ward killing 11 patients and injuring another 20 as they were having dinner in the hospital dining room. Serbian forces, armed by the Yugoslav army and backed financially and politically by the communist regime in neighboring Serbia, have been bombarding and besieging Sarajevo for neaerly six months as part of their land-grab campaign. Forces loyal to the Bosnian government comprised mostly of Muslim Slavs, but also including moderate Serbs and Croats, have been fighting to preserve the republic's newly won independence and territorial integrity. Sarajevo, with an estimated 500,000 residents and refugees, has been encircled by Serbian forces since early April. A U.N.-sponsored humanitarian aid airlift was suspended on Sept. 3, cutting the delivery of much needed relief supplies to the city, when an Italian cargo aircraft was shot down just outside Sarajevo. Food and medical supplies trucked to Sarajevo by land convoys are not sufficient to provide about 200 tons of relief needed per day. Fighting was reported in the areas of Bihac, Brcko, Maglaj, Tesanj, Zenica, Tuzla, Olovo, Zavidovic, Breza, Gradacac, Jajce, Doboj, Sarajevo radio said. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Relief supplies won't resume until UN gets security guarantees Date: 25 Sep 92 15:55:57 GMT GENEVA (UPI) -- The United Nations relief airlift of supplies to Sarajevo is to remain suspended until participating nations have further security guarantees from the warring factions in Bosnia-Hercegovina and may never be revived, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said Friday. The 19 nations participating in the airlift have told the High Commissioner for Refugees, Sadako Ogata, they will not resume flying until she has received additional guarantees from the three rival factions that the planes will not be fired on. Refering to the airlift, suspended since Sept. 3, UNHCR spokesman Sylvana Foa said, ``We're seeking guarantees but there's a limit as to how far we can go in negotiating military agreements with the Bosnian factions. We're damned if we do and damned if we don't.'' She spoke as U.N. special envoy Cyrus Vance and EC peacemaker Lord David Owen flew to Sarajevo for a three-day visit. A U.N. spokesman, Pierre Mehu, said they planned to visit Banja Luka, headquarters of the Serbian community in Bosnia and investigate reports of intimidation and growing tension between Serbs, Croats and Muslims. Mehu said Owen and Vance would stay in Bosnia-Hercegovina until Sunday, meeting with Radovan Karadzic, the Serbian leader in Bosnia and several of his aides.
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RFE/RL Daily Report No. 185, 25 September 1992 SUCCESSOR STATES TO THE USSR RUSSIA REFUSES TO SELL WEAPONS TO TAJIKISTAN. In order to end the fighting between supporters and opponents of deposed President Rakhmon Nabiev, the government of Tajikistan asked to buy heavy weaponry from Russia, but Moscow turned the request down, the deputy chairman of Tajikistan's National Security Committee told ITAR-TASS on 24 September. The same day inhabitants of Dushanbe gathered in front of the Supreme Soviet building to protest the government's inability to stop the fighting. Volunteers from Dushanbe and mountain raions that support the opposition have joined a self-defense force organized by inhabitants of Kofirnihon (formerly Ordzhonikidzeabad) Raion on the Kulyab-Dushanbe road to stop an armed group from Kulyab that is trying to reach Dushanbe. The Nurek power station remains in the hands of fighters from Kulyab. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIAN PARLIAMENT TO DISCUSS FIGHTING IN ABKHAZIA. On 25 September the Russian parliament will debate a draft proposal to deploy Russian peacekeeping troops in Abkhazia in order to safeguard the civilian population and the normal functioning of industry and transport, ITAR-TASS reported. Abkhaz parliament Chairman Vladislav Ardzinba is quoted as arguing that Russia cannot remain indifferent to the situation in Abkhazia as some 90,000 Russians live there; he also accused Georgia of violating virtually all the provisions of the 3 September ceasefire agreement. A Georgian State Council spokesman threatened on 24 September to begin "a real war" in Abkhazia if all North Caucasian armed groups fail to comply with the ultimatum to leave the area by 25 September, Reuters reported. (Liz Fuller, RFE/RL, Inc.) CONFUSION OVER RUSSIAN-UKRAINIAN TRADE QUARREL. Details concerning the dispute over trade payments between Russia and Ukraine remain unclear. At issue is the reversal of an agreement between Russian Central Bank chief Viktor Gerashchenko and the Ukrainian government to pay unsettled trade accounts. When the story first emerged, Russian sources reported that the Gaidar government had only suspended credits issued to Ukraine as part of the agreement. On 23 and 24 September, Western sources suggested that Russia had halted all financial transactions between the two countries, thus effectively freezing trade. Who owes whom what is also unclear. Ukrainian Central Bank chief Vadim Hetman, according to Western sources, claims that Russian enterprises owe Ukraine 360 billion rubles, whereas Ukrainian enterprises owe Russia only 60 billion rubles. Russian observers have given significantly different figures for outstanding payments. (Erik Whitlock, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIAN POLITICIANS QUESTION RESULTS OF WESTERN AID. The Boston Globe quoted the leader of the Industrial Union, Arkadii Volsky, as saying on 24 September that the Russian government was "slavishly following the advice of people from abroad, especially those who are not taken seriously in their own countries." The first deputy parliamentary speaker, Sergei Filatov, stated that "the great value placed on foreign aid, which is not making itself felt, is in fact the worst mistake [which the government is making]," according to Interfax on 23 September. Other criticism of Western assistance recently came from the speaker of the parliament, Ruslan Khasbulatov, the first deputy prime minister, Vladimir Shumeiko, and many other conservative deputies. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL, Inc.) GAIDAR WILL NOT RETREAT. Acting Prime Minister Egor Gaidar told The Financial Times on 24 September that he will not retreat from his market reforms approach. He said, however, that he may reach a compromise with the Civic Union on the issue of military conversion. He stated that those CIS states which do not want to remain in the ruble zone will not receive any more credits from the Russian central bank. He expressed his intention to cooperate closely with the head of the central bank, Viktor Gerashchenko, emphasizing that he does not think that the latter wanted to undermine the government's financial policy. He also told ITAR-TASS also on 24 September that government structures will be altered due to new requirements. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL, Inc.) POPOV SAYS REFORM IS HALTED. The leader of the Russian Movement for Democratic Reforms, Gavriil Popov, told Interfax on 24 September that Russia will try to divide Western countries against each other by choosing one Western partner, to whom Moscow will open its markets and resources rather than cooperating with the entire European community. Popov stated that the IMF reform program turned out to be unacceptable to Russia and that one must now think of implementing a different transition concept which takes into account Russia's unique situation. Popov asserted that acting Prime Minister Egor Gaidar has already given up on pursuing his own initial reform program and now is adopting ideas supported by the leader of the "industrial lobby," Arkadii Volsky. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL, Inc.) NEW WAGE REGULATIONS FOR RUSSIAN STATE EMPLOYEES. The wages and salaries of most employees paid directly out of the state budget will be raised and set under new, simplified regulations, Russian news agencies reported on 24 September. According to ITAR-TASS, the new regulations provide for wage indexation, adjusting wages upwards quarterly to offset inflation to some degree. Interfax reported that the regulations will be introduced starting in the fourth quarter of this year and will initially double wages and salaries from their June 1992 levels. The new regulations, which Labor Minister Gennadii Melikyan proposed, may affect the earnings of as many as 15 million Russians. (Erik Whitlock, RFE/RL, Inc.) ADJUSTMENTS IN RUSSIAN VOUCHER PROGRAM EXPECTED. With only a week left until the start of the distribution of privatization-vouchers, the Russian parliament is considering important changes in the program. Parliament's Supreme Economic Council will suggest such modifications as allowing citizens to use their vouchers not only as claims on state enterprise assets, but also to purchase land and municipal property, according to Interfax on 24 September. Other changes under consideration are a ban on the resale of vouchers and an extension of their expiration date, currently set at 31 December 1993, to the end of 1994. According to "Novosti" on 18 September, Gosznak began printing the vouchers last week, and it is reportedly producing 4 million daily. (Erik Whitlock, RFE/RL, Inc.) CANDIDATES FOR MOSCOW MAYORAL POST. The names of four politicians have so far been mentioned as confirmed or possible candidates in the forthcoming mayoral election, Ekho Moskvy reported on 23 September. Two of them--the liberal economist, Larisa Pyasheva, and the chairman of the Krasnopresnenski Raion Soviet, Aleksandr Krasnov--have already declared their candidacies. The other two candidates are Svyatoslav Fedorov, the distinguished eye surgeon from the Party of Economic Freedom, and Ilya Konstantinov, the Secretary of the Christian-Democratic Movement. The latter has announced that if elected, he will cut foreign aid and establish order in the city. The present Moscow mayor, Yurii Lushkov, told Interfax on 24 September that the candidates' announcements about running for his office were "not serious because neither the President nor the parliament have yet approved a new mayoral election. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL, Inc.) KHASBULATOV REINSTATES PARLIAMENTARY OVERSIGHT OF THE MBRF. On 22 September, the opening day of the Russian parliament's new session, the parliamentary speaker, Ruslan Khasbulatov, reestablished a parliamentary commission to monitor the activities of the Ministry of Security of the Russian Federation (the MBRF or MB, formerly the KGB). Khasbulatov himself closed the commission down a few months ago. However, the speaker has changed his mind due to a personal clash with Russian Security Minister Viktor Barannikov, who had written an message to his employees in the margins of a manuscript of Khasbulatov's book, Reforming the Reforms: The Speaker's Thoughts. Barannikov asked his assistant how Khasbulatov had spent the royalties for the book, citing information that Khasbulatov had donated the money to the Russian Assembly and other ultranationalist opposition organizations, Russian TV reported on 23 September. (Julia Wishnevsky, RFE/RL, Inc.) MAJORITY OF RUSSIAN CITIZENS NOSTALGIC ABOUT THE OLD DAYS. 80 percent of the citizens in the Russian Federation questioned in an opinion poll conducted by the well-known sociologist, Professor Grushin, say that life before perestroika was better than it is now. The results of the poll were published in Moskovskaya pravda on 24 September. According to the poll, 67 percent of the respondents still favour socialism. 50 percent of the respondents--the majority of whom are members of the older generation--have favorable thoughts about Stalin. 72 percent of those supporting Stalin are Muslims. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL, Inc.) SUPREME SOVIET PASSES REVISED LAW ON DEFENSE. The Russian Supreme Soviet on 24 September passed a version of the Law on Defense that incorporated some revisions requested by President Boris Yeltsin. According to ITAR-TASS, the new law allows the President to appoint the Defense Minister, Chief of the General Staff, and their deputies without the formal approval of the Supreme Soviet. However, the president will not gain the exclusive right to make appointments until a new constitution is adopted, leaving some uncertainty in the appointment process. The law also specifies that the Supreme Soviet will approve the structure and composition of the armed forces as recommended by the President, rather than the Prime Minister. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL, Inc.) US OBJECTS TO RUSSIAN SUBMARINE SALE TO IRAN. On 24 September acting Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger expressed US concern over Russia's planned sale of three diesel-powered submarines to Iran, according to Western news agencies. Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev defended the sale as enhancing communications with Iran as well as benefitting the Russian economy. Baltfax and the BBC on 24 September reported that the first of the Kilo-class submarines had set sail from a Russian naval base in Latvia where it was undergoing an overhaul and crew training. The Latvian government has protested the deal and the presence of Iranian crews several times during the past year. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL, Inc.) LANGUAGE QUESTION IN THE DONBASS. A group of political parties in the Donbass has issued an appeal to the oblast council recommending that a local referendum be held on the language question, Radio Ukraine reported on 23 September. The appeal states that the people themselves should decide which language they speak, read, and think in and in which language their children should be taught. The referendum would decide whether Russian should become the second state language in the region. (Roman Solchanyk, RFE/RL, Inc.) BELARUS TO SPEED NUCLEAR WEAPONS REMOVAL? Interfax on 24 September reported that President Stanislav Shushkevich has requested the acceleration of research on the removal of nuclear weapons from Belarus. Although Belarus is committed to eliminating all nuclear weapons on its soil within seven years, the instructions reportedly call for investigating scenarios in which the weapons could be removed in two to five years. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL, Inc.) BELORUSSIAN FILM DIRECTOR SHOT IN TAJIKISTAN. The noted Belorussian filmmaker, Arkadii Ruderman, has become a victim of the civil war in Tajikistan, "Novosti" reported on 23 September. Ruderman gained fame in 1988 for his documentary exposure of the attempt by Belorussian communist authorities to play down the centennial celebration of the Jewish painter Marc Chagall, who was born in Vitebsk but whose achievements the regime refused to recognize. For his daring documentaries exposing the ills of the communist regime, Ruderman won the highest awards at prestigious Soviet film festivals in 1988 and 1989. In November 1988, Ruderman was the first Russian TV journalist to interview the then dissident Czechoslovak politician Aleksandr Dubcek. Ruderman and his crew visited Tajikistan to make a film investigating the "artist's role in politics" for the Ostankino TV company, "Novosti" said. (Julia Wishnevsky, RFE/RL, Inc.) NAZARBAEV IN FRANCE. On 24 September, the first full day of his state visit to France, Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbaev met with state officials and businessmen, and thanked France for taking in thousands of Kazakhs and Russians who had fled Russia and Kazakhstan after the 1917 October Revolution, ITAR-TASS reported. Nazarbaev and French Prime Minister Pierre Beregovoy signed an agreement on the protection of investments similar to that signed by Nazarbaev in Germany earlier in the week. Seeking to persuade businesses to invest in Kazakhstan, Nazarbaev pointed out his country's rich natural resources--France's ELF-Aquitaine already has made a deal to develop oil fields in Kazakhstan--and also its stable political situation and commitment to developing a market economy. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL, Inc.) CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE CAMPAIGNING ENDS IN ROMANIA. The presidential and parliamentary election campaign ended on 24 September with a televised debate among the six presidential candidates. During the three-hour live program, Ion Iliescu defended his political career under former dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. He stressed that he had broken with Ceausescu in 1971 because of the latter's attempt to introduce a Chinese-style cultural revolution in Romania. Recent polls seem to indicate that Iliescu is regaining ground as the date for presidential and general elections, 27 September, approaches. Iliescu's main challenger is Emil Constantinescu of the Democratic Convention. The other candidates for president are Gheorghe Funar of the nationalist Party of Romanian National Unity; Caius Traian Dragomir of the center-left National Salvation Front; Mircea Druc, former premier of Moldova, running as an independent; and Ion Manzatu, candidate of the fringe Republican Party. In a separate development, the US House of Representatives decided on 24 September to postpone a vote on whether to restore Romania's most-favored-nation status until after the elections. (Dan Ionescu, RFE/RL, Inc.) BULGARIAN PARLIAMENTARY PRESIDENT RESIGNS. Stefan Savov, president of the National Assembly resigned at 17:00 on 24 September, Radio Sofia reports. A replacement must be elected within 14 days. The action headed off a no-confidence vote called for the same day and, at least for the moment lessens tension between the governing Union of Democratic Forces and its informal coalition partner, the Movement for Rights and Freedoms. The leader of the latter party, Ahmed Dogan, has pledged not to press forward with a call for a no-confidence vote on the government in order to give the UDF time in which to reorganize its cabinet. The MRF continues to insist on a change in certain cabinet positions, apparently including the ministries of finance, defense, trade, and interior. UDF leaders so far appear unwilling to give in. (Duncan Perry, RFE/RL, Inc.) GERMANY, ROMANIA AGREE TO EXPEL ILLEGAL MIGRANTS. Western agencies reported on 24 September that in Bucharest German Interior Minister Rudolf Seiters and his Romanian counterpart Victor Babiuc signed an agreement on returning illegal migrants. The accord, which allows Germany to repatriate rejected asylum-seekers to Romania even if they do not have identity documents, was described by Seiters as "an important step forward" in Germany's struggle to control the flood of illegal immigrants from Eastern Europe. More than 57,000 Romanian citizens, of whom some 60% are Gypsies, applied for asylum in Germany from January to August this year. Germany hopes to sign similar agreements with other East European countries. In Czechoslovakia, for instance, CSTK reported on 23 September that more than 21,000 refugees--most from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union--have been caught this year on the German border. Czechoslovakia is a major transit point for economic refugees heading to Western Europe. (Dan Ionescu & Jiri Pehe, RFE/RL, Inc.) SERB STEP UP BOMBING RAIDS ON JAJCE. Reuters on 24 September reported that Serb warplanes again attacked Jajce in central Bosnia, which they first bombed on 12 August. This picturesque town set in the mountains constitutes an important gap, together with Gradacac and Brcko, in attempts to link up Serbia with Serbian-held territories in Bosnia and Croatia. Muslim and Croatian forces are defending all three towns against recently intensified Serbian pressure. Jajce dates back to at least the 14th century, and was a symbol of Tito's Yugoslavia because he effectively launched his federalist program there at a conference in 1943. Elsewhere, the Serbs subjected Sarajevo to heavy shelling at a time when the UN peacekeepers are considering leaving the city for safer ground, Western Agencies report. (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL, Inc.) PANIC DISCUSSES SITUATION. Milan Panic, Prime Minister of the rump Yugoslavia, told a group of Yugoslav journalists in Washington on 24 September that his recent activities at the UN "achieved more than we expected." He described his meeting with the foreign ministers of the five permanent UN Security Council members as "a fantastic turnabout," because the ministers openly expressed support for his peace plan. On the home front, Panic said "I will never surrender Kosovo," and went on to criticize his detractors by saying "those who have been accusing me of wanting to give up Kosovo have, in fact, given everything away, and caused human losses without saving or changing anything." According to Radio Serbia, Panic said he finds the world's reactions to Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic "inexplicable and intolerable" and that "never before has the world talked about or judged a man in this way." Nonetheless, the New York Times of 25 September says Panic is losing patience in Milosevic: "I think I am through with him. . . . We are on a collision course." Western agencies report that Panic has sharply criticized past Serbian leaders for what he calls years of tragic mistakes and decisions. (Milan Andrejevich, RFE/RL, Inc.) PATRIARCH AND CARDINAL CALL FOR PEACE TALKS. Western news agencies on 24 September said that Serbian Orthodox Patriarch Pavle and Croatia's Cardinal Franjo Kuharic issued a joint statement in Geneva calling for immediate negotiations between Croats and Serbs. They condemned all ethnic cleansing and called for refugees to return home, as well as for the release of all prisoners and the closing of all camps. Muslim leader Jakub Selimoski, who had previously called for a meeting of all three religious leaders, did not attend; Pavle and Kuharic expressed regret at his absence. (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL, Inc.) CANDIDATES FOR LITHUANIAN SEIMAS. On 25 September Lietuvos aidas published the list of 448 candidates in the 71 single-mandate districts for parliamentary elections on 25 October. The number of candidates varies from 3 to 11. In 5 districts three current parliament members, and in 25 districts, two members will be competing against each other. The most notable race is in Kaisiadorys District, where former prime minister Gediminas Vagnorius of Sajudis will run against Lithuanian Democratic Labor Party chairman Algirdas Brazauskas. Both will undoubtedly be elected since they are the third and first candidates, respectively, on their parties' lists. In the 70 multiple-mandate districts, 743 candidates from 26 political parties and movements are registered. There will clearly be new deputies since in 11 single-mandate districts no incumbent deputies are competing. (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL, Inc.) CZECHOSLOVAK PARLIAMENT FAILS TO ELECT PRESIDENT. In its fifth attempt since the beginning of July, the Czechoslovak Federal Assembly failed to elect a new federal president on 24 September, CSTK reports. Jiri Kotas, chairman of the tiny Free Bloc-Conservative party, won only 40 votes in the 300-member assembly. Since Czechoslovakia is to split into two states on 1 January 1993, the vote was treated as an empty formality by many deputies after Kotas had been officially nominated by one of the deputies. (Jiri Pehe, RFE/RL, Inc.) CZECHOSLOVAK PREMIER WRITES ANTALL ABOUT GABCIKOVO DAM. In a letter to Hungarian Prime Minister Jozsef Antall on 23 September, Czechoslovak Prime Minister Jan Strasky argues that the Czechoslovak-Hungarian dispute over the Gabcikovo-Nagymaros hydroelectric dam project should be solved with the help of a European Community commission of experts. Strasky says that submitting the matter to the International Court of Justice in the Hague, as proposed by Antall in his letter to Strasky on 18 August, would be "a step backwards." Published by CSTK, the letter further says that the so-called variant C of the dam project, pursued by Czechoslovakia after Hungary unilaterally withdrew from the project, will not, as claimed by Hungary, lead to the diversion of the Danube on the current Czechoslovak-Hungarian border, but only to the diversion of some of the river's water. (Jiri Pehe, RFE/RL, Inc.) DEMONSTRATIONS AGAINST EXTREME RIGHT IN HUNGARY. MTI and wire services reported that an estimated 50,000 people demonstrated in central Budapest on the evening of 24 September against the recent resurgence of the extreme right-wing nationalism. The rally was staged by the Democratic Charter, a civil rights group organized mainly by opposition party members in September 1991, and endorsed at the last moment by the Association of the Free Democrats, the leading opposition party. The demonstrators were addressed by the writer Gyorgy Konrad, one of the leaders of the Association of Free Democrats, who called on the crowd to defend democracy. Other speakers said that Hungary cannot be diverted from the path of peaceful change and called on Prime Minister Antall to make a clean break with his party's extreme nationalist wing. A similar rally took place in Miskolc. (Karoly Okolicsanyi, RFE/RL, Inc.) EAST-CENTRAL EUROPEAN DEFENSE MINISTERS CONFER. The Czechoslovak, Hungarian, and Polish ministers of defense meet today in Slovakia to discuss prospects for cooperation in view of the impending split of Czechoslovakia into two separate states and the consequent division of its armed forces into Czech and the Slovak units. (Jan de Weydenthal, RFE/RL, Inc.) POLAND WANTS TO INCREASE ARMS SALES. Jan Straus, an official in the Polish Trade Ministry who issues arms export licenses, said at a 24 September Warsaw news conference that Poland hopes to increase its exports of arms to developing countries. In a UPI account of his comments, Straus said that he knows of no case in which a Polish firm violated the UN arms embargo on sales to regions where there are conflicts. He said that a total of 51 firms have been licensed to sell arms. Straus revealed that in years past Poland was ordered by Moscow to export arms to various countries without receiving payment. He said that Poland plans to develop its exports to "so-called Third World countries." (Doug Clarke, RFE/RL, Inc.) US SENATE PANEL VOTES RESTRICTION ON RUSSIA AID. On 23 September the US Senate Appropriations Committee approved an amendment by its chairman, Sen. Robert Byrd, to restrict nonhumanitarian aid to Russia until all Russian troops are withdrawn from the Baltic States or a negotiated timetable for their withdrawal is approved, Reuters reports. Humanitarian aid was defined as food, clothing, and medicine in order to restrict most of the aid to Russia. Sen. Patrick Leahy said that he has been told the Administration strongly opposes the amendment. (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL, Inc.) TALKS ON TROOP WITHDRAWAL FROM LATVIA STALEMATED. The latest round of talks on the withdrawal of Russian troops from Latvia, held in Jurmala on 22 and 23 September, ended in a stalemate, Radio Riga reports. The Russian side says Latvia was not sufficiently forthcoming over its offer to withdraw its troops by the end of 1994--earlier Moscow had proposed 1999--while maintaining some strategic installations in Latvia. Russia also wants Latvia to assume greater responsibility for the welfare of the active and retired Russian military in Latvia. The Latvian side simply wants all troops out by fall of 1993. Sergei Zotov, leader of the Russian delegation, expressed dismay over Latvia's desire to internationalize the troop withdrawal process and to bring up the issue at the UN, while Latvia felt offended that the Russian delegation continues to act as if Latvia joined the USSR voluntarily. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL, Inc.) RIGHTS OF ESTONIA'S RUSSIANS ON AGENDA. Vasilii Svirin, Russia's chief negotiator for talks with Estonia, told reporters that the next round of talks between the two states would focus on the rights of ethnic Russians in Estonia. Svirin called that particular sphere of problems "one of the most difficult" in the talks. The next round of talks is set for October. BNS reported Svirin's remarks. (Riina Kionka, RFE/RL, Inc.) UKRAINE ENDORSES BALTIC STANCE. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Anatolii Zlenko has confirmed his country's support for Baltic efforts to achieve a speedy withdrawal of Russian troops from their territories. Zlenko also told Janis Lovniks, the newly appointed Latvian chargi d'affaires in Ukraine, that his country considers the presence of former USSR troops in the Baltic States to be a violation of international norms, BNS reported on 23 September. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL, Inc.) EC TO HELP FIGHT BALTIC SEA POLLUTION . On 24 September in Helsinki the European Community signed a new convention to fight pollution in the Baltic Sea, Western agencies report. In order to give the document more weight the Baltic littoral countries - --Finland, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Germany, and Denmark--asked the EC to endorse the new convention drawn up in April to replace a 1974 treaty. The new convention will go into effect as soon as all the signatory states ratify it. Meanwhile, these states are already monitoring and trying to curb pollution, especially with regard to the dumping and incineration of waste materials. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL, Inc.) LATVIA NEEDS MONEY TO MAINTAIN PRISONS. Latvia's minister of internal affairs, Ziedonis Cevers, appealed to businessmen for funds to be used to maintain various law enforcement facilities, including prisons. He said that his ministry has not received an expected 500 million rubles from the state budget, and if the deficit cannot be covered, certain detention facilities will have to be closed and some law enforcement activities will have to stop, Radio Riga reported on 22 September. The reason the ministry has not yet received its allocation is that payments into the state budget are coming in more slowly than anticipated. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL, Inc.) JEWISH GENOCIDE DAY COMMEMORATED IN LITHUANIA. On 24 September Lithuania joined Israel in commemorating "Jewish Genocide Day," the RFE/RL Lithuanian Service reports. In official ceremonies, presided over by Supreme Council Chairman Vytautas Landsbergis, 20 crosses--12 posthumously--were presented to people who at great risk had rescued Jews from certain death during World War II. It is planned to award more medals in the future. (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL, Inc.)
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----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Peace envoys cite ``shattering'' image of 'ethnic cleansing' Subject: Afghan president visits Pakistan ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Peace envoys cite ``shattering'' image of 'ethnic cleansing' Date: 26 Sep 92 18:59:16 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- Peace envoys Cyrus Vance and Lord David Owen said Saturday that witnesses had painted a ``shattering picture'' of so-called ethnic cleansing by Serbian forces in the ex- Yugoslav republic of Bosnia-Hercegovina. Meanwhile, sporadic shelling around the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo Saturday morning followed a night of fierce clashes across the republic which left 54 people dead and 285 wounded, Health Ministry officials said. In Sarajevo alone, at least 21 people were killed and 104 wounded in a 24-hour period ending at 1 p.m. Saturday, the ministry said. Owen and Vance, co-chairmen of an ongoing Yugoslav peace conference, visited the Serbian-held town of Banja Luka Friday in response to U.N. reports of rising ethnic tensions in the city. The men later left the region via Croatia, another former Yugoslav republic. ``We were very troubled by what we saw in Banja Luka,'' Owen told reporters at the airport in the Croatian capital Zagreb before leaving for Geneva, Switzerland. ``We heard concrete evidence of ethnic cleansing.'' During their visit, Owen and Vance met with Catholic, Muslim and Serbian religious leaders who confirmed people were leaving en masse last week from the towns of Bosanski Petrovac and Kljuc, about 25 miles west of Banja Luka in northwestern Bosnia-Hercegovina. Owen added the reports were later independently confirmed by other witnesses. He said several witnesses confirmed accounts of an incident in Travnik in central Bosnia where 3,000-4,000 people attempted to cross through the front lines to safety. ``We are only just seeing the full story and it's a shattering one,'' Owen said. Owen and Vance went to Banja Luka after U.N. officials reported ``nasty harassment'' of non-Serbs by Serbian irregulars had escalated there. According to U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees spokesman Michael Keats, non-Serbs in Banja Luka were losing their jobs and being arrested for no reason. Owen and Vance said they saw evidence of harassment by Muslims and Croats as well, but on a much smaller scale. U.N. officials estimate thousands of refugees have been forced to leave their homes by Serb militia since the war in Bosnia-Hercegovina began in April, when Serbian forces launched an attack to pre-empt international recognition of the former Yugoslav republic. In an effort to carve a Serbian state from the republic and join it to a truncated Yugoslavia made up of Serbia and Montenegro, Serbian guerrillas have captured about 70 percent of the republic's territory. Bosnian forces opposing the Serbs are mostly comprised of Muslim Slavs with a smaller number of Croats and moderate Serbs. In Banja Luka before the war, approximately 68,000 Muslims and Croats coexisted with the Serb majority in the city of 195,000. Recent estimates now put the number of Muslims and Croats at between 30,000 and 40,000. Owen said while the situation in Banja Luka was ``tense,'' he was optimistic the situation would not get out of control. In Sarajevo, heavy overnight fighting eased by Saturday morning, with Sarajevo police reporting relative calm in the predominantly Muslim Slav city under a Serbian siege for six months. ``There was intermittent shelling coming from Serbian positions and Serbian snipers continued their activities,'' a Sarajevo police spokesman said. Government-run Sarajevo radio accused Serbian forces of using jet fighters to support infantry assaults on the Muslim Slav-held towns of Jajce, Maglaj. Gradacac, Doboj and Tuzla. The radio said Serbian forces stepped up the number of combat flights from Banja Luka, which is major military base of the Serb-led Yugoslav army. It said Serbian jet fighters rocketed and and bombarded with cluster bombs the central Bosnian town of Jajce, 80 miles northwest of Sarajevo. The town of Maglaj, about 50 miles southwest of Banja Luka, came under fire from jetfighters at about 7 a.m. as well as from tank, howitzer and mortar rounds. Sarajevo radio reported heavy clashes in the northern town of Gradacac but gave no details of the fighting. The combat flights flew from their base in Banja Luka just one day after Vance and Owen were in the city. Meanwhile, Sarajevo, Jajce, Gradacac, and Maglaj were running short of medical supplies, food as well as electricity and fresh drinking water, the radio said. An international humanitarian airlift to Sarajevo has been suspended since Sept. 3, when an Italian cargo plane was shot down over Bosnia- Hercegovina. Both Owen and Vance said they would urge nations participating in the now scaled down humanitarian airlift to Sarajevo to resume flights as soon as possible. The U.N. Protection Force has been flying in two test flights a day, down from the dozens of aid flights to the besieged city earlier this month. ``With winter coming on, it is simply vital we get people flying the airlift again,'' Vance said. Vance and Owen said they had confirmation of a bomb attack on the road from Split to Dubrovnik in southern Croatia which they said was designed to delay humanitarian aid convoys destined for Bosnia- Hercegovina. Owen said the attack ``could have little other purpose than to delay the humanitarian aid process. ``We are facing a very large deterioration in the humanitarian situation and we will both take it up to the highest level in the hope that we can sort this matter and get something done about it,'' he said. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Afghan president visits Pakistan Date: 26 Sep 92 00:21:22 GMT ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (UPI) -- Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani arrived Friday in Pakistan amid speculation that he may meet Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic, who is expected to arrive Saturday. The visit follows media reports from Bosnia that Afghan Mujahideen fighters were helping Bosnian Muslims in their fight against the Serbs. Officials in Islamabad said Rabbani, who landed at the northern city of Peshawar, will begin his official appointments Saturday when he comes to Islamabad. It is Rabbani's first presidential visit to Pakistan, which helped the Afghan resistance in toppling the Soviet-installed regime in Kabul. Rabbani and other Mujahideen leaders fought their 14-year war against the communists from Peshawar before returning to Kabul in April this year after the collapse of the communist government. Diplomatic sources said Rabbani may meet Izetbegovic, who arrives Saturday evening but has no meetings scheduled with Pakistani leaders until Sunday. Both the leaders were to be in Islamabad until Sunday evening. Rabbani will go to Iran from Pakistan. Iran has proposed forming an Islamic force to help the Bosnian Muslims when the Bosnian foreign minister visited Iran, Pakistan and Turkey, two months ago. Izetbegovic told Pakistani television in New York Friday he was ``grateful to Pakistan and other Muslim countries for the solidarity you showed with us.'' Pakistan was one of the first countries to expel Belgrade's ambassador after Serb rebels attacked Bosnia.
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LOS ANGELES (UPI) -- Serbian nationalists systematically massacred about 3,000 Muslims in two Bosnian detention camps, secretly cremating and disposing of the bodies in a rendering plant, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday. The newspaper said the State Department now deems credible eyewitness reports of the mass killings last May, according to senior U.S. officials. ``This could have been happening in other places too,'' one State Department official said, although he doubted that such killings were taking place today ``given the exposure that has taken place since August.'' The State Department reports, obtained by American diplomats, generally confirm and amplify eyewitness accounts of the killings published last August in New York Newsday. Officials said the State Departement last week obtained graphic, first-person accounts of the killings at two Serbian detentian camps operated at a brick factory and a pig farm near the Bosnian town of Brcko, about 75 miles north of Sarajevo. The Brcko killings were carried out under the direction of an ultranationalist Serb leader known as Vojislav Seselj and one who goes by the single name Arkan. Based on the reports, a senior State Department official told the Times, acting Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger urged the United Nations last week to establish a commission to investigate the war crimes in Bosnia. A State Department official said American diplomats interviewed a number of former prisoners of the camps at Brcko. ``Many people were killed, in groups of up to 50 at a time,'' the State Department official said. ``A total of about 3,000 people -- men, women and children -- were killed in the camps at Brcko.'' The official said at least some of the prisoners were beaten and tortured before they were killed. One of the former prisoners at the camp told U.S. diplomats that ``he several times had to transfer dead people to an animal rendering plant, where they secretly cremated bodies at night to evade detection,'' the senior State Department official said. The two worst detention camps were reported to be a brick factory and a pig farm in the Brcko area. After the reports last August, Serbian officials in Bosnia denied any wrongdoing and escorted Western reporters on a tour of Brcko, insisting there were no detention camps in or near the city. But some Serbian officials later acknowledged that thousands of prisoners were shuttled from one place in Bosnia to another in an effort to prevent Western human rights officials and journalists from finding the camps.
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----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: State Dept. confirms 3,000 Muslims massacred in Serbian camps Subject: U.N. says Serbs forced exile of 2,500 from northern Bosnia Subject: Pilgrims brave Bosnia war hoping for vision of Virgin Mary Subject: Peace mediators talk with Serbian leaders Subject: Mourners attacked in Sarajevo, five killed Subject: U.S. has eyewitness reports of mass executions in Bosnia ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: State Dept. confirms 3,000 Muslims massacred in Serbian camps Date: 27 Sep 92 16:06:16 GMT LOS ANGELES (UPI) -- Serbian nationalists systematically massacred about 3,000 Muslims in two Bosnian detention camps, secretly cremating and disposing of the bodies in a rendering plant, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday. The newspaper said the State Department now deems credible eyewitness reports of the mass killings last May, according to senior U.S. officials. ``This could have been happening in other places too,'' one State Department official said, although he doubted that such killings were taking place today ``given the exposure that has taken place since August.'' The State Department reports, obtained by American diplomats, generally confirm and amplify eyewitness accounts of the killings published last August in New York Newsday. Officials said the State Departement last week obtained graphic, first-person accounts of the killings at two Serbian detentian camps operated at a brick factory and a pig farm near the Bosnian town of Brcko, about 75 miles north of Sarajevo. The Brcko killings were carried out under the direction of an ultranationalist Serb leader known as Vojislav Seselj and one who goes by the single name Arkan. Based on the reports, a senior State Department official told the Times, acting Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger urged the United Nations last week to establish a commission to investigate the war crimes in Bosnia. A State Department official said American diplomats interviewed a number of former prisoners of the camps at Brcko. ``Many people were killed, in groups of up to 50 at a time,'' the State Department official said. ``A total of about 3,000 people -- men, women and children -- were killed in the camps at Brcko.'' The official said at least some of the prisoners were beaten and tortured before they were killed. One of the former prisoners at the camp told U.S. diplomats that ``he several times had to transfer dead people to an animal rendering plant, where they secretly cremated bodies at night to evade detection,'' the senior State Department official said. The two worst detention camps were reported to be a brick factory and a pig farm in the Brcko area. After the reports last August, Serbian officials in Bosnia denied any wrongdoing and escorted Western reporters on a tour of Brcko, insisting there were no detention camps in or near the city. But some Serbian officials later acknowledged that thousands of prisoners were shuttled from one place in Bosnia to another in an effort to prevent Western human rights officials and journalists from finding the camps. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: U.N. says Serbs forced exile of 2,500 from northern Bosnia Date: 27 Sep 92 23:37:15 GMT ZAGREB, Croatia (UPI) -- United Nations officials presented more accounts Sunday of the forced exile of about 2,500 Bosnians, mostly Muslims, from northern Bosnia-Hercegovina last week. Agents of the U.N. High Commission for Refugees who traveled to central Bosnia-Hercegovina to speak with the victims told U.N. officials in Zagreb that the refugees, in addition to being terrorized, were forced to pay for their ``ride into exile,'' said Michael Keats, a UNHCR spokesman. The Bosnians, mostly from Bosanski Petrovac in northwest Bosnia- Hercegovina, were loaded on to 30 buses and trucks and taken to Travnik in central Bosnia-Hercegovina, about 65 miles southeast of Bosanski Petrovac. The Bosnians were forced to pay a local Serb-run ``relocation agency'' for the transport, Keats said. In Travnik, the people were ``dumped on the front lines between Muslim and Serb forces,'' then forced to cross 6 miles of ``no-man's land'' to safety, Keats said. As they ran across, Serbian snipers shot at them, killing four people and wounding others, Keats said. One man arrived in Travnik with his ``nose bashed in and clothes soaked in blood'' after having been beaten by Serbs, the UNHCR staff agent told Keats. Many of the people who fled had ``horror stories'' of beatings and mass killings that were ``absolutely convincing,'' the staffer told Keats. The alleged attacks and forced exodus were in retaliation for the massacre of 16 Serbs last week by Muslim commandos, the mayor of Bosanski Petrovac, a Serb, told the UNHCR. But Serbian authorities denied conducting any reprisal killings, Keats said The approximately 2,500 people who fled to Travik are now scattered around the city. Some are staying outside, some in other people's homes and others in barns or whatever shelter they can find, Keats said. There are virtually no more Muslims left in Bosanski Petrovac. They have all either left in this last mass exodus or fled previously, Keats said. ``It's either get out or get killed,'' Keats said of the situation in Bosanski Petrovac. In addition the UNHCR said it had reports of mass killings in areas around Bosanski Petrovac. One man, a Muslim from Orasac, about 19 miles northwest of Bosanski Petrovac near a U.N. Protected Area in Croatia, told U.N. officials he hid in a cupboard while Serb-irregulars rampaged through his house. When he finally came out, he found his grandparents dead on the floor, six people dead in a house next door and two other handicapped people with their throats slit in another nearby house. The man is now under the protection of the French battalion in the U. N protection force, Keats said. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Pilgrims brave Bosnia war hoping for vision of Virgin Mary Date: 28 Sep 92 02:08:13 GMT MEDJUGORJE, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- Within earshot of the gunfire and artillery bombardments of the Yugoslav war, international pilgrims continue to seek miracles and enlightenment in this village made famous by the reported sightings of the Virgin Mary. While the war has deterred about 90 percent of the tourist flow that once brought up to 5,000 visitors a day, enough still come to pack the 300-capacity community Catholic church wall-to-wall. At a recent mass, about 200 people spilled outside and heard the service on loudspeakers. ``It's the safest place in the world,'' said Sister Frances Schug, a nun from Wisconsin in the United States. ``Bombs fell here and they did not explode.'' According to a well-spread rumor, Croatian police who control the area have found unexploded artillery shells in the village. The perpetuators of the tale credit the Virgin Mary with protecting the town. ``I am convinced there is something special here,'' said Blago Krlsic, 39, a Croatian Army soldier with a rosary around his neck. ``Look at all the people here. If it weren't special, they wouldn't come from all over.'' Krlsic is one of many soldiers who come to Medjugorje for confession and prayer. Visiting the town, he said, makes him ``feel less afraid when the Serbs are attacking.'' A mass is said in English each day to accommodate the international crowd that has flocked to this sacred town for the past 11 years. The pilgrims are drawn to Medjugorje by the story of six children who saw a vision of the Virgin Mary on a small hill near the village. The children resisted attempts by villagers and authorities to force them to recant their story. Despite official attempts to crush the belief something of great religious significance was occurring, the children said they continued to see the apparition and receive messages from it. As the story spread around the world, pilgrims swarmed to the town in increasing numbers. The government relaxed its opposition after seeing the profit generated by the ballooning tourist traffic. The children have grown. Two of them, Mirjana Dragicevic and Ivanka Ivankovic, stopped seeing the visions years ago, after claiming to have received 10 ``secrets'' promised them by the Virgin. They have since married and have their own children. The other four claim to have received nine of the secrets and are still seeing the visions and talking with the Virgin. Ivan Dragecivic, at 27 is the oldest of the visionaries. He lives on a nearby farm and returns to Medjugorje daily to speak with Mary in the upper loft of the community church. Each day, visiting pilgrims line up outside waiting for Dragecivic to go to the loft in hopes of being allowed to watch him during his moment of ecstacy. The loft is too small to accommodate everyone. On a recent visit, an American woman from Wisconsin pleaded with the pilgrims to let her send her son through. The 9-year-old boy wore a baseball cap to cover his bald head. ``Please,'' she begged, ``let him in. He has brain cancer.'' He was allowed through, although somewhat reluctantly, by the others waiting in line and joined about 50 people in the loft. Onlookers held their rosaries and watched silently as Dragecivic kneeled before a giant oil painting of Mary and gazed up with open eyes, moving his lips as if in a silent conversation with her. ``The most important thing the Virgin Mary said tonight when she appeared in my prayer...was that she blessed all the people present,'' he said after his five-minute vision was over. ``Mary asked for peace tonight as she does all the time. Tonight there were no special messages for the world,'' he said. ``The holy Mary said she was happy and then she talked to me and I talked to her and a lot of what we said was private.'' The small village, where early pilgrims once were invited into private homes, has taken on the look of a package tour destination over the years. Big hotels and restaturants stand where once there were small farms and markets. Across the street from the church, the main strip is lined with cafes and shops that sell Jesus dolls and rosaries in all colors from pearly white to neon green. ``We can see in the Western world that people don't know how to live with money,'' said Slavko Barbaric, a priest who arrived in Medjugorje a few months after the first apparitions were reported. ``We can just hope and pray that it doesn't taint things here because it can become very dangerous.'' ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Peace mediators talk with Serbian leaders Date: 28 Sep 92 14:15:11 GMT BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (UPI) -- International mediators Cyrus Vance and Lord David Owen arrived Monday for talks with Serbian leaders on issues that included the deployment of fresh U.N. peacekeepers in neighboring Bosnia-Hercegovina and the resumption of a humanitarian relief airlift to Sarajevo. U.N. special enovy Vance and European Community mediator Owen flew into the Serbian capital of Belgrade from Geneva on a one-day visit to meet leaders of the rump Yugoslav union of Serbia and Montenegro. Vance and Owen, the co-chairmen of the Geneva peace conference on the disintegrated Yugoslav six-republic federation, drove from Belgrade's Surcin Airport directly to the Palace of Federation for talks with Dobrica Cosic, president of the truncated Yugoslavia. They refused to answer reporters's questions as they entered a conference room for talks with Cosic, a Serbian writer who became president of the small Yugoslav federation which was forged on April 27. Col. Gen. Zivota Panic, the chief of staff of the Yugoslav Army, attended the talks in the Federation Palace. French Gen. Philippe Morillon, deputy commander of the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR), and Cedric Thornberry, in charge of UNPROFOR's civilian affairs, also attended the talks, a Yugoslav official said. Generals Panic and Morillon were to have separate talks, the official said. The two peace mediators, who last week visited the Croatian capital of Zagreb and the Serb-held town of Banja Luka in northwestern Bosnia- Hercegovina, were also scheduled to meet Serbian hard-line President Slobodan Milosevic before they fly back to Geneva later in the day, Serbian officials said. As the peace talks began in Belgrade, reports from the Bosnia- Hercegovina capital of Sarajevo said fighting flared across the war- ridden republic. Serbian guerrillas continued their land-grab campaign to rip off a self-declared ``state'' from Bosnia-Hercegovina, the former central Yugoslav republic which comprises 1.9 million Muslim Slavs, 1.4 million Christian Orthodox Serbs and 750,000 Roman Catholic Croats. At least five people were injured Monday in the predominantly Muslim Slav city of Sarajevo as Serbian forces fought sporadic artillery and infantry battles with Bosnia-Hercegovina forces, that are made up of Muslim Slavs but also include Croats and moderate Serbs, Sarajevo Radio said. Sarajevo has been under a Serbian siege during the past six months and with approaching cold winter months its 500,000 residents and refugees lack food and medical supplies. Officials of the UNPROFOR in Sarajevo said they planned to open road and railway corridors from Croatia into Sarajevo through the Serb-held stronghold of Ilidza. They plan to establish the land corridor into Sarajevo via Ilidza as soon as possible. A contigent of 6,000 troops are to be deplopyed in Bosnia-Hercegovina to help the current 1,500 UNPROFOR peacekeepers to ensure humanitarian aid deliveries. The war in Bosnia-Hercegovina broke out late in March when Serbian leaders launched their campaign to capture the ``Serbian republic'' which they declared on 70 percent of the republic. Muslim Slavs and most Croats oppose the partition of Bosnia- Hercegovina into ethnic districts. Serbian guerrillas have been armed by the Serb-led Yugoslav army and backed financially and politically by communist-ruled Serbia. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Mourners attacked in Sarajevo, five killed Date: 28 Sep 92 15:53:17 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- Serbian gunners blasted a funeral for an elderly woman Monday, killing five people and wounding 20 during a day of artillery and sniper attacks on the beseiged Bosnian capital. Serbian forces turned off pumps to the city's water supply Sunday in Serb-controlled Bacevo on Sarajevo's western outskirts, again leaving its 400,000 people virtually without water, said Salem Karovic, chief of the city's water distribution system. ``During the night, they switched off the pumps without previous announcement,'' Karovic said. The action, if confirmed, would be a violation of an agreement the Serbs made one week earlier at peace talks in Geneva not to use water and electricity as weapons against civilians. Most of the city's trapped population, already having spent the past week without electricity, was forced to dip into reserves held in bathtubs or venture into sniper-lined streets with cans and buckets in search of the rare water trucks. Sarajevo's electricity was cut a day after the Geneva agreement, allegedly by Serbian shells that hit a main cable. Continued fighting has blocked U.N.-supervised attempts to repair the lines. A total of 31 people were killed and 215 wounded in attacks throughout Bosnia-Hercegovina during the 24-hour period that ended at 10 a.m. Monday, including nine killed and 65 wounded in Sarajevo, republic officials said. The count did not include those among the 40 to 50 mourners attacked about noon Monday by at least two grenades or mortar shells that witnesses said landed some 10 to 50 yards from them in a cemetery in Boljakov Potok in the northwest part of the city. Three mourners died at the cemetery, two others died after being sped to hospitals in private cars and some 20 others were wounded, officials said. Another six civilians were wounded around 1 p.m. Monday when a shell landed on a street in western Sarajevo. The shells in Boljakov Potok fell just as the assembled mourners were awaiting the burial of an elderly woman who had died of natural causes, said Bezdrob Muharem, who suffered shrapnel wounds to his back and leg. Muharem, 27, sat afterward on a bench at the city's state hospital alongside his friend, Ferid, in his 40s, whose wounded right calf and foot dribbled blood steadily through a white tourniquet. Ferid stared blankly as hospital workers slapped water on his face and then, only while being lifted to stretcher, managed to mutter a plea that doctors not amputate his leg. The U.N. Protection Force deputy commander has arrived for talks with the Serbian leadership on opening a corridor through Serbian forces besieging the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, U.N. officials said. French Gen. Phillipe Morillon also was to discuss with Radovan Karadzic, the Serbian Democratic party chief, the need to end several days of fighting that virtually have closed the main road linking the airport with the city, preventing humanitarian aid deliveries, the officials said Sunday. Morillon flew in from the Croatian capital of Zagreb as Serbian artillery pumped intermittent shellfire into the city and Sarajevo radio announced a republic-wide air raid alert amid reports of Serbian air attacks around the northern town of Bosanski Brod. The republic's Health Ministry said that during the 24-hour period that ended at 1 p.m., at least 34 people were killed and 199 were wounded across Bosnia-Hercegovina. Of the total, at least 14 people died and 71 others were wounded in Sarajevo, the ministry said. In Zagreb, Croatia, meanwhile, U.N. officials released further confirmation of the forced exile of about 2,500 Bosnians, mostly Muslims, from northern Bosnia-Hercegovina last week. Michael Keats, spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees,. says witnesses told U.N. officials they were forced to pay as much as $66 for their ``ride into exile.'' In Sarajevo, renewed clashes along the airport road between the Serb- held suburb of Ilidza and Bosnian lines at the western end of the city prompted Morillon to cancel plans to visit the U.N. mission and drive by armored car to his meeting with Karadzic in his stronghold of Pale, east of Sarajevo. Egyptian Brig. Gen. Hussein Abdul Razek, the UNPROFOR commander for Sarajevo, told United Press International that the main focus of the talks would be the establishment of a road and rail corridor from Croatia's Adriatic port city of Split into Sarajevo through Serbian lines in Ilidza. ``The intention is to establish a free corridor to allow the free movement of people, vehicles and humanitarian aid and to reduce the number of checkpoints,'' Razek said. UNPROFOR hopes to create the corridor under a plan to expand within several weeks the 1,500-member multi-national contingent by 6,000 troops in order to ensure the delivery of humanitarian assistance to war- stricken areas across Bosnia-Hercegovina. The conflict erupted in Bosnia-Hercegovina, whose population is comprised of Muslim Slavs, Serbs and Croats, in late March, when armed Yugoslav army Serbs launched an offensive to capture a self-declared state before international recognition of the former Yugoslav republic's independence. The partition of the republic is opposed by Bosnian forces comprised overwhelmingly of Muslim Slavs, but also including moderate Serbs and Croats. Razek reiterated that UNPROFOR would not use force to ensure humanitarian aid deliveries, and said it hoped to broker agreements between the warring factions to establish supply corridors to other cities along which U.N. troops would be deployed to monitor the accords. ``UNPROFOR intends to set up observation points to be connected by patrolling paths,'' he said. U.N. officials said Morillon would also discuss with Karadzic the possible establishment at a hotel in Ilidza of an UNPROFOR headquarters for Bosnia-Hercegovina as part of the coming force expansion. The Sarajevo sector headquarters would remain at its current location on the western end of the city, they said. And, they said, Morillon was to raise the failure of both sides to respect a cease-fire along the airport road as required under a June 5 agreement that turned Sarajevo airport over to U.N. control. They said Razek planned to discuss the issue later in the day with a Senior Bosnian defense officer, Stjepan Siber. U.N. High Commission for Refugees or UNHCR officials said three days of fighting in the area of the highway had prevented the transfer of aid from the agency warehouse at the airport into Sarajevo, which requires an average of 220 tons of food daily. UNHCR warehouses have been empty for about a week because convoys have been able to deliver only an average of 44 tons of food daily since the Sept. 3 downing of an Italian transport plane prompted the suspension of the U.N.-supervised airlift. ``If it (fighting near the road) continues to be like this, like it's been the last few days, the average will go down,'' said one UNHCR worker. At least 75 tons of food have been sitting at the airport since Friday, the worker said. An estimated 500,000 residents and refugees in Sarajevo depend on U. N. humanitarian relief because of the almost six-month Serbian blockade of the capital, which Karadzic wants partitioned into ethnic districts. Many others areas of the republic have also been cut off from food and medical supplies by months of fighting. U.N. officials and aid workers have expressed grave concerns that time is running out to prepare the war-ravaged republic for the harsh Balkan winter and that a humanitarian nightmare is in the making. Karadzic has proclaimed an independent Serbian state on about 70 percent of Bosnia-Hercegovina, although Christian Orthodox Serbs constitute about 31 percent of the population of 4.4 million. His forces have been armed by the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army and backed financially and politically by communist-ruled Serbia, to which Karadzic eventually hopes to join his self-declared state. The 1.9 million Muslim Slavs and most of the 750,000 Roman Catholic Croats oppose the partition of Bosnia-Hercegovina. Some Croats, however, favor the establishment of separate ethnic regions. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: U.S. has eyewitness reports of mass executions in Bosnia Date: 28 Sep 92 18:19:37 GMT WASHINGTON (UPI) -- Credible witnesses have told U.S. officials they saw Serbian troops slaughter more than 3,000 men, women, and children at detention camps in the Bosnian town of Brcko last spring, the State Department said Monday. Spokesman Richard Boucher said U.S. officials recently received reports from two individuals who survived the Serbian brutality at Brcko that 3,000 Bosnian Muslims were executed there during May and June. Although the administration had been told previously of the mass executions, he said the fresh reports are the first from witnesses. ``These are the first eyewitness reports we've received of these killings in the Brcko area,'' Boucher said. ``The previous information that we had was either second-hand or some of the information that we had raised questions about its credibility.'' He said the information had been turned over to United Nations authorities that are investigating Serbian atrocities in Bosnia- Hercegovina, which has been under siege since March by troops from Belgrade attempting to annex the nascent republic and ``cleanse'' it of all Muslims and Croats.
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RFE/RL Daily Report No. 186, 28 September 1992 SUCCESSOR STATES TO THE USSR TAJIK FIGHTERS TAKE RUSSIAN TROOPS PRISONER. An operation by law enforcement agencies to disarm supporters of deposed President Rakhmon Nabiev, who are from Kulyab Oblast but who have been fighting in Kurgan-Tyube Oblast, was supposed to have started on 26 September, ITAR-TASS reported. The following day, however, the same source reported that armed groups from Kulyab had seized four tanks, an armored transporter, and an armored car from Russian forces stationed in Kurgan-Tyube, and that they had captured five members of the Russian unit. According to the commander of the Russian division, the unit that lost the equipment was surrounded by some 350 fighters from Kulyab who wanted to obtain more equipment and weaponry the same way. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIAN PARLIAMENT CRITICAL OF GEORGIA ON ABKHAZIA. Following discussion on 25 September of the situation in the North Caucasus and Abkhazia, the Russian parliament issued a statement saying that it "denounces the policy of the Georgian leadership...and demands that the government immediately stop combat operations, withdraw armed units from Abkhazian territory and strictly fulfill international covenants on human rights." The statement also called for the "introduction of necessary contingent of peace-keeping forces" and offered the services of the Russian Federation as a mediator in the conflict, ITAR-TASS reported on 25 September. (Suzanne Crow, RFE/RL, Inc.) ANGRY SHEVARDNADZE TO MEET WITH YELTSIN ON ABKHAZIA. Eduard Shevardnadze, chairman of Georgia's State Council, made an unscheduled stop in Moscow on his way home from the United Nations to discuss with Russian President Boris Yeltsin the Russian parliament's statement on Abkhazia. Shevardnadze was quoted by Russian TV on 27 September as saying: "I cannot recall any precedent for such crude, high-handed, and unforgivable interference in the internal affairs of our Republic." Shevardnadze described the Russian parliament's actions as "impudent and overtly aggressive" and said that the future of Russo-Georgian relations, not just the question of Abkhazia, will be the subject of his meeting with President Yeltsin; Shevardnadze added: "My task is to save these relations," ITAR-TASS reported on 27 September. The meeting is scheduled to take place on 28 September. (Suzanne Crow, RFE/RL, Inc.) STATE OF EMERGENCY DECLARED IN KABARDINO-BALKARIA. At least 20 people were injured in a confrontation between police and thousands of demonstrators in the Kabardino-Balkar republic in the North Caucasus on 27 September, Interfax reported. The demonstrations followed the detention on 23 September of Musa Shanibov, the chairman of the Confederation of the Mountain Peoples of the North Caucasus, by investigators of the Russian procurator's office. Russia had earlier declared unlawful the activities of the confederation, which has sent volunteers to Abkhazia to support the Abkhaz against Georgia. Following the violent protests a state of emergency for two months was declared in the republic, ITAR-TASS reported. (Ann Sheehy, RFE/RL, Inc.) WITHDRAWAL OF CONFEDERATION'S VOLUNTEERS FROM ABKHAZIA SUSPENDED. Abkhazia's separatist leaders said on 27 September that the pullout of the volunteers sent by the Confederation of Mountain Peoples of the North Caucasus would be delayed indefinitely because of Georgia's violations of the ceasefire in Abkhazia, Interfax reported. Georgia had threatened to remove them by force if they were not withdrawn by 25 September. (Ann Sheehy, RFE/RL, Inc.) NAGORNO-KARABAKH CEASEFIRE APPARENTLY BROKEN. ITAR-TASS reported on 26 September that Azerbaijani Defense Minister Rakhim Gaziev ordered his troops to lay down their arms in compliance with a ceasefire arranged the previous weekend, but there were no confirmed reports that the ceasefire was actually being observed by Azerbaijani or Armenian troops in Nagorno-Karabakh. The agreement, mediated by Russia, called for a ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh for two months, and a truce along the Azerbaijani-Armenian border for an undetermined period. Also on 26 September, Interfax quoted an Armenian Defense Ministry spokesman as saying that his country would observe the agreement if the Azerbaijani side did the same. On 27 September, however, ITAR-TASS reported that Armenian troops were continuing to attack Azerbaijani positions along the entire front in Nagorno-Karabakh. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL, Inc.) VOLSKY DESCRIBES 13-POINT PROGRAM. Arkadii Volsky, leader of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, outlined his "anti-crisis" program to an ITAR-TASS correspondent in St. Petersburg on 26 September. The thirteen points that comprise his program include refocusing the reform to stabilize production. Also among Volsky's proposals is the creation of a two-sector economy for the transition period. The private economy should be encouraged and receive state support; however, the state should "reestablish regulation of the development of the economy." For the state sector, Volsky vaguely described the introduction of a "new mechanism of management" and a restructuring policy for state enterprises. With regard to the voucher-privatization program, Volsky said without modifications existing plans could turn out to be "a great deception of the workers." (Erik Whitlock, RFE/RL, Inc.) VOLSKY PROPOSES NEW UNION. The leader of the Civic Union, Arkadii Volsky, has proposed the creation of a "Euro-Asiatic" union of six or seven of the members of the CIS, The Financial Times reported on 28 September. He obviously meant those of the CIS members states who signed the agreement on the formation of the Interparliamentary Assembly. Volsky also visited Kazakhstan in September and assisted Kazakh entrepreneurs in the organization of their own industrialists' union. That was a significant step toward the reestablishment of ties between the Russian and Kazakh industrial complexes. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL, Inc.) OPPOSITION TO PRIVATIZATION. Conservative deputies made an attempt in parliament to postpone or hold a nationwide referendum on privatization. One of the conservative deputies even threw a handful of vouchers in the face of Deputy Prime Minister Anatolii Chubais, who is responsible for the privatization program, Western news agencies reported on 25 September. But parliamentary speaker Ruslan Khasbulatov called upon deputies to end the debate, saying that people have certain expectations and that parliament would be making a mistake if it blocked the voucher plan. Khasbulatov proposed establishing a special parliamentary committee to monitor privatization. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL, Inc.) DEMOCRATS SUPPORT RADICAL REFORM.The "Democratic Russia" movement fears that the Civic Union may push it to the sidelines of the political arena, thereby depriving it of its popular support in society, ITAR-TASS reported on 26 September. Leaders of "Democratic Russia" issued a statement calling for a consolidation of all democratic forces on the issue of holding a referendum on private land ownership. They asserted that from the fourteen factions in the Russian parliament, only two--"Democratic Russia" and the "Radical Democrats"--support the government's radical reform course. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIA TO CUT OIL EXPORTS TO CIS. Minister of the Economy Andrei Nechaev disclosed at a news conference in Moscow that Russia is planning to cut oil exports to other CIS republics by half next year, according to Western news agencies on 26 September. The action is intended to maintain domestic and hard-currency export needs in the face of rapidly falling Russian oil production (at the rate of a million barrels per day, according to a recent World Bank study). Nechaev said the overall reduction in exports to the CIS region would be between 30-40 million tons. The reduction would be very damaging to the other CIS economies, which are heavily dependent on Russian supplies. (Erik Whitlock, RFE/RL, Inc.) SACHS, LIPTON CRITICIZE IMF. "Something is wrong, seriously wrong, with the IMF's role in Russia," wrote Jeffrey Sachs and David Lipton, two US economists advising the Russian government on economic reform, in The Washington Post on 27 September. The two claim that the IMF has to increase its presence in Russia and thereby exert a greater influence on Russian economic policy: "Without [IMF representatives] in residence... the IMF simply has not done the things it can to make the difference." The economists also criticized specific Fund pronouncements and actions, including not effectively organizing Western aid for Russia and opposition to separate national currencies in the other CIS republics. Sachs and Lipton urged the US Congress, which is considering a $12 billion increase in its contribution to the Fund, to pressure the IMF into making "fundamental management changes." (Erik Whitlock, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIA HALTS SUBMARINE SALE TO IRAN. The Russian government has decided to halt the sale of three Kilo-class diesel submarines to Iran due to alleged disagreements over payment. On 25 September, Vladimir Pakhomov of the Ministry of Foreign Relations, informed ITAR-TASS that the sale was not currently on the agenda. Also on 25 September, however, the Pentagon confirmed reports that one of the submarines was already en route to Iran with a training crew on board, according to Western news agencies. If the submarine returns to the Russian naval base in Latvia from which it set sail, it could exacerbate political tensions between Latvia and Russia. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL, Inc.) NAZARBAYEV CRITICIZES UKRAINE OVER NUCLEAR WEAPONS. Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev criticized Ukraine on 26 September for vacillating on the elimination of its nuclear arms, Western news agencies reported. According to Nazarbayev, "Ukraine cannot say one thing today and do another thing tomorrow." While Ukraine has reiterated its willingness to eliminate all nuclear weapons on its territory by the end of the decade, some Ukrainian parliamentarians have been criticizing the commitment and raising doubts about it. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL, Inc.) SHAPOSHNIKOV CONFIRMS CIS MISSILES REMAIN TARGETED ON THE US. On 25 September, Commander in Chief of CIS forces, Marshal Yevgenii Shaposhnikov, confirmed that CIS missiles are still targeted on the United States. In January 1992, President Boris Yeltsin made several vague promises and assurances that Russian missiles would not be targeted on US cities, but these statements were discounted by the military as political in nature and technically meaningless. Shaposhnikov did confirm that many missiles have been taken off alert, according to Western news agencies. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL, Inc.) PRIMAKOV PROPOSES MORATORIUM ON FOREIGN ESPIONAGE. The director of the Russian foreign intelligence service, Evgenii Primakov, has offered to recall his spies from countries that agree to cease their intelligence activities in Russia. In an interview with The Sunday Times on 27 September, Primakov said that such a step must be fortified by "a government guarantee." He also revealed that his agency has closed about 30 former KGB stations in Africa and Far East; because of personnel and budget cuts about half of all his intelligence officers will be recalled by the end of the year, he added. Primakov's offer echoed the US-Soviet intelligence pact proposed by Dr. Georgii Arbatov last year (see RFE/RL Daily Report, 27 November, 1991). At that time, Arbatov proposed a reciprocal cessation of agent recruitment by Russia and the United States, and a concomitant redirection of intelligence resources on both sides towards analytical work; meanwhile, counterintelligence forces on both sides would verify that the respective countries were abiding by the treaty. (Victor Yasmann, RFE/RL, Inc.) CRIMEA AMENDS CONSTITUTION. The Crimean parliament, meeting for a two-day session on 24 and 25 September, adopted amendments to its constitution and approved a state flag and symbols, Ukrinform-TASS reported on 25 September. The Crimean constitution now states that the Republic of the Crimea is part of Ukraine, with which it conducts its relations on the basis of mutually agreed upon laws and agreements. The Crimea's powers are defined by its constitution and the Ukrainian law delineating power between Kiev and Simferopol. The Crimean government will have its permanent representation in Kiev. Every Crimean citizen is simultaneously a Ukrainian citizen, and Crimeans reserve the right to have dual citizenship. (Roman Solchanyk, RFE/RL, Inc.) YELTSIN, NAZARBAEV, ELCHIBEI ON CIS. Yeltsin's press secretary said on 25 September that Yeltsin had sent a personal message to the leaders of the CIS states in advance of the summit meeting in Bishkek on 9 October in which he proposed that individual CIS states should move towards integration insofar as they were ready, ITAR-TASS reported. Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbaev said he shared Yeltsin's view, ITAR-TASS reported. Nazarbaev said no one should be dragged into the CIS, and some states could be associated members and others observers. Azerbaijan's president Abulfaz Elchibei said on CIS TV on 22 September that he personally was against Azerbaijan being a member, because it still lacked the hallmarks of genuine independence, namely a national currency, army, and gold reserve. Elchibei had said three days earlier, however, that it was a matter for the parliament to decide. (Ann Sheehy, RFE/RL, Inc.) TURKMENISTAN PLACES HOPES ON GAS. The gas pipeline that is to be built from Turkmenistan to Europe via Turkey will enable Turkmenistan to break into the world market, Turkmen President Saparmurad Niyazov said in an interview with the Moscow journal Svobodnaya mysl, ITAR-TASS reported on 27 September. Niyazov believes that Turkmenistan can cushion the shock of introducing a market economy through selling its gas, oil, and cotton. Western economists have been inclined to agree with him. In the interview Niyazov also praised his country's stability. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL, Inc.) CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE ROMANIAN ELECTIONS ORDERLY, GOOD TURNOUT. On 27 September Romanians voted in the second presidential and general elections after the collapse of Nicolae Ceausescu's regime in December 1989. The elections came at the end of a relatively calm electoral campaign, in sharp contrast with the one in May 1990, which was marred by violence, fraud, and intimidation. There were six presidential candidates and more than 10,600 candidates from 83 parties and alliances competing for seats in the 471-seat, two-chamber parliament. An estimated 75% of the 16.4 million electorate turned out at the 14,000-odd polling stations, under the eyes of more than 500 foreign and 8,000 domestic observers. (Dan Ionescu, RFE/RL, Inc.) ILIESCU LEADS--RUNOFF LIKELY. Preliminary results circulated by Romanian TV shortly before the polling stations closed at 9:00 p.m. showed incumbent President Ion Iliescu leading with 48% of the vote over his main challenger, Emil Constantinescu (33%), running on the ticket of the Democratic Convention (DC), an alliance of 18 centrist parties and organizations. If accurate, these projections, based on an exit poll made by the German Applied Social Research Institute and the Romanian Institute for Public Opinion Survey, indicate that Iliescu is likely to win the reelection in a runoff to be held on 11 October. A former high-ranking communist official, Iliescu appears to have enjoyed massive support from the less educated, conservative electorate in rural areas and small towns. The Democratic National Salvation Front (DNSF), the party supporting Iliescu, is also leading with 27.5% in those projections. The contest for the parliament, however, seems much tighter, with the DC in second place with 23% and Petre Roman's National Salvation Front on the third, with 11%. This suggests that a coalition will be needed to form the next government. Among the DNSF's possible allies are nationalist and leftist parties. First official preliminary results are expected at midday 28 September, while the final outcome will probably not be known before 6 October. (Dan Ionescu, RFE/RL, Inc.) FIGHTING CONTINUES IN BOSNIA. International media reported over the weekend that all contenders are trying to consolidate their positions before the harsh Balkan winter arrives in October. The BBC on 28 September quotes Serbian sources as saying that they now control all of the far eastern part of Bosnia except Gorazde, while Bosnian media reported Serbian air attacks on Jajce and Bosanski Brod. Meanwhile, Serbian heavy artillery continued to pound parts of Sarajevo. (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL, Inc.) MORE REPORTS ON "ETHNIC CLEANSING" BY SERBS IN BOSNIA. Reuters on 26 September said that EC mediator Lord Owen and his UN counterpart Cyrus Vance visited Serbian-controlled Banja Luka in western Bosnia to investigate reports of atrocities. They described how 3-4,000 Muslim and Croatian refugees were fired upon and shelled as they tried to cross over to the Bosnian side during a round of "ethnic cleansing." On 27 September the Los Angeles Times quoted State Department officials as confirming another massacre of 3,000 Muslims near Brcko during the summer. They were killed in groups of 50 at a time, and the bodies were secretly disposed of. The State Department suggested that Brcko might not be an isolated case, and Acting Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger said that Washington wants to move quickly on setting up a commission to investigate Bosnian war crimes. On 28 September the Washington Post cited Serbian police officials in Banja Luka as confirming a massacre of Muslim male civilians at Varjanta. The killers appear to have been Serbian police acting on their own, and police officials said they will be "brought to justice." (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL, Inc.) SLOVAK PREMIER WANTS NEW TREATY WITH GERMANY. Czechoslovak media quoted Slovak Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar on 25 September as saying that Slovakia wants to renegotiate the Czechoslovak-German Treaty signed in February 1992 because it does not take into account all Slovak demands. Slovakia has criticized the fact that the treaty's preamble disregards the existence of the 1939-45 Slovak State. Czech Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus said on 25 September that he sees no need for renegotiation because a division of the treaty between the successor states of Czechoslovakia is simply a technical matter. On 27 September Slovak Foreign Minister Milan Knazko told CSTK that Slovakia will conclude a new treaty with Germany after January 1993, when Czechoslovakia is to split, and that it will do so without a prior agreement with the Czech Republic. (Jiri Pehe, RFE/RL, Inc.) NO PLANS FOR "TRIANGLE" MILITARY PACT. Speaking at a press conference after the meeting of defense ministers of the "Visegrad Triangle," in Tatranske Zruby, Slovakia, Czechoslovak Defense Minister Imrich Andrejcak said that Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland do not plan to conclude a military pact or form a defense union. Andrejcak said that the three defense ministers had agreed on new areas of cooperation, such as opening garrisons to mutual inspections and discussed ways of mutual cooperation after the breakup of Czechoslovakia. Polish Defense Minister Janusz Onyszkiewicz said he hopes that military cooperation within the Visegrad Triangle will continue after Czechoslovakia's breakup. Pledging to resolve conflicts among themselves by political means, the three said that the common goal of the Visegrad countries is gaining membership in the European Community and West European military structures. Hungarian Defense Minister Lajos Fur ruled out the possibility that tensions on the Slovak-Hungarian border could rise significantly and a mobilization of the Hungarian armed forces could be needed. He said that no military actions have taken place on the Slovak-Hungarian border and none are planned. (Jiri Pehe, RFE/RL, Inc.) HUNGARIAN SMALLHOLDERS' PARTY HAS NEW CAUCUS LEADER. On 26 September the larger faction of the Independent Smallholders' Party elected a new caucus leader, lawyer Janos Szabo. The party split earlier this year into two factions: the smaller supported the party's chairman Jozsef Torgyan and left the coalition, the larger remains in the coalition. The former faction leader Gyula Pasztor resigned, saying he wants to spend more time in his voting district, but it is possible that he had to leave for political reasons, since he obstructed the reunification of the two factions. Szabo wants to start talks with the Torgyan faction and wants to work toward the reunification of the two factions. The report was carried by MTI. (Judith Pataki, RFE/RL, Inc.) ZHELEV NOTES STRAINS WITH GOVERNMENT. Bulgarian President Zhelyu Zhelev, in an interview on Bulgarian Radio on 27 September, admitted that he has had differences with the ruling Union of Democratic Forces government, BTA reports. He denied, however, that he is "at war" with the cabinet. Rather, Zhelev noted that there has been conflict between the government and the presidency over the extent of each's authority, as well as over the extent and pace of reforms. Zhelev was at pains to avoid criticizing the government--but neither did he express direct support for it. (Duncan Perry, RFE/RL, Inc.) COALITION TALKS CONTINUE IN TALLINN. Coalition talks are continuing in the wake of last week's parliamentary elections in Estonia, and RFE/RL correspondent reports. The Pro Patria (Isamaa) election coalition, along with the Moderates and the Estonian National Independence Party, has formed a bloc comprising parliamentary majority. Pro Patria is currently negotiating with potential defectors from other parties to strengthen this bloc while conducting closed-door talks on forming a government. Speculation over the composition of the government continues: Pro Patria leader Mart Laar currently tops the list for prime minister candidates, Kiel University professor Hain Rebas (from ENIP) has been mentioned for the Defense Ministry, and deputy speaker to the Supreme Council. Marju Lauristin (from the Moderates). may be tapped as Labor Minister. (Riina Kionka, RFE/RL, Inc.) FINAL LITHUANIAN PRE-ELECTION POLLS. On 26 September newspapers published the results of political polls conducted by the Sociological Research Laboratory of Vilnius University (SLVU) and the Sociological Research Department of Lithuanian Radio and TV (SDRTV), BNS reports. Election law does not permit publishing any more poll results before elections on 25 October. According to SLVU, 67.4% of the voters say that they will vote, while SDRTV reported a figure of 58.1%. Five parties (Sajudis coalition, the Democratic Labor Party, the Center Movement, the Christian Democratic Party, and the Social Democratic Party) would break the 4% barrier needed to gain seats in the proportional voting system, according to SLVU. The favored candidates for president in both polls were Vytautas Landsbergis and Algirdas Brazauskas. (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL, Inc.) WALESA EXHORTS IN GDANSK. Polish President Lech Walesa continued his current campaign to rouse public activism with visits to the Gdansk shipyard on 25 September and St. Brygida's Church on 27 September. Walesa admitted that Poland has "American prices and Polish wages," but told Gdansk residents that Poles could attain American living standards in four years' time--provided everyone gets down to work and stops expecting the government and the president to solve all the problems. Walesa repeated his threat to form a presidential party should a "master plan of reform" not take effect in six months. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL, Inc.) POLISH GOVERNMENT DEFINES SOCIAL SECURITY MINIMUM. The government completed work on the fourth of its five priority programs, "citizens' social security," on 26 September. The program defines which social services will be guaranteed by the state and which are the responsibility of local governments, employers, and individuals. Prime Minister Hanna Suchocka met with representatives of the 13 smaller trade unions on 25 September to open talks on the "pact on state firms." She also discussed the pact with business organizations. Business owners and managers criticized the proposed pact for guaranteeing only the rights of employees, an imbalance they said would slow privatization and impede foreign investment. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL, Inc.) POLAND BARGAINS WITH IMF OVER DEFICIT. Speaking to journalists on 25 September after returning from Washington, Finance Minister Jerzy Osiatynski reported that a new agreement with the IMF will be possible only after the 1992 budget is amended to cut spending and increase revenues. Osiatynski indicated that the IMF is prepared to accept a raised budget deficit ceiling of 8% of GDP for 1992 and 6% for 1993, despite having insisted on a 5% limit earlier this year. The IMF's chief worry, Osiatynski reported, is not the size of the deficit, but the manner in which it is financed. He also noted that the 17 countries that funded the $1 billion stabilization fund are to decide by 15 December whether to allow it to be used to release banks from the bad debts of state firms. Gazeta Wyborcza ran the report on 25 September under the headline "They've Taken a Liking to Our Deficit." (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL, Inc.) LITHUANIA, RUSSIA INITIAL AGREEMENTS. In Moscow Lithuania and Russia initialed three agreements on settling accounts between the two countries, Radio Lithuania reported on 27 September. Lithuanian delegation head, Deputy Economics Minister Vytas Navickas, said that for now firms in both countries can pay each other in rubles, Lithuanian temporary coupons, or foreign currency, but no agreement was reached on settling accounts after Lithuania introduces its currency, the litas. Russia has not agreed to pay back the money from Lithuania's valuta accounts in the Vneshekonombank seized last year. The Russian delegation also did not agree to 31 August 1993 as the final date for the withdrawal of its troops from Lithuania, suggesting that the agreements signed on 8 September 1992 may be changed. (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIAN DEPUTIES IN ESTONIA PAY FAREWELL VISIT. Three outgoing Estonian Supreme Council deputies paid a visit to the Paldiski Naval Base west of Tallinn, BNS reported on 25 September. Genik Israeljan, Vladimir Lebedev and Nikolai Aksinin met with officers, who said living conditions at the base are difficult for those charged with maintaining the nuclear reactors there. Officers reportedly told the deputies that it would take 10-15 years to dismantle the reactors, the existence of which Estonian authorities discovered only last year. The three deputies, who were not eligible to stand for last week's parliamentary elections because they are not citizens, called their outing "a farewell visit" to their constituents. (Riina Kionka, RFE/RL, Inc.) LATVIA INVITES UN TO RUSSIAN TROOP PULLOUT TALKS. Addressing the UN General Assembly on 25 September, Latvia's head of state Anatolijs Gorbunovs invited the UN Security Council to send observers to negotiations on the pullout of Russian troops. Gorbunovs, challenging Russia to live up to its earlier promises, explained that Russia has often changed its position on issues already agreed upon and that Latvia has not been permitted to monitor Russian troop movements on its territory. Gorbunovs noted the "dangerous alteration of the demographic situation" (Latvians now comprise about 52% of the population) in Latvia that resulted from the Soviet Union's occupation of Latvia in 1940 and "the Soviet Union's colonial policies." He rejected Russia's accusation that rights of minorities are being violated in Latvia, adding that his country wants to integrate into its citizenry those immigrants who support Latvian independence; those who find an independent Latvia unacceptable, however, should leave. Western agencies carried the story. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL, Inc.)
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----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Tensions escalate in Croatia as deadline nears for refugee return Subject: U.S. has solid information on mass executions in Bosnia Subject: Peace mediators talk with Serbian leaders Subject: Talks scheduled Wednesday on ongoing peace efforts Subject: Serbian Parliament organizes referendum for early elections Subject: U.N. helicopters fired on by anti-aircraft weapons Subject: Rocket fire targets Sarajevo business district Subject: U.N., French troops obtain releases of local U.N. workers Subject: Yugoslav prime minister meets secretly with Congress,secretary of state Subject: Pentagon to resume Bosnia relief flights Subject: U.N. refugee chief urges prompt troop deployment to Bosnia ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Tensions escalate in Croatia as deadline nears for refugee return Date: 28 Sep 92 20:05:22 GMT ZAGREB, Croatia (UPI) -- Tensions are escalating in Serb-seized Croatian territory as Serbs prepare for the return of thousands of Croatian refugees to their homes on Oct. 2. Six thousand Croatian refugees from nine villages in Serb-occupied areas in eastern Croatia, known as sector East, have declared they will begin returning to their homes despite danger warnings from the U.N. Protection Force in the area. ``A climate of intimidation and hostility exists in various locations on both sides,'' Cedric Thornberry, head of U.N. civil affairs, wrote in a letter to Ivan Milas, vice president of the government of Croatia and the government's commission for UNPROFOR. In response to the announced return, ``Serbs are mobilizing again and arming themselves,'' Thornberry said. ``We are very concerned about the Croatian deadline,'' he added. The refugees have asked the U.N. peacekeepers in the area for protection when they return. But UNPROFOR has said they cannot guarantee their safety. ``We are a peace-keeping force, not a peace-making force,'' Thornberry said. UNPROFOR has about 2,000 troops currently in sector East. To make the situation safe ``we would need nearly ten times'' UNPROFOR's current force, Thornberry said. But the refugees, impatient with the numerous unfulfilled U.N. brokered agreements and the Serbs' unwillingness to disarm, have given the UNPROFOR an ultimatum. ``If (the UNPROFOR) doesn't tell us on Sept. 29 where we can go back to and ensure our safety...we will go back anyway in the first days of October,'' said Josip Kompanovic, assistant commissioner for the Croatian government for the Beli Mastir municipality. Beli Mastir is one of four municipalities in the Serbian-occupied region of Croatia. Before the war there were about 80,000 Croats who lived in sector East, now there are only about 3,000-4,000, according to estimates by the Croatian office for refugees. Since UNPROFOR sent troops into the Serb-occupied area in March as part of a peace agreement reached in January during the Serbian-Croatian war, thousands of Croatian refugees who fled their homes have been anxious to return. ``People call all the time, we've heard the question, 'when can we return?' thousands and thousands of times,'' said Josip Esteraher, assistant general secretary for the Croatian government office for refugees. But the area is still not secure because the Serbs have stil not disarmed in accordance with the peace plan, Thornberry said. Although they have technically withdrawn their army, soldiers have re-emerged in sector East as so-called ``special police'' and ``border police.'' These police are heavily armed with mortars, armored personnel carriers, anti aircraft weapons, rockets, automatic machine guns and personal side arms, Thornberry said. The UNPROFOR stationed about 14,000 troops in four Serb-held areas of Croatia over a four-month period under the peace plan. Refugees from other four sectors want to return as well but sector East was singled out as the first place to start the return since the UNPROFOR entered it in March. The announcement by the refugees has provoked panic by the Serbs in sector East, who fear that the refugees will be backed by the Croatian Army, Thornberry said. UNPROFOR representatives said the refugees's ultimatum has not done much more than irritate the situation and ``set back efforts to create an appropriate climate for their return,'' Thornberry said. ``There are a lot of extreme minded people in the area...The Serbs have now started a general mobilization and the security situation has worsened,'' Thornberry said. ``The Serbs are so scared that they have started to move out old people and children'' to brace themselves for an attack, Thornberry said. Three hundred Croats had been expelled as of Sunday from sector East in response to the refugees' announcement, said Marko Kvesic, commissioner for the Croatian government for the Beli Mastir municipality. But the Croatian government has said that they will not allow the refugees to go back armed despite their willingness to do so. ``It's better to have unhappy people than dead people, if they go in and try to arm themselves we will go in and try to stop them,'' Zvonko Nogolica, chairman of the Croatian government's office for the the UNPROFOR said. ``The government won't allow the refugees to go off on any crazy adventures though we think the refugees are right from a moral point of view,'' Nogolica said. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: U.S. has solid information on mass executions in Bosnia Date: 28 Sep 92 19:44:37 GMT WASHINGTON (UPI) -- Credible witnesses have told U.S. officials they saw Serbian troops slaughter more than 3,000 men, women, and children last spring at detention camps in the Bosnian town of Brcko, the State Department said Monday. Spokesman Richard Boucher said U.S. officials recently received reports from two survivors of the Serbian brutality who estimated 3,000 Bosnian Muslims were executed at Brcko during May and June. Although the administration was told previously of the mass executions, he said the fresh reports are the first from witnesses. ``These are the first eyewitness reports we've received of these killings in the Brcko area,'' Boucher said. ``The previous information that we had was either second-hand or some of the information that we had raised questions about its credibility.'' He said the information had been turned over to United Nations authorities that are investigating Serbian atrocities in Bosnia- Hercegovina, which has been under siege since March by troops from Belgrade attempting to annex the nascent republic and ``cleanse'' it of all Muslims and Croats. The United States has been discussing with its allies at the United Nations a possible resolution calling for the establishment of a war- crimes commission to prosecute such abuses of human rights, officials have said. It would be similar to the one that oversaw the prosecution of German Nazis at Nuremberg following World War II. The incident at Brcko would be a candidate for such an investigation. ``We've been discussing a possible resolution with our allies,'' Boucher said. ``The resolution...would establish a war crimes commission to look into the charges, establish the facts, and prepare for possible prosecution of individuals who are found guilty.'' Boucher said the administration hopes ``to table such a resolution in the Security Council soon.'' The two witnesses said the Brcko detention camps in northeast Bosnia- Hercegovina were operated by Serbian militias and run by a Commander Arkan and then a Commander Seselj, Boucher said. The witnesses claimed ``to have witnessed the spontaneous murders of up to 50 prisoners at a time,'' he said. One witness told U.S. investigators that he transported bodies of dead prisoners from a brick factory, which served as a detention camp, to a local animal rendering plant for cremation, Boucher said. Both witnesses estimated in separate interviews with U.S. officials that ``3,000 men, women and children were executed in Brcko in the May- June period,'' he said. Information submitted by the administration last week to the United Nations contains chilling accounts of the reported mayhem at Brcko. It was given to the United Nations prior to administration interviews with the two witnesses. A 38-year-old inmate at a nearby detention camp told investigators she was taken to Brcko, ``where she saw 10 people being killed every day with rifle butts and bottles,'' the report said. The woman said ``two prisoners were required to slap each other. The one who didn't slap as hard was killed. ``One time I saw them cut off the ears of the weak slapper, then cut off his nose and then kill him by cutting his throat.'' ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Peace mediators talk with Serbian leaders Date: 28 Sep 92 21:50:54 GMT BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (UPI) -- International mediators Cyrus Vance and Lord Owen arrived Monday for talks with Serbian leaders on issues that included the deployment of fresh U.N. peacekeepers in neighboring Bosnia-Hercegovina and the resumption of a humanitarian relief airlift to Sarajevo. U.N. special enovy Vance and European Community mediator Owen flew into the Serbian capital of Belgrade from Geneva on a one-day visit to meet leaders of the rump Yugoslav union of Serbia and Montenegro. Vance and Owen, co-chairmen of the Geneva peace conference on the disintegrated Yugoslav six-republic federation, drove from Belgrade's Surcin Airport directly to the Palace of Federation for talks with Dobrica Cosic, president of the truncated Yugoslavia. Col. Gen. Zivota Panic, the chief of staff of the Yugoslav Army, attended the talks in the Federation Palace. French Gen. Philippe Morillon, deputy commander of the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR), and Cedric Thornberry, in charge of UNPROFOR's civilian affairs, also attended the talks, a Yugoslav official said. Generals Panic and Morillon were to have separate talks, the official said. Vance and Owen, who last week visited the Croatian capital of Zagreb and the Serb-held town of Banja Luka in northwestern Bosnia-Hercegovina, also were scheduled to meet Serbian hard-line President Slobodan Milosevic before they fly back to Geneva later in the day, Serbian officials said. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Talks scheduled Wednesday on ongoing peace efforts Date: 29 Sep 92 12:34:25 GMT GENEVA (UPI) -- The presidents of Croatia and the remnant of federal Yugoslavia will meet with U.N. and European Community mediators here Wednesday to discuss the ongoing U.N. peace effort in former Yugoslavia, a spokesman for the U.N. said Tuesday. President Franjo Tujman of Croatia and Dobrica Cosic will meet with U.N. mediator Cyrus Vance and Lord (David) Owen, representatives of the EC. The two conferred Tuesday with Alija Izetbegovic, President of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The flurry of meetings came as the U.N. High Commission for Refugees warned that ``the point of no return'' has been reached for humanitarian aid for many people in Bosnia-Herzegovina. ``It's too late for thousands,'' Sylvana Foa, the UNHCR spokesperson told a news conference. ``We asked in September for relief aid of $282 million and so far all we have is $176 million. We want hard cash, cash to buy food today -- not pledges, not earmarked money but cash.`` She said the UNHCR is still maintaining its estimate of 2 million persons being at risk from starvation in Bosnia-Hercegovina this winter and said she had no news of a resumption of the U.N. airlift into Sarajevo, suspended since Sept. 3 following the shooting down of an Italian plane while on U.N. service. But later Bosnian President Izetbegovic told a news conference Vance had told him ``American'' planes would resume flights into Sarajevo within the next 24 hours and that he took this to mean the airlift would resume. Demilitarization of Sarajevo is the only way of making peace talks between the three warring factions meaningful, the Bosnian president said. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Serbian Parliament organizes referendum for early elections Date: 29 Sep 92 15:02:33 GMT BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (UPI) -- The communist-controlled Parliament of Serbia Tuesday decided to stage a public referendum on Oct. 11 to determine whether to hold general and presidential elections before the end of the year. Parliament, controlled by communists loyal to Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, passed a constitutional amendment on holding early elections by the end of 1992 for parliamentary deputies and the president of the republic. Aleksadar Bakocevic, chairman of Parliament, said that despite the passing of the amendment, citizens have to confirm it by voting in the upcoming referendum. Opposition parties accused Milosevic's hard-line regime of initiating a referendum to delay elections for as long as possible in order to retain power. Vuk Draskovic, leader of the Serbian Renewal Movement, said the ruling Socialist Party of Serbia was doing all in its power to avoid and delay the elections despite demands by leaders to hold them by the end of the year. President of the rump Yugoslav federation of Serbia and Montenegro, Dobrica Cosic, and his Prime Minister Milan Panic, demanded early elections on all federal and republic levels. Cosic and Panic, advocating democratic reforms in the newly forged two-republic Yugoslav union, want early elections to replace current pro-communist deputies with liberal delegates who would help in speeding up changes. Borisav Jovic, president of the Serbian Socialist Party, commented, ``The Socialist Party of Serbia has no intention to play games.'' Jovic discounted opposition allegations that the referendum is the manipulation of the ruling party to indefinitely delay elections. ``The Socialist Party wants early elections and is not afraid of election results,'' he told the Serbian-run Tanjug news agency. Jovic said he hoped that elections could be held in early December. The condition for holding early elections is the passing of the referendum with at least 51 percent of the electoral body. But opposition leaders warned that the referendum could be easily undermined as a large portion of ethnic Albanians in Serbia's southern Kosovo province were not expected to vote. The opposition also claimed that members of the Serbian Socialist Party will vote against the referendum to help the ruling party stay in power. If the Oct. 11 referendum fails it will take at least six months to restage another one, at which point elections could be postponed for some eight months. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: U.N. helicopters fired on by anti-aircraft weapons Date: 29 Sep 92 16:13:21 GMT ZAGREB, Croatia (UPI) -- Two United Nations helicopters clearly marked as U.N. craft were fired at Monday near the Croatian capital Zagreb, according to U.N. officials Tuesday. ``It is of imense gravity when people open fire on you from the ground when you are flying peace missions...It's not what we expect,'' Cedric Thornberry, head of the U.N. civil affairs said. The helicopters, flying to Zagreb from Daruvar in north central Croatia on a regular daily mission, were not hit and there were no injuries, according to Thornberry. When asked for confirmation that it was the Croation army that fired the anti-aircraft weapons, Thornberry replied, ``Well, it occurred 20 miles from Zagreb airport...and nobody suggests that it was little green men from Mars.'' The Croatian authorites had been given notification of the helicopters'departure the day before, according to Thornberry. The helicopters were flying 45 feet apart at an altitude of 330 feet in Croatian air space when one of the pilots saw some yellow flashes coming from the ground and then bursts of smoke and fire between the two crafts, a statement issued today read. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Rocket fire targets Sarajevo business district Date: 29 Sep 92 17:23:11 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- Heavy rocket fire killed at least three people and wounded 26 others in the war-ravaged downtown business district Tuesday, and U.N. officials tried to negotiate the creation of a new corridor for channeling food and other humanitarian supplies to the Bosnian capital. The rocket explosions plus sniper fire that wounded three people Tuesday morning boosted the 24-hour casualty toll that ended at 10 a.m. to 32 people killed and 212 wounded throughout the republic, including 15 killed and 90 wounded in Sarajevo, officials said. In neighboring Croatia, U.N. officials said Tuesday that anti- aircraft gunners opened fire on clearly marked U.N. helicopters. The incident happened Monday near the capital Zagreb. No one was hit and there were no injuries, said U.N. civil affairs chief Cedric Thornberry. Thornberry said the helicopters were flying 45 feet apart at an altitude of 330 feet in Croatian air space when one of the pilots saw yellow flashes from the ground and bursts of smoke between the two craft. Asked if it was Croatian army fire, Thornberry would only say: ``Well, it occurred 20 miles from Zagreb airport...and nobody suggests that it was little green men from Mars.'' French Gen. Phillipe Morilon, deputy commander of the U.N. Protection Force (UNPROFOR), arrived in Sarajevo Tuesday and traveled to nearby Pale for further talks with Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic on opening a new aid supply corridor to the beseiged Bosnian capital. The city received its first delivery of humanitarian supplies in four days -- some 80 metric tons carried in 12 trucks -- but only after a showdown in which U.N. officials backed by French troops obtained the release of four Muslim Slav drivers and a local U.N. worker in an eight- truck convoy detained by Serbian militiamen. French Col. Patrice Satre, facing the most serious incident to confront a U.N.-organized aid convoy, rushed to the western Sarajevo suburb of Ilidza, placed himself and four soldiers in front of the detainees and refused to allow the Serbs to take them into the Ilidza police station, said Dag Espeland, the logistics manager for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. ``This was the worst we've had,'' Espeland said of the incident, which he said began when Serbian soldiers found a letter belonging to a local UNHCR worker containing ``words offensive to the Serbs.'' ``We have Serbian, Muslim and Croatian drivers,'' Espeland said. ``The Muslims are usually harassed by the Serbs, but they have never been detained before. Sometimes individuals just start things up.'' Morillon, who visited Karadzic Sunday at his headquarters in Pale and then met Serb leaders Monday in Belgrade, was seeking guarantees that would allow expanded road and air deliveries of aid to Sarajevo, UNPROFOR spokesman Adnan Razek said. Morillon, as part of the plan, is seeking Serbian approval of a new Bosnian UNPROFOR headquarters that likely would be placed in Ilidza, which has been a primary bottleneck for road convoys. The air deliveries have been cut off since an Italian aid plane was shot down Sept. 3 west of Sarajevo, and deliveries by truck have been greatly reduced by the fighting and bad road conditions, leaving the city facing the imminent onset of winter with about one-fifth of its estimated daily food needs. Rocket and sniper attacks from Serbs in the hills surrounding Sarajevo continued to kill and maim civilians, who represent about 80 percent of the casualties suffered in the Bosnian conflict. Several rockets fell around 10 a.m. in and around the gutted downtown shopping district, hitting homes, shops and offices, killing three people and wounding at least 26 others, officials said. At least three other people were reported wounded Tuesday morning by sniper fire, hospital officials said. Sevala Hasovic, manager of the Magros clothing store, said she was at his shop when rockets slammed into a nearby building used by the Bosnian military and showered the pedestrian shopping mall with shrapnel and glass. ``Me and a colleague, we were sitting inside and suddenly it exploded,'' Hasovic said as she and several co-workers swept up glass and rubble. ``Then we heard people screaming.'' Glass shards framed pools of blood on adjacent sidewalk just a few feet from the flower pots and hand-lettered sign marking the spot where a mortar shell fell May 27 and killed 18 people waiting in a bread line. Hasovic condemned Europe for failing to intervene in the crisis. ``We have lost our hope for help from Europe and the world,'' she said. ``They (Serbs) have simply been destroying the people and the city for six months.'' Salem Karovic, chief of the city's water distribution system, said Serbs controlling the area around the city's main water supply at Bacevo turned off the feed to Sarajevo Sunday night in apparent violation of an agreement made one week earlier at the peace talks in Geneva. Razek said UNPROFOR forces were prevented by the fighting from reaching the site Monday but he hoped to reach the area to investigate the matter Tuesday. Sarajevo's encircled population of about 500,000 people has been withoutelectricity for more than a week. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: U.N., French troops obtain releases of local U.N. workers Date: 29 Sep 92 17:51:17 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- Armed French soldiers intervened Tuesday to prevent Serbian militiamen from detaining five people in U.N. employ, including four Muslam Slav workers who were driving trucks in a U.N. humanitarian relief convoy, U.N. officials said. During the tense, half-hour standoff in a Serb-held Sarajevo suburb, the French troops led by their commander shielded the five U.N. workers while Izumi Nakamitsu, the Sarajevo delegate of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, negotiated a successful end to the incident, the officials said. The officials said the five workers were pulled off a UNHCR-organized eight-truck humanitarian aid convoy that was halted and searched by Serbian soldiers outside the Serb-held Sarajevo suburb of Ilidza. The soldiers found a letter belonging to a local U.N. worker that contained ``words offensive to the Serbs'' and ordered that they accompany them to the Ilidza police station, said one U.N. official. Dag Espeland, the UNHCR's Sarajevo logistics manager, said the Serbs also detained for questioning four Muslim Slav drivers in the convoy. He said U.N. officials with the convoy alerted by radio the U.N. Protection Force (UNPROFOR) headquarters, which dispatched to Ilidza 10 French troops in four armored personnel carriers led by their commander, Col. Patrice Satre. Espeland also rushed to Ilidza with Nakamitsu. The French troops were waiting at the Ilidza police station when the Serbs arrived with the local U.N. worker and the four drivers, Espeland said. Satre immediately placed himself and four of his troops in front of the detainees and refused to alow the Serbs to take them into the police station. ``He placed his armed men in front of the drivers and (said) they would not be allowed to be questioned and they were under his protection,'' recounted Espeland. ``There were about 20 Serbian soldiers standing around, but they didn't do anything.'' ``Col. Satre just stood there for half an hour while Izumi went inside the station to negotiate with the commander. In the end, they were allowed to go. They were put into one of the French APCs (armored personnel carriers) and driven to the (U.N.-controlled) airport,'' Espeland said. He said the incident was the most serious to have beset a U.N.- organized humanitarian aid convoy since UNHCR began relying on trucks to deliver relief to Sarajevo following the Sept. 3 suspension of the international airlift following the downing of an Italian cargo plane. ``This was the worst we've had. We have Serbian, Muslim and Croatian drivers. The Muslims are usually harassed by the Serbs, but they have never been detailed before,'' he said. ``Sometimes individuals just start things up.'' Serbian police in Ilidza last week arrested three Muslim Slavs who were driving buses to evacuate foreign students from Sarajevo. The drivers had been approved by Serbian political leaders to participate in the evacuation, but U.N. officials still have not been able to obtain their release. Serbian forces have been blockading and bombarding Sarajevo for almost six months in a bid to divide the city into ethnic districts as part of a drive to carve a separate Serbian state out of the independent republic of Bosnia-Hercegovina. Since the airlift suspension, UNHCR has been forced to rely on truck convoys from the Croatian port city of Split to provide food and medicine for the estimated 350,000 residents and 150,000 refugees trapped in Sarajevo. However, the convoys have been unable to fill the gap left by the airlift suspension, and UNHCR officials have expressed grave fears of serious food shortages in coming weeks. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Yugoslav prime minister meets secretly with Congress,secretary of state Date: 29 Sep 92 17:51:17 GMT WASHINGTON (UPI) -- Yugoslav Prime Minister Milan Panic slipped quietly into Washington Tuesday and is scheduled to meet with Acting Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger as well as several congressional officials, his spokesman said. Spokesman David Calef told United Press International that Panic will ask Congress to grant a waiver of the stiff sanctions imposed on the Union of Serbia and Montenegro, the unrecognized successor states to the former Yugoslavia. Specifically, Calef said, Panic wants an exemption granted on heating oil. He said Panic is concerned about the effect of a heating oil shortage on ``hospitals and children'' during the brutal Yugoslav winter. Calef said he will discuss the administration's predisposition to supporting such a move in the United Nations during his meeting this afternoon with Eagleburger. The State Department, which normally includes on its daily schedule meetings between Eagleburger and heads of state, did not make note of Tuesday's parley. Panic travels to New York late in the day to address the Council on Foreign Relations, Calef said. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Pentagon to resume Bosnia relief flights Date: 29 Sep 92 18:41:04 GMT WASHINGTON (UPI) -- The Pentagon said Tuesday U.S. Air Force relief flights to the besieged Bosnian captial of Sarajevo, suspended since an Italian relief plane was shot down by a missile, will resume soon. ``We are aware of the urgency of resuming relief flights into the Sarajevo airport,'' Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams said. ``We will resume the relief flights. We just need to work out the details of when specifically we can get them going again.'' He said Washington would set a date for renewing its relief flights in consultation with the United Nations and other countries participating in the airlift. It is expected the flights will resume within a week. The U.N. relief airlift into Sarajevo, under attack from Serbian gunners in the surrounding hills for almost six months, began last July. Flights were suspended early this month when a surface-to-air missile knocked an Italian relief plane out of the sky, killing the crew. Investigators were uncertain which side in the ethnic conflict fired the missile. Ground convoys have supplied the beleaguered residents since the shoot-down, although the United States has not been involved. ``The air flights into Sarajevo have turned out to be a very efficient way of getting an enormous amount of material in quickly,'' Williams said. ``So, if we can resume them, it's something we would like to do.'' ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: U.N. refugee chief urges prompt troop deployment to Bosnia Date: 29 Sep 92 19:09:11 GMT UNITED NATIONS (UPI) -- The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Tuesday urged governments to speed up deployment of peacekeeping troops to prevent an alarming increase in the ``ethnic cleansing'' campaign in Bosnia-Hercegovina. The high commissioner, Sadako Ogata, said in an appeal to governments to speed up the deployment of about 6,000 troops to ``prevent the further deterioration of an already terrible situation.'' Ogata said the latest information received by her organization showed an upsurge in ``ethnic cleansing'' operations, particularly in the Banja Luka area in Bosnia-Hercegovina. ``Large numbers of people are being forced out of their homes and villages and pushed across the front lines towards central Bosnia,'' she said. ``The reports received from survivors are heartbreaking.'' ``I feel that the presence of U.N. Protection Force soldiers would help contain a number of abuses that are presently being witnessed by the few foreigners who are present there,'' Ogata said. The U.N. Security Council on Sept. 14 allowed the deployment of up to 6,000 troops, most of them from NATO countries, to provide security for food convoys being organized by the U.N. refugee agency, which the is the leading organization engaged in bringing food and medicine to tens of thousands of inhabitants displaced by the fighting. Governments that have pledged to contribute the troops to the operations have yet to present a plan for the deployment to the Security Council for its approval. ``The delay, coupled with the suspension of the U.N. humanitarian airlift to the besieged city of Sarajevo, means tens of thousands if innocent victims of the war could face a very bleak winter,'' the UNHCR said. Reports of the increase in ``ethnic cleansing'' operations coincided with charges made Monday by the United States, quoting witnesses, that Serbian troops were responsible for the death of more than 3,000 men, women, and children last spring at detention camps in the Bosnian town of Brcko. U.S. State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher said U.S. officials recently received reports from two survivors of the Serbian brutality who estimated 3,000 Bosnian Muslims were executed at Brcko during May and June. ``These are the first eyewitness reports we've received of these killings in the Brcko area,'' Boucher said Monda
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NEW YORK TIMES, Tuesday, Seprember 29, 1992. SARAJEVO, BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA: The Bosnian Government has sent an urgent appeal to the U.N. Security Council warning that Sarajevo in in "imminent danger" of falling to besieging Serbian nationalist troops unless Bosnian forces are exempted from a U.N. arms embargo. The appeal said that Serbian military moves, including an increase in tank strength in Grbavica, an area of the city that is barely a mile away from key Government installations like the presidency, indicated that Sarajevo was facing "what is likely to be the final assault." "If our fears are realized, we are unlikely to survive this latest onslaught on the city." The Government letter said. The appeal dated on Saturday, came in a letter addressed to the Security Council by Ejup Ganic, a Vice President who is in charge of the Government in the absence of Alije Izetbegovic. Mr. Izetbegovic is on a foreign tour intended to foster support for his beleagured Government, which has been hanging onto its control of Sarajevo under a six-month siege by the Serbian forces. The Bosnian position has been that the arms embargo penalizes only the Sarajevo Government, since the Serbian forces are fighting with the backing of the well equipped Yugoslav army.
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(From the Los Angeles Times, September 29, 1992; for fair use only:) "Rebel Serbs Mock U.N. Mission in Croatia Zones" By Carol J. Williams, Times Staff Writer * Balkans: Guerrilla bands keep peacekeeping troops from restoring civilian control to four `protected areas.' Karlovac, Croatia -- Just a few miles south of the official crossing into U.N. Sector North, three unshaven guerrillas present a rival welcome committee. Decked out in blue camouflage in an unconvincing attempt to look like policemen, the Serbian rebels guarding the entrance to what they consider the Republic of Serbian Krajina have dragged lawn chairs and wooden sawhorses onto the roadway to create their own checkpoint. They greet all comers with the muzzles of their machine guns. "No entrance today," barked one guerrilla, spewing a cloud of brandy breath and dismissingly waving away a U.N. press pass. Sector North, on this particular day, is closed "for technical reasons." Although the Krajina vigilantes are stingy with their explanations, radio reports of Serbian air attacks on Muslim villages across the nearby Bosnian border are likely the technicalities prompting them to peremptorily seal off access to what is supposed to be a demilitarized buffer zone under U.N. control. U.N. troops have been patrolling four designated "protected areas" in Croatia for nearly five months, yet their authority appears to extend only as far as the nearest Serbian barricade. On occasion, the roving guerrilla bands even block U.N. troops from moving about, mocking the international mandate to restore civilian control and the prewar order. "It's like Wyoming in the 1880s," complained Cedric Thornberry, chief of civilian affairs for what is now the largest peacekeeping mission in U.N. history. "The situation is so bad in Sector East that we believe civil authority has basically disintegrated. Courts do not sit. Police do not investigate. Sectors South and East are descending steadily into conditions of anarchy." While Thornberry singles out the regions closest to Serbia and the coveted Dalmatian coastline for criticism, conditions in the other two zones are also woefully short of the objectives set out by U.N. special envoy Cyrus R. Vance in the deployment plan he drafted with Serbian and Croatian officials nearly a year ago. Menacing of motorists, looting, armed assault and the practice known as ethnic cleansing are the pattern of daily life here, too. * * * The lack of U.N. progress in disarming paramilitary forces has prompted anger and impatience among non-Serbs driven from the region who have been pinning their hopes on the peacekeepers to make it safe enough to go home. Croatian officials, who accuse U.N. personnel of protecting Serbian warlords who rule over one-third of the republic, are threatening to shepherd masses of refugees back into the volatile area. Marko Kvesic, deposed mayor of Beli Manastir in the Baranja region of Sector East, has given the peacekeepers until the end of the month to fulfill their pledge to help refugees return to their homes. Noting the need to begin the school year and prepare neglected farmland for winter, Kvesic plans to lead a mass return to Beli Manastir on Wednesday, whether the United Nations assists him or not. The Croatian government has promised support. "We have asked them [U.N. forces] to show in at least one village their good will to assist the refugees in returning to their homes. If they are not able to do this, then you can draw your own conclusions about how we will respond," said Damir Zoric, deputy chief of the Office for Refugees and Displaced Persons in Zagreb, the Croatian capital. Asked how he would bring refugees back to Baranja over U.N. objections, Zoric replied: "We will march." Thornberry says he has no intention of bowing to the ultimatum. * * * "It is the height of irresponsibility of Croatian government officials, knowing full well what the situation is in Baranja, to incite the hopes of desperate people and lead them into a situation that, unless they are very fortunate, will be one of violent confrontation," Thornberry warned. But the threatened showdown has put the United Nations in the awkward position of having to forcibly drive away the very people whose return they were charged with arranging. "We will seek to prevent their re-entry. We've warned that conditions are not secure and that we will put our troops there on the border ... to protect them from the lunatics inside Baranja who are wanting to shoot themselves a few Croats," Thornberry said. U.N. troops are doing what they can to disarm the guerrilla bands throughout the Krajina, he said, "but there is no answer except the unexciting one of gradually trying to restore tranquility." While none of the 600,000 people forced to leave their homes in the Croatian war zones have been able to move back as a result of the U.N. deployment, U.N. spokeswoman Shannon Boyd claims that the mission has achieved some successes. Fighting that killed 10,000 people last year has dropped off dramatically, although Croats tend to attribute the fall in casualties to the fact that Serbs now enjoy almost exclusive control of the regions after having driven out the Croats, leaving no enemy to fight. U.N. forces took over control of the Peruca Dam in Sector South in mid- September, opening one of the floodgates to avert an impending disaster. Serbian radicals who had been holding the dam for more than a year had been amassing water to a dangerous level with the intent of rupturing the structure and flooding the predominantly Croatian lowlands around the city of Sinj. Boyd also claimed that U.N. mediators had achieved a breakthrough in clearing mines and roadblocks from the Belgrade-Zagreb highway and that a limited reopening of the 250-mile route was imminent. Only humanitarian aid convoys and the few foreign travelers venturing into the region would be allowed to use the road that skirts some of the worst battlegrounds of the wars in Croatia and Bosnia, but Boyd described it as "a first step." Currently, all traffic between the respective Serbian and Croatian capitals has to detour through Hungary, tripling what would normally be a four-hour drive. The small advances toward restoring public services and a sense of normalcy to the U.N. zones have been overshadowed by what U.N. officials concede is a stalemate in disarming and dispersing the guerrilla bands. Conditions have actually worsened in recent weeks, the U.N. officials report, with Serbian guerrillas becoming more "assertive."
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----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Yugoslav Prime Minister sees Eagleburger, Congressmen ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Yugoslav Prime Minister sees Eagleburger, Congressmen Date: 29 Sep 92 19:58:01 GMT WASHINGTON (UPI) -- Yugoslav Prime Minister Milan Panic met privately Tuesday in separate sessions with Acting Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger and congressional officials to appeal for an easing of U.N. sanctions before winter strikes. David Calef, Panic's spokesman, and congressional aides told United Press International that the prime minister sought the sanctions relief in a closed meeting with Rep. Dante Fascell, D-Fla., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and other congressional leaders, and with Eagleburger. It was the second meeting in a week between Panic, the self-made American millionaire of Serbian extraction, and Eagleburger and with leaders of the House committee. He also met last week with members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The State Department, which normally includes on its daily schedule meetings between Eagleburger and heads of state, did not make note of Tuesday's parley. A senior State Department official was unsure why the meeting was omitted from Eagleburger's daily schedule. The official would not discuss details of the meeting but said the administration had ``not ruled out'' easing the embargo to allow heating oil shipments to Serbia and Montenegro, the unrecognized successor states to Yugoslavia. ``It's something we will have to take a look at,'' the official said. Congressional aides said Panic is orchestrating a lobbying campaign with U.S. officials in hopes that for ``humanitarian reasons'' they will ease sanctions imposed on Belgrade for its attempts to annex Bosnia- Hercegovina and ``cleanse'' it of all non-Serbs. Calef said Panic is concerned about the effect of a heating oil shortage on hospitals and children during the brutal Yugoslav winter. ``The main pitch was to try to make an argument with senior members of Congress on the need to lift U.N. sanctions for humanitarian reasons so they can import fuel oil,'' a congressional aide who attended the meetings told UPI under conditions of anonymity. The aide said Panic ``made a convincing argument'' that he is not involved in any of the Belgrade-inspired mayhem in Bosnia-Hercegovina. Panic said he is doing everything he can to stop ethnic cleansing in which it is estimated thousands of civilians have been slaughtered, close detention camps and silence the weapons, the aide said. Panic said he and Belgrade ``have limited influence'' over the actions of Serbian guerillas in Bosnia-Hercegovina, the aide said, and is ``saying all the right things.'' ``One is left with the nagging doubt as to how much power Panic really has in Belgrade and to what extent he is being manipulated by those really in control to plea for sanctions exemptions. The skeptics among us, or perhaps the realists, wonder how long he will last if he is successful.''
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RFE/RL Daily Report No. 187, 29 September 1992 SUCCESSOR STATES TO THE USSR RUSSIA SENDS REINFORCEMENTS TO TAJIKISTAN AS FIGHTING CONTINUES. The head of Kurgan-Tyube's city council, Nurali Kurbanov, told a press conference that hundreds of people, including the city's chief law enforcement official, were killed on 27 September in an attack on the city by Tajik forces loyal to deposed President Rakhmon Nabiev, Interfax, as quoted by Western agencies, reported on 28 September. Kurbanov also claimed that Russian troops stationed in Tajikistan were helping the pro-Nabiev forces from Kulyab Oblast. Tajik Radio was quoted as having said that acting President Akbarsho Iskandarov had sent a protest to Russia over the use of Russian tanks by Kulyab forces. The tanks were supposedly stolen by Kulyab fighters from a Russian unit. ITAR-TASS reported that additional Russian troops were being sent to Tajikistan to help those already there defend themselves. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL Inc.) YELTSIN-SHEVARDNADZE MEETING ON ABKHAZIA. Following Georgian State Council Chairman Eduard Shevardnadze's protest on 27 September against the Russian parliament's statements on the conflict in Abkhazia, Russian President Boris Yeltsin met with Shevardnadze for talks at the latter's request on 28 September in Moscow. According to Vyacheslav Kostikov, the Russian president's press secretary, the two leaders discussed ways to implement the Russo-Georgian agreement of 3 September on settling the Abkhazian conflict. Yeltsin and Shevardnadze also agreed to hold regular talks and scheduled a meeting for 13 October. Shevardnadze said he was satisfied with the talks. Speaking at a news conference after the meeting, Shevardnadze said Yeltsin is determined to follow through on democratic reforms in Russia, ITAR-TASS reported. (Suzanne Crow, RFE/RL Inc.) FIRST NORTH CAUCASIAN VOLUNTEERS LEAVE ABKHAZIA. The first group of fighters sent to Abkhazia by the Confederation of Mountain Peoples of the North Caucasus left Abkhazia for Groznyi on 28 September, ITAR-TASS reported. About one hundred were flown out in a Russian plane. The Abkhaz had stated earlier that their departure had been suspended. (Ann Sheehy, RFE/RL Inc.) RUSSIAN PARLIAMENT DEBATES LAW REDUCING YELTSIN'S POWER. The draft law "On the Council of Ministers and the Government of Russia" is currently being examined by the presidium of the Russian parliament, Interfax reported on 28 September. The draft law gives President Yeltsin the right to appoint the prime minister and other leading cabinet members only with the approval of the parliament. If the parliament does not approve the president's candidate, the president will have the right to appoint an acting prime minister for three months. If the law is adopted, Yeltsin will loose his present powers to appoint ministers without the parliament's approval. The presidium of the parliament also proposed two alternative dates, 15 December and 12 January, for convening the Seventh Congress of People's Deputies. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL Inc.) CIVIC UNION INCREASES PRESSURE ON THE GOVERNMENT. The three principal leaders of the Civic Union have increased their pressure on the government. Russian Vice President Aleksandr Rutskoi told a youth gathering that some ministers should resign because "their radicalism gives nothing to society," ITAR-TASS reported on 28 September. Arkadii Volsky, the president of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, urged the government to make way for a team of industrial managers who understood how to run the country. Nikolai Travkin, the leader of the Democratic Party, said that it was necessary to remove from the government State Secretary Gennadii Burbulis, Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev, Deputy Prime Minister Anatolii Chubais, and Economic Minister Andrei Nechaev. All three Civic Union leaders emphasized, however, that Prime Minister Egor Gaidar should stay. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL Inc.) VOLSKY PLAYS DOWN DIFFERENCES WITH GAIDAR. Despite his increasing criticism of specific Gaidar economic policies, Arkadii Volsky, president of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, seems reluctant to be branded as an anti-reformer. At a press conference in St. Petersburg, Volsky said that his group's recently released 13-point "anti-crisis" program is not an "alternative to the present economic course" of the Gaidar government, "Vesti" reported on 27 September. "We never set ourselves the task of creating an alternative program . . [T]here can be no alternative to a transition to the market," Volsky emphasized. (Erik Whitlock, RFE/RL Inc.) NECHAEV ON FALL IN INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION. Russian Minister of the Economy, Andrei Nechaev, told a conference of young business and political leaders on 28 September that the nation's industrial production is expected to fall by 20% this year, ITAR-TASS reported. According to official statistics, last year's drop was 2.2%. Nechaev also disclosed that state orders from the defense industry this year were cut by 68%. In a subsequent interview with an ITAR-TASS correspondent, Nechaev said that the government intended to limit the decline in 1993 to 8%. In a related story, Nechaev announced that the government had reached a compromise with the Central Bank on a limit of new credit creation to increase enterprise liquidity, according to "Novosti" on 27 September. There were few details. (Erik Whitlock, RFE/RL Inc.) RUSSIAN DEFENSE BUDGET FOR 1993. Russian Economics Minister Andrei Nechaev on 28 September provided details about the 1993 defense budget. According to Interfax, defense expenditures will total between 1.55 and 1.65 trillion rubles in July 1992 prices, compared to 632 billion rubles in 1992. (Comparing real outlays is complicated by rapid inflation and the arbitrary pricing structure of Russian arms.) Most of the increase is due to personnel and housing construction costs. Procurement spending has been set at 170 billion rubles, a rejection of the Industry Ministry's call to increase it by 60%. Weapons production levels would reportedly remain at the same level as in 1992. (John Lepingwell) RUSSIA NEGOTIATING WITH DEBTORS. Russia is making some progress in settling debts with less-developed countries. According to Interfax on 28 September, Minister of Foreign Economic Relations, Petr Aven, announced that India is soon to begin payments on its $15 billion debt to Russia. Negotiations are also progressing with Tanzania and Poland. Last week Aven said that less-developed nations, many of them former Soviet client states, owed Russia some $142 billion. Aven said he does not expect much of this to be repaid. Cuba, for example, has officially informed Russia that it will not pay back its $28 billion debt. Others owing sums of $10 billion or less, such as Iraq, Angola and Zaire, are in such bad economic condition that repayment is similarly unlikely. (Erik Whitlock) GORBACHEV REFUSES TO TESTIFY AT THE CPSU HEARING. Russian TV newscasts on 28 September cited a press release made by the Constitutional Court, which quotes a letter sent to the Court by former Soviet Communist Party General Secretary, Mikhail Gorbachev. Asked to testify in the current trial of the party, which was banned by President Yeltsin after the failed coup of August 1991, Gorbachev expressed in the letter his "profound respect" for the court as an important democratic institution, but added that he will not take part in the hearing, because the two opposing sides, i.e., those supporting Yeltsin's ban of the party and those defending the CPSU, are eager to exploit it for their own political purposes. (On Friday, 25 September, "Novosti" reported that one of the judges on the Constitutional Court had declared Gorbachev's refusal to appear contempt of court. According to the press release, other former Party leaders have agreed to testify. (Julia Wishnevsky) ..AND PROBABLY WITH GOOD REASON. A 25 September article in the emigre weekly Russkaya mysl', written by its Moscow correspondent, quotes Yeltsin's supporters at the CPSU hearing as saying that no matter what he might say, Gorbachev's testimony may enable his democratic opponents to diminish the former General Secretary's popularity in the West by putting him in the dock for the "party's crimes." Meanwhile, writing in Gudok on 1 September, a representative of the communist side, Anatolii Salutsky, predicted that an "unlimited" opportunity for hardliners to question Gorbachev and Aleksandr Yakovlev in court could bring about "dramatic political consequences . . . on a world scale." (Julia Wishnevsky) CHINA WELCOMES RUSSIAN WITHDRAWAL FROM MONGOLIA. A spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry on 28 September welcomed the announcement that all Russian troops have been withdrawn from Mongolia. ITAR-TASS said that the announcement of the final withdrawal was made on the previous day. The last troops left in September. Then Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev had announced a partial Soviet troop withdrawal from Mongolia in January 1989, and talks on a complete pullout began in February 1990. At one time there were as many as 70,000 Soviet troops in Mongolia. (Doug Clarke) PLUTONIUM REACTOR SHUT DOWN. On 29 September, ITAR-TASS reported that the second plutonium production reactor near Krasnoyarsk has been shut down, ending plutonium production for nuclear weapons in Russia. The Krasnoyarsk site housed two reactors deep underground, which for 30 years produced the weapons material that allowed the rapid buildup of Soviet nuclear stockpiles. Specialists at the site are proposing that it be used to build a prototype small nuclear reactor that could provide power to remote locations in Siberia and the north. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL, Inc.) INTELLIGENCE SPOKESWOMAN EXPLAINS PRIMAKOV'S PROPOSALS. The moratorium on foreign espionage offered by the director of the Russian foreign intelligence service, Evgennii Primakov,(see RFE/RL Daily Report 28 September) can be realized only if there are "collective guarantees" by the NATO countries, said the agency spokeswoman, Tatyana Samolis, ITAR-TASS reported on 28 September. Even if Great Britain, for example, agrees to cease intelligence activities in Russia, it will still be able to obtain intelligence information about Russia from its NATO allies. Therefore, Russia must receive a collective guarantee from all NATO countries which have "an integrated military and intelligence structure," she added. In light of this statement, it is noteworthy that the Primakov initiative may have the practical effect of dividing Western military and intelligence services at the time when European integration is experiencing a crisis over currency and other issues. (Victor Yasmann, RFE/RL Inc.) FOKIN TO DETAIL ECONOMIC REFORMS. Ukrainian Prime Minister Vitold Fokin is scheduled to address the Ukrainian parliament on 29 September, Interfax reported. The parliament is expected to hear details of the government's new economic program, developed by First Deputy Prime Minister Valentyn Symonenko. Both Fokin and President Leonid Kravchuk are also expected to propose changes in the composition of the government. (Roman Solchanyk, RFE/RL Inc.) UKRAINIAN STUDENTS DEMAND CHANGES. The Third Congress of the Ukrainian Students Union (USS) opened in Donetsk on 25 September, Ukrainian TV reported. The USS is taking part in the campaign for new parliamentary elections and supports radical economic reforms. Together with the All-Ukrainian Association of Solidarity with Toilers (VOST), the USS issued a statement calling for new elections and the formation of a government worthy of the public's trust. (Roman Solchanyk, RFE/RL Inc.) STATE OF EMERGENCY REVOKED IN KABARDINO-BALKARIA. The state of emergency proclaimed in Kabardino-Balkaria on 27 September was revoked on 28 September, Radio Mayak reported, and Musa Shanibov, the president of the Confederation of the Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus, was released, an RFE/RL correspondent in Moscow was told by a local official. The state of emergency had been proclaimed after supporters of the Congress of the Kabardian People staged violent protests in Nalchik to protest Shanibov's detention on 23 September for his role in the despatch of volunteers to Abkhazia. Shanibov is to address an extraordinary congress of the confederation in Groznyi on 2 October. The events in Kabardino-Balkaria are reminiscent of last year's events in Chechnya when the Russian authorities also found it necessary to back down in the face of local resistance. (Ann Sheehy, RFE/RL Inc.) RUSSIAN CEASEFIRE OBSERVERS ARRIVE IN BAKU. A first batch of Russian observers who will monitor a ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh arrived in Baku on 28 September, Azerinform-TASS reported. Additional observers from Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine are expected soon. Meanwhile, both the Azerbaijani and Armenian sides accused each other of violating the ceasefire. On 28 September Armenpress-TASS quoted a report from Stepanakert stating that Azerbaijani forces had fired on the road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia, but traffic did not stop moving. Interfax reported the same day that Azerbaijan's minister of internal affairs had rejected the idea of inviting in CIS troops for peacekeeping duties in the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL Inc.) UZBEK OPPOSITION LEADER ON CRACKDOWN. Uzbek writer Muhammed Salih, chairman of the tiny opposition Erk (Will) Party, was quoted by Reuter on 28 September as warning that he will call for street demonstrations if the Uzbek government crackdown on the opposition does not stop. Uzbek President Islam Karimov fears that unrest will spread from neighboring Tajikistan and has taken various measures to silence and intimidate the opposition in Uzbekistan. Erk, the only genuine opposition party to be registered, has had its newspaper closed and its bank account confiscated, according to Salih. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL Inc.) CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE PARTIAL RESULTS IN ROMANIAN ELECTIONS. Latest figures released by the National Statistics Board on 29 September (as of 3:00 a.m.) confirm forecasts from exit polls made by a German and a Romanian survey institute two days before. The partial results, based on complete counts from roughly 65% of all stations, show the incumbent Ion Iliescu leading in the presidential race with 47.3%. He is followed by Emil Constantinescu from the centrist Democratic Convention (DC) with 31.2%; Gheorghe Funar from the nationalist Party of Romanian National Unity (PRNU) with 11%; Caius Traian Dragomir from the National Salvation Front (NSF) with 4.7%; Ion Manzatu from the Republican Party with 3.1%; and Mircea Druc, an independent, with 2.8%. Though a runoff between Iliescu and Constantinescu on 11 October seems inevitable, the former's reelection appears almost certain. The results also show the Democratic National Salvation Front (DNSF), the party backing Iliescu, as leading the vote for the 143-seat Senate with 28.6% and for the 328-seat Chamber of Deputies with 27.6%. It is followed by the DC with 18.6% and 18.7%, respectively; the NSF (10.2% for both); the Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania (9.1% and 8.9%); the PRNU (8.2% and 7.8%); the Greater Romania Party (3.7% and 3.8%); the Democratic Agrarian Party (3.3% and 3%); and the Socialist Labor Party, the reborn communist party (3.2% and 3%). Most analysts see a coalition government looming, and believe that the DNSF might form a alliance with nationalist and leftist parties. (Dan Ionescu, RFE/RL Inc.) NEW WAVE OF "ETHNIC CLEANSING" IN BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA? The 29 September Washington Post quotes international relief officials as saying that Serbian forces have begun a systematic drive to expel the remaining 200,000 Muslims from northwestern Bosnia centering on Banja Luka. The account describes "bombings, burning, torture, and murder," with one relief worker saying: "there's more of this, and worse than anyone can imagine." At least four Muslim villages were destroyed by masked Serbs going "from house to house lobbing grenades, shooting--killing dozens . . ." during the week that peace envoys Cyrus Vance and Lord Owen visited the region. Desperate Muslims are paying Serbs large sums of money to be allowed to make the dangerous trip to the Bosnian-held enclave of Travnik, their one chance of escape. Meanwhile, the 29 September New York Times says that the Bosnian government has again appealed to the UN Security Council to allow it to buy arms to prevent what the Bosnians claim is the Serbs' "final assault" on Sarajevo. (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL Inc.) CROATIANS DEMAND TO RETURN HOME. Reuter on 28 September and the Los Angeles Times the following day report that up to 10,000 male Croats have threatened to march on their former homes in the Baranja region bordering Hungary. UN peacekeepers are trying to pressure the Croatian authorities, who may be encouraging the refugees, to stop what the UN fears could be a massacre if unarmed civilians walk into areas that have been held by Serbian militias since the summer of 1991. The Croats are impatient at the UN's failure to disarm the Serbs and enable the refugees to go home, and this has become a major issue in the Croatian media and in politics. The UN has succeeded in opening some formerly Serb-held areas in the Dalmatian hinterland, but the Croatian authorities and press warned civilians not to go home until the area has been cleared of mines. Some 600,000 people have been displaced in Croatia since local Serbs with the backing of the former Yugoslav army began taking control of Croatian territory in early 1991. (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL Inc.) KOSOVO DEVELOPMENTS. According to Radio Serbia, 19 Kosovo Albanians went on trial in Pec on 28 September. The defendants, members of the National Front of Albanians, have been charged by Serbian authorities with the intention to stage an armed rebellion to sever the Serbian province of Kosovo from Serbia and set up an independent state or annex it to Albania. The defendants are accused of buying foreign-made arms and ammunition and smuggling them into Kosovo. Other charges include unlawful entry into a local textile plant and the manufacture of military uniforms marked with Albanian military insignia. Belgrade Radio reports that one defendant has confessed that he discussed "the defense of Kosovo" with Albanian officers during a visit to Albania. He also admitted smuggling a significant amount of weapons from Switzerland. Before the trial began, the court denied the defense attorneys' request to turn the case over to an international organization. (Milan Andrejevich, RFE/RL Inc.) TALKS ON THE DIVISION OF CZECHOSLOVAK ARMY. The State Defense Council, the body supervising Czechoslovakia's defense policies, met in Prague on 28 September to discuss the division of the Czechoslovak army. Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Federal Prime Minister and Defense Council Chairman Jan Strasky said that the council asked the chairmen of the republican defense councils to work out details of the army's split. Defense Minister Imrich Andrejcak was asked to prepare draft agreements on cooperation between the two new armies after the split. Andrejcak told CSTK that the federal command of the army will cease to exist on the day of Czechoslovakia's split. Slovak Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar walked out of the council's meeting in protest against what he saw as unacceptable demands by the Czech side that each republic keep those installations and assets now situated on its territory. Speaking on Slovak television, Ivan Gasparovic, chairman of the Slovak parliament, argued that Slovakia could lose as much as 80 billion koruny if the territorial principle were applied to the division of the army's assets. (Jiri Pehe, RFE/RL Inc.) BULGARIAN ECONOMIC NEWS. European Community Finance Ministers, meeting in Brussels on 28 September, discussed awarding additional funds to Bulgaria and Romania. Last week talks between Bulgaria and the EC moved Bulgaria closer to associate status and trade terms have been agreed upon, according an RFE/RL correspondent. Further talks will be held on 15 and 16 October. The Sofia government hopes for an agreement by year's end while EC leaders are more reserved, awaiting results of the forthcoming discussions. Also on 28 September Bulgaria, together with Australia, Greece, and Luxembourg, signed an agreement to prohibit money laundering by organized crime. The pact, already signed by 20 other countries but ratified only by Great Britain so far, will make police detection of illegal money flowing into subscribing countries easier. (Duncan Perry, RFE/RL Inc.) PROCEEDINGS STARTED IN 1956 HUNGARIAN KILLINGS. Hungarian TV reported on 27 September that the Christian Democratic People's Party (CDPP) has initiated proceedings against those who ordered soldiers to fire into a crowd at Mosonmagyarovar during the 1956 Revolution. Some 100 died and 200 were injured. A 25-page brief has been filed at the Gyor-Sopron County chief prosecutor's office by two lawyers for the CDPP, against the former officials, who not only have not been punished but currently receive substantial state pensions. The chief prosecutor turned the case over to the military court in Gyor. This is the first attempt by a political party to press legal charges for a crime under the communist regime but that has not yet been prosecuted. A law allowing prosecution of such crimes was ruled unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court earlier this year. The CDPP argues that 1956 offenses constitute war crimes and as such do not fall under the statute of limitation. (Judith Pataki, RFE/RL Inc.) MEDIA WAR AT HUNGARIAN TV CONTINUES. According to Hungarian media reports on 28 September, the president of Hungarian TV, Elemer Hankiss, has fired Palfy G. Istvan, the progovernment chief editor of two influential news programs. The decision is expected to increase the tensions between the government and Hankiss, who was dismissed earlier this year by Prime Minister Jozsef Antall. President Arpad Goncz has repeatedly refused to sign Hankiss's dismissal. Hankiss claims that Palfy's programs were not objective and failed to live up to "European standards." Only one progovernment chief editor remains at the state-owned TV. (Judith Pataki, RFE/RL Inc.) LITHUANIAN PRIME MINISTER IN WARSAW. Aleksandras Abisala met with President Lech Walesa and Prime Minister Hanna Suchocka during a one-day visit to Warsaw on 28 September. It was Abisala's first foreign visit as prime minister. Agreements were signed on investment protection, the fight against organized crime, and border controls. Although both sides presented the visit as a step forward, the tensions that have slowed work on a bilateral treaty were also very much in evidence. Polish officials pressed for more equitable treatment of the Polish minority in Lithuania. Abisala insisted that Lithuania's policy meets European standards. For his part, he criticized the position of Poland's Lithuanian minority and pressed for a reckoning with the past, especially the Polish occupation of Vilnius in 1920. Lithuania's defense minister, Audrius Butkevicius, begins a three-day visit to Poland on 29 September. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL Inc.) LANDSBERGIS AT UNGA. On 28 September Lithuanian Supreme Council Chairman Vytautas Landsbergis addressed the UN General Assembly. The speech, broadcast live by Radio Lithuania, focused on the need for the Russian military to leave the Baltic States. Landsbergis noted that Russian conservatives were dividing foreign countries into "inner" and "outer" spheres, with Russia marking out its "special interests" in the former--states that could be taken over much as was done in 1939. Landsbergis held talks with UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali that day and on 29 September will meet former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd before returning to Lithuania in the evening. He cancelled a planned trip to Chicago on 30 September. (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL Inc.) GROMOV ON TROOP PULLOUT FROM THE BALTICS. Russia's Deputy Defense Minister Boris Gromov told Krasnaya zvezda of 25 September the pullout of Russian troops by 1 September 1993 from Lithuania is "by no means synonymous with a readiness to flee." He noted that specific accords on the withdrawal remain to be ratified. (On 23 September Gromov told Interfax that Russian troops in Estonia and Latvia are to be pulled out in 1994, though the final date must still be negotiated.) He pointed out that Russia intends to keep the presence of its Baltic Fleet in the region. Gromov said that there are still about 35,000 Russian officers and enlisted men in Lithuania, over 15,000 in Latvia, and about 24,000 in Estonia. These figures differ from those recently given by other Russian officials. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL Inc.) TROOPS CLASH OVER BUILDING IN KAUNAS. On 28 September, as a group of unarmed Lithuanian soldiers began to take inventory of a building in Kaunas that had been used by the Russian army, ten armed Russian soldiers burst into the building, threw the Lithuanian soldiers out, and barricaded themselves on the second floor. The Russians later left the building, Radio Lithuania reports, but three unarmed officers remained on the second floor. The first floor is controlled by Lithuanian troops. (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL Inc.) RIGA AVIATION SCHOOL MAY LOSE ITS FOREIGN STUDENTS. BNS reports that as of 1 October the Riga Aviation University may lose nearly 500 of its foreign students because the Latvian government will not take over the costs of their stipends--$2-3,000 per student annually--from Moscow, which sent them for study in Latvia. What is more, Russia has not paid off its debt of 36 million rubles for the education of its students over the last academic year nor made any payments for the first semester of this year. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL Inc.) IS RUSSIA PREPARING ESTONIA SANCTIONS? The Russian government plans to adopt a political resolution regarding relations with Estonia in the next few days, BNS reports on 28 September, quoting Interfax. The resolution may well direct the government to introduce "political and economic sanctions" against Estonia for its alleged discriminatory treatment of ethnic Russians, especially with regard to Estonia's parliamentary elections last week. (Riina Kionka, RFE/RL Inc.) CONGRESS OF ESTONIA HOLDS FINAL SESSION. The Congress of Estonia movement held its tenth and final session on 28 September, local media report. The meeting adopted a resolution stating that Estonia has restored the constitutional state structure according to the will of the republic's citizens--this had been the goal of the alternative parliament ever since it was established in March 1990. (Riina Kionka, RFE/RL Inc.) POLAND'S COL. KUKLINSKI: HERO OR TRAITOR? The Washington Post of 27 September carried a lengthy report on Col. Ryszard Kuklinski, the highly-placed Polish officer who spied for the US for 11 years and revealed the plans for martial law to the CIA before escaping from Poland in 1981. According to sources quoted in the report, Kuklinski, who now lives in the US under a false identity, provided the CIA with 35,000 pages of documents that one specialist said "virtually defined our knowledge" of Soviet military plans and equipment. The account has evoked discussion in Poland because of Kuklinski's foiled attempts to have his 1984 death sentence for treason (later reduced to 25 years imprisonment) overturned. Defense Minister Janusz Onyszkiewicz called the case a "moral dilemma" because of the implications Kuklinski's exoneration could have for the Polish army. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL Inc.)
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RFE/RL Daily Report No. 188, 30 September 1992 SUCCESSOR STATES TO THE USSR TENSE SITUATION IN TAJIKISTAN. Tajikistan's deposed President Rakhmon Nabiev told an RFE/RL correspondent on 29 September that he had not been beaten up and hospitalized, as had been reported by the Nega news agency the previous day. The same day, Moscow and Dushanbe news agencies reported that pro-Nabiev forces from Kulyab Oblast were still in control of the town of Kurgan-Tyube, an opposition stronghold, and that the town had sustained major damage in the fighting. The government in Dushanbe has devised a plan to disarm the population by buying their illegal weapons, but local authorities will have to put up the money. An article in the 30 September issue of Nezavisimaya gazeta draws attention to the rising crime rate in Tajikistan and reports that leaders of the opposing sides in the civil war say they have no control over some 20% of their forces. The same source says that anti-Nabiev forces in Kurgan-Tyube are being led by radical members of the Islamic Renaissance Party. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL, Inc.) STATUS OF BESIEGED RUSSIAN TROOPS IN TAJIKISTAN UNCLEAR. Russian news agencies reported on 29 September that the Russian military unit that was besieged near Kurgan-Tyube by fighters from Kulyab has still not been able to drive off the Tajik fighters trying to capture Russian arms and equipment. Meanwhile, Western news agencies reported on 29 September a statement by the Russian Defense Ministry that a "limited military contingent" of Russian reinforcements had arrived in Tajikistan to protect Russian troops already deployed there, their families, and military facilities. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL, Inc.) FOREIGN HELP FOR TAJIKISTAN? In a speech to the UN General Assembly on 29 September, Tajik Foreign Minister Khudoberdi Kholiknazarov played down the scope of the fighting in his country, saying that it is presently limited to the center of Kurgan-Tyube Oblast, an RFE/RL correspondent reported. He appealed for international help in ensuring that democracy prevails. The same day Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati told Tajik Minister of Culture Zakirdzhan Vazirov, on a visit to Tehran, that Iran is ready to help in working out a peaceful settlement of the civil war in Tajikistan, Western news agencies reported, quoting the official IRNA news agency. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL, Inc.) SHANIBOV'S ESCAPE AND SITUATION IN KABARDINO-BALKARIA. Musa Shanibov, president of the Confederation of the Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus, was not released from custody, as earlier reported, but escaped, Nezavisimaya gazeta reported on 30 September. Shanibov, who had been detained for his part in the confederation's despatch of volunteers to Abkhazia, returned in triumph to Nalchik, where he told a meeting of 30,000, reinforced by delegations from North Ossetia, Checheno-Ingushetia, and Karachaevo-Cherkesia, that he would continue the struggle for the independence of the North Caucasus. The meeting called for the removal of Russian troops from Kabardino-Balkaria and the punishment of local officials. The article in Nezavisimaya gazeta gives the impression that the Kabardino-Balkarian authorities are no longer in charge of the situation. (Ann Sheehy, RFE/RL, Inc.) UKRAINE REQUESTS SECURITY GUARANTEES, FOREIGN AID. Speaking at the United Nations on 29 September, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Anatoly Zlenko said that his country expected "strict international guarantees" of its national security against any threat or use of force from nuclear-armed states. In reports of his remarks carried by Western agencies, Zlenko also urged a complete ban on nuclear weapons testing. He said that Ukraine intended to accede to the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons "in the nearest future," but at a subsequent press conference he claimed Ukraine needed hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid to dismantle its missiles. (Doug Clarke/John Lepingwell, RFE/RL, Inc.) SHAPOSHNIKOV WARNS WEST AGAINST INTERFERENCE IN CIS TALKS. At a conference in Paris on 29 September, CIS Commander in Chief Evgenii Shaposhnikov warned European countries against interfering in talks between CIS states over nuclear weapons control. According to Reuters, Shaposhnikov stated that "when parents have to make delicate decisions, the advice of third parties . . . can cause harm." Shaposhnikov argued that Russia should control all former Soviet nuclear weapons immediately, regardless of their location. Belarus and Kazakhstan have reportedly partly agreed to Russian control, while Ukraine wants to exercise administrative control over nuclear weapons on its territory. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL, Inc.) BRITAIN OFFERS CREDITS TO RUSSIA. UK State Secretary Michael Heseltine and Russian Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandr Shokhin have signed an agreement to provide $480 million worth of British credits for modernizing Russian industrial and transport facilities, Western news agencies reported on 29 September. The agreement follows last week's reports of British reluctance to extend more loans to Russia before coming to an arrangement on existing overdue payments to British creditors. In a related story, an IMF official, Ernesto Cata, suggested in Moscow that current lax fiscal and monetary policies in Russia may endanger the approval of a $3 billion IMF credit hoped for by the end of this year. (Erik Whitlock, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIA SETTING UP MORE CUSTOMS POSTS. Russia will soon increase the number of customs points on its borders, Interfax reported on 29 September. The sixty-four such posts, up from twenty-four in mid-June, will be functioning by 1 October along Russia's borders with the Baltic states, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Georgia. Interfax cites "experts" claiming that these posts will be "enough to halt" the illegal export of oil and raw materials. Some Russian officials have reckoned the value of illegal export of oil and oil products at over $100 million in the first half of this year alone. (Erik Whitlock, RFE/RL, Inc.) GORBACHEV TO FACE TRIAL FOR FAILURE TO TESTIFY? On 29 September, the Russian Constitutional Court devoted its entire afternoon session to a discussion of former Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev's refusal to testify at the CPSU hearing (see RFE/RL Daily Report, 29 September). According to Russian TV, Chairman Valerii Zorkin viewed the publication of Gorbachev's letter as an "insult." The judges voted in favor of sending yet another summons to Gorbachev with a warning of possible "legal consequences" if he failed to appear. If necessary, the justices would then request that the Russian General Prosecutor bring criminal charges against Gorbachev. (Julia Wishnevsky, RFE/RL, Inc.) GORBACHEV HOLDS A NEWS CONFERENCE. At a press conference held at the Gorbachev Foundation on 29 September, Mikhail Gorbachev reaffirmed his earlier decision to ignore the summons to testify at the CPSU hearing, Russian TV reported. Gorbachev termed the hearing "a political trial" of seventy-five years of the Soviet history. He quoted rumors to the effect that the decision to summon him and his Politburo colleagues to testify at court had been motivated by a desire to sensationalize a trial that otherwise would continue to draw little public interest. While addressing other issues, Gorbachev criticized the government's privatization program. He also said that if the right moment comes along, he might form a new political party and become its leader. (Julia Wishnevsky, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIAN FOREIGN MINISTRY DEFENDS SUBMARINE SALE. On 29 September the Russian Foreign Ministry defended its sale of submarines to Iran as a "purely bilateral matter," according to Western news agencies. Despite the Russian government's apparent cancellation of the sale on 25 September, one submarine is reportedly still en route to Iran. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL, Inc.) SWEDEN'S "PERISCOPE SYNDROME" CRITICIZED. The Russian Foreign Ministry on 29 September criticized Swedish allegations that a Russian submarine had intruded into Swedish territorial waters. Interfax and Reuters reported that the statement called Swedish Prime Minister Bildt's comments "openly unfriendly towards Russia" and dismissed Sweden's "periscope syndrome," claiming that Sweden had no firm evidence that the submarine was Russian. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIANS AND AMERICANS COOPERATE ON SPACE PROJECTS. The American firm McDonnell Douglas and the Russian Academy of Science's Mechanical Engineering Research Institute announced on 28 September that they would cooperate on a series of space technology research projects. According to a McDonnell Douglas press release, the agreement was part of a company initiative to examine and perhaps utilize Russian expertise in materials, advanced mathematics, space systems, and extended manned space flight. (Doug Clarke, RFE/RL, Inc.) MISSILE DEFENSE TALKS TO RESUME IN OCTOBER. According to Western agencies on 29 September, US and Russian negotiators will meet again in Washington in October to continue negotiations over cooperation in the field of joint early warning and ballistic missile defense. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL, Inc.) HALF OF FORMER SOVIET TROOPS OUT OF GERMANY. Half of the former Soviet armed forces that were in Germany have left and the withdrawal remains on schedule for their complete departure by the end of 1994, the DPA news agency reported on 29 September. Two hundred and fifty soldiers and civilians have applied for political asylum in Germany. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL, Inc.) DROP IN RUSSIAN ARMS SALES. The daily Nezavisimaya gazeta on 29 September reported that Russia exported $1.55 billion worth of arms in 1991, resulting in what the paper described as a thirteen-fold drop in profits when compared with the average level of Soviet arms exports in the 1980s. The report said that 69% of the arms sold in 1991 went to the Near and Middle East. The paper quoted officials as saying that this sharp drop in profits from arms sales "was an extremely heavy blow" which, when coupled with shrinking oil exports, led to the bankruptcy of the Bank for Foreign Economic Relations. (Doug Clarke, RFE/RL, Inc.) UKRAINIAN PARLIAMENT TO DEBATE ECONOMY. The Ukrainian parliament, which postponed its debate of the economy because of the visit of Canada's governor-general to Kiev, will discuss economic reforms on 30 September, Western news agencies reported. President Leonid Kravchuk will address the lawmakers, and it is expected that the embattled prime minister, Vitold Fokin, will also make a presentation. The opposition is determined to force the resignation of the present government headed by Fokin. Izvestiya reported on 29 September that parliamentary speaker Ivan Plyushch conceded that the government must go. (Roman Solchanyk, RFE/RL, Inc.) CIS DEFENSE MINISTERS TO MEET BEFORE BISHKEK SUMMIT. Lieutenant General Leonid Ivashov stated on 28 September that at a meeting of Defense Ministers in Bishkek on 7 October, the question of forming a joint concept of military security will be discussed. ITAR-TASS reported that the ministers will also reexamine the functioning of the CIS joint command in light of recent developments, possibly turning it into a multinational command structure. Ivashov acknowledged that there remained differences between Ukraine and the CIS joint command, but noted that there was "positive movement" in their relations. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL, Inc.) STALEMATE IN RUSSIA'S TALKS WITH TATARSTAN. A session of the collegium of the Russian government on 29 September noted that Russia's talks with Tatarstan have not been crowned with success, ITAR-TASS reported. The head of the Russian government's press center, Gennadii Shipitko, said that Russia was insisting that Tatarstan was part of Russia, while Tatarstan wanted to be considered completely independent in the legal sense and to be treated by Russia according to the norms of international law. Tatarstan also wanted to decide its own military policy, Shipitko added, and was opposed to its citizens having Russian as well as Tatarstan citizenship. (Ann Sheehy, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIAN REPUBLICS SUPPORT KHASBULATOV. On 28 September a statement signed by the leaders of most of the republics of the Russian Federation, in which they expressed their support for the Russian parliament and its chairman Ruslan Khasbulatov, was made public, Nezavisimaya gazeta reported on 29 September. The newspaper's correspondent suggests that the republics have an interest in preserving an equal balance of power between the Russian president, parliament, and government, but it also sees the republics emerging more and more as a fourth force, which could upset the other three if it is not taken into account. (Ann Sheehy, RFE/RL, Inc.) MOLDOVAN PRIME MINISTER ON HIS WESTERN VISITS. Back in Chisinau from visits to Bonn and Washington, D.C. Moldovan Prime Minister Andrei Sangheli told the Moldovan media on 27 September that Germany and Moldova have agreed to open embassies in each other's capitals and that a German delegation is due in Moldova shortly to negotiate an intergovernmental political and economic agreement. In Washington, Sangheli obtained the consent of the International Monetary Fund for a stand-by agreement with Moldova effective 1 January and for a credit to enable Moldova to purchase feed grain to offset crop losses caused by drought. (Vladimir Socor, RFE/RL, Inc.) MOLDOVAN SOCIAL-DEMOCRATS ON NEED TO BUTTRESS INDEPENDENT STATEHOOD. At a consultative meeting with President Mircea Snegur on 29 September, the leaders of Moldova's Social- Democrat Party said that the opposition Popular Front's campaign for unification with Romania risks causing a civil war in Moldova, Moldovapres and ITAR-TASS reported. The Social-Democrats agreed with Snegur on the need to "buttress Moldovan independence" and develop Moldova as "a state with the full attributes of sovereignty now and in the future." The Social-Democrats also reserved the right to criticize the Snegur administration for any policy errors. (Vladimir Socor, RFE/RL, Inc.) CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE EXPERTS PREDICT MASSIVE DEATHS IN BOSNIA THIS WINTER. The New York Times on 30 September says that American analysts foresee at least 150,000 deaths from hunger and exposure in the embattled republic unless massive relief operations come into effect, while UN sources predict up to 400,000 deaths in a worst-case scenario. Winter usually arrives in October and is harsh in what even in peacetime was one of the former Yugoslavia's poorer regions. The BBC's "Europe Today" program said that relief flights to Sarajevo are likely to resume this week as a result of special envoys Cyrus Vance and Lord Owen having "moved heaven and earth" to persuade Washington in particular of the urgent necessity to do so. Finally, it appears that UN representatives have convinced Croatian officials to work to prevent a planned march by Croatian refugees to return to their homes in Serb-controlled areas near the Hungarian border. (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL, Inc.) BOSNIAN SERBS REJECT MASSACRE ALLEGATIONS. Radio Serbia reports on 29 September that Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic has rejected US State Department allegations that Serb forces massacred 3,000 Bosnian Muslims in a detention camp near the town of Brcko. Karadzic said the US had been "duped by unsubstantiated Muslim propaganda" and challenged US President George Bush to produce the evidence. Karadzic added that if Bush can prove the massacre took place, he will help arrest the perpetrators and hand them over for trial. Serb officials in Brcko also denied the US claims and invited representatives of any international commission to visit the town as soon as possible. Serb officials added that in the Brcko area some 1,500 Serbs are being held captive by Muslims. France has officially requested the UN and EC immediately to open an investigation. (Milan Andrejevich, RFE/RL, Inc.) ALBANIA BLAMES SERBS FOR YUGOSLAV CONFLICT. Addressing the UN General Assembly in New York, Albanian Prime Minister Alexander Meksi singled out "malicious Serbian nationalism" as responsible for the failure to resolve the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, RTR and Western agencies report. Albania is particularly concerned that the fighting could spill over into the Serbian province of Kosovo, which is 90% ethnic Albanian, and is similarly concerned about the fate of the large number of ethnic Albanians in the now independent ex-Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. (Charles Trumbull, RFE/RL, Inc.) CZECHOSLOVAK PARLIAMENT DEBATES SPLIT. On 29 September 1992, the Federal Assembly began debating a draft law on possible modes of division of the Czechoslovak federation. The law, based on political agreements between Czech Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus and Slovak Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar, provides for four different ways of dissolving the federation: a referendum, a Federal Assembly declaration, an agreement of republican parliaments, and a secession by one republic. CSTK reports that virtually all opposition deputies speaking on 29 September criticized the law and called for a referendum on the split. The debate was adjourned and will continue on the 30th. (Jiri Pehe, RFE/RL, Inc.) HUNGARIAN PARLIAMENT DEBATES MINORITIES LAW. According to MTI, Parliament began discussion of the long awaited law on minorities on 29 September. The text was prepared in close cooperation with minority leaders, and its codification took much longer than expected. The intention of the law is to stop assimilation of minorities by assuring them collective minority rights and parliamentary representation. In the draft law under debate in Budapest, members of minority groups would also retain a number of individual rights. Collective rights did not figure in the post-World War II treaties, but Hungary has brought the idea up on a number of occasions since. Under this concept, an official representative body would be given legal status to pursue the interests of an ethic or national group. (Judith Pataki, RFE/RL, Inc.) HUNGARIAN-SLOVAK CONTACTS. Hungarian Prime Minister Jozsef Antall received a delegation of the ethnic Hungarian parties represented in the Slovak parliament, led by Coexistence Chairman Miklos Duray, MTI reported on 29 September. The two sides agreed on the need for good relations between Hungary and an independent Slovakia and for a mutually acceptable solution to the disagreements over the Gabcikovo-Nagymaros hydroelectric project and the sections of the Slovak constitution concerning national minorities. The same day a delegation of the opposition Alliance of Young Democrats (FIDESZ) left Budapest for Bratislava for talks with Slovak Foreign Minister Milan Knazko and other officials and with representatives of Slovakia's Hungarian minority. The FIDESZ delegation continues on to Prague for talks with Czech officials. (Alfred Reisch, RFE/RL, Inc.) TURKEY RESTRICTS VISITORS FROM BULGARIA. Bulgarian-Turkish relations received a potential setback on 29 September when Turkey unilaterally imposed restrictions on Bulgarian citizens seeking to enter Turkey. The move is intended to reduce the number of Bulgarian Turks leaving Bulgaria in search of better job prospects. The Bulgarian Foreign Ministry indicated that no advanced warning was given and is seeking clarification. Effective immediately, Bulgarian citizens wishing to enter Turkey must demonstrate that they have at least $70 for each day of their stay, or $30 if they are part of an organized tourist group. Those visiting relatives must pledge to return to Bulgaria. Some 300-350,000 Bulgarian Turks fled to Turkey in 1989 as a result of a Bulgarian assimilation policy. While perhaps as many as half later returned, those remaining in Turkey burdening an economy beset by inflation and high unemployment. In a new wave an estimated 40,000 have entered Turkey using tourist visas and have failed to return to Bulgaria. (Duncan Perry, RFE/RL, Inc.) CONSTANTINESCU TO FIGHT ON. Emil Constantinescu, the presidential candidate of the centrist Democratic Convention, vowed to continue his fight for the Romanian presidency despite his clear second-place position. Constantinescu urged all democratic forces to block Ion Iliescu's reelection in the 11 October runoff. He also warned that the parties supporting Iliescu might join into a dominant political force powerful enough to block moves toward free market reforms. Meanwhile, the vote counting is moving forward quickly, and final results are expected much earlier than originally planned. The latest partial results from 29 September (9:00 p.m.) are based on complete counts from 92% of all stations. They show Iliescu leading with 47.6%, followed by Constantinescu with 30.6% of the votes. (Dan Ionescu, RFE/RL, Inc.) ILIESCU AIDE CALLS FOR GRAND COALITION. On 29 September Adrian Nastase, Romanian foreign minister and top Iliescu aide, called for a broad-based government coalition to include reformists from the rival National Salvation Front and the Democratic Convention. Nastase, who is widely tipped as Iliescu's choice to lead the future cabinet, told journalists that the Democratic National Salvation Front (DNSF) wants "national reconciliation." Latest figures released by Romania's National Statistics Board show the DNSF leading in the legislative elections with 28.6% for the Senate and 27.7% for the Chamber of Deputies. Nastase was quoted as saying that "we shall be looking for a government formula that will not handicap Romania." He was reacting to opposition fears that a possible coalition of the DNSF, the revived communists, and the nationalists would polarize the country and harm Romania's image in the West. (Dan Ionescu, RFE/RL, Inc.) HOUSE VOTES ON ROMANIA'S MFN STATUS. The US House of Representatives is expected to vote on 30 September on whether to restore Romania's most-favored nation trade status, an RFE/RL correspondent in Washington says. Restoration had been postponed because members of the Congress wanted to see the results of the Romanian elections. On 29 September Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Niles said that the elections appeared to have been conducted freely and fairly. Romania's opposition fears that restoration of MFN status now might send the wrong signal, and influence both the presidential runoff and the building of a coalition government. (Dan Ionescu, RFE/RL, Inc.) POLISH ECONOMIC PLANS. The government met a legal deadline by submitting its draft economic program for 1993 to the parliament on 30 September. The program's central aim is to open a period of sustained economic growth. Priorities are promoting the private sector, defending fiscal stability, and reducing interest rates. Half of any increase in GDP is earmarked for investment spending. According to Polish TV, the final draft of the economic program rejected earlier proposals to tax interest income and accelerate the zloty's devaluation. Meeting in closed session, the cabinet also agreed to ask the parliament to increase the 1992 budget deficit ceiling from just over 65 to 80-82 trillion zloty. Deputy Prime Minister Henryk Goryszewski said that across-the-board spending cuts are necessary, but none of them will be drastic. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL, Inc.) POLAND'S COALITION PARTNERS BICKER. Any final decision on the shape of the revised 1992 budget was put off pending a "political meeting" of the government coalition parties on 30 September. The coalition partners failed on 29 September to agree on a common assessment of Jan Krzysztof Bielecki's 1991 government, the subject of an upcoming Sejm vote. This is a sensitive topic, as Bielecki and some of his ministers serve in the current cabinet. Rivalry over ministerial posts is also fraying tempers, as ideological conflicts emerge between the two main coalition partners, the liberal UD and the conservative ZChN. Deputy Prime Minister Henryk Goryszewski (ZChN) recently demanded the removal of a "proabortion" deputy health minister (UD), while several ZChN deputies called for the ouster of the Civil Rights Spokesman (UD) because of his legal challenges to religious education in schools. Prime Minister Hanna Suchocka admitted to Radio Z on 29 September that she had also faced pressure over appointments from her own party, the UD, but that the coalition was functioning adequately. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL, Inc.) DUTCH PRIME MINISTER LAUDS POLISH REFORMS. Dutch Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers praised the Polish government's commitment to economic reform at the start of a two-day visit to Poland. Lubbers held talks with Prime Minister Hanna Suchocka on 29 September and is to meet with President Lech Walesa on 30 September. Lubbers pledged to encourage increased Dutch investment in Poland. According to PAP, he added that "it is better to export Dutch capital to Poland than to import Polish labor to Holland." He predicted that the Dutch parliament will ratify Poland's association agreement with the EC by year's end. The EC's internal problems will not mean "closing the community" to new members, he said, but full integration will have to wait until EC members settle differences over the pace of unification. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIA WARNS BALTS AGAINST "ETHNIC CLEANSING." Russia's delegation to the UN General Assembly on 29 September warned Estonia and Latvia against pursuing a policy of "ethnic cleansing," BNS reports. Upon returning to Moscow from New York, Russian Foreign Ministry press spokesman Sergei Yastrzhembsky told reporters that his government is concerned about policies toward non-Balts in Estonia and Latvia that could lead those two states "to slide down the slope to the practice of ethnic cleansing." Last spring and summer, the Russian Foreign Ministry used the term "apartheid" to describe the Baltic stance toward nonlocal ethnics. The same day Russian Prime Minister Egor Gaidar told Interfax that the question of sanctions against the Baltic States is to be resolved "either tomorrow or the day after tomorrow." He added that Russian policy toward these states will be conducted in light of their success in finding solutions to their "human rights problems." (Riina Kionka & Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL, Inc.) LITHUANIAN-POLISH MILITARY TALKS. On 29 September Lithuanian National Defense Minister Audrius Butkevicius began an official three-day visit to Poland at the invitation of his Polish counterpart Janusz Onyszkiewicz, Radio Lithuania reports. The two discussed the formation of joint work groups to deal with military problems and creating greater mutual cooperation. Butkevicius also held talks with National Security Bureau head Jerzy Milewski and placed a wreath at the monument in Gruenwald, commemorating the 1410 Lithuanian-Polish victory over the Teutonic knights. On 30 September he will visit Cracow. (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL, Inc.) WORK OF LATVIAN GOVERNMENT TO BE REASSESSED. Diena reported on 29 September that the work of the government will probably be reassessed by the Supreme Council the week of 5 October. The legislature has asked each minister to submit for evaluation a detailed report of his performance. Minister of State Janis Dinevics said that he does not rule out the possibility that the legislators might ask for the resignation of some members of the government. The day before Diena reported that Supreme Council Deputy Janis Kinna of the Farmers Union also supports the notion of reevaluation of the government's performance, but neither his party, nor three others--the Latvian Social Democratic Workers Party, the Liberal Democratic Party, and the People's Party--are calling for a resignation of the government at this time. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL, Inc.)
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----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Serbs carry out 'ethnic cleansing' operation in Bosnian capital Subject: Croatians trying to cross into Serb territory are held back Subject: Fischer loses game 12, rematch chess score at 5-3, 2 draws Subject: Weapons shortage spurs home-grown arms industry in Sarajevo Subject: 6 face federal charges for sending weapons to Yugoslavia ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Serbs carry out 'ethnic cleansing' operation in Bosnian capital Date: 30 Sep 92 19:54:44 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- Serb forces evicted up to 200 non-Serbs from their houses in a resumption of ``ethnic cleansing'' operations in the Bosnian capital Wednesday, ordering them on short notice to vacate their homes and cross into Bosnian-controlled territory, U.N. and Bosnian officials said. A U.N. source said the Red Cross estimated 150 people were forced from their homes in Grbavica in the southern part of Sarajevo, while a Bosnian police source estimated 200 people were involved, making it the largest such expulsion in the 6-month-old seige of the Bosnian capital. Some of the family members, taken to a police station after crossing by foot from the northern side of the Miljacka River, said they were given 10-minute warnings to pack their belongings and leave. ``It's happened a couple of times'' previously but on a smaller scale, said Sonata Kreso of the Bosnian International Press Center, who said most of those expelled in the incident of ``urban ethnic cleansing'' were women and the elderly. Bosnian officials said they knew no reason for the incident, but they speculated it might indicate that Serbian militiamen are preparing for the start of the harsh Balkan winter. Those expelled from the area along the Serbian front lines were mostly Muslim Slavs, who made up about half of the city's pre-war population of 500,000 people, police said. The expulsions came amid sporadic shelling and sniper attacks in the Bosnian capital. At least 24 people were killed and 165 wounded in Bosnia-Hercegovina in the 24-hour period that ended at 10 a.m. Wednesday, including seven killed and 54 wounded in Sarajevo, republic health officials said. The city's hospital ran out of the diesel fuel needed for its electrical generator about 1 p.m. and doctors were forced to perform surgery for a while under the light of a bulb connected to an automobile battery. ``We were hurried by the people running the generator to finish operations because we would soon be in complete darkness,'' said Dr. Edo Jaganjac, a doctor on duty at the hospital, shortly before the fuel ran out. A spokesman for the U.N. Protection Force in Sarajevo, Adnan Razek, said UNPROFOR later supplied the hospital with 4 to 5 tons of diesel fuel. UNPROFOR's Sarajevo commander, Egyptian Brig. Gen. Hussein Abdel Razek, also met Bosnian Serb leaders for several hours Wednesday at their military headquarters in Lukavica, just south of the Bosnian capital, to continue seeking agreements allowing the restoration of electricity and water and protection for utility workers. ``It still needs a political push, but we agreed to start a meeting of experts on both sides, hopefully beginning tomorrow,'' Adnan Razek said afterward. The city's electricity supplies were cut a week-and-a-half ago, and the water supply to most of the city has been out since Sunday night. The developments in Bosnia came as President Franjo Tudjman of Croatia and President Dobrica Cosic of the new two-republic Yugoslavia opened a round of talks in Geneva with international peace mediators. Former U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance was the U.N. mediator and Britain's Lord David Owen represented the European Community. Security was tight at the site. ``All I can tell you is that the talks were constructive and were going on through lunch and the afternoon,'' said Fred Eckhard, a spokesman for the United Nations. Vance and Owen also met earlier with Radovan Karadzic, the leader of Serbian forces fighting for a separate state in Bosnia-Hercegovina. Prime Minister Milan Panic, the Belgrade-born U.S. citizen and millionaire drug manufacturer who became the leader of the new Yugoslav federation, returned home from a visit to the United States Wednesday and tried to portray his trip as an overwhelming success. Panic, speaking to a news conference, claimed he had gained support of the United States to partially lift the U.N. sanctions so Serbia and Montenegro could import oil needed for the harsh winter. He also claimed his nation was still a member of the United Nations because of his efforts during a meeting of the General Assembly. ``The most important thing we came back to tell you is that we are still a member of the United Nations,'' Panic said. Later he added that another important result was that ``the United States first showed open support for the new Yugoslav government.'' ``There is a new position of the United States toward Yugoslavia, of course positive, which was determinantly negative before,'' said Panic. Despite his claims, Panic failed to convince the United Nations to name his Serbia-Montenegro federation as the legitimate successor of the former Yugoslavia. The U.N. General Assembly refused to seat Panic's federation and ordered it to apply for membership if it wanted to belong to the world body. Officials of the U.S. administration neither supported nor rejected Panic's request to lift sanctions so oil could be shipped to Belgrade. U.S. officials said the proposal was an idea to study, reiterated their support for the U.N. sanctions and said any change in the sanctions would have to be approved by the U.N. Sanctions Committee. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Croatians trying to cross into Serb territory are held back Date: 30 Sep 92 22:47:19 GMT ZAGREB, Croatia (UPI) -- About 1,000 Croatians attempted to cross into Serbian-occupied areas in the municipality of Osikek in eastern Croatia Wednesday, but were blocked by United Nations and Croatian civil authorities. The Croatians, many of whom have been homeless since last October, had been putting pressure on the U.N. Protection Force (UNPROFOR) in the area for weeks to allow them to return to their homes. But because the Serbian side has not disarmed in the so-called U.N.- sector East, in compliance with U.N. brokered peace agreements, UNPROFOR said it was far from safe. ``It's heavily mined there, everything is destroyed, there is no electricity, there is no water, how can you live there?'' a Russian UNPROFOR commander said Tuesday in Osijek to the unarmed Croatians in an emotional plea for them to turn back at the border of the territory. ``Wait a little bit, we will find an agreement, we are reasonable people, we've done our part so far, please be patient,'' Branimir Glavas, president of the municipality of Osijek said to the refugees. The refugees apparently ignored an agreement reached Tuesday between the Croatian government, UNPROFOR and representatives of the U.N. High Commission for Refugees. Under the agreement the representatives of the refugees agreed to withdraw a previous ultimatum given to UNPROFOR. Beli Manastir and Osijek are two of the four Croatian municipalities in sector East, which are partly or wholly Serbian occupied. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Fischer loses game 12, rematch chess score at 5-3, 2 draws Date: 1 Oct 92 00:59:01 GMT BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (UPI) -- Former world chess champion Bobby Fischer lost the 12th game of his controversial rematch with former Soviet grandmaster Boris Spassky Wednesday. Fischer, who was playing with black figures and used a kingside Indian defense, surrendered after 54 moves of the game that lasted almost six hours. Experts say that Fischer made a fatal mistake in his eigth move, and then lost too much time trying to improve his position. The result is now 5-3 for Fischer, with four draws. The first player to achieve 10 victories will win a $3.35 million prize, while the loser will have to be content with $1.65 milllion. The first half of the rematch began Sept. 2, at the southern Adriatic resort of Sveti Stefan in the rump Yugoslav union of Serbia and Montenegro. After Fischer's fifth victory, the set was transferred to Belgrade. On Fischer's request, the players were separated from the audience by a large glass wall. Therefore, no statements could be obtained from either player. Fischer, 49, faces a maximum of 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 for ``knowingly and willingly'' defying a U.S. Treasury Department order not to play in the truncated Yugoslav federation. The order endorsed the U.N. sanctions that ban all financial and economic transactions with the Serbia-dominated union for its involvement in the war in neighboring Bosnia-Hercegovina. Fischer publicly spat on the Treasury's order at a news conference on the eve of the first game. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Weapons shortage spurs home-grown arms industry in Sarajevo Date: 1 Oct 92 02:08:07 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- In a dark, back-alley workshop thick with the cloying aroma of gun oil, Becir Skrijel remains true to the centuries-old artisan traditions of Sarajevo. But Skrijel does not produce the intricate filigree jewelry, fine woolen carpets or bright copperwork for which the Bosnian capital gained reknown throughout the Balkans. He makes bombs. The bespectacled metalsmith is part of a network of craftsmen scattered throughout the city who have turned their skills to inventing and producing homemade munitions for the outgunned defenders of Sarajevo. The weapons reportedly work well. But, they come nowhere close to compensating for the massive stockpiles of modern military hardware supplied to encircling Serbian forces by the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army and communist-ruled Serbia. Still, with Bosnia-Hercegovina included under a U.N.-ordered international ban on weapons sales to the republics of former Yugoslavia, local arms makers believe theirs is an important contribution to the war effort. Their main sources of explosives are the Serbian artillery, tank and mortar shells that fail to detonate as they bounce down Sarajevo's streets or thud into parks and buildings. ``We are happy when the aggressor sends us a shell that doesn't explode,'' said Skrijel, 58. ``There is a unit of experts that collects them and brings them here.'' But because Sarajevo's desperate circumstances mandated innovation, Skrijel has not limited his labors to the conventional. His inventions have included Coca-Cola bottle gasoline bombs that burst on impact after being launched from mortar-like contraptions powered by automobile suspension springs compressed by foot-operated levers. Skrijel also produces anti-personnel mines loaded with shrapnel the Serbs themselves blasted into the city. And, his longtime hobby of collecting World War II small arms has served him well in the repair and improvement of vintage arms that Sarajevo's defenders have been forced to utilize. ``I like weapons, but not for killing. I like the mechanisms that make them work,'' explained Skrijel, who ran a metal-forging and foreign car repair shop before the war. His statement was underscored by the assortment of rifles, machine guns and pistols lying in various stages of disassembly on a table in his cluttered workshop in Sarajevo's Muslim Slav-dominated old Turkish quarter. Some weapons date to the end of the last century. Even so, said Skrijel, all would be cannibalized for spare parts or repaired with homemade replicas and sent up to the front lines. ``Out of 20 old ones, we can make 12 to 15 new ones,'' he said, holding a German-made Mauser pistol manufactured in 1898. ``This one is going to be fixed.'' Among the scattered metal flotsam was most of a 7.9 mm Mauser machine gun, the bolt embossed with the tiny eagle clutching a swastika in its talons -- the symbol of Nazi Germany. ``This is the best machine gun ever made,'' said Skrijel. ``They are still using this design for the NATO pact.'' Also awaiting his ministrations were World War II-era Russian machine guns, British-produced Stens and Lee Enfields, and a 1935 Italian-made Beretta machine gun that required a new spring to stop it from firing when jolted. ``Time had its effects and a spring wore out. The owner was running and he fell. The gun fired by itself and the man in front received three bullets in his backside. But, he lived,'' recounted Skrijel with a grin. Bombs, however, are the main business of Skrijel, his son, and three assistants. Working at top speed, the five each day can produce about 50 of the rocket-propelled grenades that Skrijel considers the best of the homemade weapons he has designed. ``Our fighters can throw a bomb up to 30 meters. But, the problem is that the aggressor has tanks and armored cars, and with this method, you cannot do much harm,'' he explained. ``So, we came back here to think about how we could make something that could go 200 to 300 meters. What we did was weld a small rocket onto the bottom of an empty grenade before we fill it with TNT.'' The TNT is obtained from dud shells, which he and his team open by using a lathe to shave down their steel walls to paper thinness. They then tap the shells gently on a block of wood in much the same way that a cook cracks open an egg. The yellow resin-like explosive is pried out in chunks, which the workmen grind into a powder by rolling it between a pipe and a steel surface. The powder is then poured into the grenade bodies. The final step is inserting a detonator, the fuse of which remains outside the bomb. The fuse must be lit with matches or a lighter just before the device is launched from the muzzle of a rifle using a blank cartridge to ignite the rocket. Skrijel said he first learned of the weapons' effectiveness from a Serbian television broadcast. ``They were interviewing a wounded Serbian fighter who said the Bosnian army was using some secret, but very dangerous equipment,'' he recounted. ``The fighter said, 'We don't hear it, but it explodes over our heads. We don't even have time to blink. Probably they are using something forbidden and imported from the West.''' Despite his obvious enthusiasm for his work, Skrijel said he was anxious to stop producing instruments of death and return to his old trade. ``I was forced to learn this,'' he said sadly. ``Nobody believed that this could happen to us.'' ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: 6 face federal charges for sending weapons to Yugoslavia Date: 1 Oct 92 06:04:21 GMT CHICAGO (UPI) -- The Justice Department Wednesday charged six people with conspiring to ship firearms and ammunition to the former Yugoslavia, reportedly for Serbian nationals who had been fighting the communist regime even before the current Bosnia-Hercegovina war. U.S. Attorney Fred Foreman announced indictments in the case, alleging the suspects conspired between April 1991 and October 1991 to violate the Arms Export Control Act and various federal firearms laws. The charges stemmed from the seizure of more than 300 firearms and thousands of rounds of ammunition in 1991 at O'Hare International Airport. Authorities found the weapons and ammunition hidden in an air- freight shipment being sent from O'Hare. Suspects indicted Wednesday included licensed arms-dealer Richard Tylkowski, 65, as well as his son, Timothy; Bajro and Avdo Hukic; Jovica Jovanovic and Alexander Nikolic. Foreman said authorities charged the Tylkowskis with receiving and possessing five unregistered, Mac-11 9mm fully automatic machine guns. The Justice Department also indicted the elder Tylkowski for allegedly filing false reports of firearms sales, as well as making false statements to federal agents in an attempt to conceal the alleged conspiracy. Authorities indicted the other four suspects on violation of the Arms Export Control Act, as well as on conspiracy counts.
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Noted U.S. Pediatrician Disturbed by Visit With Yugoslavian Children By PAUL RAEBURN AP Science Editor NEW YORK (AP) - A 5-year-old boy who swats at imaginary flies after having watched his older brother's mutilated body decay is a tragic example of the Balkan civil war's effect on children, a UNICEF emissary said Wednesday. Dr. T. Berry Brazelton, who recently returned from a four-day trip to the war-shattered republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina and neighboring Croatia, said the children are so deeply scarred they could erupt with a repetition of the violence and torture they've witnessed. ``No treatment will help until this terrible war has been brought to an end,'' Brazelton said in an account of the trip, sponsored by the United Nations Children's Fund. Brazelton is a pediatrician at Harvard Medical School and is widely known for his books and television programs of advice to parents. The violence and torture has no justification, so ``there's no way the children can make sense of it,'' he said in an interview. ``That calls up primitive feelings in children, feelings it's their fault, that if I were a good kid this wouldn't be happening to me.'' Brazelton was asked by UNICEF to help devise a program of emergency care for the children of the civil war in what was once Yugoslavia. With Brazelton's help, UNICEF's director James Grant said he was able to get the warring parties to agree to a ``week of tranquillity'' in November to allow blankets, clothes and food to be shipped to the children. Previous efforts at a truce have stalled, but Grant said UNICEF has arranged brief truces in places like El Salvador, Sri Lanka, Uganda and Iraq. ``It's worth a try, and both the regular leaders and the leader of the Bosnian Serbs and his principal assistants have agreed,'' Grant said. ``I talked to them all on this mission, and we'll see.'' Brazleton said that when the Serbs invaded, the 5-year-old boy's family was lined up and his older brother's hands were cut off in front of them. The brother was shot and left in the street in front of the family's home. The brother's pregnant wife was then brought before the family. ``Her belly was opened by a long cut, which allowed her fetus to fall out and hang by its cord,'' Brazelton wrote. She was hanged. Flies swarmed over her, her fetus and the boy's brother, who were left to lie in front of the family. For days the boy remained glued to the window, before the family escaped to a refugee camp, where Brazelton met them. ``Ever since they escaped,'' Brazelton wrote, ``this child has been screaming about flies at night, brushing them away all day long.'' AP-NY-10-01-92 1403EDT _____________________________________________________________________________ Red Cross Mounts Operation to Evacuate Prisoners from Bosnian Camp GENEVA (AP) - The Red Cross today mounted an operation to evacuate more than 1,500 people released from a Bosnian detention camp. A convoy of 35 buses and ambulances picked up 1,560 former prisoners outside the Serb-run camp in Trnopolje and were expected to reach the Croatian town of Karlovac later today, said a spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees operates a refugee camp in Karlovac. The warring factions in Bosnia-Herzegovina agreed at a London peace conference in August to close down detention camps. Pictures of starving inmates in some of the most notorious camps shocked the world and brought back images of Nazi-style concentration camps. The Red Cross has visited about 12,000 prisoners. The agency tried to enforce the Geneva conventions, which include standards for treatment of detainees during armed conflicts. More than 10,000 people have been killed since fighting broke out in Bosnia after Muslims and Croats voted on Feb. 29 to secede from Serbia-led Yugoslavia, sparking a rebellion by Serbs. Serbs have been blamed for waging the most severe ``ethnic cleansing'' campaigns to drive out other groups from captured areas.
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RFE/RL Daily Report No. 189, 1 October 1992 SUCCESSOR STATES TO THE USSR UKRAINIAN PRIME MINISTER RESIGNS. Ukrainian Prime Minister Vitold Fokin offered his resignation on 30 September, Ukrinform-TASS and Western news agencies reported. The announcement was made by President Leonid Kravchuk in his address to the parliament. Kravchuk asked Fokin to stay on until a new head of government is appointed. Fokin was quoted as saying that his decision to resign was dictated by his desire to ensure peace and consensus in the country, and added that his economic program would continue in his absence. Fokin also blamed constant attacks by the media for his decision to resign; as he told Reuters: "This has been brewing for a long time and I see no sign of it ending." Meanwhile, Vyacheslav Chornovil, the leader of the opposition Rukh movement, declared that Fokin's departure was "a victory for reform and democracy in Ukraine." (Roman Solchanyk, RFE/RL Inc.) UKRAINIAN PARLIAMENT SEEKING WAY OUT OF CRISIS. Heated debate, broadcast live by Radio Ukraine, continued in the Ukrainian parliament on 1 October following the resignation of Prime Minister Vitold Fokin. It confirmed not only the deep economic crisis in which Ukraine finds itself, but also the crisis in government and the division of political powers. Amid calls for the creation of a government of national conciliation, numerous deputies argued that the entire Cabinet of Ministers should resign along with Fokin, leaving the new prime minister freedom to create a new government capable of accelerating reforms. Rukh's leader Vyacheslav Chornovil on 30 September called on President Kravchuk to assume control of the government until the end of the year. (Bohdan Nahaylo, RFE/RL Inc.) SHAPOSHNIKOV CALLS FOR RUSSIAN "STATEHOOD" FOR NUCLEAR WEAPONS. In a 30 September Krasnaya zvezda article, CIS Marshal Shaposhnikov suggested that the existence of nuclear weapons on the territory of four former Soviet republics would complicate the implementation of the START treaty. He proposed giving nuclear weapons their own "statehood," which would be Russian. This move would presumably entail greater Russian operational and administrative control over the weapons. Shaposhnikov noted that Belarus and Russia are close to agreement on this point, while Kazakhstan is drawing nearer. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL Inc.) UKRAINE REJECTS INCREASED RUSSIAN CONTROL OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS. Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk rejected CIS Marshal Shaposhnikov's call for increased Russian control over nuclear weapons in a speech to the Ukrainian parliament on 30 September, as reported by Interfax and Western news agencies. Kravchuk stated that Ukraine "does not want to keep its fingers on the nuclear button, but it should give the world community guarantees that the nuclear weapons stationed on its territory will not be used by a third state." While reiterating Ukraine's determination to become a non-nuclear state, his remarks reaffirmed Ukraine's commitment to maintaining substantial control over the weapons and their elimination. Kravchuk also rejected the idea of Ukraine joining any CIS defense alliance. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL Inc.) SHAPOSHNIKOV RENEWS CALL FOR JOINT CIS MILITARY. In an article in Krasnaya zvezda on 30 September, CIS Marshal Evgenii Shaposhnikov urged closer CIS military cooperation. Criticizing US attempts to create a "unipolar world," Shaposhnikov warned of a possible new North-South confrontation and called for the CIS to act as a "stabilizing counterweight" between the North and South. To strengthen the military role of the CIS, Shaposhnikov called for a joint military structure, possibly including mixed troop formations made up of units from the CIS states. He also called for the CIS states to coordinate policies on military personnel to prevent rising disparities between the national armies and subsequent unrest within the military. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL Inc.) MUSLIM LEADERS REACT TO SHAPOSHNIKOV'S REMARKS. The Co-Chairman of the Caucasus Supreme Religious Council, Sheikh Muhammad Karachai, said on 30 September that many Russian leaders were infected with an anti-Islamic virus, an RFE/RL correspondent reported from Moscow. Karachai was reacting to a statement by CIS commander Evgeniy Shaposhnikov to Krasnaya zvezda, in which Shaposhnikov said a system of collective security for the CIS could counter growing Islamic influence. Karachai, who was attending an international Islamic conference in Moscow, said Russian leaders would have to face the reality that Muslims seek ways of unification. However, Salman Musaev, a Muslim official from the Caucasus, and the Kazakh mufti Aslanbek Abdurakhman Ali, who were also attending the conference, rejected the idea of a political union between the Central Asian states and other Islamic nations. (Ann Sheehy, RFE/RL Inc.) RUSSIAN REINFORCEMENTS ARRIVE IN TAJIKISTAN. Reinforcements for the Russian troops stationed in Tajikistan have arrived in Dushanbe and taken control of the city's airport; Tajik fighters who had been besieging Russian troops in the southern part of the country have ended their blockade, Western and Moscow agencies reported on 30 September. A Tajik security official said that roads into Dushanbe have been put under strict control to prevent arms being brought into the city. Acting President Akbar Iskandarov appealed to both CIS leaders and the UN to help stop the fighting, because Tajikistan's government cannot do so. The 30 September issue of Megapolis-Ekspress speculates that the commander of the CIS troops in Tajikistan, Major-General Mukhriddin Ashurov, might be named to the vacant post of Minister of Defense. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL Inc.) MORE REFUGEES IN DUSHANBE. Refugees from the fighting in southern Tajikistan are flooding into Dushanbe, Western and Moscow agencies reported on 30 September, and hundreds of refugees from Kurgan-Tyube, the opposition stronghold, are picketing the Russian ambassador's residence demanding an end to Russian interference in Tajikistan. They are presumably reacting to rumors that the Russian forces have given weaponry and equipment to supporters of deposed President Rakhmon Nabiev. Russian military sources insist that pro-Nabiev fighters from Kulyab Oblast forcibly seized equipment from the Russian troops to use in their battles in Kurgan-Tyube. According to the 30 September issue of Megapolis-Ekspress, law enforcement officials of the ministry of internal affairs and National Security Committee who are supposed to stay neutral in the interregional fighting are getting involved on the side of their region of origin. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL Inc.) KULYAB PEACE DEMANDS. The 30 September issue of Megapolis-Ekspress lists demands made of the government in Dushanbe by pro-Nabiev forces in Kulyab Oblast that would have to be met before the Kulyab fighters would agree to lay down their arms. One of these demands, the appointment of Communist economist Abdumalik Abdullodzhanov as prime minister, has already been met. Other demands include the removal of prominent opposition figures from the government: Deputy Prime Minister Davlat Usmon of the Islamic Renaissance Party, Tajik Radio and TV Chairman Mirbobo Mirrakhimov of Rastokhez, and deputy National Security Committee Chairman Davlat Aminov. The Kulyab forces would also like to see Akbar Turadzhonzoda removed from his post as the highest-ranking Muslim clergyman in Tajikistan. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL Inc.) VOUCHER PRIVATIZATION BEGINS TODAY AMID UNCERTAINTY. The Russian government will launch its mass privatization program today by beginning to issue vouchers to each Russian citizen. The distribution process is scheduled to last three months. The vouchers represent claims on state assets which will be auctioned off beginning some time next year. Western news agencies on 30 September catalogued the problems confronting the program. The major obstacles include: delays in printing and delivering the vouchers; delays in state enterprises transforming themselves into public share companies; outstanding questions about which state assets the vouchers can be traded for; and confusion among the Russian people over how the voucher program works. (Erik Whitlock, RFE/RL Inc.) CONTROVERSY OVER VALUE OF RUSSIAN VOUCHERS. Issued with a face value of 10,000 rubles, the real value of the vouchers to its holder has been a focus of heated political debate. The real value of any given voucher will be decided by the "market" in which a holder chooses to trade. The holder may participate directly in auctions for state assets, in which case the value will depend on the bidding process for the assets. Holders may trade their vouchers for shares in an investment fund, in which case the value to holders depends on the quality of investment decisions the fund makes. Finally, if holders sell their vouchers for cash, the value will depend on supply and demand on this "secondary" market. In the uncertain economic conditions in Russia, it is very hard to predict the outcome of any of these choices. (Erik Whitlock, RFE/RL Inc.) SHEINIS DEFENDS ABKHAZIA STATEMENTS. Russian parliamentarian Viktor Sheinis told a press conference on 30 September that the documents adopted by the parliament the previous week (on 25 September) were fully in accord with international norms. According to international law, Sheinis said, "the protection of human rights is not an internal affair and Russia, like any other state, can raise the question of human rights, wherever they are violated." On the question of arms controlled by forces in Russia's Transcaucasian Military District, Sheinis said that under no circumstances should Russia transfer these weapons to Georgian authorities, ITAR-TASS reported. (Suzanne Crow, RFE/RL Inc.) CRIMEAN SEPARATISTS "REORGANIZE." The Republican Movement of the Crimea (RDK), which has spearheaded the drive for Crimean independence, has reconstituted itself as the Russian Movement of the Crimea (RDK), Radio Ukraine reported on 29 September. The name change was announced in a statement saying that the old RDK had been rendered "illegal" by the recent changes to the Crimean Constitution, that is, by the Crimean parliament's compliance with Kiev's demand that the peninsula bring its constitution and laws in line with the Ukrainian Constitution. The new RDK maintained that the Crimea's future lies in its union with the CIS, even if the latter is restricted to Russia. (Roman Solchanyk, RFE/RL Inc.) CONSTITUTIONAL COURT STILL DEMANDS TESTIMONY OF GORBACHEV, FALIN. In response to summons from the Russian Constitutional Court, Valentin Falin, the former chief of the International Department of the CPSU Central Committee, who is now receiving medical treatment in Germany, listed seven conditions which the court would have to meet before he would agree to testify, "Novosti" reported on 30 September. These included full reimbursement for round-trip airfare and other expenses related to his trip to Moscow. Moreover, according to Western agencies on 30 September, Falin said that he would testify only if former CPSU Secretary General Mikhail Gorbachev did the same. ITAR-TASS reported on 30 September that the court was willing to pay for Falin's airfare, but that it rejected Falin's linking his testimony to that of Gorbachev. Also on 30 September, Reuters reported a statement by the court chairman, Valery Zorin, that he might have to order "executive authorities" to ensure Gorbachev's appearance. On October 1, the court will receive testimony from former USSR Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov, who has criticized Gorbachev for the latter's refusal to testify. (Julia Wishnevsky, RFE/RL Inc.) SITUATION IN KABARDINO-BALKARIA NORMALIZING. ITAR-TASS reported on the morning of 30 September that the situation in Kabardino-Balkaria was normalizing. The agency said that the Executive Committee of the Congress of the Kabardinian people had disassociated itself from the movement's fighters who were demonstrating, and that labor collectives were supporting the president and government. Roadblocks had been removed from all roads and the airport. However, supporters of the Confederation of the Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus and the fighters were preparing to hold a new meeting demanding the resignation of the president of the republic. Krasnaya zvezda of 30 September expressed concern that those meeting included more and more volunteers returning from Abkhazia. (Ann Sheehy, RFE/RL Inc.) GAIDAR VISITS AZERBAIJAN, ARMENIA. A Russian government delegation headed by Prime Minister Egor Gaidar travelled to Baku on 30 September. Gaidar met with Azerbaijani President Abulfaz Elchibey and signed a number of bilateral economic agreements, ITAR-TASS reported. In a letter addressed to Russian President Boris Yeltsin, Elchibey expressed the hope that the visit marked the beginning of a new chapter in Azerbaijani-Russian relations. Gaidar then travelled to Erevan for talks with President Levon Ter-Petrossyan and Prime Minister Khosrow Arutyunyan. According to Interfax, Armenian officials requested that Russia create an air defence system on Armenian territory. (Liz Fuller, RFE/RL Inc.) RUSSIAN BORDER TROOPS TO LEAVE GEORGIA BY MAY 1994. The head of Georgia's Central Border Protection Administration, Colonel Otar Gumberidze, told Interfax that an agreement has been reached whereby Russian border troops will be withdrawn from Georgia beginning in 1993; the withdrawal will be completed by 7 May 1994. Gumberidze conceded that at present Georgia is "physically unable" to protect its border with Turkey and has proposed that Russia and Georgia jointly finance protection of that section of the frontier for the time being. (A similar arrangement has been concluded between Russia and Azerbaijan over protection of the frontier between Iran and Azerbaijan). (Liz Fuller, RFE/RL Inc.) MORE FIGHTING IN WESTERN GEORGIA. Clashes are continuing in western Georgia between Georgian National Guard contingents and supporters of ousted president Zviad Gamsakhurdia. Georgian forces retook the town of Khobi last week and on 30 September repulsed an attempt by Gamsakhurdia's supporters to occupy the police station in Senaki; four of the attackers were killed in an ensuing gunfight, according to ITAR-TASS. (Liz Fuller, RFE/RL Inc.) CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE COSIC, TUDJMAN SIGN ACCORD. Radios Croatia and Serbia report on 30 September that Croatia's President Franjo Tudjman and Dobrica Cosic, president of the rump Yugoslavia, signed a joint 8-point declaration in Geneva. The agreement calls for the withdrawal of the federal Yugoslav army from Croatian Prevlaka Peninsula, strategically located on the Croatian-Montenegrin border. The federal forces are to leave by 20 October, thus removing the threat of renewed attacks on Dubrovnik and formally achieving the withdrawal of the federal army from Croatia. Prevlaka would be demilitarized and placed under UN supervision. The leaders also renewed pledges to use their influence to end fighting in Bosnia, condemned "ethnic cleansing," reiterated existing commitments that borders can not be changed by force, and agreed to consider the normalization of relations between the Republic of Croatia and Yugoslavia (Serbia-Montenegro). (Milan Andrejevich, RFE/RL Inc.) SERB REACTIONS. On 29 September, before the accord was signed, Col. Miodrag Miladinovic, the federal commander at Prevlaka, reportedly warned that his troops would defend the peninsula, which protects the key naval base in the Bay of Kotor, with force "if the politicians lose it." Upon hearing of the signing of the Tudjman-Cosic accord, Bozidar Vucurevic, the Serb leader from eastern Herzegovina, was said to have called it "harmful to Herzegovina's Serbs," because Croatian forces are now in a better position to penetrate Serb-controlled areas. Ultranationalist Serb leaders like Vojislav Seselj have allegedly described plans to withdraw the federal forces from Prevlaka as "shameful and treasonous." Radio Serbia carried the reports. (Milan Andrejevich, RFE/RL Inc.) ETHNIC CLEANSING COMES TO SARAJEVO. The BBC on 1 October quoted Muslim refugees as saying that armed Serbs had systematically forced them to flee their homes in two Sarajevo suburbs the previous day. They were given as little as 15 minutes to prepare, and one woman told the BBC that she was raped before she could reach Muslim lines. The Serbs have been trying to split Sarajevo into two for some time. In Washington, the Senate voted to approve up to $50 million in military aid to the Bosnian government, whose forces are greatly outgunned by the Serbs, but the measure is unlikely to be approved by the House or the White House, the Los Angeles Times says on 1 October. Meanwhile in Geneva, international mediators Cyrus Vance and Lord Owen announced on 30 September that leaders of the two sides have agreed to start talks on demilitarizing the Bosnian capital under the good offices of UNPROFOR. (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL Inc.) CZECHOSLOVAKS HOLD FINAL DEBATE ON SPLIT. The Czechoslovak parliament held its final debate on 30 September on a draft law on the division of Czechoslovakia, with most opposition deputies rejecting the law and calling for a referendum on the issue. The parliament is to vote on the law on 1 October. Commenting on the prospective split of the country, former Czechoslovak President Vaclav Havel told CSTK that a referendum on whether Czechoslovakia should split does not make sense any longer. He said he could not imagine a referendum in Slovakia which would decide anything. Havel, however, suggested that a referendum could be held to ratify the split. In the evening of 30 September, Havel met for dinner with Czech Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus. Speaking to reporters afterwards, Klaus rejected the idea of a ratification referendum. He said that "the referendum issue is a game the opposition parties are playing" and that it is useless to "waste energy on referendum arguments." (Jiri Pehe, RFE/RL Inc.) SLOVAK PRIME MINISTER ON ARMY, FOREIGN RELATIONS. Vladimir Meciar told the Slovak Press Agency on 30 September that Slovakia will establish its own ministry of defense. Meciar also said that, with the exception of Hungary, Slovakia's relations with other countries are good. He argued that the relations with Hungary could improve but that, like Slovakia, Hungary must take steps in that direction. The Slovak premier further said that he was unhappy about a letter which he received on 30 September from Hungarian Prime Minister Antall in which, in Meciar's words, "Antall accused Slovakia of violating Hungary's borders and threatening Hungary's sovereignty." Meciar also defended the performance of his government during the first 100 days in office against sharp criticism from opposition parties. (Jiri Pehe, RFE/RL Inc.) HUNGARIAN DEMOCRATIC FORUM POSTPONES CONVENTION. According to MTI, the ruling party will hold its fourth national meeting at the end of January and not at the end of November as planned. The presidium of the party denied that the meeting was postponed for political reasons--i.e., because of the controversy surrounding the pamphlet written by one of the forum's vice presidents, Istvan Csurka. Rather, they say, more time is needed to concentrate on parliamentary work. (Judith Pataki, RFE/RL Inc.) RECOUNT IS CALLED IN ROMANIAN VOTE. Romania's electoral bureau said on 30 September that some 3.6 million votes had to be declared void because people failed to understand the complicated ballot papers. Rompres quoted a Romanian official as saying that 13.6% of votes cast for the Chamber of Deputies were annulled, along with 12.9% for the Senate, and 4.8% for the presidency. In a communiqui broadcast by Radio Bucharest on 30 September, Romania's Central Electoral Bureau called for a recount within 24 hours. The Democratic Convention, an alliance of the main opposition forces, pointing to the unusually high number of invalid ballots, expressed serious doubts about the accuracy of counting procedures. The counting will now probably take several more days. (Dan Ionescu, RFE/RL Inc.) ILIESCU CALLS FOR COALITION. On 30 September President Ion Iliescu called for a government of national unity to cope with Romania's "grave problems." Speaking at a press conference, Iliescu expressed hopes that his Democratic National Salvation Front and the centrist Democratic Convention could find "a platform of minimal understanding." He suggested that a wide-based coalition might include all political groups in the new parliament. Another alternative mentioned by Iliescu was that of a cabinet of technocrats accepted by all parties in parliament. Iliescu also described fears of a slowdown in economic reforms after his party's victory as unfounded, but added that reforms should be made "tolerable." (Dan Ionescu, RFE/RL Inc.) HOUSE REJECTS MFN TRADE STATUS FOR ROMANIA. The US House of Representatives rejected on 30 September by a 283 to 88 vote the restoration of most-favored-nation trade status to Romania. There was no debate before the vote, which had been delayed because some members of the Congress wanted to see the results of the elections. Romania is currently the only East European country which does not enjoy the MFN status, which grants low tariffs to exports to the United States. (Dan Ionescu, RFE/RL Inc.) ANOTHER SETBACK FOR POLISH MASS PRIVATIZATION. The Sejm voted on 30 September to postpone any decision on whether to send the government's mass privatization program to committee, pending an official reckoning of the costs of the program. Privatization Minister Janusz Lewandowski said the program would be self-financing, thanks to World Bank and EC assistance and fees paid by participants. But objections as to costs missed the point, he added, as mass privatization aims to improve the performance of 600 selected firms and rapidly broaden private ownership. Indeed, finances do not seem to have been the real concern of the program's opponents; their zeal for healthy state budgets is sporadic. Although the Sejm may still approve further work on the plan, the vote for postponement--172 to 147 (20 abstentions)--showed the parliamentary weakness of the government coalition and the potential strength of the state industry lobby. Mass privatization has been in the planning stage in Poland for two years. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL Inc.) SEJM DEBATES DEFENSE INDUSTRIES. Sejm deputies also urged the government to save Poland's defense industries, which lost virtually their entire market with the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. Defense Minister Janusz Onyszkiewicz reported on 30 September that 3 trillion of Poland's 26.5 trillion zloty defense budget is earmarked for equipment purchases in 1992. Domestic purchases will amount to 2 trillion zloty. The defense budget has been cut by nearly 60% since 1986, Onyszkiewicz noted, severely limiting state support for defense industries. Industry Minister Waclaw Niewiarowski said that planned restructuring would reduce military production to 19% of the 1988 level and eliminate 27,000 jobs. Of the 80 existing defense plants, only 28 would remain. Many deputies urged the government to expand international arms sales and exact payment for deliveries made to the former Soviet Union. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL Inc.) HUNGARIAN BUDGET SENT TO PARLIAMENT. On 30 September, Finance Minister Mihaly Kupa presented next year's budget to the parliament. A deficit of 180-185 billion forint is anticipated. Kupa said two items are expected to spark debate: the introduction of a double-level value-added tax system and a change in the distribution of tax revenues between national and the local governments. Until now, this income was divided equally, but now local governments are to receive only 30% . Kupa said the new tax law is also ready to be sent to parliament. (Judith Pataki, RFE/RL Inc.) BANKING REFORM IN BULGARIA. On 30 September, as part of the government's economic reconstruction program, 22 of Bulgaria's commercial banks were merged. The resulting corporation, the United Bulgarian Bank (UBB), will commence operations in January 1993. UBB assets are estimated at 18 billion leva ($788 million) according to Western sources. The move is the first step in the direction of privatizing Bulgarian banking, a process expected to take up to three years. The next banking merger is expected to be between Bulgaria's two largest financial institutions, the Economic Bank and Mineral Bank, which between them are expected to control over one third of the country's banking business. (Duncan Perry, RFE/RL Inc.) BULGARIA MAY FACE ENERGY CRISIS. The consequences of an incident at the Kozloduy nuclear power plant last week, when short circuits caused a brief fire, could lead to severe power rationing Bulgarian officials warned on 30 September. Plant spokesman Yordan Yordanov first told Western agencies that a single 440-megawatt reactor would be operating during the next two months, though he later said experts are investigating a temporary solution that would allow a 1000-megawatt unit to be connected to the power grid within two weeks. In the meantime the Bulgarian National Electric Company has signed contracts for emergency electricity supplies from Ukraine and Moldova. (Kjell Engelbrekt, RFE/RL Inc.) LITHUANIA, RUSSIA SIGN MUTUAL ACCOUNTING AGREEMENT. On 30 September in Moscow Lithuanian Deputy Prime Minister Bronislavas Lubys and his Russian counterpart Aleksandr Shokhin signed an agreement on settling accounts between the two states after 1 October, when Lithuania leaves the ruble zone and introduces its temporary coupons, Radio Lithuania reports. A similar agreement was also signed for the time when Lithuania introduces its currency, the litas. A further protocol provides for the settling within a month of all bills for goods and services made prior to 1 October 1992. (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL Inc.) ESTONIA'S FIRST BANKRUPTCY. A regional court in Estonia declared a merchandising company bankrupt on 30 September, marking the first bankruptcy in Estonia in the postwar period. The case against Norten, Ltd. is the first in what is expected to be a series of suits the government will bring in compliance with new bankruptcy regulations, which took force on 1 September. As of that day, Estonian companies owed the state some 235 million kroon, BNS reports. (Riina Kionka, RFE/RL Inc.) MAYOROV PROTESTS TREATMENT OF MILITARY. Diena reported on 28 September about letter of protest addressed to the Latvian government by Col. Gen. Leonid Mayorov, commander of the Northwestern Group of Forces, demanding a halt to what he terms as provocative behavior of Latvian authorities against the Russian military. Mayorov also threatened that the army would use all means at its disposal to protect its own interests. The letter was prompted by Latvian efforts to monitor the movements of Russian military around several buildings in Riga and Jurmala that have been turned over to the Latvian authorities--but not yet vacated--by the military. One incident specifically mentioned in a report by Latvijas Jaunatne on 25 September involved attempts of the Latvian Home Guard to verify the documents of Mayorov's second in command, R-Adm. Shestakov. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL Inc.) RUSSIA STEPS UP VERBAL ATTACKS ON BALTS. On 30 September Russian Vice President Aleksandr Rutskoi urged Belgium to help defend the rights of Russians in the Baltic States. According to Interfax, Rutskoi made the statement to visiting Belgian Foreign Minister Willy Claes, who responded that Russia should remove its troops from the Baltic States. Rutskoi, in turn, said Russia wants to remove the troops, but has no place to house them. Meanwhile, Lithuanian Supreme Council Chairman Vytautas Landsbergis was quoted by Interfax as saying that Moscow is carrying out a new "Cold War" against the Baltic States. Landsbergis told reporters in Vilnius that Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev is leading a campaign against the Balts in talks in various international forums. (Riina Kionka, RFE/RL Inc.)
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RFE/RL Daily Report No 190, 2 October 1992 SUCCESSOR STATES OF THE USSR UKRAINIAN PARLIAMENT VOTES OUT CABINET. The Ukrainian parliament on 1 October overwhelmingly approved a motion of no confidence in the cabinet of ministers, Western agencies reported. The decision followed Prime Minister Vitold Fokin's request to step down as head of government the day before. Ukrainian lawmakers gave President Leonid Kravchuk ten days to appoint a new prime minister, who then will work together with the President to form a new cabinet. The fall of Fokin and his cabinet was the result of constant charges by the opposition that the government was failing to implement economic reforms in the country. (Roman Solchanyk, RFE/RL Inc.) KRAVCHUK VS CENTRALIZED CIS. Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk told parliament on 30 September that Ukraine will never allow itself to be subordinated to any kind of centralized CIS structures, Ukrinform-TASS reported. Kravchuk said that these kinds of ideas are currently being propagated, and that they are oblique references to recent proposals for tighter CIS integration made by Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbaev. At the same time, Kravchuk emphasized that as in the past, the closest possible ties will be maintained with Russia. (Roman Solchanyk, RFE/RL Inc.) ADMIRAL KASATONOV REASSIGNED FROM BLACK SEA FLEET. Interfax on 1 October reported that the commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Admiral Igor Kasatonov, has been reassigned to the position of first deputy commander of the Russian Navy. The report indicated that a Russian-Ukrainian group of officers would assume command of the fleet in accord with a Russian-Ukrainian agreement to place the fleet under joint command until the end of 1995. The removal of Kasatonov had long been demanded by the Ukrainian government, which recently accused him of illegally selling off fleet assets to private concerns. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL Inc.) RUSSIAN DEFENSE MINISTRY AFFIRMS KURIL WITHDRAWAL PLANS. Japan's Kyodo news service reported on 30 September that the Russian government has reaffirmed its commitment to withdraw all Russian troops from the disputed Kuril islands. In a written reply to a query from Kyodo, the Russian Defense Ministry stated that the withdrawal, announced by President Yeltsin in May, will start after "politicians' decisions." No timetable was given for the withdrawal, although earlier Russian-Japanese talks had specified a one to two year time period. The Russian Defense Ministry has in the past opposed any such withdrawal. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL Inc.) RUSSIAN SUBMARINE SALE TO IRAN STILL ON? A Russian submarine is still sailing to Iran, the Washington Post reported on 2 October, despite Russian indications that the submarine sale was cancelled. The Post article indicated that the submarine was nearing the English Channel en route to the Persian Gulf. In response to the Russian sale, the US Senate on 1 October attached an amendment to a foreign aid bill that would cut assistance to Russia if it sells arms to Iran, Western news agencies reported. While the final bill must still be coordinated with the House of Representatives, the amendment was a sign of the seriousness with which the arms sale was being viewed. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL Inc.) CONTINUED STRIFE IN TAJIKISTAN. Fighting continued in southern Tajikistan on 1 October, ITAR-TASS reported, and the Russian division stationed there was taking additional measures to protect its equipment, some of which supporters of deposed President Rakhmon Nabiev have already stolen or otherwise acquired. Troops of the Tajik Ministry of Internal Affairs and prison administrators issued an ultimatum to the government and party leaders that they will release the inmates of correctional institutions if attacks on them are not stopped; armed groups have been raiding prisons in order to obtain arms from the guards. Meanwhile, Russian border guards reported more battles with persons seeking to cross the Tajik-Afghan border illegally. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL Inc.) ABKHAZ FORCES LAUNCH NEW OFFENSIVE, TAKE STRATEGIC TOWN. A spokeswoman for the Abkhaz Supreme Soviet told an RL/RFE correspondent in Moscow on 1 October that the withdrawal from Abkhazia of volunteers from the North Caucasus had been suspended because Georgian troops were attempting to advance on Gudauta, where the Abkhaz leadership is currently based. Abkhaz and North Caucasian troops subsequently launched an attack on the coastal town of Kolkhida, ten kilometers south of Gagra, using tanks and rocket launchers, and took the town, inflicting heavy casualties on Georgian troops; they then advanced towards Gagra. The Georgian State Council convened an emergency session to discuss the situation. Whether State Council Chairman Eduard Shevardnadze attended the session is unclear; all scheduled sessions had been cancelled on 29 September because Shevardnadze was sick, according to ITAR-TASS. (Liz Fuller, RFE/RL Inc.) RUBLE PLUNGES ON CURRENCY EXCHANGE. The ruble lost nearly 22% of its value against the dollar in narrow trading on the Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange on 1 October, Interfax reported. The dollar rose from 254 rubles to 309 rubles. The fall in the value of the ruble was generally attributed to fears of very high inflation (an annual rate of over 2,000% is expected in 1992) or hyperinflation. Acting Russian Central Bank Chairman Viktor Gerashchenko blamed the pending increase on the price of energy-carriers. Government adviser Aleksei Ulyukayev promised that the government would take unspecified joint measures with the Russian Central Bank to stabilize the exchange rate of the ruble, ITAR-TASS reported. And writing in Trud, Deputy Prime Minister Vladimir Shumeiko called on the West to expedite the $6 billion stabilization fund to "correct" the ruble exchange rate. (Keith Bush, RFE/RL Inc.) RUSSIAN RUBLE TO BE INTRODUCED? The Acting Chairman of the Russian Central Bank, Viktor Gerashchenko, told Interfax on 1 October that while his bank favored the retention of the ruble zone, Russia may have to introduce its own monetary and currency unit if other CIS governments insist on pursuing different economic policies and fail to agree upon and to coordinate policies. He called for clear government agreements on the size of credit emission in the ruble zone and on regulating credits provided to importers of Russian goods. Many observers believe that the ruble zone exists only on paper and that "Russian rubles" are already distinct from "Moldovan rubles" or "Kazakh rubles." (Keith Bush, RFE/RL Inc.) OTHER CURRENCY DEVELOPMENTS. Belarus replaced the ruble on 1 October with a special coupon system in areas near the Lithuanian and Ukrainian borders, ITAR-TASS reported. A Belarusian National Bank official explained that the move was made because the introduction of non-ruble currencies in Lithuania and Ukraine could prompt an unwanted influx of rubles into Belarus. Lithuania replaced the ruble on 1 October with temporary coupons that will be used until the new Lithuanian currency, the litas, is introduced, Reuters reported. And Moldovan Economics Minister Sergiu Certan was quoted by Interfax on 1 October as saying that it would be a mistake to introduce a national currency now when Moldova is in an economic crisis. (Keith Bush, RFE/RL Inc.) GORBACHEV ATTACKS YELTSIN. Former CPSU Secretary General Mikhail Gorbachev told journalists that he is thinking about creating his own political party as part of a political comeback, but he added that the time for this was not yet right, Nezavisimaya gazeta reported on 30 September. He called President Boris Yeltsin "a loss," arguing that terrible mistakes had been committed in foreign and economic policies. He said Yeltsin's privatization plan was a "deception." He also criticized Yeltsin for not responding to Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev's proposal for tighter integration of CIS member states. Gorbachev recommended that President Yeltsin and other Russian leaders welcome Gorbachev advisors like Aleksandr Yakovlev into the inner circle of government decision-makers. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL Inc.) FILATOV SUPPORTS YELTSIN. First deputy parliamentary speaker Sergei Filatov has joined forces with the democrats and called for an expansion of President Boris Yeltsin's executive powers. In an interview with Stolitsa (no. 38) he warned that parliamentary speaker Ruslan Khasbulatov is violating the constitution and seeking to create an administrative-command system in parliament, thereby restricting the rights of the deputies. He argued that the president should be given the right to dissolve at least part of the legislature, since parliament has the right to impeach the president. He noted that at the moment, the balance of power in Russia is distorted to the disadvantage of the executive branch. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL Inc.) RYZHKOV TESTIFIES AT THE CPSU TRIAL. Speaking at the CPSU hearing in the Constitutional Court on 1 October, former USSR Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov denied receiving instructions from the Communist Party leadership, Russian TV reported. Since the abrogation of the provision in the Soviet Constitution on the leading role of the Communist Party, Ryzhkov said that he answered only to the USSR President and his Presidential Council. However, Ryzhkov said that Gorbachev, who had combined the post of the CPSU General Secretary with that of the President, had often mixed up these two roles. Ryzhkov denied that the CPSU was the sole cause of the country's crisis. He said that immediately following the election of Boris Yeltsin to be Speaker of the Russian parliament in 1990, the CPSU in fact ceased to be the governing party, since its largest component, the Russian communists, became an opposition movement and could not act in the party's traditional manner. Ryzhkov also denied any wrongdoings by his government during the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986. (Julia Wishnevsky, RFE/RL Inc.) TWO CHERNOBYL REACTORS TO BE RESTARTED? The director of the Chernobyl nuclear energy station told Reuters on 1 October that two of the station's four reactors will be restarted soon. The No. 3 reactor will be restarted in October and the No. 1 in November to meet increased demands for electric power in winter. Official pronouncements on whether the Chernobyl reactors will be recommissioned have been inconsistent and contradictory. The current intention appears to be that all power generation at the Chernobyl station shall be halted at the end of 1993 (see The Guardian, of 10 September). (Keith Bush, RFE/RL Inc.) KGB EXTERNAL SURVEILLANCE CODE MADE PUBLIC. The voice of the right nationalist opposition, Den, (Numbers 37-39) has published the complete instructions of secret surveillance methods employed by the former KGB. The document describes the techniques and equipment used by the KGB in overt and covert monitoring of its victims and opponents. The weekly obtained the instructions from former KGB officers, which left the agency because of "chaos and uncertainty prevailing in the present state security organs." Giving its own reason for the publication, Den wrote that the instructions can be used in support of the so-called "patriotic resistance" and underground activities in case pro-Western forces attempt to impose a direct dictatorship". (Victor Yasmann, RFE/RL Inc.) SENATE RATIFIES START TREATY. On 1 October the US Senate ratified the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) which calls for Russian strategic to be reduced to approximately 6000 nuclear warheads, Western news agencies reported. The agreement must still be ratified by Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. Kazakhstan has ratified the Lisbon protocol, which commits the former Soviet republics to observe the treaty. A second US-Russian agreement to reduce Russian warhead levels to approximately 3,000 by the year 2003 has not yet been formalized as a treaty. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL Inc.) UKRAINE PLANS TO RATIFY START TREATY. In Washington on 1 October, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Anatoly Zlenko said he hoped that Ukraine would ratify the START treaty but noted that there were many opponents of ratification. Zlenko also met with U.S. Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney to seek US assistance in dismantling ex-Soviet nuclear weapons in Ukraine, according to RFE/RL correspondents' reports. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL Inc.) MILLENNIUM OF CHRISTIANITY IN BELARUS. The Belarusian Orthodox church,the largest in the republic,is concluding celebrations of its thousand year anniversary in Belarus, Radio Minsk reported on 29 September. In addition to special church services, an international conference in the Academy of Sciences was held, as well as a festive gathering in Minsk attended by state leaders. Speaking to journalists, Belarusian Metropolitan Filaret rejected accusations that the church is an instrument of Russian imperialism, arguing that priests are now encouraged to use the Belarusian language in sermons. However, the Belarusian eparchy is still a part of the Moscow Patriarchate.(Alexander Lukashuk, RFE/RL Inc.) ROMANIAN, MOLDOVAN PRESIDENTS ON MOLDOVAN STATEHOOD. Challenged by an interviewer to speak out for the unification of Romania and Moldova, Romanian President Ion Iliescu told ECO Magazin (see the September-October 1992 issue , RFE/RL Inc.) that pro-unification propaganda in Romania "has backfired in Moldova, and not just among the Russian-speakers but among the Romanian Moldovans themselves. During the last two years one has witnessed there a movement away from unification...The [Moldovan] people's reservations on the issue of unification have grown." Moldovan President Mircea Snegur in turn told visiting Hungarian journalists on 30 September, as cited by Moldovapres, that "Moldova's independence is the choice of its people and no one has the right to conduct a policy opposing that choice...The existence of a Moldovan independent state is in the interest of all its neighbors, including Romania. (Vladimir Socor, RFE/RL Inc.) CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE CZECHOSLOVAK PARLIAMENT REJECTS LAW ON MODES OF SPLIT . . . On 1 October the Czechoslovak Federal Assembly failed to pass a law on the modes of dividing the country. CSTK reports that in each chamber of the parliament the measure fell just short of the required three-fifths majority. The law would have allowed the federation to be dissolved without a referendum, which would represent only one four possible courses; the others would be a Federal Assembly declaration, an agreement by the republican parliaments, or unilateral declaration by one of the republics. Currently, secession by one republic based on the results of referendum held in that republic is the only "constitutional" way of dissolving the country. (Jiri Pehe, RFE/RL Inc.) . . AND ADOPTS RESOLUTION ON UNION. The Federal Assembly approved a resolution calling for legislation to create a "Czech-Slovak Union," which would replace the current federation. The resolution proposes a union consisting of a president, legislature, and governing council. The resolution was approved when deputies representing Vladimir Meciar's Movement for a Democratic Slovakia banded together with opposition parties in voting for the resolution. Czech Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus opposes the idea of the union. CSTK reports him as saying that the union "is not in the interest of the citizens of the Czech Republic, and we will not create it by any means." Klaus also sharply criticized the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia for supporting the resolution. (Jiri Pehe, RFE/RL Inc.) ETHNIC CLEANSING CONTINUES APACE IN BOSNIA. The 2 October New York Times reports at length on the ethnic cleansing of some Muslim neighborhoods in central Sarajevo by Serb militants under the paramilitary leader known as Arkan. Their actions are in violation of pledges made by Serbian leaders at the London Conference in late August to halt the practice. The Washington Post adds that detention camps continue to operate despite similar promises by the Serbs to close them, although 1,500 Muslims were taken by 35 buses from the Trnopolje camp to Croatia on 1 October, the first such evacuation of inmates. Some of these refugees told reporters about massacres at the camp, including one of 125 Muslim men between 14 and 40 from the village of Hambarina near Prijedor in northwest Bosnia. Trnopolje has since been turned into "a kind of gruesome sanitized tourist attraction" for foreign visitors, but experts know of at least 21 other camps and suspect that many more exist unknown to the outside world. (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL Inc.) SITUATION TENSE IN EASTERN CROATIA. A Russian colonel serving with UNPROFOR in Sector East near Osijek, Croatia, persuaded some 1,000 refugees not to continue a march to reclaim their homes in what is now Serb-held territory. Croatian politicians and the media have widely accused UNPROFOR, which they expected to return Serb-held areas to Croatian control, of helping to consolidate the Serbs' hold there instead. Osijek's outspoken mayor Branimir Glavas told Reuters that "patience is at an end." Meanwhile, international media said on 30 September that UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali warned in a report that ghting could resume in Sector East, given the determination of the Croats and the presence of lawless armed bands of Serb militias, estimated at 16,000 men. One UN official called the situation "profoundly insecure." (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL Inc.) PANIC RETURNS TO BELGRADE AFTER US VISIT. Milan Panic, Prime Minister of the rump Yugoslavia, told reporters in Belgrade on 30 September that his trip to the US was "incredibly successful." He said the US was supportive of his peace efforts and that his request for oil imports for humanitarian purposes would be met on time, i.e. before the winter. Panic described the Tudjman-Cosic talks in Geneva, as positive and expressed hope that their agreement will ease the way to a final peace agreement with Croatia. Regarding Kosovo, Panic said Pristina University must be opened to the Albanians and that a solution must be found to reinstate "the several hundred professors" who were dismissed by Serbian authorities. Panic also reiterated his call for democratic elections and a free press. He proposed the "division" of Serbian TV, with its first channel presenting the views of the federal government and the second channel those of the Serbian government. Over the past three years, Serbian opposition parties have waged an intense struggle against the Socialist domination of TV editorial policies. Radio Serbia reported Panic's remarks. (Milan Andrejevich, RFE/RL Inc.) ROMANIA'S OPPOSITION CHARGES ELECTORAL FRAUD. The Democratic Convention , an alliance of 18 centrist parties and organizations, stated on 1 October that it had "irrefutable proof" of manipulation of election results in at least one county--Dolj. The DC said it would ask prosecutors to annul the election and order a new vote there. Rompres quoted other instances of possible fraud from the Prahova and Dimbovita counties, where electoral officers had reportedly campaigned in the polling stations and spoiled ballots vanished before they could be verified. Meanwhile, the DC launched a drive to win the rural vote for Emil Constantinescu, its candidate in the 11 October presidential runoff. (Dan Ionescu, RFE/RL Inc.) ROMANIA REACTS TO MFN VOTE. President Ion Iliescu expressed bitterness over the vote in the US House of Representatives against restoration of most-favored-nation trade status for Romania. Radio Bucharest quoted him as saying that the decision "protracts the discrimination to which Romania is unfairly subjected." Iliescu accused Hungarian-born US Congressman Tom Lantos of having "misinformed" the House on the situation in Romania. In a separate statement, the Foreign Ministry said that the House vote demonstrates both "a lack of understanding" for the changes in Romania and the "virulence of the anti-Romanian lobby in the US." (Dan Ionescu, RFE/RL Inc.) PRESSURE INCREASING ON BULGARIAN GOVERNMENT. Osman Oktay, Secretary of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF, RFE/RL Inc.), said in an interview with RFE/RL on 1 October that his party is considering lodging a vote of no confidence against the UDF minority government next week. According to Oktay, the UDF should initiate a "joint analysis" of the present political situation with the MRF or risk standing alone in parliament. He also warned that the MRF has lost confidence in Prime Minister Filip Dimitrov. Meanwhile, President Zhelyu Zhelev told RFE/RL that the UDF cabinet under Dimitrov has gradually been isolating itself in Bulgarian politics. (Kjell Engelbrekt, RFE/RL Inc.) OECD RECOMMENDS DEBT REDUCTION FOR BULGARIA. In a report released in Paris on 2 October, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development suggests that Bulgaria be offered a "substantial cut" in both its principal foreign debt and interest burden, Western agencies report. Without debt reduction, the report argues, Bulgaria can neither expect a significant inflow of foreign capital, nor will it be able to consolidate its economic achievements and speed up structural reforms. After a vote passed by the National Assembly last Friday, Bulgaria will be paying some 25% of the interest due for the last six months of 1992. (Kjell Engelbrekt, RFE/RL Inc.) HUNGARIAN PROSECUTOR REFUSES TO INVESTIGATE 1956 KILLINGS. The head of the Military Prosecutor's Office in Gyor, Gyula Varadi, says that the killings did not constitute war crimes and after 15 years, in 1971, fell under the statute of limitations. Members of the Christian Democratic People's Party initiated proceedings against those who ordered soldiers to fire into a crowd at Mosonmagyarovar during the 1956 revolution. Some 100 died and 200 were injured. A CDPP representative says that he will appeal the decision. Defense Minister Lajos Fur commented that the killings should be considered war crimes and called it "unacceptable to close a case involving mass murder even if it took place 36 years ago," MTI reported on 1 October. (Edith Oltay, RFE/RL Inc.) WALESA VISITS FSM PLANT. Polish President Lech Walesa visited the headquarters of the plant in Bielsko-Biala on 1 October. Walesa said he is fulfilling an election campaign pledge to help solve economic problems. He urged workers to take responsibility for their own fate. Citing unofficial sources, Polish TV reported that the president made Fiat's initiation of its formal takeover of the plant a condition of his visit. The final agreement between Poland and Fiat is now prepared, the TV report said, and will be signed in a few days, to take effect on 1 October. PAP reports that the plant's enormous debts were the sticking point in talks with Fiat, and that the state treasury has stepped in to guarantee nearly 2.5 trillion zloty ($180 million, RFE/RL Inc.) in debts. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL Inc.) SEJM GRUDGINGLY APPROVES BIELECKI'S PERFORMANCE. By a margin of 181 to 167 (25 abstentions, RFE/RL Inc.), the Polish Sejm voted on 2 October to accept the performance of Prime Minister Jan Krzysztof Bielecki's government, which left office nearly a year ago. The vote had no legal implications, but offered an occasion for a test of strength between the opposition and the current government. Bielecki and two of his ministers now sit on the cabinet. The Sejm budget commission had recommended a disapproval vote, charging that Bielecki had caused a "collapse of public finances." Bielecki argued that no one could accuse him of shirking decisions and that a budget deficit of under 4% of GDP was hardly a catastrophe. The Center Alliance, which has been balancing between government and opposition, supported Bielecki, a move that may signal readiness to join the ruling coalition. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL Inc.) ABISALA ON POLISH-LITHUANIAN RELATIONS. At a press conference on 1 October Lithuanian Prime Minister Aleksandras Abisala said that results of his recent trip to Poland were better than he expected, BNS reports. The talks were "correct, open, and friendly," and for the first time the problems of Lithuanians in Poland were discussed at a high level raising hopes that more attention will be paid to them. Polish Internal Affairs Minister Andrzej Milczanowski will visit Lithuania on 2 October. He noted that the ministries of justice should speed up the preparation of an agreement on legal assistance and that a planned visit by Polish businessmen should improve economic and trade cooperation. (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL Inc.) COUNCIL OF EUROPE CRITICIZES ESTONIA. Members of the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly have criticized Estonia for not having allowed noncitizens to vote in the national elections. According to Estonian delegation member and former deputy speaker of the Estonian Supreme Council Marju Lauristin, quoted by BNS on 1 October, even the conservatives "attacked us very sharply. The psychological attack against Estonia has proved fruitful." The Council of Europe delegation that monitored last week's election has not yet filed its official report. (Riina Kionka, RFE/RL Inc.) RUSSIA DENIES ANTI-BALT CAMPAIGN. Foreign Ministry spokesman Sergei Yastrzhembsky told BNS on 1 October that reports of an aggressive anti-Baltic Russian diplomatic campaign in the spirit of the Cold War are unfounded. "Such a campaign is just out of the question," Yastrzhembsky said, adding that the Baltic response to Russia's concern over the plight of Russians living in the Baltic "reminds me of the former Soviet Union's reaction to criticism for its violations of human rights." Earlier this week, Yastrzhembsky said that the way Estonia and Latvia are currently treating non-Balts could lead to a policy of "ethnic cleansing" along Serbian lines. (Riina Kionka, RFE/RL Inc.) LATVIAN REPLY TO MAYOROV. In response to the protest note of Col. Gen. Leonid Mayorov, commander of the Northwestern Group of Forces, concerning Latvia's efforts to monitor the movements of Russian military personnel in Riga and Jurmala, the Foreign Ministry expressed regret about the inconvenience caused to R-Adm. Shestakov when he was briefly detained and asked to show his documents. The ministry pointed out that the guardsmen were acting on valid instructions and said that monitoring would continue. The incident occurred during the latest round of Latvian-Russian talks on troop withdrawal in which Shestakov participated, local media reported on 30 September. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL Inc.) NATO NAVAL DELEGATION IN LATVIA. On 1 October eight ships from five NATO member states arrived in Riga for a five-day visit. During their stay, members of the NATO delegation are to get acquainted with Latvia's defense and security situation, including the problems resulting from the continued presence of Russian naval forces. The arrival coincided with a conference on Latvia's defense policies, plans, training facilities, and future plans for foreign diplomats and specialists held by Latvia's Ministry of Defense. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL Inc.) FUTURE OF "NORTHERN TOWN" IN VILNIUS. The city government is engaged in discussions on the future of Vilnius's so-called Northern Town, 60 hectares of land now housing the 107th Motorized Rifle Division of the Russian army, BNS reported on 1 October. According to the 8 September agreement on troop withdrawal, the Russian troops should depart from the territory by 30 November. All fences, barracks, garages, and other worthless structures will be demolished and replaced by a modern social and commercial center with offices, conference halls, hotels, and restaurants. Since Lithuanian firms will be unable to build everything on such a huge territory, foreign investment is being sought. Depending on the pace of foreign investment, the project should begin in 1993. (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL Inc.)
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===================================================================== F E R A L T R I B U N E _____________________________________________________________________ U broj! U broj! 392 El Splitt, 19. ruJNA 1992. _____________________________________________________________________ U Grudama potpisan povijesni dokument: HRVATSKA PRIMLJENA U BOSNU I HERCEGOVINU GRUDE, 23. IX (Od naseg posebnog sagolja) - Pobjedonosni mars hrvatske diplomacije svjetskom poyornicom i njena puna afirmacija na medjuna- rodnom planu nastavljeni su danas u Grudama, gdje je dr. Franjo Tudjman medjusobno potpisao dokument kojim je Republika Hrvatska - nakon uclanjenja u sve vaznije svjetske organizacije, od Ujedinjenih naroda do "atomskog lobija" -- primljena i u sastav Bosne i Hercegovine. Ovom povijesnom trenutku bio je nazocan i sam predsjednik Republike Hrvatske koji je potpisavsi dokument, srdacno pruzio sebi lijevu ruku -- kako je rekao - "od srca", nakon cega je, po strogom protokolu prijema u ovu medjunarodnu organizaciju, predsjednik HZ Herceg-Bosne Mate Boban uklonio perut sa Predsjednikova sakoa i glasno zajecao od srece. Doktor Franjo Tudjman je potom obavio smotru Bruna StoJica, a specijalni vod Hrvatskog vijeca obrane i drustvene samozastite u obliznjem je kaficu "Kod Dzeme" ispalio sesnaest pocasnih plotuna iz raznog pjesackog naoruzanja. Upitan za znacenje prijema Hrvatske u sastav BiH, dr. Tudjman je novinaru "Tomislava" odgovorio da prijem Hrvatske u BiH znaci da je ona primljena u sastav Bosne i Hercegovine i da on govori hrvatski a ne kineski dok je na pitanje novinara Hrvatskog radija, postaje Split, odgovorio da "hvala Bogu, dobro, samo malo aritmija srca, ali to nije nista novo", dodavsi na potpitanje istog novinara da "u redu, puna je obaveza, ali ona to bolje podnosi". Ovim cinom, zavrsio je dr. Tudjman, Republika Hrvatska postaje punopravna clanica Bosne i Hercegovine sa svojim pravima i nuznostima. Formalno verificiranje ove odluke ocekuje se na prvom sljedecem zasjedAnju Hrvatskog vijeca sigurnosti, kada ce se raspravljati i o prijedlogu nekih zemalja clanica o izbacivanju Bosne iz sastava Bosne i Hercegovine.
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----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Another draw for Fischer and Spassky Subject: Eagleburger: Yugoslav no-fly- zone decision imminent Subject: Serbian economy suffers effects of war, U.N. sanctions Subject: Serbian forces hammer Bosnian towns with artillery, mortar fire Subject: UN hopes to resume aid flights Saturday Subject: Bosnia-Hercegovina prisoners freed in Croatia ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Another draw for Fischer and Spassky Date: 1 Oct 92 21:42:42 GMT BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (UPI) -- The 13th game of the controversial Fischer and Spassky Yugoslav re-match ended in a draw Thursday after more than five hours of play. Former world chess champion Bobby Fischer, playing with white pieces, offered to draw after 45 moves. His longtime rival, former Soviet grandmaster Boris Spassky, accepted almost immediately. The game was Sicilian defense. Fischer is still leading by 5-3, and needs another five wins to get the $3.35 million prize. This was the fifth draw, and the 13th game of the match that started on Sept. 2, in Przno, near the plush Montenegrin resort of Sveti Stefan in the southern Adriatic. After the 11th game, the set was moved to Sava Congress Center in the Serbian capital of Belgrade. Fischer, who withdrew from public competition after he won the world championship title from Spassky in Rejkyevik in 1972 lost the first Belgrade game Wednsday. His comeback was marred by a possible $250,000 fine and a maximum of 10 years in jail for ``knowingly and willingly'' defying the U.S. Treasury Department's order not to play in the rump Yugoslav union of Serbia and Montenegro. The order endorsed U.N. sanctions against the truncated federation because of Serbia's role in the war in neighboring Bosnia-Hercegovina. But Fischer publicly spat on the U.S. Treasury document at the news conference on the eve of the match. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Eagleburger: Yugoslav no-fly- zone decision imminent Date: 1 Oct 92 23:08:28 GMT WASHINGTON (UPI) -- Acting Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger said Thursday the administration must decide within days whether to support a ban on Serbian military flights over Bosnia-Hercegovina. Eagleburger told reporters a sense of urgency results from the circulation among the U.N. Security Council of a draft ``no-fly'' resolution. U.S. officials say the draft resolution calls on nations participating in the possible ban to ``interdict'' any Serbian military flights over Bosnia-Hercegovina, which Belgrade is seeking to annex and ``cleanse'' of all Muslims and Croats. Eagleburger said there are different views in the government on the subject because ``it implies certain military commitments.'' ``We have to be very careful about...where they may lead,'' he said. ``We will clearly have to make up our minds in the course of the next few days.'' Eagleburger and top members of the national security team met with President Bush to review the issue. Others meeting with the president were James Baker, the former secretary of State and now White House chief of staff;, CIA Director Robert Gates; Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney; national security adviser Brent Scowcroft; and Gen. Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. ``We have nothing to announce,'' spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said. The United States and its allies agreed in principle at a conference on the crisis in Yugoslavia last month to establish a no-fly zone, but there have been no firm results. The administration several months ago offered its air and naval assets to ensure the delivery of humanitarian aid to Sarajevo. But Gen. Colin Powell,chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other administration officials have expressed reservations about sending U.S. troops into an open-ended military conflict with no set objective. Humanitarian flights have been suspended since a shoulder-fired, surface-to-air missile downed an Italian cargo plane last month. Investigators have been unable to detemine which of the many warring factions fired the missile. It is believed that jet fighter patrols would discourage military action -- from the ground or from the air -- against relief flights. The risk to U.S. fliers, however, has never been underestimated, a Pentagon official said Thursday. ``I don't believe we've ever felt since the operation started in July that the safety of these missions could be guaranteed,'' Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams said. He said the United States is now ready to resume flights, and that planes would be equipped with ``defensive measures'' to guard against attack. Eagleburger said Belgrade has given general assurances that the flights could proceed unhindered. He said, however, that Belgrade's ``assurances are not necessarily always to be relied upon.'' There is a critical need to stockpile supplies as another brutal Yugoslav winter approaches. The CIA estimated this week that 150,000 people in the former Yugoslavia could die this winter unless urgent action is taken. As a result of winter's onset, and despite the risk, Eagleburger said ``we've simply got to provide humanitarian assistance or we're going to have a lot of people starving to death.'' The Serbians as well, who are beginning to feel the pinch of sweeping U.N. sanctions, fear that winter will exact a heavy toll. Prime Minister Milan Panic asked Eagleburger and congressional leaders this week to ease the embargo to allow for the purchase of heating oil. Eagleburger said he promised Panic he would consider the request. The secretary of state said the administration would support Belgrade'srequest to the U.N. sanctions committee if children, schools and hospitals suffer the effect of heating-oil shortages, if Serbia has no domestic production capacity, and if it is not diverted for other uses. Then, he said, ``we ought to let it come in.'' Serbian Foreign Minister Ilija Djukic said Thursday in New York that he had ``submitted a formal request to the sanctions panel for the importation of heating oil.'' Based in part on Eagleburger's assurances, Djukic expressed confidence that the exemption would be granted. ``Nobody will let something terrible to happen in the winter to innocent people,'' he said. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Serbian economy suffers effects of war, U.N. sanctions Date: 2 Oct 92 02:08:10 GMT BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (UPI) -- What used to be a prosperous, booming Yugoslavia, has turned into a gloomy Serbia with soup kitchens, hospitals lacking supplies to treat patients and lengthy lines of motorists waiting for gasoline, unavailable for days at a time. Yugoslavia's economy slipped deep into crisis two years ago when the communist leadership of Serbia, the dominant state of the six-republic federation, prevented economic reforms that should have led the now defunct multi-ethnic country to a free-market economy. With harsh economic sanctions imposed earlier this year by the United Nations on Serbia for its involvement in the ongoing war in the former Yugoslav republic of Bosnia-Hercegovina, citizens of Serbia are feeling the pain of economic and political isolation. Serbia's economic woes are best measured by the 5-mile-long gasoline lines, the reopening of soup kitchens for the first time since World War II and the hopeless situation in local hospitals, which are on the verge of turning out patients for the lack essential medical supplies. The U.N. sanctions, imposed May 30, bar all trade, financial transactions and oil imports. ``I've been trying to buy gas for the past two weeks,'' said Srdja Adamovic, a 28-year-old taxi driver. ``Even though I have managed to buy gas coupons on the black market, there is no gas at the pumps to buy. ``The only way to get gas these days is to buy it directly on the black market at five German marks a liter and even then one risks buying some type of mixture which may damage the engine.'' For the most part, citizens of Belgrade are resigned to parking their cars and using public transportation. But the lack of gasoline has caused a 40 percent cut in bus schedules, leaving people stranded and frequently late for work. Although sanctions imposed on the truncated Yugoslavia are not supposed to affect the import of medical supplies, the overall situation has contributed to a major crisis in public health care. ``The situation is really terrible in the hospitals,'' said Jasminka Maksimovic, a nurse at Bezanijska Kosa Hospital in Belgrade. ``If not in critical condition, patients who have an appointment for an operation have to provide all essential medical supplies needed, including anaesthesia, infusion, surgical stitching thread, dressing material, etc.,'' Maksimovic said. ``The total cost of simple appendix operation stands about 5,000 dinars (dlrs 110) while an average paycheck of a nurse is only 28,000 dinars (dlrs 75),'' she said. Because of hyperinflation, which now runs about 3 percent a day, hospitals have been financially unable to provide a balanced diet for their patients. ``We have not been able to provide meat for our patients for the past three months,'' said Maksimovic, adding that patients mostly are served vegetable soup, potatoes and milk. Soup kitchens have been reopened in Belgrade but can feed only 650 people a day while up to 10,000 are in need of warm meals. With insufficient funds from the government, the Red Cross of Serbia says that it is taking donations from private organizations. Red Cross officials estimated there were more than 500,000 refugees in Serbia, of which only 150,000 are registered. ``About 95 percent of the refugees have found shelter with friends and family,'' said Belgrade Mayor Slobodanka Gruden, president of the Red Cross of Serbia. ``But because of the increasingly difficult economic situation in the nation and the inability of families to withstand the financial burden, we expect the registration of 'new' refugees to jump drastically,'' said Gruden. Despite the efforts of international and domestic humanitarian organizations to distribute aid and provide housing for refugees in Serbia, it is apparent that many will be left without adequate help this winter. A recent housing agreement between the United Nations High Commission for Refugees and the Serbian and Yugoslav Red Cross organizations will provide shelter for only 8,000 refugees in the coming months. The UNHCR has provided $5.19 million from various donor countries as part of a first-phase housing project for refugees in Serbia. ``To be very honest, this is a drop in the ocean of needs as we have in Serbia half a million refugees,'' said Belgrade based UNHCR representative Judith Cumin. Meanwhile, Serbia's factories are idle and its industry is rapidly disintegrating, with 70 percent of the workers either on ``forced leave'' or jobless. ``Only a half million people will hold jobs toward the end of the year,'' said trade union leader, Danilo Popovic, adding that three and one-half million people will be jobless. But the end of Bosnia-Hercegovina's bloody ethnic war is nowhere in sight as leaders of all three ethnic groups are unwilling to compromise, perpetuating the wrath of the international community and its stranglehold on Serbia's desperate economy. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Serbian forces hammer Bosnian towns with artillery, mortar fire Date: 2 Oct 92 12:49:51 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- Artillery battered this besieged Bosnian capital Friday as its war-weary residents anxiously awaited resumption of humanitarian aid flights and restoration of water and electricity. U.S. officials said the U.N.-organized flights, suspended a month ago after an Italian transport plane was shot down, could resume as early as this weekend. Acting U.S. Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger said the main players in the conflict had given guarantees of safety for such flights. A U.N. official said two U.S. planes and one British plane were ready in Zagreb, awaiting orders to depart. Members of the U.N. Protection Force in Sarajevo agreed to accompany utility workers to water and electricity plants into Serb-controlled areas west of the capital to help restore supplies that have been cut for several days. But the Bosnian head of the city's water supply said he knew of no mechanical failure at the pumping plant in nearby Serbian-controlled Bacevo, and U.N. officials questioned the Serbian commitment to restoring utilities. Bosnian Vice President Ejub Ganic again urged the world community in general and the United States in particular to make a commitment to end Serbian military aggression. Ganic said he was encouraged by possible U.S. action on resuming the aid flights and talk in Congress of providing Bosnian military aid, but said he remained pessimistic about U.S. policy. Temperatures dipped Friday morning to 40 degrees in Sarajevo, where aid supplies were arriving by truck at about one-fifth the minimum level necessary, as estimated by U.N. officials. Residents with no oil were chopping down trees in parks and along roadsides to cook food and to store for winter fuel. ``It looks like we are facing the biggest disaster ever,'' Ganic said. ``America will be a great nation if they can stop this.'' The artillery attacks from Serbian forces in the hills overlooking Sarajevo continued Friday. Tank shells, mortar rounds and grenades were fired on the city from Vogosca, a suburb behind the hills north of the capital, and from Borija, a neighborhood on a hill to the east of the city. Radio reports said Serbian forces attempted an infantry attack across the bridge at Vrbanja, crossing the Miljacka River running through central Sarajevo, but were pushed back by Bosnian defenders. Ground fighting also was reported morning in Bosnian-controlled Stup on the western fringe of Sarajevo. Sarajevo's two main hospitals reported Friday that at least five people were killed and 105 injured during attacks on the city thursday. Maglaj, a city about 75 miles north of Sarajevo, on Thursday suffered its worst day of the conflict, with artillery fired repeatedly into civilian and industrial areas, the radio said. Jajce, in central Bosnia-Hercegovina, and Gradacac, in the northeastern part of the republic, also faced aerial and artillery bombardments, Sarajevo radio said. Fighting also was reported in the northern bosnian city of Bosanski Brod. A total of 1,360 prisoners from a serbian-run camp in Trnopolje in northwest bosnia-hercegovina were sent Thursday in a convoy of 35 buses to karlovac in croatia, sarajevo radio reported. The United States announced Thursday it would resume the airlift and the other 18 participating countries have previously stated they would follow suit if the U.S. began. Serbian forces are fighting to carve a separate homeland out of territory in the predominantly Muslim Slav republic of Bosnia- Hercegovina. Some moderate Serbs and Croats have joined the Muslim Slavs in trying to retain the territorial integrity of the newly independent republic. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: UN hopes to resume aid flights Saturday Date: 2 Oct 92 16:33:08 GMT GENEVA (UPI) -- The United Nations hopes to resume its relief airlift to Sarajevo Saturday provided the various warring factions in Bosnia- Hercegovina give assurances they will not shoot at the planes, a U.N. spokesperson said Friday. Sylvana Foa, spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commission for Refugees said provided there are no hitches and that assurances of cooperation from Serbs, Muslims and Croats on the ground have been received, the airlift could start again Saturday. The U.S. has already said it is prepared to provide planes, she said. ``We have said we are going to start this weekend with U.S. planes, but we had to give the various factions 24 hours notice and we're doing that today,'' Foa said Friday. Initially only U.S. planes will be used, as other countries initially involved in the airlift are still fitting their planes with devices designed to deflect anti-aircraft fire or rockets and may not be ready to start flying this weekend, Foa said. The airlift has been on hold since Sept. 3 when an Italian plane flying for the U.N. was shot down by unidentified rocket fire. The 19 nations have since demanded the U.N. provide them with guarantees that the warring factions on the ground will not repeat the incident. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees said millions of persons face starvation in Bosnia-Hercegovina this winter unless the food situation is drastically improved. Friday Foa and Michele Mercier, spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross said not only food aid is needed, but aid for refugees liberated from prison camps in Serbian-held areas of Bosnia- Hercegovina. The ICRC brought out 1,651 detainees from some of these camps Thursday Mercier said ``and some of them were in pitiful condition.'' Negotiations are continuing with representatives of the Serbian faction in Bosnia-Hercegovina to obtain access to other camps in the area, she said. Asked whether the ICRC has full access to all camps in the area or is just being allowed to visit a sampling of them, Mercier said: ``An honest answer to the question is no, we don't have full access. We are not confident we are getting full information (on prisoners), we have never had assurances that we are being allowed full access, nor notifications of lists of people being held or even where the camps are. In a word, we are not confident that we have the right access.'' Foa said UNHCR operatives on the ground report the refugee situation in the Bajna-Luka region is worsening rapidly. ``We have people coming up to U.N. vehicles and pounding on the doors and pleading with us to get them out,'' she said. ``For the 200,000 non- Serbs there it's a situation of sheer terror.'' Latest ICRC figures show a total of 1,976,914 persons registered as being displaced persons inside former Yugoslavia, of whom 681,000 are in Bosnia-Hercegovina itself. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Bosnia-Hercegovina prisoners freed in Croatia Date: 2 Oct 92 16:40:06 GMT KARLOVAC, Croatia (UPI) -- Some 1,560 prisoners from a Serb-run detention camp in northern Bosnia-Hercegovina experienced their first day of liberty in months Friday after being freed Thursday night. The prisoners, the largest single group yet to be released, arrived in a convoy of 35 buses late Thursday night in Karlovac, about 25 miles southeast of the Croatian capital Zagreb. The convoy had made a 12-hour overland journey from a camp in Trnopolje, northern Bosnia-Hercegovina, where the prisoners had been held. Looking relatively healthy, many carrying small plastic bags of clothing and other belongings, the mostly Muslim Slav detainees were not allowed to speak with reporters but were quickly shuffled into a former Austrian army barracks for registration. ``We are very very happy that these people who have been living under very bad conditions are now out and alive,'' said Lars Nielsen, field coordinator for the U.N. High Commission for Refugees, which organized the evacuation jointly with the International Committee of the Red Cross. The release came two weeks after 68 prisoners were flown to Britain in what was planned to be the start of the release of all prisoners in detention camps in the embattled former Yugoslav republic. The prisoners' release was agreed under the terms of the London peace talks on Yugoslavia. Under the agreement, all camps were to be closed ``without delay'' and humanitarian aid organizations such as the Red cross and the UNHCR were to be given ``free and immediate'' access to the camps. But representatives of the Bosnia-Hercegovina government claimed those released Thursday were groomed for their release. Trnopolje is one of the only camps where journalists have been allowed free access for the last two months. ``Journalists were allowed to visit because it is a much better better situation there, the prisoners were actually prepared for visits, '' said Borogovar Musadik, coordinator of department for the research and discovery of war crimes for the Bosnian government. ``You see the prisoners are eating and sleeping and that is not the case in other camps,'' Musadik said. Following their release, the prisoners were to be supervised by the UNHCR in the former Austrian barracks. The Croatian government has given the organization two weeks to find another location for the ex- prisoners. The Croatian government says it cannot accept the refugees as it is already overburdened with about 650,000 refugees who have fled from the war-torn region. It has closed its borders to all trying to escape the conflict. The UNHCR is trying to find another country which will take the refugees but has no prospects yet. The UNHCR and the ICRC now have access to 31 camps run by all sides of the conflict, but say they are not allowed access to several areas in eastern Bosnia-Hercegovina which are in Serbian controlled territory. Since the London conference, two other camps, Omarska and Keratin have been closed but the whereabouts of many of the detainees are unknown.
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NEWSWEEK, October 5, 1992 ------------------------- HELP FROM THE HOLY WARRIORS Inside a secret military camp: how mujaheddin fighters are training Bosnia's Muslims Until the mujaheddin arrived last June, Alma Halep rarely stepped inside a mosque. Like most Bosnian's Muslims, the 16-year-old girl had a lot more in common with her ethnic Serb and Croat neighbours than her Islamic "brethren" from the Middle East. War has changed her habits. Now she prays the traditional five times a day at a mosque in Travnik, the central Bosnian town where she, her mother and her younger brother fled after Serbs destroyed their home nearby Turbe. Besides religious instruction, the visitors from the east are offering military assistance. "They are very good men," says Alma, tucking a few strands of blond hair under the blue scarf that covers her head. "In our country, some of the men don't want to be killed and are afraid to fight." As for mujaheddin, "They are the only ones who have come here to help us." They have come from a host of Islamic countries -Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, among them - to fight a holy war. As they explained to a NEWSWEEK reporter who went inside a secret training camp and spoke with their elusive leader Abu Abdul Aziz, they are supporting a struggle for survival because no one else will. The European Community, the United Nations and the United States have all ignored Bosnian pleas for military intervention. In the absence of Western help, someone must keep the heavily armed Serbs from "killing the Muslims like sheep," argues a uniformed mujaheddin from the Middle East (he won't say what country). "I am just doing what I can," he says, tugging his thick black beard while lounging outside the Travnik headquarters of the Muslim Forces, an offshoot of the Bosnian Army. Like other Islamic volunteers, he came to train Bosnian Muslims, provide them with money for small arms and fight side by side with them on the front line against the Serbs. The Islamic warriors began to trickle into the Travnik area this summer, first posing as journalists, then appearing more openly in locally purchased camouflage jackets and pants. Today there are said to be 200 or 300 mujaheddin around the town and an additional 200 or so in the central part of the republic. Their training camps put Muslims, who were poorly prepared for war, through two weeks of boot camp plus religious indoctrination. In the final two days mujaheddin instructors lead groups of 15 to 20 Muslims in exercise near the front. "Nobody can stop the people who come here from the Middle East or Turkey to help the Bosnian People," says former Yugoslav Army Col. Emir Redzic, who now commands the Muslim Forces in Travnik. "You can't keep them from coming." Few Bosnians would want to. "They are very good fighters," says Osman Sekic, a 46-year-old woodworker from Visenjevo. "They have no fear for their lives." Local soldiers who have fought with the mujaheddin are impressed with their bravery and their ability to strike terror in the hearts of Serbian fighters, who cringe at the sound of war cries to Allah. The Islamic warriors are admired as martyrs. "They came here to be killed," says Elis Bektas, a 22-year-old platoon leader in the Bosnian Army and former philosophy student. "For them there is no going back." Small villages like Mehurici are enormously grateful to Islamic warriors whose secrecy they jealously protect. "The mujaheddin don't exist here," insists a local man. But when mujaheddin commander Aziz drives through Mehurici in his new black four-wheel-drive Nissan, the town turns out for him. Children wave, old people turn and smile, and other villagers approach with invitations to weddings and parties. Aziz, who arrived in Bosnia three months ago, has little time for celebration. He heads up the road to a field outside town and parks his vehicle. As he pulls off his black plastic sandals and reclines on a couple of vividly colored prayer rugs, two Bosnian Muslims jump out of the Nissan and take up positions 10 yards to either side, scanning the terrain with their AK-47s. Now 50, the red-bearded Aziz claims to be a veteran of holy wars in Africa, Kashmir, the Philipinnes and Ahghanistan. "I come from Islam," he says guardedly. People who know him in nearby Travnik say his home is Saudi Arabia, where his wife and nine children see very little of him. The warlord spends part of his time proselytizing. Every day, with the help of a translator, Aziz teaches the Koran and Islamic tradition to a class of 15 children, 8 to 13 years old. But his main purpose isn't pedagogical or humanitarian. "We are not here to bring supplies like food and medicine," he says, a silver revolver gleaming from his waistband. "There are a lot of organisations that can do that. We bring men." How many? "Enough." They come from Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, Sudan, Afghanistan, Iran and Syria, say villagers. Seventeen of his men, Aziz admits have been killed in the conflict; he expects many more will die. "It will be a long war if the United Nations and the United States don't do anything," he suggests. "If the Muslims in Bosnia are not secure, we will fight until they get their freedom." No marriage: While Bosnians want their freedom, they worry about the price. Some fear the mujaheddin haven't shown their real extremist side. "If they want to offer people religion, culture and language, that's good," says 27-year-old Zafir, a Muslim from Travnik who asked that his last name not be used. "But if they insist on it, that's not good." Bektas, the platoon leader, is concerned the mujaheddin really fighting for Islam, not Bosnia. "It's good for us that they are here," he says. "But after the war, who knows?" So far, at least, locals have been more eager to embrace Kalashnikovs than the Koran: men still drink beer unmolested, and women have resisted the chador - as well as several proposals of marriage from Arab fighters. But Croatians aren't taking any chances. The mujaheddin must pass through their borders to enter Bosnia; Croat dealers control the arms flow. Zagreb has tolerated the Islamic warriors - except when it's expedient not to, as in the recent seizure of an Iranian 747 loaded with guns or the slaying of six Saudi Arabians by Croats who stole the weapons being brought to local Muslims. The Croats may be sometimes allies of the Bosnians in the war against the Serbs. But they may not hesitate to use the threat of an Islamic state to turn against their Muslim neighbours. Tom Post with Joel Brand in Travnik NEWSWEEK, October 5, 1992 _ |-| /-\ |_ |_| |< {"God protect us from ceasefires. It seems that whenever we have a ceasefire, the level of fighting goes up." Major Lewis Mackenzie, UN Commander in Sarajevo}
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NEW YORK TIMES, Sturday, October 3, 1992. BUSH'S BOSNIA REMARK: HALTING A `CRUEL WAR' WASHINGTON, Oct. 2. (Reuters) - Followinf are excerpts from a statement issued today by President Bush on steps to ease the violence in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Elsewhere in the former Yugoslav federation: All Americans, and people of compassion everywhere, remain deeply troubled by the cruel war in Bosnia and broader turmoil in what was Yugoslavia. We took several important initiatives in August, and today I am announcing further steps to help ease the conflict. The United States has been working intensively with other concerned nations to contain the conflict, alleviate the human misery it is causing, and exact a heavy price for aggression. This international effort has produced some results. The recent London Conference set up an international mechanism for addressing all aspects of the Yugoslav problems and put in motion an active negotiation . The tenuous truce in Croatia is holding. ... The U.N. trade embargo has idled roughly half the industry of Serbia, whose leaders bears heavy responsibility for the aggression in Bosnia. Our demand that the Red Cross be given access to detention camps has begun to yield results, and the release of detainees has now begun. The U.N. resolution we obtained to authorize "all necessary measures" to get relief supplies into Bosnia has led to the creation of a new U.N force to be deployed for that purpose. We will continue to honor our pledge to get humanitarian relief to the people of Sarajevo and elsewhere in Bosnia. To this end, I have directed the Secretary of Defense to resume American participation in the Sarajevo airlift tomorrow morning. I wish I could say that there is no risk of attack these flights, but I cannot, although we are taking precautions. Still, the savage violence persists in Bosnia. Despite agreements reached at the London Conference, Bosnian cities remain under siege, the movement of humanitarian felief convoys is still hazardous, and innocent civilians continue to be slaughtered. At London the parties agreed to a ban on all military flights over Bosnia. Yet the bombing of defenseless population centers has actually increased. This flagrant disregard for human life and for clear agreement requires a response from the international community, and we will take steps to see that the ban is respected. Now, a new enemy is about to enter the battlefield: winter. Some weeks ago, I asked for an assesment of the effects that the combination of war and winter could inflict on the suffering people of Bosnia. The answer was profoundly disturbing: thousands af innocent people... could perish from cold, hunger, and disease. Anticipating this danger, the United States has been working with other nations and with U.N. to mount a major expansion ao the international relief effort and to support the tireless negotiations of U.N. and E.C. envoys Cyrus Vence and David Owen, to get the fighting stopped... I have decided to take a number of further steps: First, having authorized a resumption of U.S. felief flights into Sarajevo, I am prepared to increase the U.S. share ot the airlift. Second, we will make available air and sea lift to speed the deployment of the new U.N. force needed immediately in Bosnia to protect relief convoys. The United States will also provide a hospital and other critical support for this force. Third, the U.S. will furnish $12 million in urgently needed cash to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees for the purpose of accelerating preparations for the winter. This in addition to the $85 million in financial and material support we have already commited. Fourth, we will offer U.N. and the Red Cross help in transporting and carring for those who are being freed from detention camps. We have already provided $6 million for this purpose. Fifth, in cooperation with our friends and allies, we will seek a new U.N. Securitu Council resolution, with a provision for enforcement, banning all flights in Bosnian airspace except those authorized by the U.N. If asked by the U.N., the U.S. will participate in enforcement measures.
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Vjesnik 5.10. Mate Boban Tragovi razaranja MARIO MARUSIC RAZGOVOR S MATOM BOBANOM, PREDSJEDNIKOM HRVATSKE ZAJEDNICE HERCEG-BOSNA Muslimani odustaju od unitarne drzave Ponavljajuci politicku opciju: nezavisna drzava BiH, s jednakim pravom hrvatskog naroda na nju, Mate Boban ocjenjuje da su se pregovori s Muslimanima pomakli s mrtve tocke. O zimskom pre (....) pristao bi na njega samo ako ne ugrozava hrvatski nacionalni interes. Tvrdi da ce vojni rasplet u Posavini uslijediti vrlo brzo (....) Razgovarajuci s Matom Bobanom koji nas ljubazno, makar se nismo najavili, prima u hotelu "Intercontinental" tek sat prije polijetanja za Split, postaje nam jasno da hrvatska i muslimanska strana u ratom zahva- cenoj drzavi ipak nisu na samom pocetku, kada je o dogovorima rijec, ali da jos uvijek nema koraka "od t (....) postici kompromis oko buduceg ustavnog ustroja Bosne i Hercegovine. Hrvatska strana ostaje dosljedna, u beskraj ponavljajuci i ne odustajuci od teze da Bosnu i Hercegovinu mogu ciniti samo tri naroda kao konstitutivni i suvereni dijelovi te zemlje. Muslimanska strana vise nije onako cvrsto ukopana u stavu o uni- tarnoj drzavi. Ocito, predstoji jos puno, puno koraka. U drugoj tocci Dodatka sporazuma o prijateljstvu i suradnji potpisanog u Americi izmedju Hrvatske i BiH iznova se naglasava potreba jacanja napora na iznalazenju politickog rjesenja za prestanak rata i provedbu nacela o ustrojstvu Republike BiH kao ravnopravne i cjelovite zajednice triju konstitutivnih naroda. Ocito, razgovori Boban - Silajdzic u hotelu "Intercontinetal" dio su tih napora. "O cemu ste, gospodine Bobane, razgovarali i s kakvim rezultatom?" - Da, sastali smo se u Zagrebu, ja predvodeci delegaciju Hrvata, a Silajdzic na celu muslimanske delegacije. Razgovarali smo o trenutnim zbivanjima u nasoj zajednickoj domovini, o medjusobnim odnosima i, naravno, razlikama u vidjenju ustavnog ustroja BiH nakon rata. Razgovor je posluzio kao priprema za razgovore izmedju predsjednika Hrvatske dr. Tudjmana i predsjednika Predsjednistva BiH Izetbegovica. Nasa je poli- ticka opcija jasna: nezavisna drzava BiH, s jednakim pravom hrvatskog naroda na nju. Unutar takve drzave hrvatski narod mora biti konstitu- tivan, s najbitnijim elementima suverenosti, sto znaci da hrvatski narod mora biti tako organiziran da moze osigurati svoju drzavotvornost u BiH i trajno pravo na oplemenjivanje svih narodnosnih cimbenika hrvatskog naroda, od gospodarskih i kulturnih, do politickih i upravnopravnih. "U kantonu?" - Mi ne upotrebljavamo taj izraz. U hrvatskoj nacionalnoj jedinici, dakle u odredjenom prostoru. "Kakva je muslimanska opcija, u cemu se razlikujete?" - Razlika je u tome sto je muslimanska strana odustala od konstitucije BiH kao drzave sastavljene od tri konstitutivne jedinice, hrvatske, muslimanske i srpske, u opravdanoj bojazni da netko od trojice ne bi nekada pomislio na izdvajanje i razbijanje BiH. Medjutim, pravo naroda na samoopredjeljenje je trajno, nepotroseno, pa je to iluzoran argument jer se on moze dogoditi uvijek i u svako vrijeme, i bez obzira kako drzava bila konstituirana. Ali, hrvatskom narodu ne vjerovati, povijesno je sljepilo. Hrvatski narod svoje pravo na BiH nikada i nikome ne zeli pokloniti. BiH je prije svega domovina hrvatskog naroda, prije svih i svakoga. Danas je drzava tri naroda. To je pitanje od globalnog znacaja za hrvatski narod, temelj svega. "Je li vam Haris Silajdzic povjerovao?" - Morate pitati njega. Ne vjerujem da mi vjeruje. "Jeste li se usprkos tome dogovorili?" - Dogovorili smo se da moramo trajno razgovarati kako bismo na kraju ipak dosli do trajne osnove ustavnog ustroja BiH. "Do kada cete razgovarati?" - Do trenutka kada i nama drugi budu priznali narodno hrvatsko pravo na BiH, kako i mi priznajemo drugima. "Ipak, netko mora poceti popustati da bi se krenulo s mrtve tocke. Je li u Zagrebu bio start?" - Pocelo je. Uvjeren sam da je koncepcija unitarne gradjanske drzave kod muslimanskog politickog rukovodstva uocena kao nerealna, ma koliko zeljena bila. To je taj prvi korak. "Potpuno je odbacena koncepcija unitarne drzave?" - Moram u to vjerovati. Kako razgovarati ako ne vjerujete? Ja smatram, a mislim da ce i oni doci do toga, da ne moze postojati nikakva BiH osim uredjene na nacin jednakih prava sva tri naroda. "Cak i da se dvojica uspiju dogovoriti, sto je s trecim?" - Pa vrijednost hrvatsko-muslimanskog dogovora i jest u tome sto ce, kao racionalan i objektivan, prisiliti trecega na razum i na prestanak agresije, zlocina i svih zala i namjerama sto ih je tako jasno ekspli- cirao pred cijelim svijetom. To je put politickog rjesenja krize i rata u u BiH. "Kako ste reagirali na prijedlog sto je, navodno, dosao iz "Izetbegovi- cevih redova" o "zimskom ratnom snu"?" - Ne znam za taj prijedlog, nas nitko o tome nista nije pitao, niti nam je sto predlagano, ali u ratu koji je tako jasno definirao namjere agresora, zlocinca, i namjere hrvatskog naroda kao zrtve koja se brani, dakle u tom ratu hrvatski narod ne zna za zimu, ljeto, proljece ni jesen. Mi cemo jednostavno svoje pravo ostvariti, i to prije svega poli- tickim sredstvima, budemo li mogli, ali ako nam drugi natovare druge oblike rjesavanja tog pitanja, prihvatit cemo ih. "Vjerujete da se srpska i muslimanska strana mogu dogovoriti o zimskom prekidu rata?" - Ja bih bio sretan da se na bilo koji nacin i na bilo koje vrijeme zaustavi rat, ali, kazem, nikada pod uvjetima da hrvatski nacionalni interes bude ugrozen. Mislim da je, kad ste to vec spomenuli, veoma vazna cinjenica da u BiH Hrvati imaju naspram agresoru liniju fronte duzu od 300 kilometara. "U dodatku Sporazuma govori se o zajednickoj obrani od agresije, usklad- jivanju obrambenih napora izmedju dviju suverenih drzava, Hrvatske i BiH. Sto to konkretno znaci?" - BiH je, kao i Hrvatska, napadnuta, a agresija se, i zbog geostrateskog polozaja, moze djelotvornije suzbiti zajedno. Vi znate da je najveci dio zlocina protiv Hrvatske pocinjen s prostora BiH, sto potvrdjuje prethodnu tvrdnju. Zato je taj dodatak Sporazuma izmedju drzava Hrvatske i BiH oplemenjen novom, rekao bih, institucijom, Odborom za koordi- niranje obrane. Hrvatska je delegirala svoja tri predstavnika, a BiH ce ovih dana izabrati svoja tri clana. "Tko su hrvatski clanovi?" - Generali Janko Bobetko i Slobodan Praljak, te Vice Vukojevic. "Vec rade?" - Ne, jer jos nisu poznata tri bosanskohercegovacka clana. Odbor ce imati puno posla, a osnovna ce mu zadaca biti sukladnost obrane od agresora dvije napadnute drzave. "U dodatku Sporazuma pise da ce dvije drzave zajednicki zatraziti uki- danje embarga na izvoz oruzja u BiH i Hrvatsku. Hoce li biti sto od toga?" - Obje strane to trajno traze. I ja sam osobno uvijek, kao predstavnik hrvatskog naroda iz BiH, pred predstavnicima UN na konferencijama o BiH to trazio. "Odgovor ne stize?" - To su tek pokusaji informiranja svjetske javnosti o neravnopravnosti napadaca i napadnutih. Ne vjerujem da ce uvaziti nas zahtjev. Ali treba ga postavljati. "Kakav ce biti vojni rasplet u Posavini?" - Ako se, u skladu s odlukom o zaustavljanju rata u BiH na Londonskoj i Zenevskoj konferenciji vrlo brzo ne pronadje politicko rjesenje, mi tocno znamo kako cemo to vojno zavrsiti. U nasu korist. "Kada?" - Rekao sam, vrlo brzo. "Jesu li rijeseni problemi na relaciji HVO - HOS?" - Ti problemi bili su jednostrani, odnosno, nije HVO imao problema s HOS-om vec HOS sa HVO. Ali, rijec je o marginalcima koji su se uspro- tivili svehrvatskom BiH organiziranju protiv agresora kroz postrojbe HVO. Marginalna je to pojava koja je sama od sebe nestala. U BiH vise ne postoji HOS. Svi momci, pretezno veoma hrabri hrvatski vojnici, shvatili su gdje im je mjesto i vratili su se u postrojbe HVO. "Sto biste izvukli kao najznacajniji dio dogovora s muslimanskom delega- cijom?" - Dogovor o zajednickom prijedlogu buduceg ustavnog ustroja BiH. Nas politicki cilj je konzistentan, konstantan i poznat svakome u svijetu i ocijenjen je kao realan, moguc, moralan i etican. Mi cekamo, naglasava Mate Boban.
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Vjesnik 5.10. Slika zlocina koja je obisla svijet NEOPISIVA ZVJERSTVA U LOGORIMA KOD PRIJEDORA Zemlja masovnih grobnica Prema svjedocenjima slucajno prezivjelih logorasa, poslije 2. kolovoza, odmah nakon pocetka medijske kampanje protiv logora, zvjerski je ubijeno vise desetaka tisuca logorasa Omarske, Trnopolja, Keraterma Price logorasa koji su samo slucajem prezivjeli, medjusobno se podu- daraju u rekonstrukciji masakra nakon otkrica logora. U tome nam je posebno pomogao razgovor s Fikretom, cija je slika iza zice logora Kera- term obisla svijet. Ipak, mozaik stravicnih slika jos ni priblizno nije kompletan. Poslije 2. kolovoza, odmah nakon pocetka medijske kampanje protiv logora, ubijeno je vise desetaka tisuca logorasa. U prvim danima kolo- voza ubijani su posebno "stari" logorasi u najtezem stanju - da bi se sklonili od ociju svjetske javnosti. U kamione i autobuse potrpani su i odvezeni deseci tisuca logorasa. Na stanicama tih konvoja izvlaceni su iz autobusa i ubijani mladici koji su tretirani kao zdraviji i koji bi se uskoro mogli oporaviti. Posljednja saznanja govore da se na podrucju planine Vlasic u sredisnjoj Bosni i Hercegovini, kod sela Donji Koricani, a na putu od Skender Vakufa prema Travniku, na mjestu poznatom kao Koricanska stijena, nalazi masovna grobnica logorasa iz logora oko Prijedora. Svjedoci procjenjuju da je na toj lokaciji zakopano od 3000 do 5000 ljudi. Vojni izvidjaci Vojske BiH bili su svjedoci zatrpavanja tijela oko 750 ljudi samo u jednom danu. Tijela su zatrpavana bagerima u fortifika- cijske objekte i rovove za topove koji su prethodno uklonjeni. Stradali su uhvaceni civili i mnogi logorasi iz konvoja koji su isli iz podrucja Prijedora, Banje Luke, Kljuca, Mrkonjica i Skender Vakufa. O kakvom je karakteru i razmjerima genocida rijec, najvise govore mjesta odakle su konvoji kretali. Trnopolje, naselje nedaleko od Prijedora, pretvoreno je u kombinaciju lo (....) sluzile su kao mucionice, a logorasi su bili na otvorenom i opkoljeni zicom. Jedan dio stanovnistva, odnosno nesto zena i staraca, bili su u kucama izvan zice radi poslova potrebnih zlikovcima. Ovaj logor sluzio je cetnicima posebno za izivljavanje nad zenama i maloljet- nicama. Muskarci su uglavnom sluzili za skupljanje leseva svojih susjeda po okolnim selima i njivama. Jedna grupa je samo u jednom danu skupila i u masovnu jamu zakopala 700 tijela. Mjesto jame je kraj puta prema Pri- jedoru, na rubu sume Gaj, pored gostionice koja se zove "Evropa". U samom Trnopolju nalaze se masovne grobnice gotovo pored svake kuce sa pet, deset, ili 20 tijela. Omarska, rudarski kompleks nedaleko od Prijedora, pretvoren je u logor smrti krajem svibnja, kada je tu dovedeno oko 3000 ljudi da bi se taj broj povecavao i do 12.000 ljudi. Ljudi su u jednom razdoblju bili smjesteni u metalne tornjeve za utovar rude po katovima, 300 na svakom od cetiri kata. Dnevno se gusilo oko 20 ljudi. Odmah po pristizanju prvog transporta iz Kozarca ubijeno je 60 ljudi. Tih prvih dana strijeljano je i 20 milicionara iz Prijedora koji nisu Srbi. Tijela su kamionom odvezena u nepoznatom pravcu. U toku aktivnog postojanja logora u vremenu od tri mjeseca svakodnevno je ubijeno deset do dvadeset ljudi, cija tijela su odvozena i dijelom ili u potpunosti zakopavana na lokacijama rudnika: Otvoreni kop Jezero, Stari rudnik Tomasica, Novi kop Buvac, jezero kod brane Medjedja. Keraterm, tvornica kod Prijedora, pretvorena je u logor smrti kada i Omarska. Tome logoru pristup inozemnih promatraca i novinara nikad nije omogucen. U cetiri logorske prostorije uvijek je bilo smjesteno oko 3000 ljudi. Zna se pouzdano da je 27. srpnja ubijeno 190 ljudi tako sto je u pros- toriju pusten plin. Kada su logorasi posli prema izlazu, cuvari su otvorili vatru iz protuavionskih mitraljeza i iz neposredne blizine, tako da su meci bukvalnokomadali ljude. Tada je na mjestu ubijeno oko 145 ljudi a oko 45 ranjenih pusteno da iskrvari. Nakon toga tijela su potrpana u kamione i odvezena u nepoznatom pravcu. Kada su ocekivali posjet novinara, 5. kolovoza, cetnici su 120 logorasa (....) logor Omarsku. Prema tvrdnjama prezivjelih iz te grupe, odmah na putu je zaklano devet, a dio je ubijen u Omarskoj. Samo deset iz te grupe dospjelo je do Manjace. Istog dana u "radnu jedinicu" odvedeno je 25 ljudi i nikada se vise nisu vratili niti su se u nekom logoru pojavili. Takodjer toga dana deset autobusa logorasa odvezeno je za Trnopolje. Zadnji autobus koji je stigao u sumrak zadrzan je na pisti logora Trnopolje i mnogi logorasi su maltretirani te ubijani ili kasnije podlegli ranama. Obaveza svih medjunarodnih institucija i subjekata je da hitno istraze sva ta stratista, posebno "Koricanske stijene" i upoznaju svjetsku jav- nost o tim stravicnim zlocinima. MUSADIK BOROGOVAC Autor je clan grupe za istrazivanje genocida pri Uredu za humanitarnu pomoc i izbjeglice Republike BiH u Zagrebu
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----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Serbian leaders beat the drums of war Subject: Red Cross, U.N. appeal for end to ethnic violence Subject: U.S. aid flights reach Sarajevo Subject: Humaniatarian-aid flights to Sarajevo resume Subject: W.H.O. cites 'desperate race against time' Subject: Bombardment of Sarajevo intensifies Subject: Bosnian Serb leader warns against ``no-fly'' zone proposal Subject: U.N. readies vote on war-crimes commission for former Yugoslavia ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Serbian leaders beat the drums of war Date: 2 Oct 92 18:36:38 GMT BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (UPI) -- The leader of Serbian forces occupying parts of Croatia threatened Friday to launch another war if the new Yugoslav federation recognizes Croatia, and he defended the brutality of the conflict, saying this ``kind of ethnic war cannot be ended until one side is utterly exterminated.'' Goran Hadzic, the leader of ethnic Serbs in Croatia, said that Serbs would ``have no choice but (to) fight for their lives'' if the newly forged federation of Serbia and Montenegro recognized the neighboring republic of Croatia, which views Hadzic's forces as aggressors. ``If Croatia is recognized, its authorities would treat us as rebels, and we will have to fight them,'' Hadzic told reporters in Belgrade. The statement came in reaction to the first session of negotiations in Geneva between Yugoslav President Dobrica Cosic and Croatian chief of state Franjo Tudjman. Pressed by the U.N. sanctions imposed on the two-republic Yugoslavia, the authorities in Belgrade have recently started talking peace with neighboring Bosnia-Hercegovina, which is beseiged by Serbian forces, and Croatia, which is under U.N. protection after an earlier war. Hadzic, answering questions from reporters, initially denied recent claims that Serbian militiamen had been killing Croatian and Hungarian civilians. ``But, let's face it: This kind of ethnic war cannot be ended until one side is utterly exterminated,'' he said. ``I am sorry, but that is a fact of life,'' he added. Hadzic then admitted that ``some members'' of his militia ``were involved in the war crimes,'' but he said most of the alleged attrocities were commited by the other side in order to discredit the Serbs. In another development, the leader of the Serbs from Hercegovina, Bozidar Vucurevic, said that his men are ready to attack the Yugoslav federal army if it tries to pull out its heavy weapons around the region of the historic Adriatic port of Dubrovnik. Cosic and Tudjman agreed in Geneva Thursday that the army should retreat from its positions around and south of Dubrovnik by Oct. 20. ``The federal army is not retreating -- it's running away'', Vucurevic told the Belgrade-based Tanjug news agency from his mountain stronghold of Trebinje, 20 miles north of Dubrovnik. ``The runaways will be allowed to take their food rations and their water-bottles with them. If they try to take their weapons, we will fight them,'' he said. The self-proclaimed president of ``Serbian Hercegovina'' said that the Serbs would not be happy if failed to get a piece of the Dalmatian coast. Vucurevic accused the leadership of the new Yugoslav federation of deceiving the Serbs in Hercegovina. ``They started a war, and now they want us to finish it,'' he said bitterly. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Red Cross, U.N. appeal for end to ethnic violence Date: 3 Oct 92 17:26:21 GMT GENEVA (UPI) -- The International Red Cross and the U.N. High Commission for Refugees appealed jointly Saturday for an end to ethnic violence in Bosnia-Hercegovina and admitted humanitarian efforts to stop it have had little effect. Cornelio Sommaruga, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, and Sadako Ogata, director-general of the UNHCR, issued the appeal at a joint news conference. They said atrocities continue despite repeated appeals to the three ethnic groups involved in the fighting in Bosnia-Hercegovina and on-the- ground intervention by the two humanitarian organizations and others. Sommaruga said, ``The most basic principles of international humanitarian law continue to be ignored in the field,'' despite repeated promises by leaders of the Muslim, Serb and Croatian factions in Bosnia- Hercegovina that human rights would be respected. Ogata said reports from her own staff showed thousands of prisoners have been ill-treated and many have disappeared or been summarily executed in camps as part of Serbian so-called ``ethnic cleansing'' efforts. Sommaruga said this was true even in camps visited by the Red Cross. ``Acts of vengeance and indiscriminate attacks have been carried out on a massive scale, and entire regions are inaccesible to humanitarian organizations for months,'' Sommaruga said. Both Sommaruga and Ogata said tens of thousands of minority groups are still at the mercy of ``ethnic cleansing.'' They also said claims by the leaders of the Muslim, Croat and Serbian groups in Bosnia-Hercegovina that the atrocities are carried out by undisciplined guerrilla groups simply do not hold water. They repeated the call made at the London conference on Yugoslavia for humanitarian organizations to be given unrestricted access to all civilian victims and for the unconditional release of all prisoners. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: U.S. aid flights reach Sarajevo Date: 3 Oct 92 18:47:55 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- A U.S. transport plane made two deliveries of humanitarian aid to the besieged Bosnian-Hercegovina capital Saturday, ending a one-month gap that has seen food supplies dwindle to a fraction of U.N.-established minimums. Meanwhile in Strasbourg, France, Yugoslav peace negotiator Lord David Owen compared the Serbian ``ethnic cleansing'' campaign, in which Muslims have been killed in Bosnia-Hercegovina, to the Holocaust that killed millions of Jews during World War II. He added Europe could not talk of unity and at the same time turn its back on former Yugoslavia. Also Saturday, Serbian jets made bombing runs on the Bosnian towns of Zenica, Tesanj and Gradacac, and Serbian forces in the hills overlooking Sarajevo made sporadic artillery attacks on the city, Sarajevo radio reported. In Zenica, the biggest steel producing town in Bosnia-Hercegovina, jets made two bombing runs on steel production facilities, causing heavy damage to a key part of the plant, the radio said. In Tesanj, warplanes made seven bombing runs between 9:25 a.m. and 12:45 p.m., using heavy rockets, napalm and air-to-ground rockets, causing an unknown number of injuries and several fires, it said. Gradacac was bombarded from the air at 9:25 a.m., it said. Artillery fights also were reported in Doboj and in southern Bosnia- Hercegovina in and around Mostar. Sarajevo suffered sporadic shelling throughout the day, including anti-aircraft machine-gun and sniper fire. At least five people were injured by the attacks in Otes, in the southern part of the capital. A total of 24 people were reported killed and 198 wounded across Bosnia-Hercegovina, including 10 killed and 80 injured in Sarajevo, in the 24-hour period that ended at 10 a.m. Saturday, republic health officials said. Sarajevo radio also claimed Saturday that large numbers of Serbian fighters were deserting their military units, particularly in northwestern Bosnia-Hercegovina, but the reports could not be immediately verified. Serbian forces began fighting last spring to carve a separate homeland out of territory in the predominantly Muslim Slav republic of Bosnia-Hercegovina. Some moderate Serbs and Croats have joined the Muslim Slavs in trying to retain the territorial integrity of the newly independent republic. A Serbian siege of Sarajevo prompted U.N. relief efforts, which resumed Saturday -- one month after the air bridge was suspended because of the downing of an Italian relief plane over Croatian-controlled territory west of Sarajevo. Five U.N.-organized relief flights had been expected Saturday in Sarajevo, with three U.S. and two French deliveries scheduled to bring food and electrical equipment, said a spokesman for the U.N. High Commission for Refugees. But only one U.S. plane made two deliveries -- once from Frankfurt, Germany, and a second after reloading in Zagreb -- before bad weather stopped further flights. The deliveries included several thousand pounds of ``Meals Ready to Eat,'' pre-prepared meals usually used by U.S. troops. ``Obviously, because of the tense situation in Bosnia, there is some risk involved in these flights,'' said Capt. Mike Rein, spokesman for the U.S. effort at Rhein Mein Air Base in Germany. ``But the U.S. in coordination with the U.N. has decided that this effort is so important and the need for food is so critical, that even with the risk, the flights will continue -- unless and until it becomes too dangerous, at which time they will be suspended again,'' Rein said. The two planned French flights were canceled for unknown reasons. ``I wish someone would tell us'' why, said UNHCR spokesman Michael Keats in Zagreb. ``It is very confusing today.'' Nevertheless, U.N. Protection Force spokesman Adnan Razek in Sarajevo said the city could now expect as many as 20 flights a day to begin reaching the capital. Also Saturday, the first relief ground convoy in three days -- a nine- truck convoy from Split -- reached Sarajevo, the UNHCR said. Razek also said utility workers trying to restore the city's water and electricity supplies under U.N. protection made progress and could possibly have water running again in the city within hours. Both water and electricity have been out in most of the city for between one and two weeks. Salem Karovic, chief of the city's supply system, said Saturday he also was facing a new problem with a lacked the diesel fuel necessary to bring water tanker trucks into the city. Meanwhile in France, Owen -- the EC peace negotiator for the former Yugoslavia -- told the European Parliament that the European Community could not ignore the violence in Bosnia-Hercegovina and continue blithely toward unification. ``Those that believe that it is morally acceptable that Europe turn its back on what is happening in the former Yugoslavia, with the argument that they should work things out without us, should abandon the idea of European construction,'' Owen said. Owen also compared ``ethnic cleansing'' in Bosnia-Hercegovina, especially the systematic killing of Bosnian Muslims by Serbs, to the Holocaust that killed millions of Jews during World War II. ``This time the victims are Muslim, and we should be aware of the fact that Muslims live in the four corners of the earth, and they will keep in their memories what we let their brothers be submitted to,'' Owen said. Owen, who spoke at the opening debate of the 27-country parliament of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, France, also said Europe should back the principle of no acquisition of land by force and of ensuring minority rights. The Council issued a statement condemning the ``ethnic cleansing'' in the republics of the former Yugoslavia, and refusing to recognize the breakup of territory based on ethnic criteria. In a new conference later, Owen said his most urgent mission with U. N. counterpart Cyrus Vance was to succeed in efforts to demilitarize Sarajevo and its surroundings. Evoking the approaching winter, often harsh in the former Yugoslav republics, Owen said ``We need to find the the conditions, even if it takes time, to re-establish a co-existence,'' between ethnic groups. The Council called for all member countries to bring the aid necessary to the former Yugoslav populations, without which ``hundreds of thousands of people would die.'' In addition, the council called for a ban on all flights except for those carrying humanitarian aid over Bosnia-Hercegovina. The European body also supported Owen's idea to create a board for the protection of the human rights for European countries not members of the Council. Owen also said one of his next tasks with Vance was to persuade the Belgrade government of Serbia and Montenegro to recognize another ex- Yugoslav republic, Croatia, and respect its borders. He said that would be ``a real message addressed to the Serbs in Croatia and elsewhere.'' ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Humaniatarian-aid flights to Sarajevo resume Date: 4 Oct 92 01:03:50 GMT ZAGREB, Croatia (UPI) -- Humanitarian-aid flights to Sarajevo resumed Saturday after weeks of interruption caused by fierce fighting in the besieged Bosnia-Hercegovina capital. Two U.S. planes arrived without incident at Sarajevo's U.N.- controlled main airport, bringing radar equipment and 10 tons of relief supplies from Frankfurt, Germany. However, Peter Kessler, spokesman for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, said officials scrubbed a planned third flight by one of the planes because of bad weather. Two French planes had also been scheduled to fly into Sarajevo Saturday from the Croatian city of Split, but cancelled at the last minute. UNHCR did not give a reason for the delay. Hundreds of thousands of civilians in Sarajevo have been trapped without adequate food and medicine for months by fighting between Serbian guerrillas and Bosnia-Hercegovina's predominently Muslim Slav army. The Serbian fighters oppose independence from communist Yugoslav, while the Muslim Slavs favor it. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: W.H.O. cites 'desperate race against time' Date: 5 Oct 92 15:22:48 GMT GENEVA (UPI) -- Tens of thousands of lives are at stake in a ``desperate race'' against the coming winter in ex-Yugoslavia, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned Monday. Sir Donald Acheson, WHO delegate in Zagreb, said the U.N. health agency alone will need $40 million in the next seven months for medicines and medical equipment. Besides such regular medicines as antibiotics and insulin, drugs are urgently required for mental disorders caused by the trauma of hostilities, he said. ``The lives of tens of thousands of people in the former Yugoslavia re at stake in a desparate race against time: winter is coming,'' Sir Donald told a news conference. Ex-Yugoslavia, he noted, has one of the most severe winter climates in all of Europe and that the ``health crisis will cost many more lives than the conflict itself.'' There are 300,000 people without shelter, support or health services in Bosnia and Hervzogovina, the WHO official said. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Bombardment of Sarajevo intensifies Date: 5 Oct 92 12:47:57 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina -- Serbian forces in the hills overlooking Sarajevo unleased one of the heaviest assaults in their six- month seige of the Bosnian capital Monday, firing scores of artillery rounds that heavily damaged or set fire to apartment buildings, an electrical utility and a television transmitter. The attacks began with sporadic overnight grenading throughout the city, particularly in the southwestern area of Dobrinja, and escalated into a heavy downtown attack, using grenades, mortars and tank fire. Between 50 and 100 injured people were brought during the morning to the city's main Hosevo hospital complex, mostly from the center of the old town section and Pero Kosoric Square, a front-line area just south of the Miljacka River, a hospital official said. The city's state hospital, which said it handled only nine patients during a relatively quiet day Sunday, said at 11 a.m. Monday it already had 20 patients and more were arriving. Thick black smoke poured from a downtown business office of Elektroprivreda, BVsnia-Hercegovina's main electricity supplier, blotting out the early morning sun while loud explosions continued to thunder around it. ``The damage is so big that the building probably wont be there anymore,'' said Slobodan Primorac, deputy to the general manager at Elektroprivreda. ``After the fire was started, we counted 12 phosphorus grenades (designed to start fires), and supposed that altogether about 20 of them hit the building.'' Monday morning's barrage on the capital came from Serbian-controlled areas of Vraca, a hilly area in the southern part of the city, and nearby Ozrenska Street, Sarajevo radio reported. The mortars, grenades and tank shells repeatedly hit Pero Kosoric Square, killing and injuring an unknown number of people, the radio said. The bombardment also hit numerous apartment buildings along Darovalaca Krvi Street, setting them on fire, it said. Sporadic sniper firing into the city also began around 7 a.m., the radio said. The downtown Holiday Inn, which houses many foreign journalists, also was hit around 8:15 a.m. on the fifth floor, facing south toward Grbavica, and set on fire. Two journalists working for the French television network TF-1 were slightly injured by flying glass on the ground floor, said Amra Abadzic, a translator for the Reuters news agency. Rockets hit and set fire to the the downtown offices of the Post Telegraph and Telephone building and a nearby tobacco factory, Sarajevo radio said. The attack on the telephone exchange building caused unknown damage but no reported injuries, said Enes Arnautovic, general director of PTT in Ssarajevo. Bosnian Vice President Ejub Ganic said Sunday that Serbian forces apparently were embarking on a new campaign to wipe out major economic targets that could be left in areas they fail to control. Houses around the offices hit Monday morning in Sarajevo also were badly damaged and burning, Sarajevo radio said. The television transmitter on Hum Hill, to the north of the city, also took a direct hit, it said. Around 9 a.m. a water truck that brought water daily to Pofalici, in the north-central part of the city, was directly hit while driving along a road, it said. Vogosca, a northern suburb of Sarajevo also suffered a heavy grenada attack during the morning, Sarajevo radio said. Commercial gas supplies to the city went out around 9 p.m. Sunday evening. A gas company worker said officials traced the outage to a break in a substation and planned to investigate the cause monday. Electricity and water supplies to Sarajevo, which have been out for between several days and several weeks across the city, remained out despite continued efforts by U.N. protection force troops to accompany repair crews to damaged facilities. Sarajevo radio said electricity had been restored to the citys main wellfield and pumping station in the Serbian-controlled western suburb of Bacevo, allowing service to be resumed in the adjacent serbian- controlled city of Ilidza, but it said the lines serving Sarajevo remained badly damaged. Telephone service inside the city, which was partially disconnected Saturday because of a lack of fuel for electricity generators, was restored Monday. But Arnautovic said the telephone company only had enough diesel fuel to run the system for another two days. Dr. Bakir Nakas, director of the state hospital, said Monday morning that his facility had enough diesel fuel for run its generators for another four hours and the Kosevo complex had enough for another seven hours. Elsewhere in Bosnia-Hercegovina, the small town of Olovo, just north of Sarajevo, was hit by some 850 rounds of artillery fire over a 24-hour period ending Monday morning, Sarajevo radio reported. And the village of Mionica in Gradacac, in northeastern Bosnia- Hercegovina, was hit by an estimated 2,000 grenades in a two-hour period beginning at 4 a.m. monday, the radio said. The area had been suffering almost daily aerial bombing. Maglaj, northwest of the capital, also came under another round of heavy attacks, the radio said. The heavy attacks followed a rainy and relatively quiet weekend and came one day before the head of the newly formed UNPROFOR operation for Bosnia-Hercegovina, was due to visit Sarajevo and meet again with Bosnian Serb leaders. French Gen. Phillipe Morillon planned a Tuesday visit the Bosnian Serb headquarters in nearby Pale and travel wednesday to the Serbian capital Belgrade. Topics for the meeting were expected to include the new headquarters for the republic's UNPROFOR command. UNPROFOR officials were hoping to place it in Ilidza, which would help break a main bottleneck for humanitarian aid convoys reaching Sarajevo by land. A 10-truck convoy orgnanized by the U.N. High Commission for Refugees brought another 100 tons of food aid to SWrajevo on Monday, but workers were prevented by the heavy shelling from unloading, said Marc Vachon, the UNHCR's chief of logistics at the Sarajevo airport. Three U.N.-organized aid flights also reached the city Monday morning and another four flights were expected, but French crews canceled four scheduled flights because of the weather, Vachon said. The three flights that arrived in the morning -- two American and one Canadian -- brought two loads of food aid and more equipment for the radar system being installed at the airport, he said. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Bosnian Serb leader warns against ``no-fly'' zone proposal Date: 5 Oct 92 21:59:19 GMT BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (UPI) -- Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic warned Monday that he would pull out of internationally brokered peace talks if the United Nations approves a proposal to close the airspace over war-torn Bosnia-Hercegovina to all but humanitarian aid flights. The Tanjug news agency in a dispatch from Geneva said Karadzic's warning was in a letter he sent to the U.N. Security Council, which was expected to consider the ``no-fly'' zone proposal late Monday in New York. The 12-nation European Community and the United States agreed in principle at an international conference on the Yugoslav crisis held in London in August to support a U.N. resolution banning all flights over Bosnia-Hercegovina except those delivering humanitarian aid. In a statement last week President Bush said that the United States will seek a new U.N. resolution of a ``no-fly'' zone , ``banning all flights in Bosnian airspace except those authorized by the U.N,'' adding that the United States would participate in the enforcement of measures if asked by the U.N. The proposal would require warplanes of the nations participating in the U.N.-sponsored humanitarian airlift to Sarajevo to interdict flights by military planes supplied to Karadzic's forces by the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army. Serbian aircraft have been used extensively in the Serbian drive to rip a self-declared state out of the former Yugoslav republic of Muslim Slavs, Serbs and Croats, reportedly making daily bombing runs in support of Serbian ground forces. Tanjug quoted Karadzic's letter as saying that if the ``no-fly'' zone was instituted, the Serbian leader would withdraw from peace negotiations being brokered in Geneva by the United Nations and the EC between the warring factions. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: U.N. readies vote on war-crimes commission for former Yugoslavia Date: 6 Oct 92 00:03:22 GMT UNITED NATIONS (UPI) -- The Security Council is prearing to vote Tuesday on resolutions to establish a war-crimes commission and to declare the Prevlaka peninsula in the former Yugoslavia a demilitarized zone. The 15-nation panel also is considering a third resolution over establishing a ``flight interdiction (zone) for military aircraft'' in Bosnia-Hercegovina in an effort to ground the Serbian air force. The so-called ``no-fly zone'' in Bosnia-Hercegovina, supported mostly by the United States, has not met unanimous support from other Western nations because it would be difficult to implement. Those nations said Serbian forces would retaliate against U.N. peacekeeping troops if the zone is set up. Serbian leader Radovan Karadzic warned in a letter on Monday to Secretary-General Boutros Ghali that if the council voted in favor of the ``no-fly zone,'' he would pull out of the London conference on the former Yugoslavia. ``In the event that the Security Council decides to override the negotiated agreement several days ago, I must regretfully inform you that we will immediately withdraw from the London conference and close our mission in Geneva,'' Karadzic said. Karadzic said the exclusion zone for air traffic would be ``unacceptable'' because it would give strategic advantage to Bosnian Muslims, ``which will be in breach of another London conference decision on the delivery of humanitarian aid.'' Western diplomats said the air exclusion zone would be difficult to implement and they have been trying to reach a compromise whereby the zone would be implemented in two stages, with the imposition of the zone first and military enforcement if Serbian forces did not comply with it. In a private meeting Monday, the Security Council agreed on a text for setting up the war-crimes commission. It first will call on Ghali to collect within 30 days all information related to human rights violations and ``grave violations'' of the 1949 Geneva Convention on the protection of civilians during war time in the former Yugoslavia. The council would call on Ghali to set up an impartial commission of experts to ``examine and analyze'' all information received. The experts are asked to obtain information themselves or by other means and to present to the secretary-general the evidence of those violations. British U.N. Ambassador David Hannay said he expected the council to adopt the war-crimes commission resolution unanimously. He said the council's 15 members would also support the second resolution declaring Prevlaka peninsula a demilitarized zone and demanding the withdrawal of heavy weapons from the neighboring regions in Croatia and Montenegro. Several members of the council said the establishment of the war- crimes commission would be the first step toward bringing to trial those responsible for the reported execution of Muslim Slavs in Bosnia- Hercegovina. The next step would be setting up a tribunal.
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Los Angeles Times Oct 5, 1992 ... The United Nations Protection Force said it expressed consternation to the Croatian government after two U.N. helicopters came under fire while approaching Zagreb on a medical evacuation mission Friday. It said its director of civil affairs, Cedric Thornberry, had written to Croatian Vice President Ivan Milas asking what steps the government was taking to prevent any further such occurrences. Both helicopters landed safely and without damage at Zagreb airport. A similar attack last Monday was later blamed by Croatia on a soldier opening fire without orders. ...
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New Yorker, Oct. 5/1992 NEWS FROM HELL by Anna Husarska SARAJEVO FIRST, the flak jackets. They come in many sizes, colors, and weights. The ones for ladies are shorter than the gents'. The latter have an additional flap in the front, a "quick-draw groin protector," or "tongue," which can be pulled down or unfolded for extra protection. The really good jackets (the genuinely bulletproof ones) are made of a material called Kevlar and come fitted out with a pair of H.V.P.s, or high-velocity panels. These are concave ceramic plates for the chest and back which weigh a lot but give real protection against sniper bullets. Lying down in any sort of H.V.P.-equipped gear is a bad idea; you may end up like a beetle on its back. Almost all the jackets close with Velcro straps, so at the start of any press conference in some relatively safe building here there is a terrible rasping noise as up to forty journalists tear their straps open. The main trick is to close them around the waist tightly so that the jacket sits on the hips (great for elimination of love handles) instead of hanging heavily on the shoulders (a real back killer). Some models have high- standing collars; others have smaller ones, a la Mao; and still others are cut like old-fashioned men's underwear vests, and these are particularly appreciated by cameramen, because the Kevlar shoulder pads of the standard ones are too bulky and unstable to provide a good "platform" for a camera. A label on the H.V.P. lists all the different impacts (single and multiple) that the panel will stop. -- Picture: A page found in the burned-out National Library in Sarajevo. -- ny.zip
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The following is the text of the joint declaration signed by Dr. Franjo Tudjman and Mr. Dobrica Cosic, and witnessed by Mr. Cyrus Vance and Lord David Owen in Geneva on September 30, 1992. JOINT DECLARATION Meeting under the auspices of the Co-Chairman of the International Conference on the Former Yugoslavia in Geneva, the undersigned Presidents wish to announce the following: 1. The two Presidents reaffirmed the commitments of the International Conference in London on the inviolability of existing borders, other than through changes reached by peaceful agreement, and agreed to intensify work towards the normalization of relations between the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the Republic of Croatia, on the basis of mutual recognition. All questions concerning succession of the former SFRY will be resolved within the framework of the International Conference or, as appropriate, bilaterally. 2. Authorities of the Republic of Croatia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, in close collaboration with the United Nations Protection Force, will undertake urgent, joint measures to ensure the peaceful return to their homes in the United Nations Protected Areas of all persons displaced therefrom who so wish. To that end they propose the prompt establishment of a quadripartite mechanism - consisting of authorities of the Government of Croatia, local Serb representatives, representatives of UNPROFOR and the UNHCR - to assure that this process moves forward. Equally, Serb and Croat people formerly residing on the territory of the Republic of Croatia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia should have the right to return in peace to their former homes. Agreement was reached with regard to more resolute action concerning the return of displaced persons to their homes, and to allowing for a voluntary and humane resettlement of those persons wishing to do so between the two States. 3. The two Presidents agree that the Yugoslav Army will leave Prevlaka by October 20, 1992 in accordance with the Vance Plan. Security in the area will be resolved by demilitarization and the deployment of the UN Monitors. The overall security of Boka Kotorska and Dubrovnik will be resolved through subsequent negotiations. 4. The two Presidents agree to establish a Joint Interstate Committee for the consideration of all open issues and for the normalization of relations between the sovereign Republic of Croatia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. In order that a durable peace may be established as soon as possible, particular attention will be given to normalizing traffic and economic links. 5. The two Presidents confirm their conviction that all problems between their two States must be settled peacefully. They pledge their best efforts to this end. In that connection, they will exert all their influence towards a just, peaceful solution of the current crisis enveloping Bosnia and Herzegovina. 6. The two Presidents declare their total condemnation of all practices related to "ethnic cleansing," and commit themselves to helping reverse that which has already happened. They also declare that all statements or commitments made under duress, particularly those relating to land and property, are wholly null and void. They urge all concerned parties to cooperate fully, promptly and unconditionally with current efforts, in particular by the ICRC and the UNHCR, to free all detainees, close all detention centers, and assure safe passage of former detainees to secure and safe areas. They further urge all parties to facilitate the safe delivery of all humanitarian assistance. 7. The two Presidents welcome the early stationing of international observers on airfields in their respective countries as a confidence-building measure. 8. The two Presidents agree to meet again on October 20 with the Co-Chairman. They express their gratitude to the Co-Chairman for convening today's meeting.
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----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Serbian attack leaves Sarajevo in flames Subject: Yugoslav Army announces retreat from Prevlaka Subject: Serbian President Milosevic meets Bobby Fischer Subject: U.N. troops allow Bosnian refugees into Croatia ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Serbian attack leaves Sarajevo in flames Date: 6 Oct 92 14:33:25 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- Serbian forces bombarded Sarajevo with artillery, tank and machine-gun fire Tuesday, a day after one of the most vicious assaults in their six-month seige destroyed offices and apartment buildings, leaving dozens of civilians dead and thousands homeless. Streams of the screaming and crying homeless were forced after a day of relentless bombing to flee their flaming homes with only handfulls of possessions. They fled overnight through the rain of artillery to cross the Miljacka River from front-line apartments in southern Sarajevo. The apartments, blasted head-on by tanks and artillery only a few hundred feet away, included five 20-floor buildings along Pero Kosoric Square whose multi-story infernos lit up the skies across the bosnian capital throughout the evening. The city's three main hospitals said at least 19 people died and they treated 175 injured people, many of them burned. At least eight residential buildings and four office buildings were set on fire or destroyed during the day-long attack Monday by Serbian forces in the hills ringing the strangled Bosnian capital. The republic's health officials, in their daily casualty count, said at least 34 people were killed and 241 injured across Bosnia-Hercegovina in the 24-hour period that ended at 10 a.m. Tuesday, including 25 killed and 133 injured in Sarajevo. Some 2,800 to 3,000 people were estimated to have been left homeless from the assault on Pero Kosoric Square, said Bejadin Abdulovski, commanding officer of Bosnian defense forces for the neighborhood. ``Everybody was down in the basement screaming,'' said Jasmina Jusubasic, who had lived on the top floor of one of the gutted 20-story buildings with her mother and 5-year-old daughter. The two women, who arrived Tuesday with three handbags seeking help at a small hotel a few streets back from the river, sat trembling and weeping while nursing some food and coffee and trying to telephone a friend. The grandmother, her hair tied under a shawl, shook and wrung her hands each time another boom of artillery fire rang out in the background. Her granddaughter, Ira, sat between the women playing quietly with some candy bars given to her by a hotel worker. Jusubasic said many of the 500 people who lived in her apartment were hiding in the basement when the smoke from the fires above started seeping in through the vents. In panic, the people began smashing tiny windows about 3-feet-by-2- feet wide and tried pushing themselves through. Some could not make it and remained inside, Jusubasic said. The grandmother, Semsa Solaja, said she believed at least six people in the building died, including ``one person everyone could hear inside screaming but nobody could do anything about.'' Jusubasic said the explosions were intensified when flames began falling onto a Bosnian military headquarters stationed between two of the apartment buildings, as well as when the fire caught ammunition apparently kept inside private residences. People trying to fight the fires in the square, named after a Serbian World War II military hero, carried buckets of water from the river in a futile bid to compensate for the city's lost water supply. At least two fires were still burning inside apartment buildings Tuesday morning and workers were unable to provide exact figures on casualties and homeless. But Abdulovski said only about 50 of the 900 apartments in the five 20-story buildings on Pero Kosoric square were still usable. Those treated at the city's hospitals monday included a 10-year-old girl whose arm was amputated and a 17-year-old boy who lost both legs, doctors said. The city's two main hospitals said they were operating Tuesday in the dark because they lacked diesel fuel to run generators. Both said they had run out of all but a handful of sterile instruments being saved for absolute emergency cases. The larger of the two facilities, the Kosevo complex, despite problems, reported nine births overnight, five girls and four boys, Sarajevo radio reported. Sarajevo residents have been without water and electricity for between several days and several weeks, despite continued efforts by U. N. troops to guarantee the safety of utility workers trying to make repairs. City electricians have received commitments from Serbian forces to visit only one of 16 locations they believe need repair work, Sarajevo radio said Tuesday. An official with Sarajevo's commercial gas utility said workers believe a line break that has cut off supplies to the city for the past two days is located in Serbian-controlled territory and the utility was seeking a U.N. escort to investigate. Elsewhere Tuesday, the city of Jajce, in the central part of Bosnia- Hercegovina, came under fire around 7 a.m. from 120mm mortars, 155mm artillery and tanks, Sarajevo radio reported. The shooting was aimed throughout the town and hit a mosque, a Catholic church and civilian structures, causing an unknown number of casualties, the radio said. Tesanj, in the central part of the republic, suffered an artillery barrage and an infantry attack Tuesday that was beaten back by Bosnian defenders, Sarajevo radio said. Defenders in Bihac, in the far northwestern part of the republic near the border with Croatia, also fought off a Serbian infantry attack, the radio said. Infantry battles and artillery attacks also were reported in various areas of the Zenica region, in the central part of the republic, causing an unknown number of casualties, the radio said. An uneasy calm came Tuesday to Bugojno, west of Sarajevo, after several days of heavy fighting and aerial bombardments that destroyed a major industrial complex, the radio said. The U.N. Security Council also was planning to vote Tuesday on three matters concerning the yugoslav conflicting, including a U.S. proposal for banning military flights over bosnia-hercegovina. the other two resolutions would establish a war crimes commission and declare the Prevlaka peninsula in the former Yugoslavia a demilitarized zone. Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic threatened Monday to pull out of the ongoing peace talks in Geneva if the United Nations accepts the flight ban, although he reportedly later said he would accept such a restriction if Bosnian attacks on his forces are halted. French Gen. Phillipe Morillon, commander of the U.N. protection forces new Bosnian operations, flew Tuesday into Sarajevo to begin a two-day visit to the area. He planned to meet bosnian government leaders in downtown Sarajevo and visit the bosnian serb headquarters in nearby Pale before traveling Wednesday to the Serbian capital Belgrade. Another 12 U.N. High Commission for Refugees relief flights were due to arrive Tuesday in Sarajevo, although Izumi Nakamitsu, head of the operation, said the day's steady rain might force many cancellations. No truck convoys were due in the city tuesday, she said. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Yugoslav Army announces retreat from Prevlaka Date: 6 Oct 92 14:40:19 GMT BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (UPI) -- The army of rump Yugoslavia Tuesday reaffirmed its intention to withdraw from Croatia's disputed Adriatic peninsula of Prevlaka within the next two weeks. The announcement, carried by the official Tanjug news agency, came just hours before the U.N. Security Council was scheduled to vote on a resolution declaring Prevlaka a demilitarized zone and placing it under U.N. observation. The army of the union forged by Serbia and Montenegro said that its units and equipment would be ``transferred'' by Oct. 20 from the peninsula and the surrounding region as required by a Sept. 29 pact reached in Geneva between Yugoslav President Dobrica Cosic and his Croatian counterpart, Franjo Tudjman. But the army warned that should Croatia violate the agreement to create a demilitarize zone on the peninsula, it would ``use all of its potential to defend'' the main Yugoslav navy base at adjacent Boka Kotorska Bay. Prevlaka is a 1.5 mile-long stony finger of Adriatic coast that controls the entrance to Boka Kotorska Bay, where most of the Yugoslav fleet is located. It has been the subject of a bitter dispute because it is located just inside the border of Croatia, whose secession from former Yugoslavia last year ignited a civil war. The Yugoslav army used the peninsula's strategic importance as a major justification for its year-long siege of Croatia's port city of Dubrovnik and occupation of a 100-mile-long swath of coastline stretching south from the famed Adriatic resort to Prevlaka. During talks in Geneva with Tudjman, Cosic agreed to order the Yugoslav army's withdrawl from Prevlaka on condition that it was declared a demilitarized zone and placed under U.N. observation. The agreement was met by a wave of protests by Serbian extremists, who claimed that the surrender of Prevlaka would jeopardize Yugoslavia's strategic interests, and they accused Cosic of treason. There had also been speculation that the army would refuse to leave a 50-year-old military base on Prevlaka. Political analysts saw the army's announcement as a clear sign that senior generals support ongoing efforts by Cosic and Yugoslav Prime Minister Milan Panic to restore peace to former Yugoslavia. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Serbian President Milosevic meets Bobby Fischer Date: 6 Oct 92 17:12:52 GMT BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (UPI) -- Communist President Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia met Tuesday with former world chess champion Bobby Fischer as the grand master took a two-day break from his historic rematch with his Russian arch-rival, Boris Spassky. The authoritarian Serbian leader used the meeting to launch a new attack on U.N. economic sanctions slapped on his republic for underwriting the Serbian territorial conquests in neighboring Bosnia- Hercegovina. ``I am glad that our country is in the position to be the host of such a significant chess match between Fischer and Spassky...especially at a time when our nation is under an unjust blockade,'' Milosevic was quoted by the official Tanjug news agency as telling the American chess wizard. The Fischer-Spassky match has been extensively publicized by Milosevic's regime in a bid to counter the international isolation and economic devastation wrought to Serbia by the U.N. sanctions. The May 30 blockade included an oil, air and trade embargo and banned financial transactions with Serbia and its tiny protege, Montenegro. Despite the prohibition, Fischer and Spassky agreed to play a $5 million rematch of their 1972 world champiomship at the invitation of a private Belgrade banker, Jezdimir Vasiljevic. The U.S. Treasury Department ordered Fischer not to play, but he publicly spat on the document at a news conference on the eve of the opening game at the posh Adriatic resort of St. Stefan in Montenegro. The pair have played 15 games -- beginning in St. Stefan and then moving to Belgrade -- of which Fischer has won five and Spassky three. They were to resume the match on Wednesday after a two-day break. By the time Fischer was 14, he was U.S. chess champion. A year later he became the youngest grandmaster in chess history. He captured the world's attention by defeating Spassky and becoming the first American ever to hold the title of world champion on Sept. 1, 1972. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: U.N. troops allow Bosnian refugees into Croatia Date: 6 Oct 92 17:40:55 GMT ZAGREB, Croatia (UPI) -- Soldiers from the U.N. Protection Force have set up a tent city for about 400 Muslims who fled from war-torn Bosnia- Hercegovina over the weekend into the Serbian-occupied area of Croatia that is now under U.N. protection. The action was taken by the Danish battalion of the U.N. force even though the Croatian government has closed its border to refugees because of a lack of resources to cope with the flood of people. The refugees came across the border on foot Friday night during the first heavy rains of winter. ``It's not something we normally do but their lives were threatened,'' said a U.N. official who refused to be identified. ``Croatia certainly was not going to take them in. The Danish battalion felt compelled to act in a humanitarian way...Of course we weren't going to turn them back.'' The military unit established a tent camp for the 400 refugees in the town of Vojnic, which is located in the Serbian-occupied area of Croatia that is currently under the supervision of the Danish battalion of the U.N. force. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees has asked the Croatian government to house the refugees temporarily but has not received a reply. ``We are beholden to the mercy of the Croatian government,'' said Michael Keats, spokesman for the UNHCR in the Croatian capitol, Zagreb. Croatia is already home to about 650,000 refugees, who make up about 10 percent of the republic's current population. In mid-September the Croatian government changed it's policy toward refugees. Previously the republic allowed refugees if they had a letter of guarantee from people in Croatia that they would house and feed them. But the policy was abused Croatian government officials said. ``People would give out guarantee letters freely, then after a few days the refugees would show up at shelters saying: 'Please take us. We need a bed and food. The people can't take care of us anymore,''' said Josip Esteraher, a spokesman for the Croatian government's office for refugees. Now the refugees can only come into Croatia if they are en route to other countries. ``We can't afford it any more. Other countries have to help,'' Esteraher said. Housing and feeding the people takes up about 20 percent of the state budget, Esteraher said. This latest incident is indicative of a larger problem that the UNHCR will be facing soon, Keats said. The UNHCR estimates there are approximately 250,000 people who want to leave Bosnia-Hercegovina but they are caught in a ``Catch-22'' situation because there is nowhere for them to go, Keats said. They are often forced to become refugees in their own republic, Keats said. At the end of September, Serbian forces transported about 2,500 people, mostly Muslims from northwest Bosnia-Hercegovina, to Travnik in central Bosnia-Hercegovina. There they were forced to run across the front lines to Muslim-held territory while the Serbs fired shots at them. Four people were killed. ``In northern Bosnia there is a whole stretch of people who just want to get out, but the question is what are you going to do with them,'' Keats said.
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HU.N. SAYS SARAJEVO CHILDREN ON BRINK OF STARVATION By Philippe Naughton GENEVA, Oct 5, Reuter - A United Nations health expert warned on Monday that large numbers of Sarajevo children would begin dying of starvation by the end of this month unless an international airlift to the city was beefed up immediately. Two days after the airlift's hesitant resumption, U.N. advisor Sir Donald Acheson said the Bosnian capital's needs were greater than ever before as winter approached. ``The fuse is beginning to burn and unless 240 tonnes of food get into Sarajevo every day...you will see children dying of starvation by the end of October,'' Acheson, Britain's former public health chief, told a news conference. ``We have a situation which requires action today. We have no time for delays.'' The U.N.-run airlift was suspended on September 3 after an Italian cargo plane was downed in a missile attack. Despite security guarantees from the warring factions, only three of the 19 countries originally involved have agreed to resume flights. Acheson, who himself travelled with the ill-fated Italian crew two days before they were killed, said the airlift during the summer averaged between 190 and 220 tonnes of food a day. With the mountain city already hit by fog and winter snows expected soon to hamper flights further, he said Sarajevo needed 480 tonnes a day for the next month to build up reserves for the worst of the winter. Instead, its 380,000 besieged residents had been getting only around 40 tonnes of food a day for the past month, all of it via difficult road convoys. Citing a report by British nutritionist Philip James, who compared the siege of Sarajevo with the siege of Leningrad in World War Two, he added: ``At this rate of food supply children and adults will enter a state of profound semi-starvation with children dying within three to four weeks. ``Adult men and women will lose five to eight kilos per week and become severely deficient within eight weeks. Previous siege experience suggests an escalating mortality within two weeks of the clear signs of starvation, e.g. leg swelling. ``If food stocks run out in ten days time and road supplies continue at the current rate then the population will enter a critical state by mid-November,'' he added. Acheson, the official public health advisor to the UNHCR office in Zagreb, said there were various ways round the shortfall, including the use of large Russian Ilyushin cargo planes capable of carrying 40 tonnes at a time. He also renewed an appeal for trucks to expand road convoys into Sarajevo. The UNHCR, which currently has 80 trucks on the road in the former Yugoslavia, says it needs at least 200 just for food convoys and as many as 500 to implement a full ``winterization'' programme. According to the UNHCR, as many as 400,000 people could perish because of the cold in former Yugoslavia this winter. Acheson's warning was echoed by Lord Owen, the co- chairman of the month-old Yugoslav peace conference in Geneva. Owen told reporters on Monday it was a ``great sadness'' that plans to provide winter shelter for refugees and displaced persons was so far behind. Owen, who is trying to persuade the three warring factions to agree to the demilitarisation of Sarajevo, said large-scale starvation could only now be avoided if hostilities were ended. ``People will die of cold this winter in substantial numbers, letting alone from lack of food. The crucial question is the military one,'' Owen said.
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CHARITY LEADER CONDEMNS ``COWARDICE'' OVER YUGOSLAVIA STRASBOURG, France, Oct 5, Reuter - The head of a leading French medical charity blasted Western policy on the former Yugoslavia on Tuesday, accusing political leaders of effectively condoning atrocities through ``cowardice and resignation.'' ``The lesson for any budding dictator...is: massacre, deport, purify, build concentration camps -- do what you want as long as you let a few humanitarian convoys in,'' said Rony Brauman, head of Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF). ``Humanitarianism in these conditions is no more than a mask for political inaction, the modern name for cowardice and resignation,'' Brauman said in an outspoken speech to accept the Council of Europe's Human Rights prize. MSF has been among leading non-governmental agencies bringing relief to Bosnia-Herzegovina since the beginning of the republic's inter-ethnic war in April. It has sent in 20 tonnes of medical equipment alone. Brauman did not say what he though the West should do to stop the bloodletting between Serbs, Moslems and Croats. Western leaders have resisted calls for full-scale military intervention to halt what they see as Serb aggression, saying the goals of such an operation were too unclear and very difficult to achieve. Brauman's predecessor at MSF was Bernard Kouchner, now French Humanitarian Aid Minister and one of the architects of the West's humanitarian airlift to Bosnia. They have long been critics of each other's methods.
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Lawrence Eagleburger - MacNeil-Lehrer Tuesday 6. October Newsmaker interview: M-L: I have just received raport from the Security Council just adopted resolu- tion establishing the first ever war crimes committee to investigate the all- eged attrocities in the former Yugoslavia. Is that an important step? Eagleburger: Oh yes, I think it is. It is the proposal we introduced in the Security Council. And it has two purposes: one is to establish the facts on what is going on in the past in terms of war crimes, and it is also I hope, a warning to those in Yugoslavia who have been commiting these acts that they better watch out from now on, because it will be people watching them. So hopefully it will have a deterent effect as well. M-L: How close is the United nations now to improving the no-fly zone over Bosnia. Eagleburger: Well ther is still a debate gonig on, we have proposed a resolution which would call for a no-fly zone and at a same time said if it is violated the force may be used to police it. There was a good bit of a debate in the Security Council with the number of the other permanent members of the SC not particularly enthusiastic about moving to the enforcment stage , at least at first. So we are still in the informal debate with the number of the SC members, we will be looking at this again tomorow, but it is clasic case of that everybody needs to remember. This is multilateral institution and we have to be in a aggrement with all the parties and we are not quite there yet. M-L: tell me exactly the purpose of this no-fly zone. E: there are I think several purposes. the fact of the matter is that the Bosnian Serbs have been flying attack flights for some time now, they have benn in efect threatening the air zone where the humanitarian flights were coming in. It is more than a nuisance, it is very serious problem, and at the London conference about a month ago supposedly, everybody agreed that there will be no more such flights, but as is often the case and in this particular situation, the Bosnian Serbs are not carrying out their commitments so we think it is now time for the SC to mandate that and to make it clear in the same time that if the SC demand is not met, that there will be force to make sure that it is. There is still debate on that second part of it. M-L: Bosnian Serbs said today through their foreign minister mr Buha, that they will imediately stop military flights, and that is been interpreted as effort to head off this no-fly zone move in the UN. Do you believe them this time? E: I believe that it is an attempt to head off the resolution, they also qualify it by saying if the Bosnian Moslems or Croats took advantage of this to attack, then they would return again it's so fuzzy that you can't be particularly certain of how serious they are, but they are wery clearly worried by ehat is going on in the SC. I think they want to try to head off the SC resolution on the basis of to much past history. I wouldn't put too much creedence in their words. M-L: Now there is a difference, isn't there, in intention this time and that is actualy to protect some of the Muslim people in Bosnia from Serbian attack. Whereas previous US policy was to protect (use force if neccesaru) to protect relief supplies. E: well certanly that would be part of the consequence yes. You have to put it in two pieces. First of all there is the question of flying and what it does to threaten humanitarian flights, in addition there is no quetion, that if you impose a no-fly zone, it means that the Bosnian Serbs can't use their aircraft to attack the Bosnian Muslims. That is correct. M-L[ I gather from the reports today, that the British and the French would rather that there were two stages : you declare a no-fly zone and then observers on the ground see whether that is being observed before you move to the stage which you want US wants, of immediately having patroling flights to monitor and observe. Is that fair? E: yes, that is fair representation of their view against ours, and I dont know if we are having any argument of puting observers on the ground in this airfields, and so forth. They can I suppose watch the planes take off and land and hopefully that would have some deterent effect. But we feel very strongly that it is important for the SC to make it clear that its resolutions are to be obeyed. As I said earlier this is the multilateral institution. We will have to debate with the our collegues in the SC, and probably will have to come to some compromise. M-L: They are apparently worried that the French , who have troups on the ground and the British who will, might have those troups retaliated against by the Serbians, whereas the US has no troups on the ground to be retaliated against. E: Look. There is no question that the decision that the president finaly made to go to no-fly zone with some theeths in it, is in fact the tough decision. And there is no argument that we had debate within the US government we are now having debate with some of our allies. there is no question at all that moving to this step has some consequences with it as well and they are a lot of heavy chested ....newspaper editors who dont seem to recognize that it is a comlicated problem, and there are consequences to our alies. The president decided I think rightly that the situation in and around Sarajevo is disatruous now ,that we need to move hard and fast to prevent it becoming worse , but I can understand the argument of the French and the British or anyone else saying : look there are consequences with this that we need to pin through. M-L: Some reports are suggesting Mr. Bush have changed his policy because he was being pressured by the governor Clinton who was urging more US involvment. Is that the reason the President changed his policy. E: No no, ...... M-L: It is also being suggested that the administration was sensitive to apparent inconsistency with policy in Iraq, where a no-fly zone was .... in, Us planes together with the British and French and some other planes have been enforcing that. Why you were willing to do it in the Iraq, where there is not obvious .... danger to civilians , why not do it in Yugoslavia? Were you sensitive to that argument? E: There is no question. We are very sensitive to the Muslim world view, that the west is permiting the killing of Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina while acting differently in Iraq. The situation is totaly different. So I mean it is very clear you can impose a no-fly zone in Iraq for totaly different reasons, but the point nevertheless ... is that the Moslem world looks on the gas more and more as the Moslems in Bosnia and Herzegovina are killed, and that there is no question at all that this waights heavily on the president and on of all of us who tried to think through this problem. Again the situa- tion is totaly different but the fact of the matter is Moslems are being killed in Bosnia Herzegovina. And this government is trying to demonstrate to the Moslim world we care about it, and want to do something about it. M-L: So president is now prepared to put American war planes into the sjy ower Bosnia if the UN asks for it. E: Again I dont want to commit the president, but It seems to me that is fairly obvious that if in fact the no-fly zone were passed with the teeth in it that we want, the president would be prepared to contribute to the enforcemtn od the no-fly zone, Yes. M-L: And if the Serbian planes interfiered would they be shot down? E: Again I dont want to speculate other than to say that you can assume the US would be prepared to make sure that the no-fly zone was carried out and I suppose if that requires the use of force, we would be prepared to do that. M-L: Moving to the other piece of the situation which has so many people so concerned with, particularly with winter advancing . What is the US doing to increase the quantity or proportion of relief suplies actually reaching? E: It is a tough problem. And again, as winter comes about it is going to be much tougher to get the food in by plane becouse the airport is fogged over most of the time. One, we are trying to get as much by air as we can all being virtualy US is almost alone in flying aircraft in it at this point, and if not alone we are contributing the major part. Trying roads ... doignour best... M-L: And the US will be prepared to use force to in some way in conjuction with other countries to protect those road convoys? E: Again you are asking me to make commitment for the president. The fact of the matter is we have already SC resolution which says all necessary means to assure that humanitarian aids reach there. It is a decision for the Secretary General of the UN and the UNPROFOR as to what that force might be, obviously we will be ready to support whatever the decision is. M-L: Briefly mr Secretary, does US government believe these very alarming estimates of how many people men, women and children, would starve this winter if some solution isnt found E: Believe is probably the wrong word. We are prepared to accept as potentialy possible that a very substantial deaths this winter through starvation if food and medicine does not get to these people. It could be a herendous problem and we are doing everything we can to make sure it doesnt happen M-L: Secretary Eagleburger, thank you for joining us.
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RFE/RL Daily Report No. 191, 5 October 1992 SUCCESSOR STATES TO THE USSR HEAVY FIGHTING IN ABKHAZIA. On 2 October some 3,000-4,000 Abkhaz National Guardsmen and volunteers from the North Caucasus captured the town of Gagra after heavy fighting with the 200 Georgian troops there; some 100 people were killed, Western agencies reported. The Georgian State Council announced plans to mobilize 40,000 reservists. State Council Chairman Eduard Shevardnadze flew to the Abkhaz capital, Sukhumi, where he told journalists that while Georgia had complied with the 3 September ceasefire agreement, Abkhaz forces had consistently violated it with the support of the Russian parliament. He vowed that Georgia would retake Gagra. Meeting in Tbilisi on 3 October in Shevardnadze's absence, the Georgian State Council voted to seize all former Soviet military equipment on Georgian territory. Also on 3 October, Shevardnadze's helicopter was fired upon as he travelled to Sochi for talks with Russian military officials. Gagra was reported calm on 4 October, but a representative of the State Council told AFP that the Abkhaz were committing "atrocities" against the civilian population. Georgian reinforcements were dispatched to the towns of Gantiadi and Leselidze, between Gagra and the Russian frontier. The State Council appealed to NATO Secretary-General Manfred Woerner and to the CSCE to help calm the situation, according to AFP. Addressing a rally in Sukhumi, Shevardnadze called on the Georgian population of Abkhazia to participate in the 11 October parliamentary elections which he termed the key to stabilizing the situation in the republic. (Liz Fuller, RFE/RL, Inc.) GRACHEV WARNS GEORGIA ABOUT ARMS SEIZURES. Russian Defense Minister General Pavel Grachev on 4 October warned Georgia that any attempts to take control of Russian military equipment in the republic could lead to armed clashes between Russian and Georgian forces. Grachev was responding to the recent Georgian State Council's decision to seize all Russian arms stationed in Georgia. ITAR-TASS quoted Grachev as saying that this decision was "a flagrant breach of earlier agreements" and that he had given orders to all Russian troops to prevent any forcible seizure of military facilities. Russian and Georgian authorities had previously worked out arrangements for the transfer of some Russian military equipment to the republic. In August, the Russians announced that the 10th Motorized Rifle division in Akhaltsikhe, stationed along the Turkish border, would be disbanded and its equipment handed over to Georgia. However, on 17 September the Russian Defense Ministry charged that Georgian units were attacking Russian troops and civilians, and warned that its forces reserved the right to fight back. (Doug Clarke, RFE/RL, Inc.) WESTERN CORRESPONDENTS VISIT TAJIKISTAN WAR ZONE. Reports on 2,3 and 4 October from Western correspondents visiting Kurgan-Tyube and other locations in southern Tajikistan provide some confirmation of charges made earlier by opponents of deposed President Rakhmon Nabiev that Russian forces stationed in the country are helping pro-Nabiev fighters. The pro-Nabiev forces from Kulyab Oblast have severely damaged the town of Kurgan-Tyube, and thousands of refugees from there were reported to be making their way to Dushanbe. In an interview on Tajik Radio on 4 October, Tajik Deputy Prime Minister Davlat Usmon, a leader of the Islamic Renaissance Party, compared the role of Russian troops in Tajikistan with that of Soviet troops in Afghanistan and accused the Russians of siding with forces opposed to the present Tajik government. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL, Inc.) EXPERIMENTAL LAND SALES IN RUSSIA. President Yeltsin has signed a decree "On Carrying Out an Experiment in Moscow Oblast in 1992 in Auctioning Off Plots of Land for Housing Construction," ITAR-TASS reported on 2 October. Officials in the Ramenskoye raion will be authorized to auction plots of land to residents of Moscow and the Moscow oblast for housing construction. They will be asked to submit reports within one month on the results of the experiment. The State Committee for Land Reform is expected to use the results to help determine land values in any future widespread land privatization. (Keith Bush, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIA TO TIGHTEN CONTROL OF HARD- CURRENCY EARNINGS. Russian First Deputy Foreign Trade Minister Sergei Glazyev told Parliament on 2 October that the government would soon require state enterprises to sell all of their hard-currency earnings to the state, Interfax and Radio Rossii reported. At present, state enterprises must sell half of their hard-currency earnings to the state at the going market rate. Glazyev did not specify when the proposed measure would take effect. He told Interfax that firms had stashed away some $3.5 billion in foreign bank accounts, while an additional $1.5 billion was "outside government control." It is thought that anticipation of this move was a factor in last week's decline in the exchange rate of the ruble. (Keith Bush, RFE/RL, Inc.) KRAVCHUK APPOINTS ACTING PRIME MINISTER. Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk on 2 October appointed Valentyn Symonenko as acting prime minister, Ukrinform-TASS and Western news agencies reported. The move follows the resignation of Vitold Fokin and the parliamentary vote of no confidence in his government. Symonenko, who was appointed Kravchuk's representative in Odessa earlier this year, subsequently was named first deputy prime minister. His appointment came after Volodymyr Lanovyi, the market-oriented minister of economics and deputy prime minister, was sacked by Kravchuk. (Roman Solchanyk, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIA, UKRAINE CONCUR ON FORMER USSR DEBT. Russian Prime Minister Egor Gaidar and Ukrainian President Kravchuk announced in Kiev on 3 October that their countries would accept responsibility for their individual shares of the $70-$80 billion debt of the former Soviet Union, but no more. The two nations are thereby rejecting the concept of "joint and several" responsibility for the debt to which they agreed with Western creditors last December. The concept of "joint and several" responsibility basically means that in case of non-payment on the former Soviet debt by one or more of the republics, the remaining republics must make up the difference. This decision by Russia and Ukraine may cause further problems in upcoming negotiations over debt repayment with Western creditors. (Erik Whitlock, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIAN-UKRAINIAN AGREEMENT ON TRADE ISSUES. Gaidar's visit to Kiev also produced an agreement between Russia and Ukraine on resolving their current trade dispute. Few details were provided. Western news agencies quoted Gaidar as saying simply that the agreement would contribute to "normalizing uneasy relations between the two countries." The recent dispute concerns outstanding payments between Ukrainian and Russian enterprises for imports. Russian unilateral actions to stem the growth of this indebtedness has significantly hampered already floundering trade between the two states. The documents signed by Gaidar and acting Ukrainian Prime Minister Valentin Symonenko also appear to include provisions for the introduction of a new Ukrainian national currency. (Erik Whitlock, RFE/RL, Inc.) DEMOCRATS AND CIVIC UNION SEARCH FOR CONSENSUS. Representatives of the "Democratic Russia" movement and the Civic Union have met to discuss economic reform and decided to set up groups of joint experts of various political groups to monitor and advice the government on reform, DR-Press reported on 4 October. Representatives of the Civic Union suggested that an invitation be extended to members of a right-wing group opposed to the group of experts, but the democrats rejected the idea. Members of the Civic Union said that the Arkadii Volsky's "thirteen point program," which had been published in Izvestiya on 13 September, was not the official economic program of the Civic Union. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL, Inc.) GORBACHEV BARRED FROM FOREIGN TRAVEL. ITAR-TASS quoted on 2 October a press release issued by the Russian Constitutional Court concerning its request that the Russian Foreign Ministry along with the Ministry of Security (formerly the KGB) ensure the appearance in the Court of former CPSU Secretary General Mikhail Gorbachev. The request was made in response to Gorbachev's refusal to testify at the communist party hearings "and in the connection of his scheduled trip abroad." ITAR-TASS quoted the Constitutional Court as stating that the aforementioned ministries had taken "appropriate measures" to stop Gorbachev from going abroad. On 6 October, Gorbachev was supposed to begin a visit to South Korea; according to The Los Angeles Times of 4 October, after the authorities withdrew his passport, Gorbachev informed the Koreans that the trip had to be postponed. Gorbachev reportedly had plans to visit several Latin American countries; he also was to visit Berlin to receive that city's honorary citizenship on 6 November. (Julia Wishnevsky, RFE/RL, Inc.) YELTSIN SIGNS DECREE ON GOVERNMENT. President Boris Yeltsin has signed a decree on the reorganization of the government, ITAR-TASS reported on 2 October. It abolishes the ministry of architecture, construction and housing management, the ministry for industry and twenty-two state committees. Six new state committees, including one for industrial policy, will be created. Twenty-six other ministries will be reorganized and a new post of deputy prime minister for agriculture will be established. The former State Committee for Procurement (Gossnab) will be transformed into a share holding company called Roskontrakt. Yeltsin signed the decree before the parliament concluded its discussions on a new law on the government, which may cause new friction. In an apparent effort to minimize anticipated negative political reaction, Prime Minister Gaidar told an ITAR-TASS correspondent on 24 September that the current governmental structure was hurriedly thrown together in a moment of crisis as the Soviet Union was falling apart. The planned restructuring, he said, is simply an attempt to "instill order, [and] define functions and competence... [in] the hierarchy of agencies." (Alexander Rahr & Erik Whitlock, RFE/RL, Inc.) CRIMEAN MEJLIS TO HOLD EMERGENCY SESSION. Crimean Tatar leaders are calling for an emergency session of their parliament, the Mejlis, Interfax and Western news agencies reported on 4 October. The action follows a clash between Tatars and Crimean authorities after the latter ordered the removal of temporary houses built by the Tartars in the southern town of Alushta. More than 50 people were reported injured. (Roman Solchanyk, RFE/RL, Inc.) EXTRAORDINARY CONGRESS OF MOUNTAIN PEOPLES OF THE CAUCASUS. The two-day extraordinary congress of the mountain peoples of the Caucasus held in the Chechen capital Groznyi to discuss the situation in Abkhazia ended on 4 October, ITAR-TASS reported. Its final declaration calls on the official leaders of the North Caucasian republics to denounce the federal treaty that governs their relations with Russia as not in accord with the interests of the peoples of the North Caucasus. It also recommends that political organizations and movements in the republics demand that the leaderships strive for real independence, recognize the independence of Chechnya, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia, and create joint forces of regional security. If the republican leaderships refuse to do this, the confederation threatens to organize mass protests demanding their resignations. The congress also demanded the immediate withdrawal of all Russian troops from the region. (Ann Sheehy, RFE/RL, Inc.) CONFEDERATION OF MOUNTAIN PEOPLES RENAMED. The congress decided to rename the Confederation of the Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus the Confederation of the Peoples of the Caucasus in the hope that the local Cossacks and others would join it. In an interview with ITAR-TASS on 3 October, the confederation's president, Musa Shanibov, said that although Chechnya was the standard-bearer of freedom in the region, he still believed that the other 15 peoples who are members of the confederation should for the time being continue to link their fate with Russia to avoid a conflagration. A session of the confederation's parliament is due to take place in two weeks' time. (Ann Sheehy, RFE/RL, Inc.) PRESIDENT OF KABARDINO-BALKARIA CRITICIZES RUSSIA. Valerii Kokov, president of Kabardino-Balkaria, told Russian journalists on 4 October that Russia's policy towards the North Caucasus was "inadequate," and lacking in an understanding of the situation, ITAR-TASS reported. He said that the arrest in Nalchik of Musa Shanibov, the leader of the Confederation of the Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus, had been illtimed. The arrest sparked off round-the-clock protests meetings in Nalchik that are still continuing. Interfax reported on 4 October that protesters were still awaiting a response from the republican government to their demands that Russian MVD troops withdraw and that Kokov resign. (Ann Sheehy, RFE/RL, Inc.) POLL ON POLITICAL PARTIES IN AZERBAIJAN. On 3 October Interfax cited the results of a poll conducted by the Baku Center for Sociological Studies which indicates that the ruling Azerbaijan Popular Front is the most popular political organization in Azerbaijan, with a rating of 37.2 per cent among an unspecified number of respondents in the cities of Baku and Sumgait. The radical National Independence Party of Azerbaijan, headed by Etibar Mamedov, was second with 26 per cent. Among the Azerbaijani leadership, Iskander Gamidov, the pan-Turkist Minister of Internal Affairs, is supported by 58.7 per cent of those polled, followed by Defense Minister Ragim Kaziev (50 per cent,) and Nakhichevan parliament Chairman Geidar Aliev (39.5 per cent). No rating was listed for President Abulfaz Elchibey. (Liz Fuller, RFE/RL, Inc.) OIL INDUSTRY DEVELOPMENTS. Azerbaijan has signed a preliminary agreement with Pennzoil, Remco, and Pennzoil Caspial to develop oil and gas deposits in the Guneshli offshore field in the Caspian Sea, Turan, RIA, and The Wall Street Journal reported on 2 October. The Western companies are expected to invest $2.5 billion during the next 10 years. Russia's top corruption investigator was quoted by Trud on 2 October as saying that corruption in the oil industry is "alarming" and that only one-quarter of the value of exported oil is repatriated. And the governor of Tyumen oblast told Reuters on 2 October that his oil industry will fight to keep its 20% share of oil revenues. (Keith Bush, RFE/RL, Inc.) KYRGYZ VICE PRESIDENT VISITS TAJIKISTAN. Kyrgyzstan's Vice President Feliks Kulov was the first representative of a CIS state to visit the war zone in southern Tajikistan, Tajik acting President Akbarsho Iskandarov told Interfax on 2 October. The following day Kulov told Interfax that the issue of a peacekeeping force for Tajikistan will be raised at the CIS summit on 9 October, and Tajik leaders will present plans for the deployment of peacekeepers. The opposing sides in the conflict agreed to support the deployment of a CIS peacekeeping force, according to Kulov, but want it to be made up of troops from a neutral state. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL, Inc.) CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE BOSNIAN UPDATE. International relief flights began again to Sarajevo on 3 October, following a one-month break after an Italian cargo plane was shot down by a shoulder-launched missile of undetermined origin. The thick Sarajevo fog forced a delay in additional relief flights on 3 October, but the BBC said that the first plane had brought new radar equipment to enable the airport to stay open throughout the fog season. The New York Times quoted President George Bush as calling Serbian bombing attacks in Bosnia a "flagrant disregard for human life" and supporting a ban on all flights in that republic except those authorized by the UN. In Strasbourg EC special envoy Lord Owen told an RFE/RL correspondent that the effects of ethnic cleansing by Serbian forces will eventually be undone by "persistent application of principle . . . not over months but over years." Finally, Reuters quoted UN High Commissioner for Refugees Sadako Ogata and the chief of the International Committee of the Red Cross Cornelio Sommaruga as condemning ethnic cleansing, including what Ogata referred to as encouraging "rape of women of another ethnic group." (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL, Inc.) ALLEGATIONS OF SYSTEMATIC ASSAULTS ON MUSLIM WOMEN. Western news agencies on 2 October quoted Bosnian Serbian leaders as denying recent media reports that their fighters are systematically raping Muslim women, and military liaison officer Momo Starcevic promised to punish any guilty parties. On 25 September the Zagreb weekly Globus reported on a particular incident in which 40 Muslim young women from one village said they had been gang-raped by Serbs over a period of several days. One of the men told them it was part of a policy to wipe out the Muslim nation. Globus further reported that a team of UN gynecologists examined the women, confirmed their stories, and concluded that such mistreatment appears to be a "war strategy . . . [ordered] from the top." The story was not corroborated, however. (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL, Inc.) ATMOSPHERE IN CZECHOSLOVAK COALITION DETERIORATING. After deputies of Slovak Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar's Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) supported a resolution of the leftist opposition in the federal parliament on the creation of a Czech and Slovak Union on 1 October, Czech officials charged Meciar with breaking earlier agreements between the coalition partners. Czech Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus published a statement on 2 October in which he said that he feels betrayed. He said the HZDS's shift of position is dangerous "for the future of democracy in our country." After an emergency session of the Czech government on 3 October, Klaus made it clear that he has no intention of postponing scheduled meetings with the Slovak government to discuss further steps of dividing the country, despite Meciar's urging to do so. Klaus also said that Czechoslovakia will cease to exist on 1 January 1993, thus indicating that he will not take into consideration the federal parliament's proposal on creating a union between the two republics. Former President Vaclav Havel supported the Czech government's view; he was quoted by CSTK on 3 October as saying that a union would only prolong the agony. (Jan Obrman, RFE/RL, Inc.) CIVIC MOVEMENT BECOMES A PARTY. Delegates to a special congress of the Civic Movement, one of the heirs to the Civic Forum, which toppled the Czechoslovak communist regime in November 1989, voted on 4 October to transform the movement into a political party. Delegates abolished the movement's collective, open membership and replaced it with a fixed structure. Before the elections of June 1992, the Civic Movement was a dominating political actor on the federal level and in the Czech Republic, but it failed to win enough support in the elections to be represented in either the Czech or the federal parliaments. Former Foreign Minister Jiri Dienstbier was elected the party's chairman. He said the party's goal is to form a liberal, nonsocialist alternative in today's political scene. (Jan Obrman, RFE/RL, Inc.) FINAL RESULTS IN ROMANIAN PRESIDENTIAL RACE. On 4 October the Constitutional Court released the final results of the 27 September presidential race. Incumbent President Ion Iliescu won 47.34% of the votes, followed by Emil Constantinescu, candidate of the centrist Democratic Convention, with 31.24%; Gheorghe Funar of the Party of Romanian National Unity (10.88%); Caius Traian Dragomir of the National Salvation Front (4.75); Ioan Manzatu from the fringe Republican Party (3.05%); and Mircea Druc, a former prime minister of Moldova who ran as an independent (2.75%). Radio Bucharest quoted the president of the court as saying that the share of invalid votes (4.65%) was "normal." A runoff between Iliescu and Constantinescu is scheduled for 11 October. (Dan Ionescu, RFE/RL, Inc.) CONSTANTINESCU CRITICIZES VOTE COUNTING. The same day Radio Bucharest broadcast a statement by Constantinescu criticizing what he termed "confusion and lack of transparency" surrounding the vote counting. Constantinescu spoke of "serious irregularities" and stressed that roughly one in ten votes for the parliament had been declared invalid. He appealed to the authorities to show "a maximum of fairness" in staging the runoff for presidency, and challenged his rival Ion Iliescu to at least three debates to be broadcast live by Romanian radio and television. (Dan Ionescu, RFE/RL, Inc.) FUNAR BECOMES INTERIM PRESIDENT OF HIS PARTY. The National Council of the Party of Romanian National Unity (PRNU), the political arm of the nationalist "Vatra Romaneasca" (Romanian Hearth) organization, announced on 3 October that Gheorghe Funar was appointed the party's interim president at a council meeting in Cluj-Napoca. Funar placed third with almost 11% of the votes in the presidential race, while his PRNU was also third in the parliamentarian elections. Before appointing Funar, the council "suspended" former party president Radu Ciontea and "discharged" another four leaders. It also appointed a delegation including Funar to conduct talks in Bucharest on the building of the next government, Radio Bucharest said. (Dan Ionescu, RFE/RL, Inc.) IN POLAND, GAIDAR AGREES TO ZERO-SUM DEBT SETTLEMENT. Mutual debt claims were the focus of talks between Russian Prime Minister Egor Gaidar and Polish officials in Warsaw on 2 October. Gaidar and Polish Prime Minister Hanna Suchocka signed agreements on investment protection and cross-border cooperation. Gaidar pledged that Poland will be able to buy as much oil from Russia as it can afford in 1992 and 1993. Russia supports the idea of a "zero-sum settlement" of mutual debt claims, he said. President Lech Walesa earlier told Gaidar that Poland insists on a zero-sum solution. Polish TV reported that Poland owes Moscow $1.5 billion and 5 billion transfer rubles, while Russia owes Poland $300 million and 7 million transfer rubles. A joint commission was formed to settle the question. Gen. Leonid Kovalev announced that the withdrawal of Russian combat troops from Poland will conclude by the end of October, two weeks ahead of schedule. Walesa said that Poland wants good relations with Russia, but with respect for the principles of partnership and democracy. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL, Inc.) POLISH MASS PRIVATIZATION MOVES FORWARD. Poland's mass privatization program survived an important test on 2 October, when the Sejm voted down a motion to throw out the government's draft legislation. PAP reported that the vote on rejecting the legislation outright was 146 to 180, with 17 abstentions. The vote on the mass privatization program, which aims to privatize 600 selected firms and distribute shares in 20 national investment funds to the general public, had been delayed because the Sejm demanded an official reckoning of the expected costs. Privatization Minister Janusz Lewandowski reported that the program would begin to pay for itself as soon as the first million citizens paid their minimal participation fees. Some 10-20 million Poles are expected to take part in the mass privatization program. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL, Inc.) POLAND PLANS DEFENSE ACCORDS WITH NEIGHBORS. Defense Minister Janusz Onyszkiewicz told a press conference on 2 October that Poland plans to sign military cooperation agreements with Germany, Russia, Ukraine, and Lithuania in the near future. These agreements will resemble those Poland has already concluded with Hungary, France, and Latvia. Onyszkiewicz added that the defense ministry will not take an official stance on the issue of Col. Ryszard Kuklinski, the Polish officer who spied for the CIA for eleven years. There were many "question marks" about Kuklinski's behavior, Onyszkiewicz said, adding that Kuklinski had access only to those Warsaw Pact operational plans that involved the participation of Polish armed forces. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL, Inc.) SLOVENIAN ELECTIONS IN DECEMBER. Slovenia's first multiparty parliamentary and presidential elections since declaring independence from Yugoslavia in June 1991 will be held on 6 December. A second round is scheduled on 20 December for candidates failing to win more than 50% of the vote. There are currently eight presidential candidates, including the current president, Milan Kucan. Kucan, a former chairman of the Slovenian League of Communists, won in a run-off election in April 1990 during Slovenia's first multiparty elections since 1938. Recent polls show that Kucan is the republic's most popular politician. Radio Slovenia carried the report on 1 October. (Milan Andrejevich, RFE/RL, Inc.) HUNGARY TO RESTORE NAGYMAROS LANDSCAPE. The Hungarian government approved a plan to restore the landscape at Nagymaros, the Hungarian section of the joint Hungarian-Czechoslovak Gabcikovo-Nagymaros hydroelectric power project, MTI reports. If parliament votes to accept the plan in the coming weeks, work on restoring the landscape can begin next spring and is expected to take two and a half years. The major work involves removing the dam, filling the Danube river bed, and making the river navigable. Costs are estimated at over 7 billion forint. State Secretary in the Ministry of Transportation, Communications, and Water Conservation Zsolt Rajkai said that normal operations of the Gabcikovo dam on the Slovak side should not cause problems, but a peak operation raises the danger of flooding for both sides. Hungary started construction at Nagymaros in 1977 but pulled out of the joint project in 1989 because of environmental concerns. (Edith Oltay, RFE/RL, Inc.) ALBANIAN ECONOMY ON VERGE OF COLLAPSE. A study appearing in Business Eastern Europe, the weekly of the private consulting group, Business International, says industrial output in Europe's poorest country will likely drop by 17% this year to a level only 35% of what it was in 1990, at the time of the fall of the communist regime. Only one-third of the 300 largest enterprises are operating, unemployment in industry is at 50% and rising, and inflation, currently at about 220%, could shoot up as well. Foreign aid to Albania remains vital, the report says. At the same time Reuters reports that during a 3 October visit, Prime Minister Alexander Meksi secured an additional $30 million in emergency aid from Italy, the main donor nation to Albania, and established formal bilateral economic relations. (Charles Trumbull, RFE/RL, Inc.) OIL SPILL IN BELARUS APPROACHING LITHUANIA. On 3 October the Lithuanian Environmental Protection Department reported that nearly 200 tons of oil, spilled into the Nemunas River when a deranged person pried open oil containers at a furniture factory 70 kilometers from Grodno, are approaching Lithuania, BNS reports. Only a small portion of the Nemunas bank has been contaminated and workers at Druskininkai, Alytus, and Prienai have built barriers of hay to prevent the further spread of the contamination. (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL, Inc.) SKINHEADS ATTACK GERMANS IN CRACOW. Three German truck drivers were attacked by skinheads in Nowa Huta, near Cracow, on the night of 1 October. One of the Germans died as a result of injuries suffered in the attack. Cracow police apprehended a group of 10 teenage suspects and placed four under arrest. About 100 skinheads waged a battle with police in the center of Cracow on the night of 2 October. One policeman was seriously injured. Prime Minister Hanna Suchocka expressed "deep sorrow and regret" at the incident, according to PAP. Hundreds of horrified Cracow residents placed flowers and lit candles at the site of the attack. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL, Inc.)
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RFE/RL Daily Report No. 192, 6 October, 1992 SUCCESSOR STATES TO THE USSR GEORGIAN MILITIA CHIEF ISSUES ULTIMATUM TO RUSSIAN TROOPS. Georgian State Council deputy chairman Dzhaba Ioseliani, the commander of the Mkhedrioni militia, issued an ultimatum to Russian troops and volunteers from the North Caucasus fighting in Abkhazia to leave by 15 October or be driven out by force, Western agencies reported. Meanwhile a Georgian counter-offensive aimed at retaking Gagra was repulsed by the Abkhaz. A Georgian military helicopter was shot down near Gagra. The Georgian State Council press office claimed that it was shot down by two Russian jets, while the Russian Defense Ministry denied any involvement and suggested that it was brought down by a ground-to-air missile launched by Abkhaz separatists. Following a meeting with the leadership of the Transcaucasus Military District, Georgian State Council chairman Eduard Shevardnadze claimed in a radio address that Russian troops in Abkhazia have formed a military government there and are no longer obeying commands. Shevardnadze further charged that "reactionary forces" in Russia are supporting Abkhaz separatism, but warned that Georgia should not break off relations with Moscow given the presence of "healthy democratic forces" there. (Liz Fuller, RFE/RL, Inc.) WHILE FOREIGN MINISTER TRIES CONCILIATORY APPROACH. Addressing a news conference in Moscow on 5 October, Georgian Foreign Minister Aleksandre Chikvaidze said that his top policy priority was saving Georgian-Russian relations, which date back centuries and must not be allowed suddenly to collapse, ITAR-TASS reported. Chikvaidze also stated that nothing can prevent the holding of the parliamentary elections scheduled for 11 October, "even if they take place against a background of artillery fire." (Liz Fuller, RFE/RL, Inc.) SITUATION IN TAJIKISTAN. More than 1,000 refugees from southern Tajikistan gathered in front of the parliament building in Dushanbe to demand the removal of Russian troops from the region, Interfax reported on 5 October. Acting president Akbarsho Iskandarov told the refugees that the status of the troops will be determined when agreements are signed with the Russian Federation; the same day he told Interfax that the Tajik government is not strong enough to disarm the armed bands that have been fighting each other in the southern part of the country, and Deputy Chairman of Tajikistan's National Security Committee Jurabek Aminov commented that the government is getting weaker while the armed groups are getting stronger. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIAN TROOPS IN TAJIKISTAN CONFINED TO BASES. All Russian forces in Tajikistan were confined to their bases as of 5 October, Svyatoslav Nabzdorov, Chief of Staff of the Russian troops in Tajikistan, told Interfax the same day. Nabzdorov said that an agreement to this effect had been reached with the various Tajik factions the previous day. The only exception is the Russian troops guarding the Nurek dam and hydroelectric station. National Security Deputy Chairman Aminov told a Reuter correspondent on 5 October that Leninabad Oblast in the north, which has stayed out of the fighting so far, has created its own defense force, as has the self-proclaimed Autonomous Republic of Gorno-Badakhshan in the Pamirs. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL, Inc.) MOLDOVAN FOREIGN MINISTER CALLS FOR UNITED NATIONS ACTION ON MOLDOVA. Addressing the UN General Assembly on 1 October, Moldovan Foreign Minister Nicolae Tiu urged the dispatch of UN ceasefire monitors and human rights rapporteurs to the Dniester, where, he claimed, "pro-communist imperial forces, the military-industrial complex, and the upper ranks of the ex-Soviet army have launched a veritable war...seeking to tear off Moldova's eastern area." Characterizing Russia's 14th Army in eastern Moldova as "an army of occupation . . . and a permanent source of tension and conflict," Tiu noted that Russia is obstructing the negotiations on its withdrawal. Endorsing a proposed resolution on the withdrawal of Russian troops from the Baltic States, Tiu urged the General Assembly to add the issue of Russian troops in Moldova to that debate. (Vladimir Socor, RFE/RL, Inc.) "DNIESTER" INSURGENTS BUILD UP MILITARY STRENGTH. "Dniester Republic President" Igor Smirnov has appointed Colonel Stanislav Khazheev as "minister of defense" of the would-be republic, DR-Press reported from Tiraspol on 2 October. On the same date, the age limit for officers serving with the "Dniester" forces was raised from 50 to 60 years of age to enable more Russian veterans to join the insurgent forces with full salaries and benefits. Interviewed by Western correspondents on 29 September, as cited by Moldovapres, Smirnov disclosed that the "Dniester" forces currently comprise 35,000 men and that arms procurement would continue despite the ceasefire agreement. Komsomolskaya Pravda had reported from Tiraspol on 24 September that Russian Cossacks are being enrolled in the "Dniester republic"'s newly formed "army" and "border guards." (Vladimir Socor, RFE/RL, Inc.) MOLDOVA NEGOTIATES WITH GAGAUZ ON TERRITORIAL AUTONOMY. Moldovan President Mircea Snegur and a Gagauz delegation headed by "Gagauz republic Supreme Soviet Chairman" Mikhail Kendigelyan conferred in Chisinau on 1 October, Moldovapres reported. It was Snegur's second meeting with Gagauz leaders in the space of less than two weeks to discuss a draft law on Gagauz territorial autonomy, prepared by a joint commission of the Moldovan parliament and government. In an apparent attempt to facilitate a deal, the Gagauz leaders on 28 September dismissed their most intransigent colleague, Ivan Burgudji, from his posts of "director of internal affairs" and commander of the "Gagauz defense forces." The dismissal followed a riot in Comrat against Burgudji and his guards who have long made themselves unpopular among ordinary Gagauz. (Vladimir Socor, RFE/RL, Inc.) LIGACHEV ADDRESSES CONSTITUTIONAL COURT. Addressing the Russian Constitutional Court hearings on the CPSU on 5 October, former CPSU CC Politburo member Egor Ligachev, condemned Yeltsin's ban on the Party as unconstitutional. ITAR-TASS reported that the main part of Ligachev's speech was devoted to criticism of the current situation in Russia. The country's current problems were the result of the disbandment of the CPSU, Ligachev maintained. The former Communist Party leading hard-liner accused Mikhail Gorbachev of destroying the Party and said the policies of the former Soviet president opened doors to "anti-communism and national separatism." ITAR-TASS reported the same day that the Constitutional Court again summoned Gorbachev to attend the hearings and fined him for 100 rubles for ignoring earlier summons. (Vera Tolz, RFE/RL, Inc.) GORBACHEV FOUNDATION CRITICIZES TRAVEL BAN. The Gorbachev Foundation issued a statement on 3 October criticizing the order barring Mikhail Gorbachev from leaving Russian territory, The order was issued by the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs in response to Gorbachev's refusal to attend the Constitutional Court Hearings,Russian television and Western news agencies reported. "Novosti," said the foundation found the involvement of the Minstry of Security in the affair particularly worrisome. Its statement noted that such a ban "contradicts the Russian Constitution and international law," and suggested that the incident might mark the rebirth of the old Soviet technique of denying civil rights to political dissenters. According to The Los Angeles Times of 4 October, Gorbachev had asked in vain to be kept informed of all "concrete measures" taken against him, and for information about the laws permitting such measures. (Julia Wishnevsky, RFE/RL, Inc.) PROVISIONAL AGENDA FOR CIS SUMMIT AGREED. A meeting of the foreign ministers of CIS states in Moscow on 5 October agreed on a provisional agenda of 20 items for the CIS heads of state and of 24 items for the CIS heads of government for their joint summit meeting in Bishkek on 9 October, Interfax reported. The first item will be the draft CIS charter. The draft agenda also includes a number of economic and defense issues as well as regional conflicts. Among these are harmonizing economic legislation, progress in forming an economic arbitration council, and creating a consultative and coordinatory economic council. Most of the items have been on the agenda of earlier summits, and only limited progress can be expected this time as well. Russia's acting premier Egor Gaidar, for instance, said that Russia will not be rushed into creating the economic council, advocated by Kazakhstan president Nursultan Nazarbaev, for fear of accusations of imperial ambitions. (Ann Sheehy, RFE/RL, Inc.) YELTSIN SIGNS LAW ON DEFENSE. Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed the Law on Defense on 5 October, the Interfax news agency reported. The law sets out the basic structure and principles of organization of the Russian Armed Forces. Yeltsin and the Supreme Soviet had clashed over the right of the President to appoint senior military commanders without consulting the Supreme Soviet (see the Daily Report 25 September 1992), but a compromise was reached allowing the President the exclusive right of appointment after a new Russian constitution is ratified. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL, Inc.) NAZARBAEV PROPOSES ASIAN SECURITY CONFERENCE. Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbaev took his proposal for an Asian counterpart to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe to the United Nations General Assembly on 5 October, an RFE/RL correspondent reported. Nazarbaev has been raising the idea of an Asian security organization since 1991; on 2 October his press secretary announced that the presidents of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Turkey, Pakistan and Iran will meet in Alma-Ata at the end of October or beginning of November to begin the process of creating an Asian security system patterned on the CSCE. Nazarbaev said that talks with China and Russia about membership are already underway. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIAN ARMY FACES PERSONNEL, EQUIPMENT PROBLEMS. The Deputy Commander of the Russian Ground Forces for Armaments, General Colonel Sergei Maev, reported that the Russian army faces serious equipment and repair problems. In an interview in Krasnaya zvezda on 3 October, Maev complained of a 30% personnel shortfall and stated that 70-75% of Russian equipment was outdated. He attributed this to Russia's inheritance of the second-echelon military districts, which held older equipment than the districts in Ukraine and Belarus. Additional difficulties are caused by the fact that 40%, in the case of armor 80%, of repair facilities are located outside Russia. Maev warned that it would require a "serious state program" to correct these deficiencies. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIAN SHIPS JOIN GULF PATROL. On 5 October two Russian naval vessels arrived in the Persian Gulf to join the international peace-keeping forces in that region. ITAR-TASS identified the ships as the "Admiral Vinogradov"--a "Udaloy"-class anti-submarine guided-missile destroyer--and the tanker "Boris Butoma." The report said that the commander of the Russian force would meet with a US naval officer on 6 October to be briefed on naval operations in the Gulf, but stressed that the Russian ships would be responsible only to Admiral Felix Gromov, the Russian Navy's commander-in-chief. The news account also emphasized that the Russian ships had no nuclear weapons onboard. (Doug Clarke, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIAN DEFENSE DELEGATION VISITS SOUTH KOREA. Russian First Deputy of Defense Andrei Kokoshin led a delegation of military officers, academicians, and defense industrialists to South Korea on 4 October in what ITAR-TASS described as the first such visit in history. Kokoshin was quoted as telling the agency that the visit testified to "Russian's serious intentions to activate its policy in the Asia-Pacific region." During their five-day visit the Russians planned to meet with officials of the South Korean defense department and leading businessmen. Kokoshin noted that "favorable opportunities exist for the development of industrial cooperation between Moscow and Seoul, including the fulfillment of the Russian defense industry's conversion program." (Doug Clarke, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIAN-AMERICAN SPACE COOPERATION. A Russian cosmonaut will fly in the American space shuttle and an American astronaut will be lifted to the Russian Mir space station by a Soyuz rocket according to plans announced on 4 October by the directors of the US and Russian space agencies. According to UPI, the agreements for these joint efforts were signed that day in Moscow. Two Russian cosmonauts will travel to Houston latter this month to start training for a November 1993 space shuttle mission. Two American astronauts will train in Russia for a 1995 flight to the Mir space station. In each case, only one person will eventually make the space trip. (Doug Clarke, RFE/RL, Inc.) SUBMARINE SALE DOES NOT HALT AID PACKAGE. The US House of Representatives passed the $417 million aid package for the republics of the former Soviet Union and sent it to President Bush for his signature despite concerns over the recent Russian sale of diesel submarines to Iran. Western agencies on 2 October reported that the US State Department announced that day that it had been officially informed that Russia intended to go ahead with the sale. The House approved the aid bill 232 to 164. Opposition to the measure was based chiefly on the submarine sale and even several of the bill's supporters admitted that they were troubled by the deal. (Doug Clarke, RFE/RL, Inc.) WHAT IS A KARBOVANETS? The karbovanets, as described by Interfax, would be similar to the existing Ukrainian coupons that have circulated since the beginning of this year. The difference between the coupons and the karbovanets appears be twofold: 1) the former is used only for cash settlements while the latter may be also as a unit of account in non-cash settlements; and 2) the karbovanets, as they are exchanged for rubles, are intended gradually to "cycle" the ruble out of circulation. (Erik Whitlock, RFE/RL, Inc.) UKRAINE TO HAVE NEW PARALLEL CURRENCY THIS MONTH? According to a representative of the Russian State Committee on Cooperation with CIS Nations, Sergei Dubinin, Ukraine will introduce a new currency this month, Interfax reported on 5 October. The "karbovanets" will temporarily circulate together with the ruble at a fixed 1:1 exchange rate. The measure represents an attempt to avoid the economic shock associated with a sudden shift to a new exclusive currency that would likely flood Russia with Ukrainian rubles. The introduction of the "hrivnya," which will presumably replace the ruble, karbovanets and Ukraine's other quasi-money, coupons, as Ukraine's exclusive currency, is scheduled for the end of this year. (Erik Whitlock, RFE/RL, Inc.) NALCHIK RALLY ENDS. The protest meeting that had been going on for more than a week in the center of Nalchik, the capital of Kabardino-Balkaria ended late on 4 October after the government agreed to meet some of the protesters' demands, Interfax and ITAR-TASS reported on 5 October. Interfax quoted Zantemira Gubochikova, deputy chairwoman of the opposition Congress of the Kabardinian People as saying that the government had agreed to most of her movement's demands. She said the government agreed to remove special militia units from government buildings, give the congress airtime on local TV on a weekly basis, and halt trials of those who volunteered to fight Georgian forces in Abkhazia. The government also agreed to remove a military unit from the capital within in one month but rejected the demand for the resignation of the republic's president. (Ann Sheehy, RFE/RL, Inc.) CRIMEAN TATARS DEMONSTRATE. Crimean Tatars blocked roads leading to Simferopol, the capital, and demonstrated in front of the offices of the procurator general on October 5, a spokeswoman reported to RFE/RL. The main demand of the protestors is the release of Crimean Tatars taken into custody after a clash with the authorities several days ago. About 50 people were hurt in the incident when authorities tried to remove homes built by the Crimean Tatars on the property of state farms. A special session of the Mejlis, the Crimean Tatar parliament, is scheduled to meet on 6 October to discuss the situation. (Roman Solchanyk, RFE/RL, Inc.) CIVIC CONGRESS OF UKRAINE OPENS IN DONETSK. The Civic Congress of Ukraine convened in Donetsk on 3 October, ITAR-TASS and DR-Press reported. Delegations from 18 oblasts and the Crimea are taking part. The group favors a federal structure for Ukraine and official status for the Russian and Ukrainian languages in the Donbass region. (Roman Solchanyk, RFE/RL, Inc.) CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE EC REBUFF FOR "TRIANGLE" COUNTRIES. European Community foreign ministers met for the first time with their counterparts from the Visegrad triangle of Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia on 5 October in Luxembourg, Western agencies report. The current EC president, British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, told the three countries that no timetable can be set for full membership in the EC. Hurd told a news conference that the EC "sympathizes with the wish of our friends here to become full members," but that economic uncertainties stood in the way. The triangle countries had requested in September that the EC agree to open negotiations on full membership in 1996, with a view to their joining the community by the end of the century. A formal reply to this request is due at an EC summit in December. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL, Inc.) KLAUS AND MECIAR TO MEET TODAY. Czech Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus and his Slovak counterpart Vladimir Meciar agreed to hold a meeting of their respective parties, the Civic Democratic Party and the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia, today in Moravia, after Meciar unilaterally cancelled talks between the Czech and Slovak governments that were scheduled for today. The Slovak Prime Minister argued that after the rejection of a constitutional amendment by the federal parliament that would have set the modes for the division of the country, senior officials of the two coalition partners should return to the drawing board. Indicating that the main topic of the talks will be budgetary matters, Klaus said on 5 October that it will not be possible to force the parliaments to adopt a federal budget similar to those of the past three years, CSTK reported. He added that because of that, the basis for a common state will automatically cease to exist on 1 January 1993. Klaus also said that he has a "document necessary for the declaration of the independence of the Czech Republic" ready. He did not say if and when he would use it. (Jan Obrman, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUNOFF CAMPAIGN OPENS IN ROMANIA. Campaigning for the 11 October runoff for presidency started on 5 October with messages broadcast by the two candidates. The contest is between Romania's incumbent president Ion Iliescu, a former high-ranking communist official, and Bucharest University rector Emil Constantinescu, candidate of the centrist Democratic Convention. Iliescu rejected public doubts about the fairness of the 27 September first-round voting as well as charges that he is opposing reforms. He directed a particularly vehement attack at Nicolae Manolescu, the president of the Party of Civic Alliance, whom he accused of "flunkyism towards circles hostile to Romania" and of obeying "overseas patrons." In his address, Constantinescu reiterated that if elected he would respect the constitution and the will of the nation. (Dan Ionescu, RFE/RL, Inc.) WEST SHOULD LEARN "LESSON" FROM ROMANIAN VOTE. Foreign Minister Adrian Nastase, who had recently been appointed vice president of Ion Iliescu's Democratic National Salvation Front, said at a press conference on 5 October that the West should view the Romanian election results as "a lesson" and that it needs "a new strategy toward Romania." Nastase claimed that the withholding of aid by the West helped communists and radical nationalists in the 27 September elections. He added that last week's rejection by the US House of Representatives of most-favored-nation trade status for Romania will only boost support for Iliescu. Nastase, who has been widely-tipped as Romania's next prime minister, suggested that an independent would make a better choice for that position. (Dan Ionescu, RFE/RL, Inc.) YUGOSLAV AREA UPDATE. The BBC said on 5 October that Sarajevo has been subjected to renewed, particularly intense shelling from Serbian positions. Over the weekend, the Serbs began consolidating their hold on several Sarajevo districts following the expulsion of many of their Muslim inhabitants the previous week. Elsewhere, Western news agencies report that the three warring sides in Bosnia have agreed to release all civilian and military prisoners by the end of the month as part of an agreement brokered by the Red Cross. Finally, AFP quotes Croatian President Franjo Tudjman as saying that he and President of Serbia-Montenegro, Dobrica Cosic, have agreed to "voluntary and civilized transfers" of populations of unspecified size and duration. (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL, Inc.) JARUZELSKI, KISZCZAK TESTIFY IN 1981 SHOOTINGS. Former Polish party chief Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski was interrogated by the Katowice prosecutor on 5 October in an investigation into the martial law killings of nine miners in the Wujek mine. Special ZOMO troops opened fire on striking miners there on 16 December 1981. Questioned as a witness, Jaruzelski accepted "moral responsibility" but no blame for the shootings. Former Internal Affairs Minister Czeslaw Kiszczak was questioned as a suspect in the case on 1 October. The prosecutor charges that Kiszczak's coded message to local officials authorizing the use of force, including firearms, to clear the mine jeopardized the miners' lives. Kiszczak contends the shots were fired in the heat of battle. In a different case, the Warsaw prosecutor told PAP on 5 October that Adam Humer, chief investigator for the dreaded security ministry from 1945 to 1956, had admitted to murdering "suspects" during interrogation and secretly burying their corpses in the woods. Zycie Warszawy reports that Humer is the first former security official to face charges under a new law that lifts the statute of limitations on Stalinist crimes. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL, Inc.) SOVIET COMBAT HELICOPTER VIOLATES POLISH AIRSPACE. A police spokesman in Krosno reported on 5 October that a MI-8 combat helicopter of Soviet origin had violated Polish airspace over Ustrzyki Dolne and Ustjanowa, towns near Poland's border with Ukraine, on 3 October. The helicopter, adorned with a red star, made two low passes over buildings in Ustrzyki before departing in the direction of the border. The Polish border guard in Przemysl confirmed the report, adding that investigations are continuing. Ukrainian military officials denied that any air force operations had taken place in the area. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL, Inc.) CANADIAN GOVERNOR GENERAL IN HUNGARY. Ramon John Hnatyshyn held talks in Budapest on 5 October with President Arpad Goncz and Prime Minister Jozsef Antall. The goal of the official visit is to expand bilateral ties between the two countries. The talks focused on economic ties, Canada's participation in the 1996 Budapest World Fair, and the situation in the former Yugoslavia. Antall urged that Western countries adopt a comprehensive strategy aimed at strengthening East Central Europe's new democracies. Goncz expressed concern about a possible spread of the Yugoslav crisis and said that future peace treaties should guarantee the exercise of minority rights. (Edith Oltay, RFE/RL, Inc.) SATELLITE TV FOR HUNGARIANS ABROAD. Spokeswoman Judit Juhasz says the Hungarian government has set up the Hungaria Television Foundation to finance a satellite station to convey Hungarian cultural values, provide an objective view of Hungary, cultivate relations between peoples, and help minorities in other countries preserve their Hungarian identity. Hungaria TV is to start transmission three hours a day on 1 November. Programs will deal with politics, culture, entertainment, and religion, with special emphasis on education. The station will be overseen by a 13-member board of trustees consisting of prominent Hungarian cultural figures, including the writer Sandor Csoori. State subsidies will amount to 300 million forint this year and 2 billion next year, but the station is expected to be self-financing by 1997. MTI and Radio Budapest carried the story. (Edith Oltay, RFE/RL, Inc.) MORE POLICEMEN IN HUNGARY. Minister of the Interior Peter Boross told a press conference that this year 2500 new police posts have been filled and 500 additional policemen are to be hired next year. Pointing out that public security is becoming a number one political issue in Hungary, Boross said that the increase in police personnel has the population's support. Boross stressed the importance of keeping the police force free of any political influence. As in all East European countries, the number of crimes in Hungary has sharply increased in the freer atmosphere brought about by democratization. (Edith Oltay, RFE/RL, Inc.) ZHELEV-DIMITROV RIFT DEEPENS. In an interview on Bulgarian radio on 5 October, Bulgarian Prime Minister Filip Dimitrov accused President Zhelyu Zhelev of knowingly telling lies about him and his UDF government. Dimitrov, who did not go into detail, was apparently referring to Zhelev's account of the background to their differences in yesterday's issue of 24 chasa. Dimitrov said the timing of such statements make him believe Zhelev has joined what he termed a "purposeful and premeditated" campaign aimed at destabilizing the government. The UDF cabinet has been at odds with Zhelev since he launched sharp criticism of some aspects of government policies in late August. (Kjell Engelbrekt, RFE/RL, Inc.) BULGARIA, UKRAINE SIGN ACCORDS. During a seven-hour visit by the Ukrainian president to Sofia, Leonid Kravchuk and Bulgarian President Zhelyu Zhelev signed a treaty of friendship and cooperation as well as bilateral agreements on trade, cultural exchange and defense matters, BTA and ITAR-TASS report. The friendship treaty confirms the territorial integrity of the two states and calls for peaceful settlement of disputes and respect for human rights. Zhelev told a press conference that he is pleased with Ukrainian authorities' attitude toward resolving the problems of the some 240,000 ethnic Bulgarians in their country, saying there was no need for a special minority clause in the agreements. Kravchuk noted that Ukraine will soon open an embassy in Sofia. (Kjell Engelbrekt, RFE/RL, Inc.) BULGARIAN SCHOOL STRIKE. On 5 October Bulgarian teachers went on strike to demand higher pay. BTA reports that some 70% of all teachers participated on the first day of the strike, forcing some 3,500 of the country's 4,500 schools to close. The teachers' unions are dissatisfied with the general 26% salary increase offered in the second half of 1992 and demand an agreement in principle that will put their salaries at 10% above the average. They are also seeking more public resources to improve schools. (Kjell Engelbrekt, RFE/RL, Inc.) STIPENDS FOR LATVIAN STUDENTS INCREASED. On 30 September the Latvian Supreme Council adopted a resolution raising the amount of financial aid available to students at institutions of higher learning, BNS reports. The monthly state scholarship of 1140 rubles had been less than the official minimum wage of 1500 rubles. Students may now apply for interest-free loans in an amount up to 1.5 times the state stipend in addition to the free scholarship itself. The loans, to be repaid eight years after graduation, are available to full-time students in the last two years of their studies who are Latvian citizens. Other loans are available for needy and disabled students. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL, Inc.)
novine.55 zandric,
> The authoritarian Serbian leader used the meeting to > launch a new attack on U.N. economic sanctions slapped on > his republic for underwriting the Serbian territorial > conquests in neighboring Bosnia- Hercegovina. "PUSKINOVO NJET" Boris Spaski se nije odazvao pozivu da prisustvuje jucerasnjem prijemu kod predsednika republike Srbije. Sahovski Puskin, uprkos insistiranjima novinara, nije zeleo da obrazlozi svoju odluku. Nezvanicno se saznaje da Spaski jednostavno nije zeleo da tako provede slobodan dan. Borba,7. oktobar :>>>>>>>>>>!!!!!
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Eagleburger Says U.S. Pressing `No-Fly' Zone in Bosnia By GENE KRAMER Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - The United States is concerned about the killing of Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina and is pressing allies to enforce a ban on military flights there, says acting Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger. ``We are very sensitive to the Muslim world's view that the West is permitting killing of Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina while acting differently in Iraq,'' where ``no-fly'' zones have been declared, Eagleburger said in a television interview Tuesday. A no-fly zone would halt Serbian or Bosnian Serbian air attacks against U.N. humanitarian flights in the war-torn former Yugoslav republic. Bosnia has no combat planes. Eagleburger said it would also mean the Serbians can't use their aircraft to attack Bosnian Muslims in their policy of ``ethnic cleansing.'' More than 14,000 people have been killed in Bosnia since Bosnian Serbs rebelled against a vote in February by majority Muslims and Croats to secede from Yugoslavia. Serbs, initially backed by the Yugoslav army, have seized about two-thirds of Bosnian territory. Informal closed debates on the flight ban are under way with Britain, France and other U.N. Security Council members, Eagleburger said, predicting the result could be a compromise involving first trying measures short of using force to enforce the ban. ``We had a debate in the U.S. government about it and are having a debate with some of our allies,'' he said on public television's ``MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour'' program. The situations are ``totally different,'' Eagleburger said, but the United States nevertheless recognizes that ``the Muslim world looks on aghast as more and more Muslims are killed. There is no question that this weighed heavily on (President Bush) and all of us ... and this government tried to demonstrate to the Muslim world that we care about that and want to do something about that. ``The president has decided, and I think rightly so, that the situation in and around Sarajevo and Bosnia is so disastrous now we need to move hard and fast to prevent it from becoming worse,'' Eagleburger added. ``But I can understand the French, British or anyone else'' with ground troops in the area wanting to think through the consequences. Eagleburger disputed a suggestion that the decision resulted from pressure from Bill Clinton, Bush's Democratic campaign rival, for stronger U.S. intervention. ``We have been debating this and ... with all respect to the governor, he had nothing to do with it,'' he said.
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Women, Children Speak of Terrors of Ethnic Cleansing By JOHN DANISZEWSKI Associated Press Writer TRAVNIK, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) _ Hasnija Halilovic said the Serb fighters came in the night, wearing black masks. They lined up about 200 Muslim women and children at gunpoint in three rows between a Muslim home and piled the house's contents nearby, she recalled. Then both the furniture and the house were set ablaze. For four hours, with fires in front of them and behind, the women and children stood helpless, screaming and pleading for their lives. They cried. They choked on the smoke. Their captors taunted them, threatening to shoot. Finally, they were let go. ``No one was killed, but they were beating us,'' said Mrs. Halilovic, 60, her blue eyes ablaze with anger. The scene occurred two weeks ago in Kljuc, a northern Bosnian town where thousands of Muslims from surrounding areas have been herded into a ghetto since last spring. Now, in another example of the process known as ``ethnic cleansing,'' the last Muslims are being expelled by Serb occupiers from their land and sent to Travnik, one of the few remaining Muslim-held cities in Bosnia. A key part of ethnic cleansing is to instill terror, and the Serbs in Kljuc succeeded. Mrs. Halilovic's daughter-in-law, Zijada, said the shock sent her into labor. The infant at her breast, Rashid, was born the next day. Dressed in a green scarf and five layers of shirts, sweaters and skirts, Mrs. Halilovic stood Sunday with about 1,000 other bedraggled figures outside a decaying secondary school, now their temporary home in Travnik. On this bleak, rainy day, they waited for their daily meal: rice. This front-line Muslim city, squeezed into a narrow mountain valley adorned with a dozen minarets, has become a main refuge for people forced from their homes in Serb- controlled areas of Bosnia. The city is patrolled by Croatian and Muslim troops, including units of the ``Muslim Forces'' who affect the bravado of Middle Eastern guerrillas by wrapping their heads in traditional headdresses. An occasional rifle-toting volunteer from the Middle East or North Africa also can be seen in the streets, lending credence to Serb claims that ``mujahedeen'' from Islamic countries are fighting on the Muslim side. But such foreigners resolutely refused to talk to journalists. There are now about 25,000 refugees in Travnik, normally a city of 35,000, said Meris Zulic of the humanitarian organization Merhamet. If the Serbs complete the ethnic cleansing around Banja Luka, capital of the self-proclaimed Serbian Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, 80,000 more Muslims and 40,000 Croats could join them, he said. There already are shortages of food, shelter, toilets and clean water. With winter fast approaching, officials worry about bitter cold and disease. Travnik has not been shelled recently, but nearby areas have been bombed, said Zeir Krnjic, a Muslim forces commander. Mrs. Halilovic and other veterans of ethnic cleansing described their exodus from Serb-held areas as brutal. After their night between the flames, the women and children holed up for another week in the crowded Muslim quarter of Kljuc. Then, on a Thursday, about 3,000 Muslims from Kljuc and surrounding villages were put into 10 buses and eight trucks. As they were put aboard, they were beaten by about 150 soldiers who demanded money or stole from their meager belongings, Mrs. Halilovic said. ``Then they were shooting at the trucks,'' she said. ``One truck didn't arrive at all and we don't know what happened to those people.'' At the frontier of Serb-controlled territory, she said, the refugees were ordered to abandon their remaining belongings and told to start walking over mountainous terrain toward Travnik, about 12 miles away. After five hours on a treacherous track with steep cliffs, they reached a unit of Croatian soldiers. Details of such journeys are impossible to verify, but they mesh with accounts from numerous other refugees and Western journalists who have traveled with them. Zulic said large groups of such people have been arriving every two or three days since May, despite promises of Bosnia's Serbs to curb ethnic cleansing. Croats and Muslims also have been accused of purging areas of other ethnic groups, but the Serbs have been condemned internationally most often. He said he knows that at least 10 people traveling in Mrs. Halilovic's group died because the Serb side later offered to trade their bodies for a group of Serbs in Travnik. NO-FLY ZONE RESOLUTION AT A GLANCE UNITED NATIONS, Oct 7, Reuter - Following are the key elements in a draft Security Council resolution banning military aircraft over Bosnia-Herzegovina. The document, obtained by Reuters, was approved by the United States, Britain and France on Wednesday. The document -- Establishes a ban on military flights, excluding any aircraft relating to U.N. operations or supporting them. -- Requests U.N. forces to monitor compliance, including placing observers on airfields, wherever necessary. -- Requests U.N. forces to set up an inspection mechanism to make sure all flights to and from Bosnia do not violate Security Council resolutions. -- Calls on all states to take measures to help U.N. forces, including technical monitoring and ``other capabilities.'' -- In case of violations, the council would pledge to ``consider urgently'' further measures to enforce the ban. REUTER EL BRO BN Reut18:34 10-07 Serbs Shell Other Towns After Capturing Key City in Northern Bosnia By JOHN DANISZEWSKI Associated Press Writer SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) _ Serb fighters were reported cleaning out the last pockets of resistance in a northern strategic city on Wednesday, and they widened their offensive with intensified shelling throughout the region. The lightning capture of Bosanski Brod on the Croatian border was a major victory for the Serbs, who are seeking to set up their own republic within Bosnia possibly as a prelude to linking up with Serbia. The Serbian advances mean they have taken control of 70 percent of Bosnia in the 7-month-old civil war, and their offensive sought to gain further territory before winter. More than 14,000 people have been killed in Bosnia since Bosnian Serbs rebelled against a vote in February by majority Muslims and Croats to secede from Serbian-dominated Yugoslavia. The fall of Bosanski Brod, the last major government- held town in northern Bosnia, apparently was part of a Serbian offensive aimed at occupying more Bosnian territory before winter sets in. There was major shelling in Sarajevo in what the city's radio called a ``hellish'' morning. But there was major fighting in the north, according to Croatian radio reports: _Heavy Serb artillery blasted the region around Zupanja, 35 miles east of Slavonski Brod. _The city of Gradacac was hit by hundreds of missiles and cluster bombs. _Serb forces 12 miles north of Gradacac were caught in a Muslim-Croat pincer, forcing them to retreat and leave 10 artillery pieces behind. Elsewhere, Serb missiles targeted Bihac, a Bosnian border town just 40 miles south of Zagreb, Croatia's capital. Maglaj, 60 miles north of Sarajevo, was bombed by Serb warplanes. Mostar, 100 miles southwest of the Bosnian capital, was rocked by artillery barrages. The Serbs had significantly improved their position with the capture on Tuesday of Bosanski Brod, widening the corridor between the territories they control in eastern and western Bosnia. Officials in Slavonski Brod, a Croatian city across the Sava River, speaking on condition of anonymity, said small- arms fire and the boom of artillery continued to sound from the neighboring Bosnian town late Wednesday. They said Serb troops apparently were moving from house to house, firing machine gun bursts inside and throwing in hand grenades to clean up last pockets of suspected resistance. AP photographer Zoran Bozicevic said dozens of houses set on fire by the Serb invaders blazed in Bosanski Brod. A high-rise apartment building still burned Wednesday morning. The bridge across the Sava River was blown up before dawn Wednesday, destroying what for months had been a path to relative safety for tens of thousands of refugees. Just hours before its destruction, at least 5,000 refugees and Muslim-Croat forces used the bridge to flee the Serb advance. The Serb offensive appeared aimed at eliminating the entire Bosnian enclave along the river border. The enclave threatened the supply routes running from Serbia proper to areas held by Serb rebels in western Bosnia and central Croatia. A Croatian army spokesman in Zagreb told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Croat-Muslim defenders, under constant air and artillery attack for six days, were withdrawn to save lives. Slavonski Brod on the Croatian side teemed with Bosnian troops Wednesday. Some soldiers were withdrawn Tuesday night by a small ferry from a village just west of Bosanski Brod. In Sarajevo, shells landed near the presidency building and in the city's new section. One landed about 100 yards outside a stadium where a funeral was under way. Sarajevo radio called it ``one of the most hellish mornings since the beginning of the war.'' In Geneva, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said three U.S. and two French relief flights landed at Sarajevo airport. But they supplied only a fraction of the 200 tons of food needed daily by the besieged city's 500,000 residents. Without more food, children are expected to start dying from starvation next month, U.N. officials say. The situation of tens of thousands of Sarajevans preparing for winter worsened Tuesday, when natural gas supplies used by many to heat homes were cut. Running water and electricity already have been unavailable for weeks in many sections. BOSNIAN SERBS MOP UP AFTER BIG MILITARY VICTORY By Paul Holmes SLAVONSKI BROD, Croatia, Oct 7, Reuter - The Bosnian Serb army mopped up on Wednesday after seizing the key northern town of Bosanski Brod in their biggest military victory in three months. Thousands of people retreated in panic across the Sava river to the neighbouring town of Slavonski Brod inside Croatia before the Bosnian Serbs captured Bosanski Brod late on Tuesday and a bridge linking the two centres was blown up. A senior source close to Croatian President Franjo Tudjman said Croatia feared Serb forces would now turn their attention to central Bosnian targets such as Tuzla and Zenica. Each side accused the other of destroying the road and rail bridge, which was Croatia's last fixed link under its control across the Sava into northern Bosnia. The Serbs' victory consolidates their hold on a strategic corridor across northern Bosnia linking Serbia proper in the east with the Krajina area of Croatia taken by Serb fighters in their war with Croatia last year. The Bosnian Serbs have been fighting for six months against a shaky coalition of Bosnian Moslems and Croats whose supporters voted for independence at a referendum, leading to international recognition for an independent state whose capital is the besieged city of Sarajevo. Fierce fighting erupted again in Sarajevo on Wednesday. Tanjug reported heavy infantry duels in Novo Sarajevo, with the most intense combat in the Moslem-held Hrasno area. Heavy artillery and mortar fire broke out in the old town, Dobrinja and the centre of Sarajevo. At Slavonski Brod, some Croatian national guardsmen manning an anti-tank cannon cursed Tudjman as they withdrew from a position near the shattered bridge. ``Damn Tudjman. I voted for him. Look what he's done for this town, and the Croats over there (in Bosnia),'' one soldier said. The Bosnian Serb army said in a statement hundreds of Croat and Moslem soldiers had been killed in the Serbs' final assault on the city, their bodies littering lawns and city squares. Slavko Bilandzija, the Croatian military police chief for Slavonski Brod, said 250 people, including civilians as well as Croat and Moslem soldiers, had been killed in the last few days in air attacks and artillery bombardments to soften up resistance before the final assault. The Croatian Defence Council for northern Bosnia (HVO) said 8,000 Bosnian Serb troops had been killed in the drive to take the town, and 60 enemy tanks had been destroyed and 21 planes shot down. Bilandzija said his men watched Serb fighters blow up the steel bridge early on Wednesday morning, whereas the Bosnian Serb army said it was destroyed by retreating Croatian forces. Virtually every window in three 11-storey apartment blocks near the bridge was blown out by the force of the blast. Bilandzija said 10,000 people, mostly civilians had fled to Slavonski Brod on Tuesday, crossing the bridge or grabbing boats or barges. ``There was complete chaos,'' he said, adding that said some elderly Moslems and Croats who had been unwilling to flee remained on the Bosnian side of the river. He said Serb forces on Wednesday had used loudhailers to shout messages across the Sava to Croatian forces that they would not attack Slavonski Brod. Witnesses said the Serbs shouted: ``Don't shoot at us. We're not shooting back. We got what we wanted.'' Bilandzija said: ``There are no guarantees that they'll stick to that. They might use this (time) to do their looting, then they'll start shooting again.'' There was no official Croatian government comment on the fall of Bosanski Brod. The senior source close to Tudjman said he was deeply worried but was determined not to get Croatia openly involved in the war in Bosnia.
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----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Serbs to ground jetfighters in Bosnia-Hercegovina Subject: U.N. sets up war-crimes commission for former Yugoslavia Subject: Sarajevo doctors say psychological wounds hardest to treat Subject: Bridge blown up after Serbs capture key town ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Serbs to ground jetfighters in Bosnia-Hercegovina Date: 6 Oct 92 20:54:30 GMT BELGRADE (UPI) -- Bosnian Serb leaders said Tuesday Serbian forces would ``immediately'' ground their air force in Bosnia-Hercegovina but warned they would resume combat flights if predominantly Muslim Slav forces tried to take advantage of the decision, the Serb-run Tanjug news agency reported. The ``foreign minister'' of the self-declared Serbian state in Bosnia-Hercegovina, Aleksandar Buha, said that leaders of the Bosnian Serbs, in Geneva for peace talks on former Yugoslavia, agreed Tuesday evening to ``stop military flights.'' ``This decision goes into effect immediately,'' Buha told Tanjug in a telephone conversation and added that ``it will remain in effect as long as the other side does not use it to gain a military advantage.'' Buha said Serbian forces would ``resume flights if the enemy misuses our agreement.'' Radovan Karadzic, self-styled president of the Bosnian Serb state, Monday warned his delegation would quit the internationally-sponsored peace talks in Geneva if the U.N. Security Council approved a proposal to create a ``no-fly'' zone for combat aircraft over the newly independent republic of Bosnia-Hercegovina. Serbian forces have been using Soviet-made MiG jetfighters and other aircraft supplied to them by the Serb-led Yugoslav army in missions supporting their ground forces fighting against Bosnia-Hercegovina government forces. Bosnian government forces are comprised of mostly Muslim Slavs but also include some Croats and moderate Serbs. Karadzic has declared a Serbian state on about 70 percent of the republic's territory. The 1.4 million Serbs in Bosnia-Hercegovina make up about 31 percent of the population. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: U.N. sets up war-crimes commission for former Yugoslavia Date: 6 Oct 92 23:49:21 GMT UNITED NATIONS (UPI) -- The U.N. Security Council decided unanimously Tuesday to establish a war-crimes commission to study charges of severe human rights violations in the former Yugoslavia and to prosecute those who may be charged in an international court. The council said the commission, to be composed of ``impartial experts,'' will ``examine and analyze'' all information obtained by them or through investigation or efforts by organizations other than the United Nations to uncover executions or human rights abuses in the Balkans. The council adopted the resolution forming the war-crimes commission with a 15-0 vote after calling on governments and international organizations to provide within 30 days ``substantiated information'' on alleged human rights violations in the territory of the former Yugoslavia. The commission was charged to provide concluding proofs that ``violations of Geneva Conventions and of other international conventions on human rights had been committed in the territory of the former Yugoslavia.'' The council asked Secretary-General Boutros Ghali to name the experts on the commission and to make a report on the panel's findings. It did not specify the next step to be taken, but diplomats said they have been considering calling for a trial of those responsible for human rights violations. ``It doesn't make any sense if the commission would not lead to a trial,'' Venezuelan U.N. Ambassador Diego Arria said. U.N. officials said legal steps would be taken to establish a tribunal similar to the Nuremberg trials, the records of which were deposited to the care of the United Nations. In Geneva, a special investigator for the U.N. Commission for Human Rights, former Polish Premier Tadeusz Mazowiecki, said he will make a second visit to Bosnia-Hercegovina, Croatia, Kosovo and other parts of the former Yugoslavia to continue his investigation. Mazowiecki will begin his 10-day visit in Sarajevo on Oct. 12. Mazowiecki's first trip to Bosnia-Hercegovina in August resulted in a harsh report condemning all warring factions for violating human rights. Serbian forces in Bosnia-Hercegovina have been accused of carrying out ``ethnic cleansing'' to gain territories occupied by Muslim Slavs or Croats, thus driving hundreds of thousands of people out of their destroyed homes. The Serbs also were alleged to have tortured and killed Muslims in detention centers and prisons, but Serbian leaders denied the charges. The United States last month said it has evidence that at least 3,000 Muslim men, women and children were executed in May and June in Serb-run detention centers near the Bosnian town of Brcko. By another vote of 15-0 the council decided also to demilitarize the Prevlaka peninsula in the Adriatic Sea which had been used by Belgrade's Yugoslav army to attack Croatia's port city of Dubrovnik and control navigation on a 100-mile-long coastline. In the resolution on the Prevlaka peninsula, the council asked that Croatia and Montenegro withdraw their heavy weapons and to cooperate with monitors from the European Community. In Belgrade Tuesday the official Tanjug news agency announced that the army of rump Yugoslavia reiterated its intention to withdraw from the disputed peninsula within the next two weeks. The army of the Serbia-Montenegro federation said that its units and equipment would be ``transferred'' by Oct. 20 from the peninsula and the surrounding region as required by a Sept. 29 pact reached in Geneva between Yugoslav President Dobrica Cosic and his Croatian counterpart, Franjo Tudjman. But, the army warned that should Croatia violate the agreement to create a demilitarize zone on the peninsula, it would ``use all of its potential to defend'' the main Yugoslav navy base at adjacent Boka Kotorska Bay. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Sarajevo doctors say psychological wounds hardest to treat Date: 7 Oct 92 02:08:07 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- On any given day at the bombed- out state hospital, doctors may face several dozen shrapnel injuries, close a half-dozen bullet wounds and perhaps amputate three or four limbs. But for each torn-open leg or blown-away arm bleeding onto the cots of the ground-floor emergency unit, Dr. Mirza Cisic, a neuropsychiatrist, says he and his staff, squeezed into a tiny third- floor office, handle more than twice as many injuries to the mind. ``The surgeons are doing the physical work, and we have to save the brain and the soul,'' said his colleague, Dr. Momir Smitran, sitting with Cisic and wearing a white lab coat. ``And that is a lot more work.'' The dozen or so people sitting quietly in the dark, bomb-scarred hallway outside their office are but a small part of the problem. For outside the office, where residents of Sarajevo still survive the daily rain of artillery shells and random sniper attacks, doctors feel the number of such victims is at least 10 times as great. ``Generally speaking, we must say there is no family in Sarajevo that has not been damaged or destroyed psychologically,'' Cisic said. The doctors offer both individual and group therapy, but they lack normal diagnostic and basic rehabilatative tools, such as videotapes of prosthesis patients designed to give hope to those who just lost limbs. But thousands of those needing treatment, including those with pre- existing mental problems, simply never find help. ``They feel the situation is hopeless, with not much chance that it will be improved,'' Cisic said. ``They do not come and report here because this place is always under grenade and sniper fire.'' Cisic, who is old enough to recall World War II, sees little comparison even to wartime London or Dresden because those cities were not cut off from the outside world and the aerial blitzes at least came with some warning. ``This is six months of daily shelling,'' he said. ``Here you just walk down the street and suddenly a shell is falling on you,'' Smitran said. ``When there is an air alert, it does not get any attention -- people just keep walking on the street.'' ``Now (the city) is one big concentration camp,'' Cisic said. ``The inhabitants are in a hopeless situation, not only for their vital living functions, but because their existence remains in doubt. ``I personally don't know what to bring my family, how to feed them.'' Perhaps ironically, one release from the tension could be found in the impish grin and beaming brown eyes of 40-year-old Nermin Tulic, sitting on a cot tucked away in the darkness of an elevator waiting area a couple floors below the psychiatrists' office. Tulic, a well-known Shakespearean actor in the city, was standing outside his home June 10 when a mortar grenade fell from the sky and exploded between his legs. He said his doctors tried everything to save at least one of the legs, but could not. ``I thought of suicide -- they took the knives and forks away from me -- I was trying to die,'' Tulic said, playfully wiggling his scarred stumps beneath an unbuttoned pink shirt. ``But then when I put in perspective what is behind me and what is in front of me,'' he said, recalling the sudden change of heart he had about two months ago. ``I thought that I have a girl 14 months old, that my wife is pregnant -- she had another girl just 40 days ago -- and that with good rehabilitation -- I can expect to resume about 80 percent of my activities.'' Tulic said the turning point came when, after days of struggling, he finally learned the trick of sitting up straight without his legs. ``At that point a micro-switch flipped in my brain, and I did in one night what some people take two weeks to do,'' he said. Tulic rejected any thought of bearing hatred for the rest of his life ``because I will never meet the man, the animal, the beast who shot this grenade.'' Cisic and Smitran, perhaps better than anyone else in the city, understand the psychological as well as military warfare being waged by Serbian forces against the civilian population, but are no better able to comprehend why. ``They are the most sadistic, psychopathic type of violations,'' Cisic said, doubting he could even give a professional recommendation that those shooting the guns from the hills above Sarajevo could be held legally responsible. ``It would be an understatement to say these are people with diminished capacity. And in a normal process, they couldn't even be prosecuted,'' he said. ``They would be put in an asylum.'' Early in the Bosnian phase of the Yugoslav conflict the Serbs opened the doors of a Sarajevo asylum for non-criminal patients, Cisic said. More than 100 residents were evicted, some wearing only their pajamas. Some of the patients have been returned to hospitals for treatment, he said. Others are believed among those still walking the streets. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Bridge blown up after Serbs capture key town Date: 7 Oct 92 16:41:04 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- The military defeat of Muslim Slav and Croat forces after the fall of the key border town of Bosanski Brod was compounded Wednesday when Serbian forces blew up a strategic bridge near the town, Sarajevo radio reported. The Serbian attack on the bridge effectively cut the only road link connecting northern Bosnia-Hercegovina with Croatia, further isolating Bosnian forces. According to the report, a coalition of Croatian and Muslim Slav defenders fled the town north across a bridge into the Croatian town of Slavonski Brod and Serbian forces following behind them blew up the bridge. The explosion was so heavy it blew out the remaining windows and door frames on nearby multiple-story apartment buildings, Croatian radio said. Occupying Serbian forces began robbing those properties still standing and fires broke out in numerous buildings including the post office, oil refinery and apartment buildings, it said. The fall of Bosanski Brod, the only major town on Bosnia- Hercegovina's northern frontier with Croatia not to have been captured by the Serbs, consolidates Serbian control of a strategic corridor running from the border of Serbia, in the east, across the top of Bosnia-Hercegovina, to the Serb-held stronghold of Banja Luka and surrounding Serb-controlled areas of the republic's northwest. Aside from being territory claimed for the self-declared Serbian state in Bosnia-Hercegovina, the corridor is essential for the delivery of military, food and fuel supplies from communist-ruled Serbia to Serbian forces throughout the region and headquartered in Banja Luka. From Banja Luka, such supplies are also fowarded across the nearby Croatian border to sustain Serbian forces based in Knin, the headquarters town of the self-declared ``Republic of Serbian Krajina'' proclaimed in areas of Croatia captured by Serbs during the civil war last year. Control of Bosanski Brod will allow Serbian artillery to hit towns in central Croatia, across the Sava River, including Slavonski Brod, a major industrial center. Bosanski Brod had been linked to Slavonski Brod by the bridge that was blown up. The fall of now devastated Bosanski Brod came seven months after Serbian forces in Bosnia-Hercegovina opened their war in the town for control of territory in the breakaway Yugoslav republic. Serbs since then have captured more than 70 percent of the former Yugoslav republics' territory despite representing only 31 percent of its pre-war population. Bosanski Brod before the war had about 34,000 residents, 41 percent of whom identified themselves in a 1991 census as Croats, 34 percent Serbs and 12 percent Muslim Slavs. Serbian fighting in recent months was concentrated on cutting the land route through the Muslim Slav-dominated northeast into the large Serbian-controlled northwest as part of an overall plan to create an ``ethnically purified'' greater Serbia. In Sarajevo Wednesday Serbian forces in the hills overlooking the city unleashed a series of artillery assaults on the capital, hitting numerous apartment buildings and other civilian targets and killing at least three people and wounding 25 others. Sporadic shooting throughout the night in Sarajevo was broken open around 5 a.m. Wednesday when Serbian forces opened fire throughout the city, using 120mm mortars, 155mm artillery guns and tanks, Sarajevo radio said. The new part of the city came under the heaviest fire, from Serbian tank positions in the southern area of Vraca, it said. Three apartment buildings were burning on Ivana Krndelja Street south of the Miljacka River, and a tobacco factory was burning on the north side, the radio said. Apartments in the Cengic Vila complex in the center of the new part of the city also were hit early Wednesday, killing at least one person, Sarajevo radio said. Another civilian apartment complex further west, Alipasino Poljine, just across the street from the city's United Nations Protection Forces (UNPRFOR) headquarters, also was hit, the radio said. Serbian infantry forces, moving under the cover of grenade fire from the western suburb of Ilidza, attempted an advance into Stup but were pushed back by Bosnian defenders, the radio said. Serbian forces based in Poljine also shot artillery and tank fire Wednesday morning into the northern suburb of Vogosca and onto the road connecting it with Sarajevo, it said. In Split, Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic met Bosnian Croat leader Mate Boban to discuss improved military cooperation and visited Bosnian refugee camps around the Croatian port city, Sarajevo radio reported. Heavy fighting also was reported Wednesday throughout Bosnia- Hercegovina, particularly in the Muslim Slav-dominated areas of the republic's northeast. Sarajevo radio reported heavy fighting Wednesday across central Bosnia- Hercegovina, including artillery fire and infantry attacks on the towns of Gradacac, Doboj, Tesanj and Gracanica. Heavy artillery and infantry attacks also were reported Tuesday and Wednesday closer to Sarajevo, in the towns of Breza, Olovo and Ilijas, Sarajevo radio said. Srebrenica, on the eastern border with Serbia, and Jajce, in the central part of the republic, also saw more fighting and artillery attacks, the radio said. One woman was killed and six were injured since tuesday in Jajce, it said. Artillery attacks were reported against civilian regions of Mostar, southwest of Sarajevo, although the heavy fighting of previous days appeared to have eased, Sarajevo radio said. Also Wednesday, French Gen. Phillipe Morillon, commander of the UNPROFOR new Bosnian operations, was due to meet Bosnian Serb leaders at their headquarters in Pale, just outside Sarajevo, before traveling later to the Serbian capital Belgrade. U.N. troops have been trying for several days to escort utility workers into Serbian-controlled areas to restore sarajevos water and electricity supplies, but Morillon and Ganic conceded after their meeting little progress was likely while the fighting continued. Morillon said UNPROFOR troops would continue trying to help utility workers reach the areas where repairs are necessary but Ganic, frustrated by week- long outages of water and electricity, asked UNPROFOR to say clearly what it can and cannot do. Serbian forces on the eve of Morillon's arrival launched one of the most devastating assaults in their six-month seige of Sarajevo, destroying rows of offices and apartment buildings, and leaving dozens of civilians dead and thousands homeless. Earlier Tuesday, Serbian forces bombarded Sarajevo with artillery, tank and machine-gun fire, a day after one of the most vicious assaults in their six-month seige destroyed offices and apartment buildings, leaving dozens of civilians dead and thousands homeless. Streams of the screaming and crying homeless were forced after a day of relentless bombing to flee their flaming homes with only handfuls of possessions.
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RFE/RL Daily Report No. 193, 6 October, 1992 SUCCESSOR STATES TO THE USSR YELTSIN: RUSSIAN FORCES TO DEFEND THEMSELVES, RAILROADS, IN ABKHAZIA. Abkhaz forces continued to advance north from Gagra and took the villages of Leselidze and Gantiadi early on 6 October, and they now control a 65 kilometer stretch of coastline from the Russian border south almost as far as Sukhumi. Speaking to journalists in Tbilisi, Georgian State Council Chairman Eduard Shevardnadze accused Russian troops stationed near Gudauta of transferring ultra-modern technology to the Abkhaz forces, ITAR-TASS reported. Russian President Boris Yeltsin told the Russian Supreme Soviet that Russia would not stand by while Russian citizens' interests were being trampled on; nor would Russian troops hesitate to defend themselves if attacked. Although he claimed that Russian forces remained neutral, President Yeltsin told deputies that "we will not pull our [military] contingent out [of Abkhazia], because it is necessary to take control of the railroad on the territory of Abkhazia, from the Russian-Abkhazian border to the Abkhazian-Georgian border--the entire line, which runs along the seaside," ITAR-TASS reported. According to Western agencies, Yeltsin also stated that Russian control of the railroads were vital, since they were key to communications between Russia and Armenia. Yeltsin also stated that he would meet on 13 October with Shevardnadze, Abkhaz parliament Chairman Vladislav Ardzinba and North Caucasian representatives to discuss the Abkhaz situation; however, his statement about Russian interests in Abkhazia is tantamount to an assertion that Abkhazia is not part of Georgia. The UN Security Council has expressed concern over the Abkhaz crisis and may send observers to monitor the situation there. (Liz Fuller, RFE/RL, Inc.) YELTSIN'S CHANGE OF ECONOMIC COURSE? In an address to the Russian parliament on 6 October, carried in full on Russian TV, President Yeltsin distanced himself from the rigorous reform plan espoused by acting Prime Minister Egor Gaidar and his administration. He criticized Gaidar, Aven, Nechaev, and Titkin by name, which suggested that all or some of them might soon be replaced or choose to resign. Yeltsin sought to deflect public dissatisfaction from himself by blaming excessive emphasis on macroeconomic strategy at the expense of the social safety net. He proposed a redefinition of economic reform strategy to concentrate on: fighting inflation; restructuring industry; completing privatization; accelerating land reform; and stimulating competition by means of an effective demonopolization policy. (Keith Bush, RFE/RL, Inc.) POLITICAL ASPECTS OF YELTSIN'S SPEECH. Russian President Boris Yeltsin indicated in his speech to the parliament that he may consider allying himself with the Civic Union. Yeltsin's analysis of the economic situation coincided with criticism recently made by leaders of the Civic Union. In the second part of the speech, Yeltsin emphasized the need to root out corruption and crime with an iron fist--another demand frequently made by the Civic Union. He also suggested that the "Democratic Russia" movement and the Civic Union may, in the future, constitute a two-party system in Russia. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL, Inc.) GAIDAR REJECTS CRITICISM. In a brilliant and largely unrepentant speech, acting Prime Minister Egor Gaidar explicitly rejected the burden of Yeltsin's criticisms and restated his opposition to the policies advanced by the Civic Union. He savaged the implicit calls to take the Chinese path of authoritarian central control together with a large private sector. He ridiculed those who now wished to slow the pace of privatization after criticizing his administration earlier for moving too slowly. He condemned the process of nomenklatura privatization and continued protectionism. He gave a surprisingly positive progress report on conversion, and he reassured deputies that state farms would not be phased out in the near future. (Keith Bush, RFE/RL, Inc.) YELTSIN ANNOUNCED STRENGTHENING OF MVD, ANTI-CORRUPTION MEASURES. In his address to the Russian parliament on 6 October, Boris Yeltsin revealed that his administration recently has increased the MVD personnel by 50,000 men; he also suggested increasing MVD personnel by another 50-100,000 men contingent on parliamentary approval. The Russian president also proposed using the Army to combat crime and tighter gun control legislation. The package of anti-corruption measures includes new registration requirements for non-state commercial firms and foundations, and the revision of property transferred to them by the state bodies, as well as a direct ban of business activities conducted by government officials. (Victor Yasmann, RFE/RL, Inc.) KINKEL, KOZYREV WARN OF NATIONALISM. The German and Russian foreign ministers warned against rising nationalism in Europe following meetings in Moscow on 6 October. The German foreign minister, Klaus Kinkel, said the two countries must strive to prevent nationalist violence -- whether in southern Europe, the Caucasus or elsewhere. In a speech to mark the opening of the new Germany Embassy in Moscow, Kozyrev remarked that the building should not contain within its walls any of the "phantoms" which were threatening post-communist Europe, Interfax reported. The Russian Foreign Ministry had expressed concern in September over right-wing violence in parts of Germany. Kinkel is scheduled to meet Russian President Boris Yeltsin on 7 October. (Suzanne Crow, RFE/RL, Inc.) "DNIESTER" LEADERS GREETED BY RUSSIA. "Dniester republic" leaders in eastern Moldova celebrated on 2 and 3 October the bicentennial of the founding of their would-be capital Tiraspol as a military settlement of the Russian Empire. Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev sent a message of greetings to the "Dniester" leaders on the occasion, and Russian Vice president Aleksandr Rutskoy sent a personal representative, Col. Gen. Shkenakin, who addressed the celebratory rally in Tiraspol, DR-Press reported on 3 October. The event is the latest in a series of recent Russian gestures of overt political and economic support to the "Dniester republic" which can only complicate the domestic political situation of Moldovan President Mircea Snegur, who is staking his popularity on cooperation with Russia for a peaceful resolution of the Dniester conflict. (Vladimir Socor, RFE/RL, Inc.) YELTSIN NOT IN FAVOR OF NEW "UNION." In his speech to the Russian parliament said that Russia's attitude towards the Commonwealth was unchanged. Russia was for the strengthening of relations on a treaty basis and was not seeking the creation of any kind of new "union." Yeltsin reiterated that relations with the CIS states should take account of the specific features of each state, but he maintained that there should nonetheless be some common norms of behavior. In particular, Russia would insist at the Bishkek summit that states wishing to stay in the ruble zone jointly work out the rules and submit to them. (Ann Sheehy, RFE/RL, Inc.) GORBACHEV AGREES TO MEET CONSTITUTIONAL COURT OFFICIALS. Former CPSU Secretary General Mikhail Gorbachev said he would agree to meet informally with Russian Constitutional Court officials, but would continue to refuse court orders to testify at its hearings on the CPSU. The Russian media quoted Gorbachev as saying on 6 October that he objected to attempts to transform the Constitutional Court into "a stage for political trials." On 6 October, President Yeltsin criticized Gorbachev for ignoring the summons to appear at the hearings. The Russian president accused Gorbachev of showing "disrespect for the state of law, the Constitutional Court and for Russian statehood," ITAR-TASS reported. (Vera Tolz, RFE/RL, Inc.) INTELLIGENTSIA NOSTALGIC FOR GORBACHEV? On 27 September, Mikhail Gorbachev was met with the longest wave of applause while attending the hit of the theater season: the performance of the nineteenth century classic, Aleksandr Griboedov's Woe from Wit, in the Moscow Arts Festival, Izvestiya reported on 28 September. Meanwhile, Literaturnaya gazeta (No. 40), the weekly read primarily by the intelligentsia, reprinted without comment an article from the Times of London saying that Yeltsin is just as unpopular among the Moscow intellectual elite as were any of the communist tyrants; the article also stated that the Russian intelligentsia compared President Yeltsin unfavorably with former Secretary General Gorbachev. (Julia Wishnevsky, RFE/RL, Inc.) KASATONOV CRITICIZES JOINT CONTROL OF BLACK SEA FLEET. President Yeltsin on 5 October signed a decree formally appointing Admiral Kasatonov First Deputy Commander of the Russian Navy, although he will temporarily continue as Commander of the Black Sea Fleet, according to Interfax. On 6 October, Kasatonov held a press conference at which he criticized plans for joint Russian-Ukrainian control of the fleet. Kasatonov claimed that a joint command system with one fleet commander and one Russian and one Ukrainian deputy commander would work, but that Ukraine's proposal for having two captains on one ship would reduce combat readiness. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL, Inc.) UKRAINE TO SELL URANIUM FROM NUCLEAR WEAPONS? In a meeting with US Under-Secretary of State Frank Wiesner, Foreign Minister Boris Tarasyuk proposed that the US buy enriched Uranium originating from the nuclear warheads located in Ukraine. The US has already agreed to buy up to $5 billion worth of Uranium from disassembled Russian warheads. Since Ukraine has no warhead disassembly facilities, the US has proposed buying the material from Russia after disassembly there, and paying Ukraine for its share. But Ukraine claims that the warheads belong to it and wants to sell the material directly, according to an Interfax report on 6 October. It is unclear how much Uranium would be in the warheads, as modern weapons are more likely to contain Plutonium. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIA DENIES PLUTONIUM FUEL PROPOSAL TO JAPAN. Russian Deputy Minister of the Nuclear Power Industry Nikolai Egorov has denied reports that he proposed a joint project with Japan that would use Plutonium from Russian nuclear weapons as fuel for Japanese reactors. According to an ITAR-TASS report of 5 October, Egorov claimed that the project was merely an "unofficial proposal." Egorov also stated, according to AFP on 5 October, that warhead dismantling was taking place in 4 locations: Chelyabinsk-70, Arzamas-16, Sverdlovsk-44 and Zlatoust. In Washington on 6 October, the Defense Department reported it had agreed to help design a storage facility in Russia for nuclear material from the dismantled weapons, according to Western news agencies. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL, Inc.) CHIEF OF RUSSIAN GENERAL STAFF PROMOTED. The chief of the Russian general staff and first deputy minister of defense, Viktor Dubynin, was promoted to general of the Army in a decree signed by President Yeltsin on 5 October. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL, Inc.) UPCOMING CIS SUMMIT. Sapurmurad Niyazov, president of Turkmenistan, has announced that he will not be attending the CIS summit in Bishkek on 9 October, Interfax reported. Turkmenistan will be represented instead by the chairman of the republic's parliament. Turkmenistan is against the creation of any coordinating bodies which will be one of the major topics of discussion at the summit. The Azerbaijan parliament is to discuss Azerbaijan's membership of the CIS on 7 October, and the outcome is likely to determine whether or not the Azerbaijani president, Abulfaz Elchibei, attends the summit. The Moldovan president Mircea Snegur is to attend, although the Moldovan parliament has still not ratified the CIS treaty. (Ann Sheehy, RFE/RL, Inc.) AKAEV ON CIS SUMMIT. At a press conference in Bishkek on 6 October, Kyrgyz President Askar Akaev said that the authority of the CIS was undermined by the fact that many decisions were not implemented not only because the decisions themselves were imperfect, but because of the amorphous nature of the CIS's structures, ITAR-TASS reported. Akaev said that the planned establishment of a consultative coordination economic council and economic court was extremely important to arrest economic decline in the CIS states. The creation of the council seems unlikely, however, given President Yeltsin's reluctance to force the issue, presumably out of a desire not to antagonize Ukraine. (Ann Sheehy, RFE/RL, Inc.) CRIMEAN TATARS CLASH WITH POLICE IN SIMFEROPOL. On 6 October, Crimean Tatars occupied the Simferopol Supreme Soviet building in an effort to obtain the release of Tatars detained in a clash with police in Alushta on 1 October, a spokeswoman for the Crimean Tatar parliament told an RL/RFE correspondent in Moscow. According to the spokeswoman, police wounded some of the protesters when they used clubs, water cannon, tear gas, and firearms against them; these charges were not, however, confirmed by Crimean officials. The spokeswoman also reported that 5,000 Tatars were holding a rally in the Simferopol central square, and that Mustafa Dzemilyou, chairman of the Crimean Tatar parliament, urged demonstrators to establish self-defense units to resist Crimean authorities. (Hal Kosiba, RFE/RL, Inc.) MOLDOVA REQUESTS U.N. ATTENDANCE AT TROOP TALKS WITH RUSSIA. In successive messages addressed to U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Ghali on 2 and 5 October, reported by Moldovapres, President Mircea Snegur and Foreign Minister Nicolae Tiu requested that the U.N. delegate observers to attend the Moldovan-Russian negotiations on the withdrawal of Russia's 14th Army stationed in eastern Moldova. Noting that the negotiations conducted over the last two months have seen "only very little movement," the Moldovan leaders asked that the U.N. delegates "give an impetus to the talks," "see them through to their completion," and "participate in the verification of the withdrawal of Russian forces from Moldova once agreement has been reached." (Vladimir Socor, RFE/RL, Inc.) MAJOR OIL PIPELINE DAMAGED IN GEORGIA. The main oil pipeline from Azerbaijan to the Black Sea has been badly damaged near the south-west Georgian town of Lanchkhuta, some 50 kilometers from the terminal at Batumi; a 30 meter high fountain of oil is gushing from the leak, RIA reported on 6 October. The cause of the damage was not specified. (Liz Fuller, RFE/RL, Inc.) CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE SECURITY COUNCIL TO SET UP WAR CRIMES COMMISSION. In a unanimous vote on 6 October, the UN body voted to set up a commission to collect evidence of war crimes in the former Yugoslavia, the first such group to be established since the end of World War II. The aim of the measure is to prevent further violence by letting the perpetrators know they will be held responsible for their actions. The 7 October New York Times says that the commission will probably look for concrete violations of the 1949 Geneva conventions dealing with prisoners of war and with civilians in war zones, as well as for violations of the principles established during the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders. The BBC pointed out, however, that the measure is a preliminary one and lacks any clear means of enforcement. Reuters on 6 October nonetheless quoted Russian ambassador to the UN Yulii Vorontsov as saying that "if more teeth will be needed, they will be added." (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL, Inc.) SERBS TAKE STRATEGIC BOSNIAN TOWN. International media reported on 6 October that Serbian forces occupied Bosanski Brod in the middle of northern Bosnia opposite Croatia. It is a major strategic loss for both Bosnia and Croatia, and considerably strengthens the land corridor connecting Serbia with Serbian enclaves in the two neighboring republics. This leaves Brcko and Gradacac as among the few remaining towns held by Croatian and Muslim forces in northern Bosnia. (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL, Inc.) WILL BOSNIAN SERBS SUSPEND MILITARY FLIGHTS? On 6 October in Geneva, representatives of the self-proclaimed Serb Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina agreed to suspend military flights over Bosnia-Herzegovina. The decision comes one day before the UN security council is scheduled to discuss the setting up of a "no-fly" zone over Bosnia, which Bosnian Serbs oppose. Aleksa Buha, "foreign minister" of the Serb republic, stated the suspension will take effect immediately but warned "If the other side takes advantage of our decision, the flights will be resumed." He explained the Serb delegation has agreed to suspend military flights in line with the London conference determination that humanitarian aid must not be used to the detriment of any of the sides in the conflict. Radio Serbia carried the report. (Milan Andrejevich, RFE/RL, Inc.) BOSNIAN SERBS ON THE FUTURE SHAPE ON BOSNIA. Buha also said that at the talks on Yugoslavia in Geneva the Serbs reiterated their views on the future constitutional system of Bosnia-Herzegovina, which call for the establishment of a community of three national states. Most economic, political, and security functions would be regulated by the individual national units, while transportation, energy, the ecology, and human rights would be handled jointly from Sarajevo. Buha also talked about plans to divide Sarajevo into Serb and Muslim parts. Meanwhile, on 6 October, Sarajevo Serb leaders established a body, the "City Assembly of Serb Sarajevo," for the administration of the part of the city they control. Radio Serbia carried the reports. (Milan Andrejevich, RFE/RL, Inc.) HUNGARY AND THE EMBARGO. Janos Nagy, deputy commander of the Customs and Excise Office, reported that 10 to 12 trucks a day try to cross the border with rump Yugoslavia carrying goods in violation of the UN embargo. He said that customs officers have also held up two freighters on the Danube and 117 railway deliveries since the embargo was imposed on 1 June. Nagy said that Hungarian customs officers are doing everything in their power to implement the embargo and make others observe it too, Radio Budapest and MTI report. (Edith Oltay, RFE/RL, Inc.) REPUBLICAN PREMIERS CONFIRM CZECHOSLOVAK BREAKUP. An eight-hour meeting between the leaderships of the Civic Democratic Party (CDP) and the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (MDS) held on 6 October in the Moravian town of Jihlava resulted in the signing of an agreement by the Czech and Slovak Prime Ministers, Vaclav Klaus and Vladimir Meciar. Both leaders made it clear that the main purpose of the meeting was to reestablish trust between the republican leaderships after Meciar's MDS joined the opposition to vote for establishing a commission on creating a Czech and Slovak Union in the federal parliament. The document signed in Jihlava basically confirms earlier agreements between the two parties, saying that Czechoslovakia will cease to exist on 1 January 1993. It also states that a series of treaties specifying the bilateral relationship between the two new states, would go into effect on that day. At a press conference following the meeting, Klaus and Meciar said that further debates on a "union" were unrealistic. Revoking statements made earlier this week, Meciar also said that the question of whether there should be a federal budget for 1993 "was not an issue." The two republican leaders also agreed to establish special commissions to deal with open questions such as the distribution of federal property. The agreement does not define specific terms for Czechoslovakia's split. (Jan Obrman, RFE/RL, Inc.) ANTALL MEETS HUNGARIAN PARTY LEADERS FROM SLOVAKIA. Prime Minister Jozsef Antall held talks on 6 October with coalition leaders from Coexistence, the Hungarian Christian Democratic Movement, and the Hungarian People's Party. The talks focused on political developments in the Czech and Slovak republics and the situation of the Hungarian minority in Slovakia. Antall reiterated that his government has no intention of isolating Slovakia and seeks to promote its integration into Europe. Antall and the party leaders agreed, according to MTI, "that the situation of the Hungarian minority in Slovakia should be settled . . considering the principle of self-government." The party leaders from Slovakia advocated the convening of an international conference on East Central Europe to discuss the problems of democratic transformation and the protection of minority rights. (Edith Oltay, RFE/RL, Inc.) ROMANIAN ELECTORAL RESULTS. On 7 October, after a recount of nullified votes, the Central Electoral Bureau released the final results of the 27 September parliamentary elections. In the Chamber of Deputies the Democratic National Salvation Front (DNSF) received 27.71% of the votes followed by the Democratic Convention of Romania (DCR) with 20.01%; the National Salvation Front (NSF), with 10.18%; the Party of Romanian National Unity (PRNU), with 7.71%; the Hungarian Democratic Federation of Romania (HDFR), with 7.45%; the Greater Romania Party (GRP), with 3.89%; and the Socialist Labor Party (SLP) with 3.03%. In the Senate the DNSF is the strongest party, with 28.29%, followed by the DCR (20.16%); the NSF (10.38%); the PRNU (8.12%); the HDFR (7.58%); the GRP (3.85%); the Democratic Agrarian Party (3.30%) and the SLP (3.18%). (Michael Shafir, RFE/RL, Inc.). ROMANIAN CENTRAL ELECTORAL BUREAU MEMBER RESIGNS IN PROTEST. Tudor Florescu, who represented the Convention of Social Solidarity party on the Central Electoral Bureau, resigned in protest against what he termed "information . . . leading me to the conviction that the elections were not correct," Rompres reported on 6 October. (Michael Shafir, RFE/RL, Inc.) CONSTANTINESCU ON THE HUSTINGS. Answering listeners' questions in the campaign for the second round in Romania's presidential elections, DCR candidate Emil Constantinescu said that in the future Romania must be integrated into NATO military structures. He also said that the decision of the US Congress not to approve the MFN status for Romania was legitimate and follows from the failure of the country's leadership to convince Congress of its genuine commitment to reform. Constantinescu again denied that he had been a member of the nomenklatura under Ceausescu's regime. (Michael Shafir, RFE/RL, Inc.). POLISH GOVERNMENT COMPLETES PLAN FOR AGRICULTURE. The Polish cabinet put its seal of approval on the last of the government's five priority action plans, "opportunities for the village and agriculture," on 6 October. Prime Minister Hanna Suchocka is scheduled to present a full report on the government's plans to the Sejm on 9 October. The government proposes maintaining guaranteed minimum prices on grain and milk; the gradual replacement of preferential credits for farmers with credits earmarked for modernization and investment; the privatization of food processing industries; and the imposition of new duties to protect Polish farmers from competition from subsidized EC imports. Agriculture Minister Gabriel Janowski stressed that individual family farms would remain the foundation of Polish agriculture. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL, Inc.) TALKS OPEN ON POLAND'S "PACT ON STATE FIRMS." Tripartite negotiations on the government's proposed "pact on state firms" among employers, unions, and the labor and finance ministers opened on 6 October. The former official OPZZ federation and 11 other national unions took part in morning sessions; Solidarity, which has refused to sit at the same table with the postcommunist unions, attended in the afternoon. Eight unions, including the OPZZ and Solidarity '80, walked out of one of three thematic working groups, arguing that the government had been late in providing them with its outline economic plan for 1993. This seemed a pretext designed to show the unions' mettle in confronting the government. The dual structure of the talks impeded progress, PAP reported, as the government was unable to provide an immediate response to union counterproposals. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL, Inc.) SOFIA REQUESTS HIGHER EXPORT QUOTA FROM THE EC. In the next round of negotiations on an association agreement with the European Community, scheduled for 15-16 October, Bulgaria will ask to be granted higher export quotas, according to Deputy Trade Minister Svetoslav Daskalov. In an interview with Die Presse published on 6 October, Daskalov explained that the new Bulgarian position cites the country's fine political record, which has also been arian border guards, reportehat some 900,000 foreigners have been turned back at the border in the past 12 months, a year after increased border controls took effect in Hungary. The foreigners lack travel documents or money to finance their stay in Hungary. The great majority--some 798,000--were Romanian citizens, 27,000 came from the CIS states, 25,000 were Poles, 17,000 were Bulgarians, and the remaining 33,000 came from the Third World. MTI carried the report. (Edith Oltay, RFE/RL, Inc.) MASS GRAVES FOUND IN ALBANIA. Six mass graves with the remains of as many as 2,000 bodies have been discovered in Shkoder, ATA and foreign agencies report. About 40 bodies of opponents of Albania's communist regime have been identified by a joint committee of former political prisoners and police, but the process is slow and difficult because the former regime falsified records to hide evidence of the killings. Shkoder, a predominately Catholic city in the northwest of the country, was a center of resistance to communism after World War II. (Charles Trumbull, R.) RUSSIA WANTS TO KEEP SKRUNDA WARNING RR. On 6 October at the Baltic Security Conference in Salzburg spred by the RFE/RL Research Institute, Russian First Deputy Fon Minister Fedor Shelov-Kovedayev stated that Russia wants to maintain access to the Skrunda ballistic missile early warning radar station in Latvtated that the Skrunda radar is "not object of discussion" with Russia. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL, I
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New York Times: October 7. Danas nam John Burns kroz price o Kemalu Kurspahicu, Fuadu Kovacevicu i Vladimiru Staki prica o nevjerovatnom kontinuiranom izlazenju sarajevskog casopisa Oslobodjenje. Izmedju ostalog Vladimir Staka kaze: " Moji srpski korijeni su irelevantni, najmanje u ovom. Sta je vazno je to sto se ovdje desava, a to je jednostavno. Grad u kome zivim, grad u kojem sam rodjen, je teroriziran od militarista. Svaki dan gledam najstravicinje stvari - djecu iskasapljenu arti- ljerijskim granatama i mortarima, ljude sa raznesenim nogama, ljude koji su vec izgubili majke i oceve, njihove kcerke i sinove." Paul Lewis iz UN javlja detalje rezolucije o ratnim zlocinima. Izmedju ostalog kaze da bi se sudjenja trebala odvijati u Bosni ili nekoj drugoj balkanskoj drzavi. Rezolucija definise tri skupa inter- nacionalnih zlocina: 1. Zlocini protiv mira, koji ukljucuju planiranje ili vodjenje "rata-agresije ili vrsenje povrede inter- nacionalnih ugovora, dogovora ili sporazuma"; 2. Ratni zlocini koji ukljucuju zlostavljanje civila ili ratnih zarobljenika; 3. zlocini protiv covjecnosti, koji ukljucuju "ubistva, istrebljivanje, porobljavanje, deportaciju ili druge nehumana djela ucinjena nad bilo kojom civilnom popu- lacijom". U danasnjem New York Times-u takodje mozete naci i tekst UN rezolucije: "A War-Crimes Board for the Balkans".
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The New York Times Op-Ed, Thursday, October 8, 1992, page A35 Why Generals Get Nervous By Colin L.Powel, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dateline: Washington. There has been a spate of commentary recently over the use of American military force to deal with the vexing problems of an untidy post-cold war world. The mili- tary has been criticized for being too reluctant to use force. In a recent editorial, for example, The New York Times suggested that the military has a "no can do" attitude and asked whether America is getting a fair return on its defense, investment. The editorial even reached back to the famous exchange between President Lincoln and General McClellan urging the Civil War. Lincoln, frustrated with McClellan's slowness in engaging the enemy, told him, "If you don't want to use the Army, I should like to borrow it for a while." Let me respond by reviewing a little more recent history. During the past three years U.S. armed forces have been used repeatedly to defend our interests and achieve our political objectives. In December 1989, a dictator was removed from power in Panama. In that same month, when a coup threatened to topple democracy in the Philippines, a limited use of force helped prevent it. In January 1991, a daring night raid rescued our embassy in Somalia. That same month, we rescued stranded foreigners and protected our embassy in Liberia. We waged a major war in the Persian Gulf to liberate Kuwait. Moreover, we have used our forces for humanitarian relief operations in Iraq, Somalia, Bangladesh, Russia and Bosnia. American C-130 aircraft are part of the relief effort in Sarajevo. All of these operations had one thing in common: they were successful. There have been no Bay of Pigs, failed desert raids, Beirut bombings, and no Vietnams. Today, American troops around the world are protecting the peace in Europe, the Persian Gulf, Korea, Cambodia, the Sinai and the western Sahara. Unwilling to use the armed forces? Tell that to our troops who are constantly being deployed to accomplish these missions. Americans know they are getting a hell of a return on their defense investment, even as the critics shout for imprudent reductions that would gut the armed forces. The reason for our success is that in every instance we have carefully matched the use of military force to our political objectives. President Bush, more than any other recent President, understands the proper use of military force. In every instance, he has made sure that the objective was clear and that we knew what we were getting into. We owe it to the men and women who go in harm's way to make sure that their lives are not squandered for unclear purposes. Military men and women recognize more than most people that not every situation will be crystal clear. We can and do operate in murky, unpredictable circumstances. We offer a range options. But we also recognize that military force is not always the right answer. If force is used imprecisely or out of frustration rather than clear analysis, the situation can be made worse. Decisive means and results are always to be preferred, even if they are not always possible. So you bet I get nervous when so-called experts suggest that all we need is a little surgical bombing or a limited attack. When the desired result isn't obtained, a new set of experts then comes forward with talk of a little escalation. History has not been kind to this approach. The crisis in Bosnia is especially complex. Our policy and the policy of the international community have been to assist in providing humanitarian relief to the victims of that terrible conflict, one with deep ethnic and religious roots that go back a thousand years. The solution must ultimately be a political one. Deeper military involvement beyond hu- manitarian purposes requires great care and a full examination of possible outcomes. That is what we have been doing. Whatever is decided on this or the other challenges that will come along, Americans can be sure that their armed forces will be ready, willing and able to accomplish the mission. Finally, allow me to set the record straight on President Lincoln's frustration with General McClellan. Lincoln's problem with McClellan was that McClellan would not use the overwhelming force available to him to achieve a decisive result. Lincoln had set out clear political objectives. McClellan acted in a limited, inconclusive way. We have learned the proper lessons history, even If some journalists have not.
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RFE/RL Daily Report No. 194, 8 October 1992 SUCCESSOR STATES TO THE USSR GEORGIA ACCUSES RUSSIA OF SUPPLYING ABKHAZ FORCES. Georgian reinforcements were sent to Sukhumi on 7 October in anticipation of an attack by Abkhaz forces. Georgian security officials charged that Russia had begun airlifting military equipment out of Georgia from a military airfield near Kutaisi, and was sending ultra-modern T-72 and T-80 tanks to the Abkhaz, Western agencies reported. Russian Defense Minister Pavel Grachev told Interfax that the tanks originated from "another state located to the north of Abkhazia"; a Ukrainian spokesman denied involvement. President Yeltsin telephoned Georgian State Council Chairman Eduard Shevardnadze on 7 October; their conversation was described by ITAR-TASS as "extremely sharp and frank." Georgian First Deputy Foreign Minister Tedo Dzhaparidze submitted a formal request to the UN Security Council to address the Abkhaz crisis. (Liz Fuller, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIAN CABINET DELAYS ADOPTION OF ECONOMIC RESTRUCTURING PLAN. At a cabinet meeting on 7 October, Russian President Boris Yeltsin reiterated some of the main points of his speech to the parliament on 6 October. According to Interfax, he emphasized priority for a better social safety net and the preservation of Russia's "unique industrial and scientific potential" (read "defense-industrial complex"). After listening to Yeltsin's statement, the cabinet decided to delay consideration of the economic restructuring plan for 1993 that had been drawn up by Economics Minister Andrei Nechaev. Nechaev was one of four cabinet ministers who were sharply criticized in Yeltsin's speech to the parliament. (Keith Bush, RFE/RL, Inc.) YELTSIN WARNS ESTONIA, LATVIA ON TROOP WITHDRAWALS. President Boris Yeltsin stated on October 7 that no troop withdrawal agreements will be signed with Estonia and Latvia until they provide greater "minority rights" for Russians. Yeltsin accused the two states of gross violations of the rights of their Russian minorities, and stated that negotiations with Estonian and Latvian representatives had been fruitless, according to an Interfax report. He urged Estonia and Latvia to adopt legislation similar to that of Lithuania, with which Russia recently concluded a troop withdrawal agreement. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL, Inc.) GENERAL SAYS RUSSIAN MILITARY MUST PROTECT RUSSIANS IN FORMER USSR. Col. General Vladimir Toporov, a Russian deputy defense minister, told ITAR-TASS on 7 October that "the Russian military must guarantee the safety of Russian citizens and take them under its protection." He was justifying the presence of Russian troops in Tajikistan. He said that "Russian-speaking people" were hostage to all the inter-ethnic conflicts on the territory of the former Soviet Union, and the military could not be indifferent to their fate. (Doug Clarke, RFE/RL, Inc.) SHAPOSHNIKOV ON DEFENSE MINISTERS' MEETING AT BISHKEK. According to an Interfax report of 7 October, CIS Commander in Chief Shaposhnikov is pleased with the results of the meeting of the CIS defense ministers held in Bishkek. Shaposhnikov reported that two draft agreements had been prepared, one creating a "doctrine for the collective security of the CIS states" and the other reorganizing the CIS command structure. No agreement has yet been reached on the control of nuclear weapons, however, and the issue will be referred to the heads of state for discussion. According to an article in Nezavisimaya Gazeta on October 8, Shaposhnikov says he is prepared to immediately transfer all nuclear launch codes to the Russian Defense Ministry if the other CIS nuclear states agree. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL, Inc.) UKRAINE BALKS ON CIS NUCLEAR ARMS ACCORD. Ukrainian negotiators at the preparatory meeting for the 9 October CIS summit in Bishkek, Kirgyzstan have balked at the proposals for creating a framework of common agencies to be in control of the CIS strategic nuclear forces. Interfax reported on 7 October that this means the proposal for pooling the nuclear arsenal of the former USSR will have to be taken up by the CIS presidents. Last month Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk rejected a call for increased Russian control over nuclear weapons. (Doug Clarke, RFE/RL, Inc.) YELTSIN ON KURIL ISLANDS. Interfax reported on 7 October a statement by President Yeltsin that a significant change in the hitherto intransigent Japanese position on the Kuril islands may be possible. Specifically, Yeltsin said that there were some in Japan who were now proposing a formula whereby a peace treaty would be signed and, subsequent to that, the 1956 Soviet-Japanese agreement would become the basis for a resolution of the dispute over the islands. The 1956 agreement made Russian recognition of Japanese sovereignty over two of the four islands (Shikotan and Habomai) a precondition for the signing of a peace treaty. If true, such a proposal would mark a major reversal in Tokyo's position. Yeltsin said he would visit Japan under such conditions. (Stephen Foye, RFE/RL, Inc.) EXPORT DUTIES TO REPLACE EXPORT QUOTAS IN RUSSIA. Russian Minister of Foreign Economic Relations Petr Aven told the cabinet meeting on 7 October that export quotas will be abolished for most goods beginning in 1993, ITAR-TASS reported. Export quotas will be maintained only for oil and petroleum products, gas, some non-ferrous metals, and chemical products. The main method of controlling exports will be through export duties. Aven said that duties will be gradually decreased and will be abolished when Russian industry adapts to world prices for raw materials and energy resources. (Keith Bush, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIAN OIL EXPORTS TO CIS DEFAULTERS TO BE CUT? At a Moscow meeting of Russian oil producers on 7 October, Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin warned former Soviet republics who were in arrears with payments for oil deliveries that they could face a cut-off of oil shipments if they did not pay their bills by 12 October, Interfax reported. In the future, pre-payments will be required for Russian oil shipments. Chernomyrdin said that the Russian fuel and energy complex was owed 640 billion rubles at the beginning of October and that CIS members were responsible for "a substantial part" of this debt. Economics Minister Andrei Nechaev had earlier predicted that Russian oil exports to the former Soviet republics would be halved next year. (Keith Bush, RFE/RL, Inc.) REPATRIATION OF HARD CURRENCY TO RUSSIA. Acting Russian Central Bank Chairman Viktor Gerashchenko was quoted by Interfax on 7 October as approving a government plan to repatriate hard currency stashed away by Russian enterprises in foreign bank accounts. The plan is to take effect on 1 January 1993, but its details have not been disclosed. Economic Adviser Aleksei Ulyukaev told the latest edition of Literaturnaya gazeta that while export revenues amount to some $3 billion a month, only $300 million is sold each month on Russian currency exchanges. (Keith Bush, RFE/RL, Inc.) PARLIAMENT FAILS TO APPROVE BILL ON FORMING GOVERNMENT. The Russian parliament did not approve after an initial reading a draft law on "the Council of Ministers--Government of the Russian Federation," ITAR-TASS reported on 7 October. The agency said deputies decided to set up a working group to revise the draft. President Yeltsin wants to limit the parliament's ability to overrule presidential appointments to ministerial posts. The parliament wants greater authority in the selection and approval of ministers. ITAR-TASS quoted a statement by the chairman of the parliament's legislative committee, Mikhail Mityukov, that the draft left a leading role to the president in forming the government, but did not allow him to take over the post of prime minister. Current regulations provide for such a possibility. Mityukov said the draft called for the prime minister to be appointed or removed only with parliamentary approval. (Vera Tolz, RFE/RL, Inc.) YELTSIN TRANSFERS CONTROL OF GORBACHEV FOUNDATION PREMISES. On 7 October, President Yeltsin signed a decree handing over a five-building complex previously used by the Gorbachev Foundation to the newly established Russian Federation Financial Academy, according to "Novosti." Interfax reported that the foundation will be allowed to rent part of the space in question. On 6 October, Yeltsin had criticized "some of the newly founded foundations" for "occupying premises that are too spacious for them." After Gorbachev resigned his post as USSR president, Yeltsin confiscated Gorbachev's apartment and country house; later, he replaced Gorbachev's limousine with a smaller car. Both the Gorbachev Foundation and the limousine were part of Gorbachev's retirement settlement. On 30 September, while announcing that he might make a political comeback, Gorbachev had called Yeltsin "a loss" and the latter's privatization plan "a deception." (Julia Wishnevsky, RFE/RL, Inc.) KINKEL AND ETHNIC GERMANS. On the second and last day of his visit to Moscow German foreign minister Klaus Kinkel discussed the problem of the Russian Germans with President Yeltsin, ITAR-TASS and Western agencies reported on 7 October. Yeltsin assured Kinkel that he was personally devoting great attention to the problem and that the political will was there to reestablish German autonomy on the Volga, but there were economic difficulties and opposition from non-Germans living in the area. At a meeting with the leaders of three Russian-German associations, Kinkel said that the state of relations between Germany and Russia would depend to a large extent on the resolution of the problems of the Germans in Russia. (Ann Sheehy, RFE/RL, Inc.) CIS DELEGATION LEAVES TAJIKISTAN. A delegation of representatives of the presidents of Armenia, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Uzbekistan headed by Kyrgyzstan Vice President Feliks Kulov left Tajikistan on 8 October, Khovar-TASS reported. The delegation had two days of intensive talks with the republic's leadership, political parties, army commanders, the Muslim kadi, and then visited Kurgan-Tyube and Kulyab. Kulov said that all sides had agreed to the introduction of peace-keeping forces, and the results of the visit would be presented to the CIS summit in Bishkek. (Ann Sheehy, RFE/RL, Inc.) ASSIGNMENTS FOR SECURITY OFFICIALS IN STATE APPARATUS. President Yeltsin has established an administrative framework through which high-ranking KGB, MVD, and military officers may be assigned as consultants and advisors to other government and state institutions without leaving active service, according to a presidential edict published in Rossiiskaya gazeta, on 29 September. In explaining the measure, the edict cites personnel cuts among senior officer corps in the Russian Ministries of Security, Interior Affairs, and Defense. Although the officers will obtain positions as consultants and advisers, they will be not demobilized and will retain dual subordination to the civil government and their appropriate ministries. (Victor Yasmann, RFE/RL, Inc.) TENSION IN THE CRIMEA. Ukraine has deployed National Guard units in the Crimea in response to the rising tension there between the Crimean Tatars and local authorities, Ukrinform-TASS reported on 7 October. Crimean Tatar demonstrators attempted to storm the parliamentary building in Simferopol. According to the report, those taking part in the attack were armed. In the meantime, the Crimean Tatar Mejlis has called for a "mobilization of all forces" and ordered all Crimean Tatars serving outside the republic to return to the Crimea and join self-defense units. The conflict, which stems from the destruction of Crimean Tatar homes on the territory of a local state farm, is scheduled to be discussed by the Crimean parliament on 8 October. (Roman Solchanyk, RFE/RL, Inc.) STUDENT ACTION IN KIEV. The Union of Ukrainian Students (SUS) on 6 October marked the second anniversary of the 1990 student hunger strike by putting up a tent city in the Ukrainian capital's central square, Ukrainian television reported. The students are demanding new parliamentary elections in the spring of 1993 and Ukraine's withdrawal from the CIS. Interfax quotes a student leader as saying that the students are also supporting President Leonid Kravchuk's stand against closer integration of the CIS member states. (Roman Solchanyk, RFE/RL, Inc.) AZERBAIJAN NATIONAL COUNCIL VOTES AGAINST CIS MEMBERSHIP. Azerbaijan's National Council, which is functioning as the country's supreme legislative body pending new parliamentary elections, voted on 7 October by 43 votes to one against membership of the CIS, the Turan news agency reported. Former President Ayaz Mutalibov had signed the Alma-Ata agreement in December, 1991, but it was never ratified by the Azerbaijani parliament. Azerbaijan will nonetheless send an observer to the Bishkek summit. (Liz Fuller, RFE/RL, Inc.) LEFT-BANK MOLDOVANS DEMAND REINSTATEMENT OF LATIN ALPHABET. In most of Moldova's area on the left bank of the Dniester, controlled by insurgents of the Russian minority, Moldovans continue to protest against the reimposition of the Russian alphabet in place of the Latin used in "Moldovan" (i.e. Romanian) language schools. School teachers and pupils are in the third week of a protest strike in schools in Grigoriopol and Slobozia raions. Parents from those as well as Dubasari and Rabnita raions have addressed appeals with thousands of signatures to the United Nations and to the US and Russian embassies in Chisinau urging the reinstatement of the Latin alphabet and of Moldovan school textbooks and the dispatch of human rights investigators to insurgent-controlled areas. (Vladimir Socor, RFE/RL, Inc.) CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE BOSNIA UPDATE. International media and Radio Serbia report on 8 October that the US has agreed to a British-French proposal calling for a UN resolution to ban all Serbian military flights over Bosnia-Herzegovina. The draft stops short of calling for the shooting down of violators but rather creates a two-stage process for enforcement. If the Serbs continue to fly combat planes, the Security Council will "urgently" consider further measures, presumably authorizing use of Allied warplanes to enforce the ban. The draft also provides for extensive monitoring. The Security Council is expected to take a vote on the new draft resolution on 9 October. Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic told UN-EC negotiators in Geneva that the Serb air force has suspended sorties on the condition that the Bosnian Muslims halt their military offensives; he described the draft resolution as "pointless." Meanwhile, talks between the three warring parties about the demilitarization of Sarajevo opened in the besieged city, but no details have been made available. On 7 October, Teheran radio quoted Iran's spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as saying that the West should allow Iran to send fighters to help Bosnian Muslims. (Milan Andrejevich, RFE/RL, Inc.) SANCTION TEAM ARRIVES IN ROMANIA. A communiqui released by the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on 7 October quoted by Radio Bucharest says the first team of international observers of sanctions against the former Yugoslavia has arrived in Romania and begun its work. The team comprises two US experts. It will be followed by another American team as well as a Turkish and an Austrian team. (Michael Shafir, RFE/RL, Inc.). ESTONIAN PRESIDENT'S MAIDEN SPEECH. In his first speech to the new Estonian State Assembly (Riigikogu) on 6 October, widely reported in the local press, President Lennart Meri called for a "rapid, orderly and complete" withdrawal of foreign military forces from Estonian territory. Meri highlighted the need to speed market reforms, saying economic hardship will end when the Estonian people "begin to believe in [their] own strength and begin to stand on [their] own two feet." Meri, who was elected president on 6 October in a 59-31 vote in parliament, also stressed that Estonia is a Rechtsstaat, saying that the state "guarantees citizens' rights to all its citizens, and human rights to all peoples." (Riina Kionka, RFE/RL, Inc.) ESTONIAN PARLIAMENT ENDS TRANSITION PERIOD. The State Assembly on 7 October declared the end of the transition period to full independence declared on 30 March 1990, BNS reports. In a resolution restoring constitutional state powers, the parliament announced legal continuity between the interwar republic and the current state, and accepted the resignation of Prime Minister-in-Exile Heinrich Mark. Next week, President Lennart Meri is expected to announce his choice of prime minister, who will, in turn, form the new government. (Riina Kionka, RFE/RL, Inc.) SUCHOCKA AT NATO. After meeting with NATO Secretary General Manfred Woerner in Brussels on 7 October, Polish Prime Minister Hanna Suchocka predicted that Poland will be able to join NATO before it manages to gain full membership in the EC. In a speech to NATO ambassadors, Suchocka said that the Visegrad triangle countries appreciate the contacts they have had with NATO since the fall of communism, but that Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia expected in time to be given "increasingly substantial commitments leading to integration with the Atlantic security system." Full membership is the eventual goal. Suchocka also met with King Baudouin of Belgium. She is to meet with EC leaders on 8 October. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL, Inc.) NATO DOES NOT FEAR CZECHOSLOVAK DISINTEGRATION. Gen. Dieter Clauss, deputy commander in chief of NATO forces in Europe, told reporters in Prague on 7 October that Czechs and Slovaks have to decide themselves if they want to live in one or two states. He said that the division of the Czechoslovak armed forces is being carried out in a "civilized and democratic manner." Clauss made it clear that NATO is preparing to establish "intensive cooperation" with both new armies. CSTK quoted him as saying that if the relationship between the future Czech and Slovak armies will be good, than there was ample room for cooperation with NATO. Gen. Clauss is on a three-day official visit to Czechoslovakia. (Jan Obrman, RFE/RL, Inc.) US OFFICIAL ASSURES SLOVAKIA OF CONTINUED AID. Robert Hutchings, a special State Department adviser on assistance to Eastern Europe, told Slovak cabinet members on 7 October that he expects aid to Slovakia to continue at current levels after Czechoslovakia's dissolution, Reuters reports. Hutchings, who is leading a nine-member US delegation to Slovakia, discussed various projects with Slovak government members, including the creation of jobs in small and medium-sized businesses and the conversion of arms production sites. (Jan Obrman, RFE/RL, Inc.) MECIAR ON MINORITIES IN SLOVAKIA. Slovak Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar said in an interview with the Hungarian section of Slovak Radio on 6 October that ethnic minorities are an integral part of Slovak society. He said that minorities enjoy the same rights and have the same obligations as the rest of the population and added that they should in fact have "even wider rights in order to preserve their identity." The prime minister said he believes that such extended rights for minorities are embedded in the new Slovak constitution, which went into effect on 1 October. Meciar also said that the Hungarian minority has the right to receive education in its native language but that the introduction of Hungarian-language universities is impossible for economic reasons. Representatives of the 600,000 ethnic Hungarians living in Slovakia have criticized the new Slovak leadership for not taking into account their interests. (Jan Obrman, RFE/RL, Inc.) ANTALL CONFERS WITH AUSTRIAN CHANCELLOR. Hungarian Prime Minister Jozsef Antall met his Austrian counterpart Franz Vranitzky in Eisenstadt, Austria, to discuss the details of a Hungarian-Austrian economic agreement, Radio Budapest reports. Hungary seeks to expand exports of farm products to Austria by 10% and to increase the quota of Hungarian workers allowed to work in Austria. The leaders told a press conference that the economic agreement will be worked out by the end of the year. The agreement is especially important for Hungary since Austria is its largest Western trading partner. (Edith Oltay, RFE/RL, Inc.) ILIESCU'S PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN. Answering questions from the public on 6 October, incumbent Romanian president Ion Iliescu said in a live broadcast on Romanian TV that the next phase of price rises scheduled for 1 January should be postponed until the spring. Iliescu denied that Romania's foreign relations have been adversely prejudiced by a "communist" image cast by himself and the country's policies. At a rally in Cluj on 7 October, Iliescu was evidently courting the nationalist vote backing mayor Gheorghe Funar, who was eliminated from the presidential contest after the first round of voting. (Michael Shafir, RFE/RL, Inc.). ROMANIA'S PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES DEBATE ON TV. A debate on television on 7 October between Iliescu and challenger Emil Constantinescu turned into an acrimonious attempt to discredit each other's records. Iliescu reiterated his accusation that Constantinescu had been a member of the nomenklatura, accused him of having changed his mind on the monarchy and of now posing as a republican, and claimed that Constantinescu refused to endorse Romania's definition as a "national" state. Constantinescu, in turn, said Iliescu was posing as a past "dissident" and was "mystifying" his record under Ceausescu and covering up the events that followed Ceausescu's overthrow, which resulted in many unclarified deaths. (Michael Shafir, RFE/RL, Inc.) MORE BULGARIAN EX-COMMUNIST LEADERS ON TRIAL. On 7 October a trial opened against former Prime Minister Georgi Atanasov and former Minister of Economy and Planning Stoyan Ovcharov, both charged with embezzlement, Western agencies report. Atanasov and Ovcharov are accused of having granted 210,000 leva (roughly $70,000 at the time) to 42 orphans whose parents fought as communist partisans in World War II. When the orphans received the money, in 1989, the youngest of them was 45 years old. Atanasov, who is also being investigated for using public funds to support Third World communist regimes, told reporters the trial is politically motivated. (Kjell Engelbrekt, RFE/RL, Inc.) LATVIAN GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTS TO THE LEGISLATURE. This week the Latvian Supreme Council is evaluating the performance of the government, the first time that the entire government has to account for itself to the legislators. The review was called in response to widespread dissatisfaction with the overall situation in Latvia and calls for the dismissal of some ministers, most notably Janis Jurkans--Foreign Affairs, Ziedonis Cevers--Internal Affairs, and Viktors Skudra--Justice. On 6 October the performances of the agriculture, forestry, and finance ministries were found to be to be satisfactory, though not without fault, Diena reports. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL, Inc.) LITHUANIAN PARLIAMENT SESSIONS. On 6 and 7 October the Lithuanian parliament was to meet in its last sessions before the elections to the Seimas on 25 October, but decided instead to meet on 12 October to discuss the projects for the new constitution, Radio Lithuania reports. Parliament approved a law on regulating average wages in Lithuania, but will have to vote on it again when there is a quorum. It is unclear if this will happen during the current parliament session. The government was obligated to issue a decree on the mechanics of regulating the wages until 15 October. Parliament also passed a decision amending its 9 April decision on state assistance to individuals for housing in cities. Individuals seeking such aid are required to file by 15 November. (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL, Inc.) LANDSBERGIS STATEMENT ON TROOP WITHDRAWAL. On 8 October Radio Lithuania presented a statement by Lithuanian parliament chairman Vytautas Landsbergis on the withdrawal of Russian troops from Lithuania. He noted that in the past month the withdrawal of the army has proceeded in an orderly manner, placing importance on the removal of the 107th Division from Vilnius--considered to signal the beginning of the formal withdrawal process. He said, however, that some Russian military leaders spoke of instructions from Moscow to postpone the handing over of installations. He did not know who had issued these instructions, but hoped that the Russian Defense Ministry would abide by the agreements on the withdrawal that it signed on 8 September and not yield to delay tactics advocated by some conservatives in the Russian parliament. (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL, Inc.) LATVIAN DEFENSE MINISTRY ON SOVIET VETERANS ORGANIZATION. On 6 October the ministry issued a statement criticizing the activities of the Association for the Defense of Veterans Rights, led by retired Col. Albert Lebedev, former deputy chairman of Interfront, which actively opposed Latvia's independence. This organization, which joined the Russian Officers' Society earlier this month, reportedly works under the auspices of the Northwestern Group of Forces and cooperates with groups that want to topple the Yeltsin government in Russia and destabilize Latvia. It has also disseminated unfounded claims of human rights violations in Latvia, Diena reports on 6 October. The Latvian Ministry of Defense concluded that the organization's activities "cannot be assessed as anything other than interference by the Russian Army in Latvia's internal affairs." (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL, Inc.) PRIVATIZATION OF ARABLE LAND IN HUNGARY. Minister of Agriculture Elemer Gergatz predicted that some 80% of the total arable land will be privately owned by the end of the year or at the latest by next March, MTI reports. Speaking at a conference on agriculture in Debrecen, Gergatz stressed that the government attaches special significance to returning land to its rightful owners when compensating victims of communism. He forecast that of the 6.5 million hectares of arable land in Hungary less than 1 million will remain under state ownership and that there will be a million new landowners when the compensation process is completed. Finance Minister Mihaly Kupa told the conference that the debts of agricultural cooperatives should be cancelled so that the new owners are not burdened by the debts accumulated during the communist era. (Edith Oltay, RFE/RL, Inc.) POLISH COURT SIDESTEPS ABORTION RULING. The Constitutional Tribunal opted not to rule on the constitutionality of abortion restrictions contained in the Polish medical association's new "code of medical ethics." The civil rights spokesman had asked for a ruling on the grounds that the code, which forbids doctors to perform abortions except when a woman's life is in danger or the pregnancy results from a crime, conflicts with Polish law, which permits abortions in other circumstances. After the new ethical code took effect, many hospitals ceased performing abortions because the medical association can revoke the licenses of doctors who violate the code. The tribunal concluded on 7 October that legal rather than ethical norms were its proper jurisdiction. It nonetheless alerted the Sejm to contradictions between the law granting doctors the right to self-regulation and laws defining permissible medical practices. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL, Inc.)
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BOSNIAN GOVERNMENT PULLS BACK FROM TALKS WITH SERBS By Robert Evans GENEVA, Oct 8, Reuter - Bosnia's Moslem-led government has pulled back from direct U.N.-brokered talks with rebel Serbs near Sarajevo following the insurgents' capture of a strategic town, diplomatic sources said on Thursday. At the same time, Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic dropped a threat to withdraw from international peace efforts in former Yugoslavia if the United Nations imposed a ban on military flights over Bosnian territory. The face-to-face talks, to be mediated on the spot by a top United Nations military commander and aimed at an agreement on demilitarisation of Sarajevo, Bosnia's battered capital, had been scheduled for Wednesday. But in the face of the fall on Tuesday of Bosanski Brod on Bosnia's river border with Croatia and an insurgent onslaught on the Sarajevo suburb of Hrasno they failed to materialise, according to the sources. ``There is no doubt the government side felt it could not go into direct negotiations with the Serbs on the edge of Sarajevo at this point in time,'' said one source following developments in former Yugoslavia. There was no confirmation of the report from the Geneva conference on former Yugoslavia, but spokesman Fred Eckhard said Wednesday's contacts had been in separate meetings involving the two main sides to the Bosnian conflict. First General Philippe Morillon of the U.N.'s UNPROFOR protection force in Bosnia had met with Moslem and Croat military commanders, who form a loose alliance, and then separately with Serb representatives. Eckhard said the co-chairmen of the conference, Cyrus Vance of the U.N. and the European Community's Lord Owen, still hoped all three Bosnian groups would sit down ``at one table'' next Monday when another round of contacts was scheduled. Agreement on the talks emerged last week after a visit to Geneva by Bosnia's president Alija Izetbegovic, who had resisted direct negotiations since Serbs took up arms in April to bar the republic's independence as a unitary state. Izetbegovic, a Moslem, told Vance and Owen he would agree to the discussions in a bid to achieve some relief for the 380,000 people of Sarajevo who have been surrounded by ring of rebel Serb artillery for over six months. Karadzic, who has been in Geneva for the past week, told reporters on Thursday his forces were not laying siege to the city. ``We are simply protecting our Serbian suburbs from Moslem (government) attack,'' he said. Last weekend he had threatened to walk out of the Geneva conference if the U.N. Security Council adopted a ``no fly'' resolution intended to keep his air force on the ground. The Bosnian government has no planes of its own. Talking to reporters invited to his conference office at Geneva's Palais des Nations, he indicated that he had convinced other leaders of the self-styled Serbian Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina that a walk-out would be unwise. ``I had discussions with representatives of our Assembly (parliament) and explained to them that we should stay at the conference anyway because we are approaching a cessation of hostilities and a ban on flights would be meaningless,'' he said. ``I suggested we should stay because we can achieve deep political goals and a cessation of hostilities. But the Serbs are very angry about this resolution because it gives a strategic advantage to the Moslems,'' he declared. The rebel leader said his planes -- left behind by the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army when it withdrew from Bosnia earlier this year -- had not been in operation for several days. ``We will comply with our own decision not to fly,'' he added. The U.N. Security Council was expected to discuss a draft resolution banning military flights on Thursday and vote on it on Friday. The United States, Britain and France agreed on Wednesday to a resolution banning the flights, although it does not provide for immediate enforcement. Washington had pressed for a stronger resolution. Under the compromise, the Security Council would have to adopt a second resolution authorising enforcement in case of violations. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- BOSNIA PREPARES TO DEFEND REMAINING TOWNS AGAINST SERBS By Kurt Schork SARAJEVO, Oct 9, Reuter - Serbs are attacking an important Bosnian town and the embattled republic's president said he was bracing for a fight to defend remaining strongholds from what appears to be a fresh Serbian onslaught. Serbs intensified attacks on Gradacac, the most northerly town to remain in Moslem hands, after taking the strategic northern town of Bosanski Brod on Tuesday, and Bosnians fear it could be the next to fall. The fall of Bosanski Brod sealed Serbian control of the Posavina region of north Bosnia and put the Serbs within a few hundred metres (yards) of Croatia. Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic told reporters on Thursday night he had been in Bosanski Brod on Monday, and had rushed to Zagreb to meet Croatian President Franjo Tudjman, his ally, to try to head off its collapse. ``There was nothing we could do,'' Izetbegovic said in the Croatian port of Split before returning to Bosnia. ``It was the first time we tried to do something together but it didn't work...It was too late. ``Now Gradacac is in a very difficult position,'' he said. Government-controlled Sarajevo radio reported that people in Gradacac were sheltering in basements as artillery shells and mortars set fire to homes, the hospital and public buildings. It said at least seven people had been killed and 12 wounded in the attack. The radio also said Serb forces had attacked Maglaj and other Moslem communities in north and central Bosnia. The Belgrade-based Tanjug news agency reported unsuccessful efforts by Moslems to break out of areas in which they were encircled. Casualty figures issued by Sarajevo's Medical Crisis Centre on Thursday said 15,284 Bosnians had been killed in fighting in the former Yugoslav republic since the conflict began in April. In Belgrade, French General Philippe Morillon, commander of U.N. forces in Bosnia, said he was ``no saviour nor a magician'' who could stop the fighting in Bosnia. ``I am convinced that absolutely no military solution is possible in Bosnia,'' he said. His comments echoed those of America's top soldier General Colin Powell who again cautioned on Thursday against the use of U.S. military force in Bosnia. ``The solution must ultimately be a political one,'' Powell, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said. ``Deeper military involvement beyond humanitarian purposes requires great care and full examination of possible outcomes. That is what we have been doing.'' Bosnia's U.N. ambassador on Thursday called for Islamic states to send troops to deliver relief supplies to his country immediately and said any ``no-fly zone'' for Serb aircraft over Bosnia must be backed by military force to be effective. Muhamed Sacirbey lashed out at Western European nations for taking so long to get their troops into Bosnia, and urged Moslem states to do the job instead. The United States, Britain and France have compromised on a Security Council draft resolution, expected to be adopted on Friday, that would establish a no-fly zone for military aircraft but would not immediately enforce it with fighter planes. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Serb Rebels Press Attacks in Northern Bosnia; Iran Issues Threat By JOHN DANISZEWSKI Associated Press Writer SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) _ Flush with victory over the stunning capture of a strategic city, Serb rebels pounded government-held towns in northern Bosnia on Thursday, prompting threats of foreign intervention. The Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, was relatively quiet. Repair crews set out to restore cut utilities to the city and its surroundings, and a senior U.N. general warned that the U.N. troops escorting them would return fire if the crews were attacked. Near Bosnia's northern border with Croatia, Serb artillery pounded the towns of Gradacac and Maglaj with ``destructive howitzer shells, particularly incendiary ones,'' and attacked them by air, Bosnian radio said. On Wednesday, Serb planes dropped cluster and napalm bombs on Maglaj and the towns of Tesanj and Teslic, all in an area 60 to 90 miles north of Sarajevo, the radio said. It said 12 people were killed and 50 wounded in Maglaj on Wednesday. The reports could not be independently confirmed. At the United Nations Thursday, diplomats said the Security Council would approve a resolution Friday banning military flights over Bosnia in an effort to stop Serb air attacks. But they said there would be no immediate authorization of military action against planes violating the ``no-fly'' zone. The United States has pressed for military enforcement of the zone, and President Bush offered last week to send military planes to police Bosnian air space. But Britain and France said enforcement could prompt Serb attacks on U.N. peacekeepers and aid convoys. Bosnia's U.N. ambassador, Muhamed Sacirbey, called for immediate enforcement of the flight ban, the first by the United Nations. He said the Serbs are flying 50 to 60 sorties daily. The Serbs have 40 aircraft, left when the Yugoslav federal army withdrew earlier this year. The Bosnian government forces have none. The resurgent fighting in the north followed a major Serb victory late Tuesday, when Serb units overran Bosanski Brod, once thought firmly in the control of Bosnian loyalists. The city's capture means Serb fighters now control 70 percent of Bosnia. The Serbs apparently are trying to gain more territory before they are forced to dig in for the winter. More than 14,000 people have been killed in Bosnia since the republic's Serbs rebelled against a vote in February by majority Muslims and Croats to secede from Serbian-dominated Yugoslavia. The Bosnian Serbs want their own republic, possibly as a prelude to uniting with Serbia. Bosnian radio said 10 villages in the Brcko area were retaken by government forces Thursday, causing ``confusion'' in Serb ranks. The latest Serb advance prompted warnings of possible military intervention from abroad. Iran's Islamic Republic News Agency said the country's Revolutionary Guards were ready to help Bosnia's ``defenseless Muslims.'' It quoted the Iranian leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as saying that ``if Western governments are unable to stop the massacre of Muslims there, then they should allow our young Muslim combatants to give the Serbs their dues.'' NATO's secretary-general, Manfred Woerner, said that if the United Nations decided military intervention was warranted, the alliance likely would follow suit. Germany's mass-circulation Bild newspaper quoted Woerner as saying such a move would require approval from the 16 NATO members. Also Thursday, U.N. officials said the United States would provide a military field hospital for Bosnian war victims, the first time U.S. personnel would participate in the U.N. peacekeeping operation. The hospital, to be staffed by 300 Americans, is to be in Zagreb, Croatia, according to U.N. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. The Pentagon said it had no other details. Gen. Philippe Morillon, commander of U.N. peacekeepers in Bosnia, held talks this week with Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian military leaders on restoring disrupted electricity, gas and water supplies to Sarajevo. At a news conference Thursday, Morillon said he asked the warring sides to ``at least temporarily end hostilities'' where the utility repairs were to take place, and warned that his troops would return fire if crews were attacked. ``We are racing against time because of the coming winter,'' he said. A critical water shortage that is causing cases of dysentery has been blamed on the lack of electricity to operate pumping stations. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- DUMAS SAYS U.N. WAR CRIMES GROUP COULD LEAD TO COURT PARIS, Oct 7, Reuter - French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas said on Thursday that a U.N. commission created to investigate crimes against humanity in the former Yugoslavia opened the way for a permanent international criminal court. Dumas was commenting on a Security Council resolution, adopted unanimously on Tuesday, which created a commission to investigate crimes against humanity such as murder, torture and ``ethnic cleansing.'' ``This decision, unprecedented since the creation of the U.N., opens the way for the setting up of a permanent international criminal court,'' Dumas told reporters. Dumas, who gave no further details on such a court, said: ``The resolution which decided on an international investigation commission is a considerable step as far as human rights are concerned.'' In a letter to U.N. secretary-general Boutros Boutros- Ghali, released to the media, Dumas offered investigators for the commission and said French peace-keeping troops in Yugoslavia would also be at its disposal if needed. ``The international community must shed all the necessary light on the massacres and ``ethnic cleansing' processes which revolt the conscience of humanity,'' Dumas wrote.
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Serbs in Body Armor Stage Attack, Reportedly Routed by Bosnia Forces AP Photos SAR101,ZAG101-2 By JOHN DANISZEWSKI Associated Press Writer SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) - Serbian troops wearing body armor attacked a central district of Sarajevo today but were defeated in close-quarter fighting, a Bosnian commander said. Zaim Backovic, the deputy commander of the Bosnia-Herzegovina army, said it was the first such assault involving armored forces in the Bosnian fighting that began in February after the republic voted to secede from the Yugoslav federation. ``We would shoot them with bullets and they would fall down and get up two minutes later. We are calling them `turtles,''' Backovic told The Associated Press. But Backovic said the Serbs wore helmets and armor-plating on their torsos and arms, but that the Bosnian forces defeated them with rifle-launched grenades. His report could not be independently confirmed. ``There are many dead turtles out there today,'' he said, putting the toll at 100. Bosnian casualties were reportedly light. Today's fighting occurred in the Grbavica and Hrasno neighborhoods in this multi-ethnic city of a half-million Serbs, Croats and Muslims, the commander said. More than 14,000 people have been killed in Bosnia since the republic's Serbs rebelled against a vote in February by majority Muslims and Croats to secede from Serbian-dominated Yugoslavia. Bosnian Serbs want their own republic, possibly as a prelude to uniting with Serbia. In other developments today: -Bosnian Serbs began new mass expulsions of non-Serbs this week around the northern city of Banja Luka and opened at least one new camp where thousands were rounded up, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said. So-called ethnic cleansing, designed to drive Slavic Muslims and Croats from Serb-controlled areas in Bosnia, seems to be reaching a climax, said Sylvana Foa, a spokeswoman for the refugee agency. ``The expulsion of people form these areas is being carried out systematically and with enormous repression,'' she said. She said about 6,500 victims of ethnic cleansing are reportedly being held in a field surrounded by barbed wire at Kotor Varos, about 20 miles south of Banja Luka. -Two Egyptian peacekeeping soldiers were slightly injured by a mortar round at their Camp Beaver site near the Sarajevo airport, which has come under sporadic shelling but is used to bring in emergency medical and food supplies to Sarajevo. -The Oslobodjenje daily reported today that Serb MiG-21s on Thursday flew heavy attacks on Gradacac in northeastern Bosnia. Other northern cities were also attacked by warplanes. ``After they took Bosanski Brod, it is to be expected that they are going to push harder to take Gradacac,'' the paper said, referring to Tuesday's surprise capture by Serb forces of the last major government stronghold on the Bosnian-Croatian border. The air strikes came after Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic had said in Geneva that Serb forces would stop using warplanes, provided they are not attacked. At the United Nations, Security Council diplomats said they were determined to ground Serbian warplanes, and the council was expected to approve a ban on military flights today. Also on Thursday, Karadzic said Serb and Croat forces in Bosnia were close to a truce. But he denied an Oslobodjenje report that suggested Serbs were able to take Bosanski Brod because Croat fighters gave up its defense under an alleged secret deal between Croatia and Serbia.
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Seminar by George D. Kenney USC, Oct. 9, 1992 Organized by Political Science Students Council and Muslim Public Affairs Association. Kenney also acknowledged help from Bosnian Action Committee and Jewish Community Relations Committee. About 40+ people were present, most of them with the hearth warming accents. Speaker was introduced by representatives from the Muslim and Jewish groups, the later informing the audience that both of them have names that mean "peace," respectively in Arabic and Hebrew. Mr. Kenney was born in 1956, studied in Seattle and Chicago, noted for his study of Asia, worked in Kinshasa, Marseille and State Department. He spoke briefly, no more than 5-10 minutes, than took questions from the audience. He described himself as not being an expert in Yugoslavia, serving on that desk for 7 months before the resignation. The audience responded with questions reflecting their despair, anger or self-righteousness, which almost turned the atmosphere at times to "razgovore ugodne naroda slovinskoga." The moderators had to intervene twice, not with much skill. Mr. Kenney at times had quite a red face. This posturing and tense attempts for self-control had one true moment, when one polite, older woman in a nice dress said, ``... we always listen about Serbs and Croats, but what did Muslims do to Serbs to deserve this?'' (Silence.) Here are excerpts from some of his statements that reflect more personal experience on his part. (on his view of the situation) `` Serb radicals were no more than 15% of Bosnian Serbs. They imposed themselves on the rest.'' (on his frustration with State Department) ``I would draft material for M. Tuttwiller. (It was she who was doing the policy for most of the time I was there.) The senior bureaucrats would remove my strong words, for example on starvation problem that I saw coming already in April. They did not want to see it. I was hoping to generate greater public pressure, they wanted to avoid it. They would say, `we can't trust these reports, we don't have anybody on the ground.' Or I would describe the shelling as Serbian shelling. They would like to say it was mutual. Of course it was, Bosnians were defending themselves from Serbian attacks. M. Tuttwiller sided with me on that. Every morning I would talk to Embassy for half-hour, and every morning we had reports on human rights abuses. You would expects to see 500-1000 such reports by now in State Department files. But now, we came forward with 31! Again, it is an attempt not to generate public reaction." (on US policy) ``People in State Department thought that Yugoslavia was a good experiment in communism, and they thought they should support it. They also had understanding for Serbian interest since they are the largest group there... It was difficult to find the proper logic and to spell it out. I know, as I was writing these public statements, and I know they make no sense." (lobby in the State Department) ``They are secondary, direction comes from the White House. The most effective is Greek-American lobby. Croats are somewhat effective. Serbs are trying but people don't take seriously what they say." (what bothers him) ``The appearance of some things. Former ambassador in Yugoslavia, I think it was successor to Eaglburger, Jack Skl...??, works as a consultant for Panic's business. He can call Eaglburger at home! Also former Senator T??... They both made US to allow for this exception to embargo that Panic requested... To have Panic there was a mistake, everybody realized that. It was forced by Eaglburger... Panic sais all the right things, but in the meantime Serbs go along with their military conquest. (what Clinton might do) ``His advisers are more interventionist minded.'' (what Bush might do) `` Nothing before the elections unless he is absolutely desperate. After election, Dole will not feel obliged any more to be a good boy and obey the President. He has support of some other senators, both republicans and democrats, conservative and liberal. They would press. If public pressure from different group is mounted, if Bush realizes that he can profit from that, he would turn around and do something.'' (what does he think would be the solution) `` To achieve balance of forces. Every military support to Bosnia, let fighting go on until the balance on the ground is reached! Most of Serbian troops are young, undisciplined soldiers, often drunk. They are now in rupture of killing, enjoying the power they have, but they would crumble under serious pressure. This is not only my view, many analysts think the same. Then, Serbian military in Serbia should realize that they may loose all their capability, hardware, airports, power... God, Dutch Air Force could ground Serbian Air Force! I think that in the short run fighting would intensify, but there will be recovery of territory. Everyone involved realized that nothing is to be achieved by negotiations that go on now.'' (supply of arms and men from Iran, etc) ``US would prefer it is not happening. This trade is expensive. If it goes through Croatia, Croatia gets a cut...'' (press in US) ``They are important... they were after me after my resignation, as they saw what I saw, but they could not tell, they do not have access. I am vehicle for the press now.'' (Germany) ``There are historical ties between Germany and Croatia. Gensher was very important for Croatia. But someone should keep pressuring and controlling Croatian government. Tudjman is certainly not democrat, there are problems with the freedom of press, minorities, true intentions in Bosnia.'' (on Izetbegovic) ``I met him. He is a sincere, moderate man, a visionary man.'' (after someone read a sentence from Izetbegovic's book, `... islam from Morocco to Indonesia...') ``This is not position of the Bosnian government. When was it written? (answer: in 1972, re-printed in 1990) This is not where he will lead Bosnia.'' The meeting broke off after about hour and a half. Comment: If one wants to be harsh, Mr. Kenney appears as a classical bureaucratic moron. He knows Washigton, and he knows the ropes, and that is about it. It seems he likes power and decision making, and it comes natural to him to play tough foreign policy. (``Like a police at home'', he said.) He started by stressing the moral issue, killing and deportation of civilians, but there is no doubt on my mind that he has no compassion for these people. Rather, this appears as an ``issue'' that came across his desk, and it was perceived as a good vehicle for his advance, an excersize in influenze in ``generating public pressure.'' Naturally, some people in Bosnia may profit from that. He keeps his crusade in a different forum, but the issue is the same, most likely because it is something that can identify him for public and not-so-public eyes.
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Yugoslav Strongman Uses New Strategy to Hang Onto Job (Belgrade)< By Carol J. Williams (c) 1992, Los Angeles Times BELGRADE, Yugoslavia _ In a move befitting his reputation as a cunnin g political tactician, Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic appears to have hit on a formula for staying in power by turning voter apathy and confusion to his advantage. Milosevic has been under pressure from Yugoslav Prime Minister Milan Panic to call early elections and to allow the Serbian people to rethink their support for the nationalist regime that has led them to ruin. The Serbian president reportedly promised Panic and Yugoslav Presiden t Dobrica Cosic that he would submit to a vote before the year's end as a condition for their agreement to lead the new Yugoslavia that Milosevic created from the last two republics of the shattered Balkan federation. Milosevic's popularity has been waning since May, when the United Nat ions slapped Serbia and Montenegro with severe sanctions for their role in fomenting deadly warfare in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The latest opinion polls in Serbia show Milosevic and the Socialists trailing any potential opposition coalition headed by Panic or Cosic. Less than two years ago, Milosevic won a five-year mandate with more than two-thirds of the vote. But fearful now of defeat, Milosevic has sought to stall the election and cleverly masked his evasion with a veneer of popular support. The Socialist Party of Serbia led by Milosevic has scheduled a little-publicized referendum for Sunday asking voters whether they support or oppose early elections. The catch, clearly understood by Milosevic, is that the ballot needs a 50 percent turnout to be valid; that is a virtually impossible hurdle to surmount considering the splintered, resentful and increasingly apolitical electorate. ``If there is not satisfactory turnout, he (Milosevic) can claim that most of the people say elections are unnecessary,'' said Vojislav Kostunica, head of the opposition Democratic Party of Serbia. And by putting the election itself up to a vote, the delay gains respectability as the preference of the people. In the troubled remains of Yugoslavia, where the poorly organized opp osition routinely sends mixed signals to supporters, turnout has been low recently even for broadly publicized elections. The May 31 vote to seat a new federal Parliament was said to have had a 52 percent turnout. But most opposition parties accused the victorious Socialists of massive fraud to squeak past the threshold for validation. Thanks to the virtual absence of campaigning, Sunday's vote is expect ed to fall far short of the minimum turnout. The 2 million Albanians in Kosovo Province, who account for 20 percent of Serbia's population, boycott all elections in protest of the Serb-imposed police state they have endured for more than three years. Milosevic's Socialist Party has been transmitting the subtle message to supporters that the best contribution they can make is to stay home. And the opposition, sensing defeat, has refused to organize any movem ent to get out the vote. ``The referendum has been so underpublicized that it's obvious the republican government and regime do not want it to succeed,'' complained Vladeta Jankovic, head of the DEPOS opposition coalition. ``This is simply another attempt to prolong the uncertainty and create confusion. This regime has survived by creating confusion.'' Jankovic insists elections must be held both in Serbia and on the fed eral level as soon as possible because ``the only alternative to elections is a social explosion and civil war. No one in his right mind, not even the Socialists, can want that.'' Others disagree. They see Milosevic as power-hungry and desperate eno ugh to risk bloody fratricide rather than submit his resignation and call an election. ``If they block elections in Serbia, we will probably have war, predominantly in Kosovo Province, and the establishment of dictatorship,'' warned Dragan Veselinov, head of the Farmers' Party based in Serbia's multiethnic province of Vojvodina. While Milosevic appears poised to elude elections in the Serbian repu blic with the referendum doomed to failure, voting for a new federal leadership is being held up by other means. An election law submitted by Panic is suffering a Balkan-style filibuster in the Yugoslav Parliament, where Milosevic's Socialists and other nationalist parties have a monopoly on power due to opposition boycott of the last election. Panic has spoken out forcefully for early elections in the hopes that Milosevic would be ousted and a new slate of leaders would prompt the United Nations to lift the sanctions that have choked off gasoline and heating oil and worsened hyperinflation, which is raging beyond a 100,000 percent annual rate. But Panic, an American millionaire who left his pharmaceuticals empir e in July to take the political helm in his troubled homeland, failed to challenge Milosevic on the referendum scandal. David Calef, Panic's spokesman, said that the prime minister did not consider the referendum to be in violation of a reported agreement he had with Milosevic for early elections. ``But it seems superfluous to have an election to decide if we should have an election,'' Calef said of Panic's position. ``This is not what democracy is all about.'' Bosnian Lists Atrocity Claims, Pleads for Help From World Muslims< By Trevor Rowe Special to The Washington Post UNITED NATIONS _ Two days after the U.N. Security Council created a ``commission of experts'' to investigate alleged war crimes in Bosnia, Bosnian Ambassador Muhamed Sacirbey Thursday submitted what he said were 32 first-hand accounts of mass murder, torture and other atrocities committed by the Serb nationalist side in Bosnia's six-month-old factional war. Sacirbey also appealed to Islamic countries to help defend his Slavic Muslim-led government against Serb forces that now control about 70 percent of the republic and to use military means if necessary to deliver relief supplies to beleaguered civilians. Speaking to reporters, Sacirbey charged that Western countries had been too slow to respond to pleas for support against Serb aggression and that little had been done despite two U.N. resolutions authorizing international military action to guarantee humanitarian aid shipments. Sacirbey cited a CIA estimate that up to 147,000 civilians could die in Bosnia this winter if aid shipments are not stepped up, while a U.N. ``worst case'' estimate put the figure at up to 400,000 _ most of whom would likely be Muslim refugees or those under siege by Serb militiamen in isolated enclaves. He said that rather than working through U.N. relief officials in Bosnia, Islamic countries should proceed under U.N. Resolution 770, which calls on countries to take ``all measures necessary,'' including the use of force, to deliver aid. There has been no formal response to the appeal so far. Among the atrocity allegations Sacirbey submitted to the new commissi on was a statement from a 34-year-old Muslim named Fadahija Hasanovic, who said he had been interned at a makeshift Serb prison camp in the town of Karakaj, where at least 20 of 700 prisoners crammed into a building had died of suffocation. Hasanovic said the prisoners were beaten regularly and that many were summarily executed. ``We would hear rifle fire, screams and cries,'' he said. ``Then my turn came. ... They forced us against the wall and started shooting immediately. Before that I took my cousin Sejdo by the hand. It was a miracle that I stayed alive, I pretended to be dead among the killed neighbors. When (the Serbs) went to get a new group of captives, I got away crawling.'' According to a resolution adopted Tuesday, the new U.N. commission is to provide U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali with its conclusions on such allegations, and he in turn is to make recommendations for any possible further action _ including, diplomats say, establishment of a Nuremberg-style War Crimes Tribunal. Another atrocity allegation submitted by Sacirbey was from a woman na med Tima Dautovic, identified as a 28-year-old Muslim housewife. In the town of Krinjaca, she asserted, Muslim men were taken by Serb security forces ``to a hall where they were beaten for 4-5 hours, while we the women and children were listening to their cries and screams for help. There was blood on the walls of the hall. ``After that (the (Serbs) took out 35 grown men _ age 17-70 _ and ... shot them. None of them survived. Women were raped and tortured in other ways. A dozen boys age 14-15 were taken in the direction of Zvornik after which we heard nothing of them.'' There have been countless allegations of atrocities by all sides in t he Bosnian warfare, but most have been impossible to verify independently. Nevertheless, U.N. officials and representatives of international relief organizations in Bosnia have noted the consistent pattern of such claims against Serb militiamen and prison guards and have called for a comprehensive investigation. While there was little corroborating evidence for the atrocity accoun ts Sacirbey offered Thursday, most of the signatories expressed a willingness to testify before the commission. Last week, the U.S. government submitted what it called ``reliable'' information to support claims of Serb atrocities in Bosnia. Columbus Discovered America _ But Where? By Boyce Rensberger (c) 1992, The Washington Post Everybody knows that Christopher Columbus discovered America on this day in 1492 _ exactly 500 years ago. Nobody, however, knows for sure exactly where he found it. Columbus' log, which might be expected to answer the question, has be en lost for centuries. An ``abstract'' made by a 16th-century Spanish friar is thought to be a fairly accurate copy of the key parts and it says the explorer's first landfall was a small island that the inhabitants called Guanahani. Unfortunately, Columbus never bothered to say exactly where the islan d was or to describe it in detail. And, although he gave it Spanish Christendom's most-sacred name _ San Salvador _ he stayed there just three days and never returned. Columbus' mission was, of course, to find gold and once he satisfied himself that there was none on Guanahani, the abstract says he sailed to another island that the ``Indians,'' as he called them, assured him had gold. He called that one Santa Maria but it, too, like all the others he would visit, was goldless. And again he wrote down only a sketchy description of the island and the path he sailed. Working his way down a hierarchy of names, Columbus dubbed the third island for King Ferdinand of Spain and the fourth for Queen Isabela. Island five he named for Prince Juan but in the log Columbus often called it by its Indian name _ Cuba. His descriptions make it clear this is the Cuba of today. It is one of the few unmistakable points of contact between the real world and the abstract of the log. And it is from this part of Columbus' voyage, experts agree, that his torians must reckon backwards to find Guanahani, site of the historic first step into the New World. The loss of the original log is a major historical disappointment. Co lumbus presented it to Isabella on his return. She had a scribe in Barcelona make a copy for Columbus and nobody knows what happened to the original. Unfortunately, the Barcelona copy is also missing. It is thought to h ave remained in the Columbus family until the explorer's ne'er-do-well grandson Luis inherited it. He probably sold it, as he did most of the family's possessions to finance his extravagant lifestyle. The only known clues to where Columbus first landed come from a third -hand version of the log. Before Luis inherited the Barcelona copy, a Dominican friar named Bartolome de Las Casas hand-copied the part that dealt with the landfall and the travels among the islands, apparently for use in writing his History of the Indies. This copy, which survives today, is known as the Diario and its vague ness _ presumably reflecting Columbus' vagueness _ has allowed at least nine islands to be advanced, usually with more fervor than evidence, over the last few centuries as the true Guanahani. All are among or near today's Bahama islands but they are scattered over a range of 450 miles. As each of the theorists has pointed out, errors could have crept int o the copying process at each stage. In fact, each theory requires that the Diario contain one or more specific errors. This is because there is no island that fits perfectly into the sequence of islands and sailing tracks. To make the case for an island, its adocate must argue that Las Casa s or the Barcelona scribe wrote, for example, ``northwest'' when Columbus meant ``southwest'' or perhaps that somebody wrote the word ``miles'' when he should have written ``leagues'' (which are about three times longer) or vice versa. As a result, the effort to find Guanahani has been riven by arguments among the advocates of various islands _ arguments that may never cease. Indeed, the Diario contains many abbreviations, struck-out words and inserted notes. Nobody knows whether Las Casas made these to correct his copying errors or to reproduce corrections Columbus made or, in the worst case, to change Columbus' words to conform to what Las Casas thought he knew to be correct. Several times in the Diario the friar notes that Spanish was not the native language of the Italian-born explorer. Early in this century, opinion converged so confidently on Watlings I sland _ which had first been advocated in the 18th century _ that in 1926 it was officially renamed San Salvador. In 1942 most remaining debate withered when the influential Harvard historian Samuel Eliot Morison pronounced flatly that Watlings was the real Guanahani. In the 1980s the debate began anew and was joined in 1986 by Joseph J udge, then the number-two editor at National Geographic magazine and now retired. He announced he had ``demonstrated conclusively'' that the landfall was Samana Cay, a 9-mile-long patch of uninhabited sand 65 miles southeast of Watlings. Judge did it by running the Diario's track backward from the Ragged I slands, a string of islets that Columbus passed _ and, for once, described well _ on the leg that ended in Cuba. The Ragged Islands are the first place Columbus reached whose position all debaters agree upon. Judge's finding confirmed a theory first advanced in 1882 by Gustavus Fox, who had been Abraham Lincoln's assistant secretary of the Navy. Judge's case won over Robert Fuson, a University of Florida geographe r who had championed Grand Turk Island, 220 miles away. ``The only one to change his mind in the whole history of this debate is Bob Fuson,'' Judge said. Other current debaters stand fast. Arne Molander, a Gaithersburg, Md. , engineer, argues for Egg Island, 240 miles northwest of Samana. He insists Columbus was a ``latitude sailor,'' meaning that he sailed due west, keeping to the same latitude as his jumping off place in the Canary Islands and that this would have brought him to Egg. Steven W. Mitchell, a California State University geologist, likes Conception Island, a spit of land only two or three miles long. He says the Diario ``accounts precisely'' for the entire track from it to the Ragged Islands. The debate has even attracted a new combatant. At a symposium last sp ring at the annual meeting of the U.S. Naval Institute in Annapolis, Keith Pickering, a Watertown, Minn., computer programmer, revived an old case for the two Plana Cays, suggesting Columbus somehow considered them one entity. Still, by most accounts, the leading contenders are Watlings and Sama na. Watlings looks good to some because it is the only place to which Columbus' forward track points if only the clues in the Diario _ daily compass headings and distances traveled _ are laid out end to end. Samana looks good to others because the backward track from Cuba and the Ragged Islands require the Diario to contain the fewest errors _ just one. Judge argues that the true forward track from Spain cannot be deduced from headings and distances alone because there would have been winds and currents that pushed Columbus sideways. ``The fact that the uncorrected forward track goes to Watlings means that can't be the island,'' Judge said. His colleagues at the Geographic estimated that the other forces pushed Columbus southward just enough to bring him to Samana. Other evidence from the Diario includes sketchy descriptions of islan ds _ written in an archaic form of Spanish whose meanings are debated. For example, the journal describes Guanahani as having ``una laguna e n medio muy grande.'' This seems to say the island has a very large laguna in the middle. Watlings Island has a big lake in the middle of the island and Samuel L. Morison, the late historian's grandson who also argues for Watlings, says ^laguna@ is the old Spanish word for a lake. Judge says that if Columbus meant lake, he would have used the word ^lago@. He thinks Columbus was referring to the lagoon, or bay, that exists in the middle of Samana's long coastline. Besides, if Morison wants ^laguna@ to mean lake, Judge notes, Columbu s couldn't have been describing Watling because it has 20 sizable lakes and Columbus would not have written of just one ^laguna@. And so the arguments continue. With no new source of evidence, the de baters are condemned to mining and massaging the vagueness of the Diario, which, if it is an accurate copy of an accurate copy, would seem to indicate that Columbus cared less about the site of his first landfall than any of them do today. ^End adv for mon oct 12< Army Sex Scandal in N.Y. Leads to Discharge of 4 Officers, 1 Soldier By Letta Taylor (c) 1992, Newsday A sex scandal at the Fort Drum Army base in upstate New York has led to the discharge of four officers and one enlisted man, Army officials said Thursday. The officers resigned _ and were subsequently discharged _ after bein g charged with having consensual sex with a subordinate female enlisted soldier in 1991 at the upstate Army facility, Army spokesman Maj. Hiriam Bell Jr. said. A videotape, uncovered during the investigation, showed ``a number of '' the officers having sex with the female enlistee, Bell said. In another aspect of the investigation, Spec. Marlon L. Pass agreed t o a discharge after being charged with rape and attempted rape in separate incidents involving the female enlisted soldier and a second female enlisted soldier from July 1991 to April 1992, Bell said. No criminal charges are pending against Pass. The officers and soldier agreed to be discharged between Sept. 21 and Oct. 2 in lieu of any further disciplinary action, Bell said. If convicted in a court-martial, they could have faced five years in military prison. Also Thursday, Bell said that the Army had confiscated two other sex videotapes involving the male officers. Bell refused comment on those tapes except to say anyone involved in them had been investigated. No action will be taken against the two females, who cooperated in th e investigation, Bell said. The women could not be reached for comment. Second Lt. Brian G. Preston, one of the four officers who resigned, s aid that he considered the Army's actions ``unjust'' and said that the officers were being made scapegoats for larger military sex scandals, including one in which Navy aviators allegedly harassed 26 women at the Tailhook convention last fall. The Army's actions were ``racist'' because all five people who were discharged are black, he said. ``I feel that in this particular case, black officers ... and a black soldier were singled out,'' Preston said. Preston refused to elaborate. But sources close to the case said that investigators had failed to pursue reports that the female soldier had had sex with white officers. Bell denied any racism and said that the Army would have investigated any allegations that might violate military code _ especially assault or sex between superiors and subordinates. The sources also said the the videotape only involved two of the four officers who resigned and that those officers _ along with the female enlisted soldier _ didn't even know that one of the men was taping them. The sources also said that the woman hadn't pressed charges against the officers, which Bell confirmed was true. Preston also said that he felt he had not been fairly represented by the Army's legal defense service and questioned why Pass got the same treatment as the four officers when he was charged with rape rather than consensual sex. Asked why the Army agreed to discharge Pass rather than prosecute him for a crime as serious as rape, Bell said that the decision was ``not capricious'' and added: ``It met our needs for punishment and deterrence and it met the victim's needs for privacy.'' The other officers and Pass either could not be reached or refused co mment. The Army's defense lawyers refused comment. Originally, six officers had been investigated for alleged consensual sex with the first female soldier. A fifth officer received a letter of reprimand and no action was taken against the sixth officer, Bell said.
novine.67 .bale.,
RFE/RL Daily Report No. 195, 9 October 1992 SUCCESSOR STATES TO THE USSR SUKHUMI RESIDENTS FLEE EXPECTED ABKHAZ ATTACK. Up to 20% of the population of the Abkhaz capital, Sukhumi, have fled in anticipation of an attack by Abkhaz forces, according to a Georgian Red Cross official quoted by Reuters. An Abkhaz representative in Moscow denied that an attack on the town was imminent. Georgian and Abkhaz forces engaged in shelling and small arms fire in northern Abkhazia, and two Georgian soldiers were killed when their armored car was destroyed by a landmine. The UN Security Council called for an immediate halt to the fighting and compliance with the 3 September ceasefire agreement, and voted to send an observer mission to Georgia next week. A request by Georgian Foreign Minister Aleksandre Chkheidze for NATO observers to monitor the Georgian elections was rejected on the grounds that other organizations are better qualified to do so. The First International Congress of Abkhaz in Lykhny addressed an appeal to the UN to support Abkhaz self-determination and to impose sanctions on Georgia, AFP reported. (Liz Fuller, RFE/RL, Inc.) CIS SUMMIT STARTS. The CIS summit in Bishkek started on 9 October with a joint session of the heads of state and heads of government, ITAR-TASS reported. All ten member states are participating, and Georgia and Azerbaijan have sent observers. ITAR-TASS said that it had been decided to postpone the adoption of a declaration on obligations in the field of human rights until a CIS summit in Minsk on 8 December. After two hours of discussion, agreements on coordinating economic legislation, the creation of an international TV company, the mutual recognition of property rights, and cooperation in ensuring stability on the Commonwealth's external frontiers were said to be ready for signing. Progress on the other items on the agenda seems to have been more limited. Agreement was reached in principle to create an intergovernmental bank for the ruble zone, and the CIS charter was given its first reading only. ITAR-TASS reported that an agreement on creating a Consultative Economic Working Commission (presumably a less tightly knit body than the planned consultative-coordinating economic council) would be adopted together with the charter at the next summit, and that it had been agreed to sign a document on the "course of the formation" of the economic court. (Ann Sheehy, RFE/RL, Inc.) CIS HEADS OF STATE TO DISCUSS NUCLEAR WEAPONS CONTROL. In Bishkek today, a proposal by CIS Commander in Chief Shaposhnikov to give Russia sole control over launch codes and the dismantling of nuclear weapons will be discussed, Interfax reported on 8 October. Russian Defense Minister Grachev claims that Belarus supports the proposal and will dismantle its weapons within three years, rather than the seven previously agreed. Kazakhstan has agreed on both control and dismantling issues. Ukraine rejects the proposal completely. On 8 October, Ukrainian President Kravchuk stated that Ukraine did not desire sole launch authority for its nuclear weapons, but insisted that it be able to veto any launch order from the Russian or CIS command. Kravchuk claimed that the proposal would complicate ratification of the START treaty. Ukraine has also been reluctant to allow the removal of the weapons to Russia for dismantling. It seems likely that the summit will produce a split decision, with Kazakhstan and Belarus handing over control to Russia, while Ukraine refuses, introducing even greater uncertainty into the nuclear control system, and increasing tensions between Russia and Ukraine. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL, Inc.) DETAILS OF CIS DRAFT TREATY ON DEFENSE AND COLLECTIVE SECURITY RELEASED. According to Interfax reports of 8 October, the signatories agree to defend each other from external threats, in accordance with decisions by the CIS Council of Heads of State. The "United Armed Forces" of the CIS would apparently include strategic nuclear weapons as well as conventional forces. The draft agreement was initialled by nine states on 8 October, excluding Moldova and Ukraine. Azerbaijan initialled the treaty but is unlikely to sign it in the wake of its decision not to join the CIS. Ukraine claims that the treaty makes sense only until all its nuclear forces are dismantled. The treaty's provisions on nuclear forces are unclear: to be consistent with new CIS proposals on nuclear weapons, Russia would presumably assign strategic nuclear forces to the CIS command in the event of an emergency. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL, Inc.) CIS PEACEKEEPERS FOR TAJIKISTAN. Following two days of talks mediated by a CIS delegation headed by Kirgiz Vice-President Felix Kulov, the Tajik Supreme Soviet agreed provisionally on 8 October to the Kirgiz proposal to send peacekeepers to separate the warring sides in south-west Tajikistan, Radio Moscow reported. Interfax quoted acting Tajik President Akbar Iskandarov as stating that only Kirgiz peacekeeping troops would be acceptable and not contingents from other CIS states. (Liz Fuller, RFE/RL, Inc.) SUBSIDIES RAISED ON IMPORTED GRAIN. The Russian ministries of finance and economics have announced an increase in the subsidy paid on imported grain from 80% to 95%, Interfax reported on 8 October. An unnamed finance ministry official was quoted as saying that, at current exchange rates (334 rubles to the dollar) and without a subsidy, bread baked with imported grain would retail at 100 rubles a kilo instead of the current 44 rubles a kilo, "putting it out of reach of Russian citizens." This development could revive earlier proposals by Vice President Rutskoi that Russian farmers be paid in hard currency for their grain sales to the state. (Keith Bush, RFE/RL, Inc.) FORMER SOVIET REPUBLICS FACING OIL CUTBACK. In an interview with an RFE/RL correspondent on 8 October, the deputy head of the Finance Department of the Russian Fuel and Energy Ministry elaborated on Russia's 7 October warning on oil shipments. Evgenii Lelenkov said that Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan are in arrears with payments for past oil deliveries and face reductions in supplies starting 12 October. The Baltic states were also said to owe Russia money for past deliveries of fuel and energy, but they enjoy positive overall trade balances with the Russian Republic. (Keith Bush, RFE/RL, Inc.) PARLIAMENTARY RESOLUTION CRITICIZES RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT. On 8 October, the Russian Supreme Soviet passed a resolution criticizing the way the government was currently implementing economic reforms. The resolution described the government's work as unsatisfactory, and called on the government to present within a month a series of measures to combat the crisis in the country. ITAR-TASS reported that the document was initially approved by a vote of 124 to 29. There were seven abstentions and 70 deputies were absent. Later the same news agency said that the voting procedure was deemed improper; consequently, the resolution was annulled and the deputies will discuss it again today. The Supreme Soviet also decided that the Congress of Peoples Deputies would meet on 1 December. The agenda will include the government's reform policy, a new Russian Constitution, and a debate on whether to prolong President Yeltsin's special powers. (Vera Tolz, RFE/RL, Inc.) KOKOSHIN DELEGATION LEAVES KOREA, VISITS CHINA. At the end of an historic five-day visit to South Korea, a Russian military delegation headed by First Deputy Defense Minister Andrei Kokoshin arrived in Beijing on 8 October. ITAR-TASS quoted Kokoshin as saying the his delegation would continue the work begun during the August visit of Chinese Defense Minister Qin Jiwei to Moscow. "Our program includes...discussions on a wide range of issues concerning our expanding cooperation with China, and the resolution of a whole set of practical questions," he added. (Doug Clarke, RFE/RL, Inc.) POLICE BLOCK EMPLOYEES OF GORBACHEV FOUNDATION. All Russian TV newscasts ascribed great prominence on 8 October to the police blockade of the Gorbachev Foundation and to Gorbachev's subsequent press conference. Gorbachev condemned the blockade of his research institute as "a stupid and arbitrary action," and alleged that Yeltsin's treatment of Gorbachev might be a test for Russian society generally and a sign of an impending dictatorship. Within hours of the issuance of Yeltsin's decree transferring the Foundation's premises to a Russian financial school, some thirty armed police officers surrounded the five-building complex to stop 200 foundation employees from entering their offices. The only employee whom the police did not dare to stop, the foundation's vice-president, Aleksandr Yakovlev, termed the action "the lawlessness without limits, like the 1917 [Bolshevik] revolution." (Julia Wishnevsky, RFE/RL, Inc.) ITALIAN FOREIGN MINISTER INSISTS ON GORBACHEV VISIT. According to the ITAR-TASS and the DR Press on 8 October, on 5 October the Italian foreign ministry instructed its embassy in Moscow to issue a formal note to the Russian foreign minister, Andrei Kozyrev, in view of last week's confiscation of Mikhail Gorbachev's travel documents due to his refusal to testify in the Constitution Court. The note cited Russian obligations to respect internationally recognized democratic norms, as provided by the conference on security and cooperation in Europe, of which both countries are members, and stated Italy's expectations that Gorbachev's visits abroad, including his planned visit to Italy scheduled to start in the mid-October, will take place as expected. At his press-conference held on 8 October, Gorbachev said that he would rather go to prison then testify at the CPSU the Constitutional Court hearings. (Julia Wishnevsky, RFE/RL, Inc.) FALIN REJECTS THE CHARGE OF MISUSE OF FUNDS. Valentin Falin, former head of the CPSU Central Committee International Department, on 8 October began his testimony at the Constitution Court hearings on the CPSU. Earlier, Falin refused to break off his lecture tour in Germany unless the Constitutional Court compensated him for expenses; the court met this condition. Falin is a prime suspect in the government's investigation of alleged CPSU embezzlement of public funds to subsidize "fraternal" (communist) parties abroad after the failed coup of August 1991. According to Falin, the CPSU always compensated the state bank with rubles for the hard currency it borrowed to support foreign communists. Falin added that the same system of the ruble compensation existed for Soviet trade unions, the Komsomol, the USSR Academy of Sciences, and other such bodies. Falin also denied that the Party had ever supported terrorists, apart from PLO fighters who, he maintained, are not regarded "terrorists" in today's Russia. (Julia Wishnevsky, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIAN SPACE PROGRAM SAID TO BE ON THE MEND. Oleg Lobov, the chairman of the presidential Council of Experts, told ITAR-TASS on 8 October that the Russian space program "is pulling out of a crisis." He said he became convinced of this conversion of the aerospace complex. Lobov added that it was not true that Russia had lost its scientific and technical potential in this important field. The previous day, Valentin Stepanov, the director-general of the general engineering department in the ministry of industry, told a Moscow press conference that he hoped the Buran space shuttle would be launched again in November. The 36 meter long Buran has been into space only once--an unmanned flight in November 1988. It is carried aloft by the giant Energiya booster rocket. (Doug Clarke, RFE/RL, Inc.) YELTSIN ORDERS SPECIAL UNITS TO FIGHT CRIME AND CORRUPTION. President Yeltsin has ordered the establishment of an inter-branch commission under the aegis of Russian Security Council to combat organized crime, ITAR-TASS reported on 8 October. It will coordinate activities of the ministries of interior, security, and defense, as well as the state customs committee and the federal service for export and currency control. Under the direction of Vice President Alexander Rutskoi, the commission includes the first deputy of the speaker of parliament, Sergei Filatov, State Secretary Gennadii Burbulis, and the secretary of the security council, Yurii Skokov. The same decree authorized fast reaction teams in the MVD. Yeltsin's decision to establish these special units is probably the result of pressure from the Russian political right and the public's general dissatisfaction over rising crime. (Victor Yasmann, RFE/RL, Inc.) "RUKH" SUPPORTS CRIMEAN TATARS. "Rukh" has adopted a resolution condemning the authorities for the attack on the Crimean Tatar settlement in Krasnyi Rai on 1 October, "Mayak" and DR-Press reported on 8 October. The destruction of the Crimean Tatar homes on the territory of a state farm there has resulted in an escalation of the conflict. "Rukh" calls the actions of the authorities a continuation of the genocide against the Crimean Tatars. (Roman Solchanyk, RFE/RL, Inc.) AZERBAIJAN TIGHTENS SECURITY ON IRANIAN FRONTIER. Azerbaijan has deployed tanks, armored cars and additional frontier troops along its border with Iran following a decree by Azerbaijani President Abulfaz Elchibey imposing a state of emergency in the Dzhalilabad and Yardymly raions in south-east Azerbaijan, according to an AFP report from Tehran quoting travellers. An Azerbaijani presidential spokesman said the move was intended to prevent the smuggling of drugs and contraband across the frontier. On 6 October ITAR-TASS reported a recent increase in frontier violations, including some by "groups of armed horsemen." (Liz Fuller, RFE/RL, Inc.) CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE SERBS INCREASE PRESSURE IN NORTHERN BOSNIA. International media reported on 8 October that Serbian aircraft bombed Gradacac, Orasje, and Maglaj, which were also hit with incendiary shells. The towns are among the few still controlled by Croatian and Muslim forces along the strip linking Serbia with ethnic Serb enclaves in Croatia and western Bosnia. Meanwhile, an RFE/RL correspondent reports from the UN that Bosnia's ambassador presented that body with a list of alleged atrocities committed by the Serbs. He appealed to Islamic countries for aid, even if they have to supply protection for their missions themselves. Ambassador Mohamed Sacirbey added that Turkey, Pakistan, and Malaysia said they are willing to do this. Malaysia earlier had made a blanket offer of asylum for any Muslim refugees forced to flee "ethnic cleansing." (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL, Inc.) BULGARIA WANTS UN OBSERVERS ON ITS WESTERN BORDER. Bulgaria, through its UN Ambassador Slavi Pashovski, has officially requested the deployment of UN military observers on its territory, an RFE/RL correspondent reports. On 8 October Pashovski told the General Assembly that the conflict in ex-Yugoslavia might be more easily contained if the UN presence in the region were increased. He said Bulgaria would also accept a UN mission to monitor the application of sanctions against Serbia and Montenegro. Over the last few days observers and customs officials sent by the EC and the CSCE have been stationed along Bulgaria's western border and in its Danube ports. (Kjell Engelbrekt, RFE/RL, Inc.) CZECHOSLOVAK PARLIAMENT APPROVES POWER-SHARING LAWS. The Federal Assembly passed two constitutional amendments aimed at transferring federal powers to the Czech and Slovak Republics. The first amendment reduces the number of federal ministries from 15 to 5 (foreign affairs, defense, interior, economics, and finance). The remaining ministries will cease to exist and their jurisdictions will be assumed by the corresponding republican ministries. A second bill was first rejected and refereed to an arbitration panel but a compromise version was eventually approved. It will give the republics the power to investigate "crimes against the security of the state" and transfer state media institutions to the republics. It also ends the federal monopoly on film. (Jan Obrman, RFE/RL, Inc.) SUCHOCKA PRESENTS GOVERNMENT PROGRAM. Three months after taking office, Prime Minister Hanna Suchocka presented her government's full economic program to the Sejm. Poland most needs "a sense of order" and "clear prospects for growth," she said on 9 October. After three years devoted to transforming its economic system, Poland now has the chance to open a period of steady economic growth. The goal--to double national income in 10 years' time--could be met under certain conditions: legal stability and a strong state; increased domestic spending on investment; an influx of foreign capital; reduction of Poland's foreign debt; lasting social peace; and courage and self-confidence. Suchocka warned, however, that economic growth will require limiting consumption for the coming five years and that real wages can not grow faster than production. Suchocka's address preceded a debate on the government's economic plan for 1993. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL, Inc.) POLAND PRESSES FOR EC MEMBERSHIP TIMETABLE. On the second day of her visit to Brussels, Polish Prime Minister Hanna Suchocka urged the European Community to set a fixed timetable for full membership for the countries of the Visegrad triangle. Suchocka also pressed for better access to EC markets and authorization to use the $1 billion stabilization fund to finance Poland's budget deficit and enact banking reform. Speaking to the European Parliament on 8 October, Suchocka said that Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary "do not insist on rapid acceptance, but we would like to be taken into account in the construction of the European union." The EC's response was noncommittal; commissioner Frans Andriessen commented that "today was not a day to be specific." On her return to Warsaw, Suchocka nonetheless expressed confidence that Poland would join the EC within ten years and NATO even sooner. She added that Poland had restored its image among EC countries as a bulwark of stability in Eastern Europe. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL, Inc.) LAST DEBATE BEFORE ROMANIAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. In a four-hour television program on 8 October, incumbent president Ion Iliescu and challenger Emil Constantinescu debated mainly economic issues. Constantinescu attacked the record of the Iliescu administration and asked viewers to consider whether there are any grounds to assume that things will improve in the next four years. He presented a program for economic redress and said a social moratorium was necessary for the economy to be put on the right path. Iliescu reiterated his views on economic "restructuring," saying that the state must have instruments for intervention when necessary, and attacked the Constantinescu's program, calling it "liberal idealism." (Michael Shafir, RFE/RL, Inc.) COMPOSITION OF THE ROMANIAN PARLIAMENT. The Central Electoral Bureau announced the first-cut distribution of seats in the parliament elected on 27 September. The final distribution will be established after the centralization of the results at country level according to a complicated system. At this stage, the Chamber of Deputies will comprise Democratic National Salvation Front (DNSF)--117 seats; Democratic Convention of Romania (DCR)--82; National Salvation Front (NSF)--43; Party of Romanian National Unity (PRNU)--30; Hungarian Democratic Federation of Romania (HDFR)--27; Greater Romania Party (GRP)--16; Socialist Labor Party (SLP)--12. In the Senate the seats will be distributed as follows: DNSF--49; DCR--34; NSF--18; PRNU--14; GRP-6; Democratic Agrarian Party--5; and SLP--5. Meanwhile, the DCR says it will contest the results of the parliamentary and presidential elections. The decision was announced in an official statement published in the daily Dreptatea on 8 October. DCR campaign manager Ilie Paunescu told Reuters that the protest will be filed because of "the large number of annulled votes, fraud attempts, and major irregularities." (Michael Shafir) KING MICHAEL REQUESTS VISA TO VISIT ROMANIA. Exiled king Michael has asked the embassy in Bern to issue a visa for a visit to Romania accompanied by his family. Teodor Melescanu, secretary of state at the ministry of foreign affairs, said in an interview with Radio Bucharest on 8 October that Romania's official position remains that in principle there are no objections to visits by the royal family, but only after the end of the present elections. He added that the government's willingness to grant entry permits referred to visits for pilgrimages, family commemorations and similar occasions. Other problems connected with what he termed "the clarification of the relationship between the royal family and Romania" must await the formation of the new government. (Michael Shafir). ROMANIAN CULTURAL CENTER OPENS IN BUDAPEST. Romanian Minister of Culture Ludovic Spiess said at the opening ceremony on 8 October that "in Budapest today Romania opens a new door to Europe" and "an opportunity for dialogue that the two countries urgently need." A Hungarian cultural center opened in Bucharest on 1 October. Spiess and his Hungarian counterpart Bertalan Andrasfalvy expressed the hope that the cultural centers will promote closer cooperation between the two countries. MTI carried the report. (Edith Oltay, RFE/RL, Inc.) POSSIBLE COMPROMISE ON THE MEDIA FRONT IN HUNGARY. Representatives of Hungary's three opposition parties told a press conference following talks with President Arpad Goncz on 8 October that they are willing to make "sound compromises" to end the country's media war. They agreed to enter into discussions with the government on the appointment of new radio and TV chiefs as well as the package of laws on the media. The opposition parties have until now insisted that the appointment of heads of radio and TV be discussed only after the enactment by parliament of the media laws. The government dismissed the radio and TV chiefs months ago, but they remain in their posts because President Goncz refused to approve the dismissals. Quarrels between the government and the opposition over control of the media have for the past two years blocked the passing of much needed laws on the media. (Edith Oltay, RFE/RL, Inc.) LAAR NAMED ESTONIAN PREMIER. As expected, Estonian President Lennart Meri on 8 October named Pro Patria chairman Mart Laar as his candidate for prime minister. Laar, 32, told reporters that Estonia needs to be more "energetic" in its dealings with Russia. Laar also said speeded up market reforms will be among his first tasks, Rahva Haal reports on 9 October. Laar's appointment will be put to a vote in parliament on 19 October (Riina Kionka, RFE/RL, Inc.) PARLIAMENTARY COMMISSIONS FORMED. Ten parliamentary commissions have been officially registered in the newly elected Estonian State Assembly, Rahva Haal of 9 October reports. With one defection from Secure Home, Pro Patria is by far the largest faction, with 30 seats. Other factions include the Central faction (15); the Moderates (12); the Estonian National Independence Party (11); and the Royalists (8). The election coalition Secure Home has split over ownership policy into two separate factions--the Coalition Party Alliance (8) and the Rural Union Alliance. (Riina Kionka, RFE/RL, Inc.) ETHNIC COMMUNITIES DELEGATION IN LITHUANIA. On 7 October representatives of the Federation of Ethnic Communities of Europe held talks with the Lithuanian Supreme Council's Citizens' Rights and Nationality Affairs Commission as well as the Foreign Affairs Commission, Radio Lithuania reports. The latter's chairman Vidmantas Povilionis said that the delegation learned that Lithuania has already passed laws regulating the status of all minorities and not just some as is the case in many European countries. Povilionis suggested that Lithuania's laws could be a model for other countries. The delegation visited the Tatar mosque in Kaunas and the Russian cultural center in Vilnius. On 9 September the delegation will have a meeting with Prime Minister Aleksandras Abisala and hold a press conference before departing. (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL, Inc.) WESTERN DIPLOMATS: HUMAN RIGHTS OBSERVED IN LATVIA. BNS reported on 7 October that Western diplomats told the press, that, despite Russian allegations, the rights of Russian-speakers in Latvia are not being violated. British ambassador Richard Samuel said that the Latvian government wants to observe human rights of all minorities and has not noticed any examples of violation of those rights. US embassy press attachi James Kenny said that as far he is concerned, the Baltic States are observing human rights and noted that in response to US queries, Russia has failed to provide facts about claims of human rights violations. German ambassador Count Hagen von Lambsdorf pointed out that a distinction should be drawn between human and civil rights. Other diplomats noted that while human rights were being observed in Latvia, some problems were caused by the way the Latvian authorities are handling the citizenship and language issues. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL, Inc.) REFERENDUM ON LITHUANIAN CONSTITUTION. On 8 October Supreme Council Chairman Vytautas Landsbergis held a press conference devoted to the new Lithuanian constitution, Radio Lithuania reports. After long negotiations the constitution projects presented by the Sajudis coalition and a parliament commission had been reconciled, he said, and the parliament's presidium had decided to call a special session of the parliament on 12 October to approve the holding of a referendum on the constitution on 25 October, when elections to the Seimas will be held. The Seimas would be empowered to approve the final version of the constitution. The draft calls for the direct election of the president for a five-year term. The president would offer a candidate for prime minister that the Seimas would have to approve. The prime minister would, in turn, offer candidates for his cabinet that the president would approve. The prime minister would then present the cabinet and his program for the approval of the Seimas. (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL, Inc.) RAVNOPRAVIE DEPUTIES DENY COOPERATION. In response to Latvian Defense Ministry's protest concerning the anti-Latvian activities of the Association for the Defense of Veterans Rights, several deputies of the Ravnopravie faction of the Latvian Supreme Council denied their affiliation with the pro-Russian and pro-Soviet organization, while others did admit to contacts with it and similar organizations, such as the Russian Citizens Association, saying that they need to maintain contacts with their voters, Diena reported on 7 October. Ravnopravie deputies are mostly Russian-speakers and originally supported the idea that Latvia should remain a part of the Soviet Union. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL, Inc.) BALTIC COOPERATION ON ENERGY. During a meeting in Riga on 6 October, Baltic ministers responsible for fuel and energy coordinated their policies on how to cope with the expected shortages this fall and winter. They decided that the Latvian port of Ventspils and the Lithuanian port of Klaipeda would be available for common use to receive and channel further emergency energy aid resources from abroad; similarly, the port of Riga would be used to receive gas from abroad. Estonia agreed to discount electricity exports to Latvia in exchange for the use of Latvia's gas reservoirs, BNS reported on 7 October. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL, Inc.)
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----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Fighting hampers U.N. peacekeepers work in Sarajevo Subject: Vance, Owen to visit Moscow Subject: Fighting reported in six cities of Bosnia-Hercegovina Subject: U.S. may send field hospital to Bosnia-Hercegovina Subject: 'Ethnic cleansing' almost over, says U.N. spokesperson Subject: Serbia and Croatian forces reportedly strike secret deal Subject: Chess champ Kasparov says he'd face Fischer for 'clean money' Subject: Security Council bans military flights over Bosnia-Hercegovina ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Fighting hampers U.N. peacekeepers work in Sarajevo Date: 8 Oct 92 15:50:59 GMT BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (UPI) -- The newly appointed U.N. commander in Bosnia-Hercegovina Thursday expressed his determination to restore water and electricity supplies to the Serb-beseiged capital of Sarajevo and said U.N. soldiers would fire to protect themselves and repair crews. ``We need absolute guarantees of a cease-fire, at least in these locations where these workmen will be working,'' French Gen. Phillipe Morillon of the U.N. Protection Force (UNPROFOR) said, refering to local technicians on whom depend repairs to Sarajevo's war-damaged utility systems. Asked at a news conference what UNPROFOR escorts for the repair teams would do if they were fired upon, he replied: ``We have come here not to fight, but to help in bringing about peace to Bosnia-Hercegovina. ``However, we are ready to open fire to eliminate threats, but without engaging in retaliation actions. We are entitled to self- defense, legitimate defense to protect the lives of our people and those of repair squads,'' he said. An estimated 350,000 residents and 150,000 refugees are trapped with little water and no electricity in Sarajevo by a more than six-month siege by Serbian extremists fighting to rip a self-declared state out of the former Yugoslav republic of Muslim Slavs, Croats and Serbs. Morillon was appointed Sept. 30 as the commander in Bosnia- Hercegovina of the multinational UNPROFOR as part of a major expansion in the contingent ordered by the U.N. Security Council as part of an effort to bolster humanitarian aid operations. He has previously asserted that he was determined to end the blockade of Sarajevo, which has left its predominantly Muslim Slav population dependent on U.N.-organized food and medical aid. Morillon held talks on the issue on Wednesday in Sarajevo and in Pale, the main Serbian stronghold to the east of the city, where he said he was told that local commanders would be responsible for ensuring the safety of U.N.-protected utility repair teams. ``I'll ask all sides involved in the war to comply with the Serbian promise'' and hold local commanders responsible for cease-fire violations, said Morillon.``I became aware how a tragic sitution is in Sarajevo with no electricity and no water.'' ``Our first priority is to restore electricity and water in Sarajevo, '' Morillon said. ``What is needed is protection for local civilian technicians in their repair work. I got assurances of such protection in my talks yesterday from both the Bosnian and Serbian leaders.'' But, he warned the task would be difficult, saying, ``General Morillon is not a magician or savior. We have to work step by step.'' He said that half of the 30 utility repair missions attempted in the past month in the Sarajevo area had to be abandoned because of fighting. Under the recent U.N. Security Council decision, UNPROFOR in Bosnia- Hercegovina is to be expanded from a 1,500-strong force to more than 6, 000 men, all from the North Atlantic Treay Organization countries. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Vance, Owen to visit Moscow Date: 8 Oct 92 16:14:18 GMT GENEVA (UPI) -- The United Nations and European Community mediators, Cyrus Vance and Lord David Owen, were due to fly to Moscow Friday to talk with government leaders on the continued fighting in Bosnia- Hercegovina, a U.N.spokesman said Thursday. A meeting with President Boris Yeltsin is ``hoped for, but not yet scheduled,'' spokesman Fred Eckhard said. The mediators plan to return to Geneva Sunday to resume meetings Monday with representatives of the three warring factions in Bosnia- Hercegovina. The visit to Moscow, Eckhard said, is one of a number of trips Vance and Owen have planned to neighboring countries which have an interest in the fighting in the former Yugoslavia. They have already been to Greece. Thursday Vance and Owen met with former Polish Premier Tadeusz Mazowiecki, the U.N.-appointed investigator into human rights violations in the former Yugoslavia. Mazowiecki, who has produced a report sharply criticizing conditions in Bosnia-Hercegovina, leaves Monday for a trip to various former Yugoslav republics including Kossovo, Serbia and Montenegro. Eckhard said of the continued fighting in the north of Bosnia- Hercegovina, ``it doesn't help the search for peace here (in Geneva) to have things heating up on the ground.'' He said Vance and Owen are determined that the peace process, as outlined by the August London conference, will see any territorial gains made illegally reversed in a final settlement. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Fighting reported in six cities of Bosnia-Hercegovina Date: 8 Oct 92 19:48:54 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- Fighting raged across north and central Bosnia-Hercegovina Thursday, with Serbian militiamen and government forces clashing in half a dozen cities just two days after a major border town fell to the Yugoslav-army armed guerrillas, Bosnian officials and radio reported. Warring factions in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo appeared to be regrouping after three days of fierce fighting, but sporadic clashes killed at least one and wounded 26, including two Egyptian U.N. soldiers hit when their headquarter came under mortar fire, officials said. Health officials in the newly independent republic, which erupted in warfare after ethnic Serbs launched a campaign to carve a separate nation out of the country, said at least 37 people were killed and 190 wounded in 24 hours of fighting that ended at 10 a.m., about one third of them in the capital. Heavy fighting raged Thursday in five cities north and northwest of the capital, officials and Sarajevo radio said. Clashes were reported in Bugojno, Bihac, Jajce, Doboj and Gradacac as Serbian forces pressed their advantage following the capture of the key northern border town of Bosanski Brod. The lull in fighting in Sarajevo came after three days of heavy shellfire that devastated several high-rise apartment and office buildings in the capital as Serbian forces tried to advance from the south. Bosnian forces counterattacked at three bridges along the Miljacka river and stopped the advance, Bosnian military sources said. Unconfirmed Bosnian reports said up to 150 Serbian fighters were killed in the offensive thrust after they were drawn into an ambush and attacked by Bosnian troops firing rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns. Serbian forces Thursday also attempted several infantry advances on Bihac under the cover of heavy artillery fire that hit locations from the center of town out to the suburbs, Sarajevo radio said. It claimed the attackers had been turned back by Bosnian defenders. At least two people were killed and 11 wounded in the fighting, the radio said. The latest fighting came as Serbian forces tightened their grip on Bosanski Brod after a seven-month campaign that led late Tuesday to the fall of the strategic city along the Bosnian border with Croatia. The capture of the city and the destruction of the bridge over the Sava River cut a major supply link used by Bosnian troops, comprised mostly of Muslim Slavs but including some Croats and Serbs. Bosnian vice president Ejub Ganic said Thursday thousands of Serbian troops involved in the battle for Bosanki Brod were being moved to Gradacac, which Sarajevo radio said came under heavy fire Thursday. Officials of the U.N. Protection Force said Thursday the commander of UNPROFOR's new republic-wide operation, French. Col. Phillipe Morillon, failed during his two-day visit to Sarajevo to arrange a joint meeting of the warring factions to discuss humanitarian and other logistical issues. Both Bosnian and Serbian officials were particularly interested in winning UNPROFORs increased commitment to help restore water and electricity supplies in and around the capital, UNPROFOR spokesman Mik Magnusson said. UNPROFOR troops have been escorting some utility workers trying to identify problems and make repairs but have been deterred by constant fighting and recurring damages, Magnusson said. ``We are ready to open fire to elimate threats'' when protecting utility crews, ``but without engaging in retaliation actions,'' Morillon told a news conference Thursday in Belgrade. ``We are entitled to self-defense, legitimate defense to protect the lives of our people and those of repair squads,'' he said. The outages have been particularly severe at Sarajevo's hospitals, where surgeons said they have been forced to operate by candlelight and have been prevented from properly sterilizing equipment. UNPROFOR Thursday provided the city's two main hospitals with enough diesel fuel to run their electricity generators for about four or five days, and the U.N. High Commission for Refugees was planning to try loading two tanker trucks with fuel in the Croatian-controlled town of Kiseljak, 25 miles northwest of Sarajevo, and driving them to the Bosnian capital. Two Ukrainian soldiers from UNPROFOR volunteered to drive the trucks after getting commitments that all warring parties would allow them to pass, said Marc Vachon, the UNHCR's Sarajevo logistics officer. ``If we are shot at tomorrow, you will hear it wherever you are in town,'' Vachon said. ``You will hear the kaboom.'' None of eleven scheduled UNHCR humanitarian aid delivery flights reached the city Thursday, although 24 trucks arrived with some 200 tons of food and other supplies, Vachon said. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: U.S. may send field hospital to Bosnia-Hercegovina Date: 8 Oct 92 20:04:42 GMT UNITED NATIONS (UPI) -- Secretary-General Boutros Ghali informed the U.N. Security Council Thursday that the United States has agreed to contribute military personnel to the U.N. peace force in the former Yugoslavia. Ghali said Spain and other countries have also agreed to send military contingents in order to strengthen the current U.N. Protection Force, whose task has been to provide security to food convoys and other humanitarian operations to civilians trapped by the civil war. A U.S. official said in Washington that the administration is ``actively considering'' setting up a field hospital in Zagreb, Croatia, as part of the UNPROFOR operations. The official said the final decision could come as early as Thursday from the Pentagon. ``The president (Bush) has pretty much ruled out sending out ground troops to Bosnia,'' the official said. The United States has rejected the idea of committing ground troops to the war that had been ravaging the Balkan republic since April for fear that it would be drawn into the fighting. It has provided military aircraft for the food airlift to Sarajevo, however. The Security Council has allowed Ghali to strengthen UNPROFOR by at least 6,000 troops, most of them coming from NATO countries. Those countries have agreed also to pay for the costs of maintaining the military contingents in Bosnia-Hercegovina. ``I propose that Spain and the United States of America be added to the list of member states contributing military personnel to UNPROFOR,'' Ghali said. Canada, France and Britain said they will send each an infantry battalion to Bosnia-Hercegovina. Countries that will also contribute military components to UNPROFOR are Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal and Norway. A U.N. spokesman said those countries have already sent an advance military team to the region to study the deployment of the additional force. UNPROFOR currently has about 14,000 troops based in Croatia and 1,600 in Sarajevo where they have been providing security to the international airport for the humanitarian airlift. The additional troops to UNPROFOR came at a time when the Security Council was considering a ban on military flights over Bosnia- Hercegovina in an effort to ground the Serbian air force. The ban will not apply to U.N. and humanitarian flights. A compromise resolution apparently reached by the United States, France and Britain, which was circulated to governments in the Security Council, would ``establish a ban on military flights in the air space of Bosnia-Hercegovina.'' The draft resolution would ask UNPROFOR to monitor compliance with the ban on military flights and to place observers at air fields throughout the former Yugoslavia. UNPROFOR would be asked to draw up a mechanism for approval and inspection of non-military flights. The draft made no mention of an enforcement measure. Diplomats said the Security Council would have to take a stronger measure, like ordering UNPROFOR to shoot down violators, if the ban was not complied with. In a related development, the Bosnian ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammed Sacirbey, sent to the Security Council documents pertaining to grave human rights violations in his country, including testimonies by witnesses on the destruction of properties, tortures and killings. The documents were requested by the council on Tuesday so they can be analyzed by a war-crimes panel that was set up by the council with the purpose of bringing to trial those charged with violations of Geneva conventions on war crimes. The panel will be comprised of a number of ``impartial experts'' to be named by the U.N. secretary-general. Ghali was requested to collect information related to the human rights violations in the former Yugoslavia within 30 days from Tuesday. Sacirbey told a news conference Thursday that the council's war- crimes panel was ``not entirely up to standard'' set up for the Nuremberg process, which was created by allied countries in 1943 to prosecute Nazi leaders involved in the extermination of Jews in Europe. Sacirbey proposed a series of legal measures in order to prosecute those guilty of human rights violations by setting up a war-crimes commission for Bosnia-Hercegovina, ``which should work closely with governmental authorities to secure apprehension and arrest of suspected war criminals.'' ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: 'Ethnic cleansing' almost over, says U.N. spokesperson Date: 9 Oct 92 11:44:11 GMT GENEVA (UPI) -- Certain parts of northern Bosnia-Hercegovina are ``in the final stages of ethnic cleansing'' with non-Serb populations fleeing anywhere to escape further atrocities, the U.N. High Commission for Refugees said Friday. ``Some really horrible things are happening,'' UNHCR spokesperson Sylvana Foa told a news conference. ``I think we are in the final stages of ethnic cleansing and the sooner peace-keeping troops can get into northern Bosnia-Hercegovina the better.'' Foa said the situation was deteriorating rapidly in the region of Bagna-Luka, where 200,000 people, mostly Muslims but including some Croats, were fearful of attack by Serbian guerillas. In the region of Kotoruaros, 6,500 people are camped in an open field in rapidly deteriorating weather conditions waiting for international relief organizations to evacuate them, Foa said. The UNHCR had reports that refugees seeking to join the group have been dragged from buses by armed men and taken away to an unknown destination, she said. In the town of Kljuc between as many as 4,000 Muslim refugees have been told to get out of town by Friday, Foa said. Meanwhile, she said, Germany has announced it will rejoin the supply airlift to Sarajevo Saturday once its planes were fitted with anti anti- aircraft devices. The UNHCR had 11 flights scheduled into Sarajevo for Friday by U.S., Canadian, and French planes, making 26 since the airlift resumed nearly a week ago. So far they have brought in 1,127 tons of food, ``nowhere near what we need,'' Foa said. The UNHCR governing council was winding up a weeklong meeting with 43 donor countries Friday designed to increase financial support for its operations in former Yugoslavia. In a related development, former U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and Lord David Owen, the U.N. and European Community mediators in former Yugoslavia, flew to Moscow for two days of meetings with government officials, including a hoped-for session with President Yeltsin. They will be back in Geneva Monday for resumption of talks with the three warring factions in Bosnia-Hercegovina, said their spokesman, Fred Eckhard. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Serbia and Croatian forces reportedly strike secret deal Date: 9 Oct 92 15:26:14 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herecegovina (UPI) -- Serbian and Croatian forces in Bosnia-Hercegovina have agreed to a cease-fire, a senior Serbian leader said Friday, adding new fuel to speculation of a secret deal to partition the war-torn former Yugoslav republic at the expense of its Muslim Slavs. The truce was announced at a news conference in the Serbian stronghold of Banja Luka by Col. Bogdan Subotic, the ``defense minister'' of the self-declared Serbian state that Serbian forces have been fighting to capture. Subotic was quoted by the Serbia-based Tanjug news agency as saying that the cease-fire was ``unconditional.'' There was no mention in the Tanjug dispatch of when it became effective or confirmation that it had gone into effect. The announcement came a day after Radovan Karadzic, the ``president'' of the self-declared Serbian state, said in Geneva that he and representatives of the majority of Bosnia-Hercegovina's Croatian community were close to reaching a truce accord. Leaders of the republic's Muslim Slavs, Serbs and Croats have been meeting in Geneva in internationally mediated negotiations on ending the war that erupted when Serbian forces launched an offensive in late March to capture their self-declared state. The development added new fuel to mounting speculation that Serbia and Croatia have secretly agreed to partition Bosnia-Hercegovina into autonomous ethnic regions, a plan opposed by Muslim Slavs, the largest community in the newly independent, former Yugoslav republic. ``I think there is a deal,'' said a Western diplomat who closely tracks developments in Bosnia-Hercegovina from Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. Such speculation began in May with the first of at least two meetings held in Austria between Karadzic, whose forces are financed and armed by Serbia's communist regime, and Mate Boban, the leader of the Bosnia- Hercegovina branch of the Croatian Democratic Union of President Franjo Tudjman of Croatia. Forces armed by Croatia and loyal to Boban this summer took control of the Croat-dominated region of Western Hercegovina. He then declared the area part of an ``Autonomous Croatian Community of Herceg-Bosna.'' The announcement of the cease-fire came as Bosnia-Hercegovina's Muslim Slav president, Alija Izetbegovic, held a second day of talks with local Croatian leaders in Western Hercegovina in an apparent bid to preserve what had been an alliance against the Serbs and prevent the division of the republic. Sarajevo radio said that Izetbegovic, dressed in a military uniform, told a news conference Thursday in the main Western Hercegovina town of Mostar that he wanted to ``contribute to better cooperation between the Muslim and Croatian peoples in the struggle against the common enemy, but also to the building of a sovereign state of Bosnia-Hercegovina.'' Izetbegovic continued his tour Friday with meetings in the predominantly Croat town of Konjic, the radio said. The Bosnian government of Muslim Slavs, moderate Serbs and Croats opposes the breakup of the republic, seeking to preserve its territorial integrity and independence, international recognition of which it won in early April. Fears of a Serb-Croat deal to divide the republic were renewed following a meeting last week in Geneva between Tudjman and Dobrica Cosic, the ultra-nationalist president of the rump Yugoslav federation forged by Serbia and its tiny dependent, Montenegro, in April. Cosic on Friday signaled an apparent about-turn in Serbian policy when he called for direct negotiations between Tudjman's regime and Serbian rebels who captured 35 percent of Croatia in the civil war ignited by the republic's June 1991 declaration of independence from the former Yugoslav federation. Speculation of a Serb-Croat agreement on Bosnia-Hercegovina riose further with the sudden capture Tuesday by Serbian forces of Bosanski Brod, a Croat-controlled town of immense strategic importance because of its location on the Sava River border between northern Bosnia- Hercegovina and Croatia. ``Bosanski Brod fits in. It appears the Croats just pulled out,'' said the Western diplomat. Bosanski Brod had been connected to Croatia by the only Sava River bridge left standing, thereby providing the main route for arms and supplies from Zagreb to the coalition of Croatian and Muslim Slav forces fighting in northern Bosnia-Hercergovina. The Serbs blew up the bridge on Wednesday morning after Bosanski Brod was abandoned by well-supplied and experienced Croatian and Muslim Slav units that had withstood seven months of Serbian land and air attacks. The fall of the town consolidated the Serbs' control of a vast swath of territory claimed for their self-declared state and providing a vital supply corridor running from the border of Serbia, across the northern tier of Bosnia-Hercegovina to western areas of Croatia captured by Serbian forces during last year's civil war. Meanwhile, fighting flared in northern Bosnia-Hercegovina while clashes eased in and around the capital of Sarajevo. Serbian forces intensified their infantry and artillery attacks on the predominantly Muslim Slav-Croat town of Gradacac and Sarajevo radio described the situation there as ``critical.'' ``Fierce clashes'' were under way in the Muslim Slav town of Brcko, the radio said. It was mostly calm in Sarajevo with sporadic fighting and intermittent shelling echoing across the city. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Chess champ Kasparov says he'd face Fischer for 'clean money' Date: 8 Oct 92 20:43:29 GMT BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (UPI) -- World chess champion Gary Kasparov said Thursday he would be willing to face America's ``living legend'' Bobby Fischer over a chess board, but only for ``clean money not paid for by Serbian propaganda.'' Kasparov, the 29-year-old Azerbaijani who captured the chess title in 1985, took the swipe at Fischer after enduring a barrage of criticism from the former world champion, who has repeatedly disparaged Kasparov's play and insulted him by calling him ``an outright crook,'' a ``creep'' and ``a liar.'' The current chess champion's turn to reply came during a news conference in the Argentine capital after being quizzed about the possibility of a game with Fischer, who is currently involved in a Serbian-sponsored re-match of his 1972 title bout with former world champion Boris Spassky. ``If the public thinks there should be a match, and if there is clean money not paid for by Serbian propoganda and there is a country willing to host, I think it can be done,'' Kasparov told the news conference. The reigning world champ admitted he was surprised by Fischer's recent return to the public eye after 20 years, saying: ``I never thought he would come back. He was always the maximum world champion, like a living legend.'' He described the prospects of a match with Fischer as ``a hypothetical possibility,'' but said with the return of the erratic Fischer ``anything is possible.'' While downplaying the possibility of a match, Kasparov engaged in his own bit of psychological warfare, saying he was not very impressed by Fischer's play so far during the re-match, in which Fischer leads Spassky 6-3. ``The quality shown up to now is not very high. Really it is sad that it has to be that way,'' Kasparov said. ``Maybe there is a miracle and Fischer can return to play strong, but since he retired, chess has evolved quite a bit and it will be difficult for him to catch up.'' Kasparov criticized Fischer for choosing to hold the match in the Yugoslav capital while that country is still backing a war with its neighboring republics. Fischer ignored U.S. warnings that the match would violate U.N. sanctions against Serbia and spat on a Treasury Department order barring him from play. Kasparov denied Fischer's repeated allegations that his world championship matches with Anatoli Karpov were rigged. ``In order to fix 144 matches, you would have to have graduated in Hollywood,'' Kasparov said, smiling. ``You can plan good moves, but not the errors, and with Karpov we committed a lot that time (in 1985). Fischer's words show his mental conditions are not very healthy.'' Kasparov said that while he hoped to continue improving his game, he found little motivation. ``It is difficult to push yourself after having won all the tournaments over nearly 10 years.'' He said his only slight motivation was a possible match against Fischer or a computer. Next year, Kasparov will defend his title against the winner of a match between English Grandmaster Nigel Short and Dutch champion Jan Timman. ``I would bet on Timman to win,'' Kasparov said. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Security Council bans military flights over Bosnia-Hercegovina Date: 9 Oct 92 18:47:14 GMT UNITED NATIONS (UPI) -- The U.N. Security Council Friday imposed a ban on military air traffic over Bosnia-Hercegovina and said it will take measures to enforce the ban if it is violated. The council said the ban, which took effect immediately, excluded flights by the U.N. Protection Force and humanitarian organizations. It decided to post observers at air fields throughout the former Yugoslavia to monitor compliance with the ban. The resolution imposing the military air ban was adopted by a 14-0 vote, with China abstaining. It was adopted after the United States, Britain and France reached a compromise stating the ban will be carried out in two stages with U.N. and European Community observers monitoring the air space in the first step. The council said, ``in the case of violations, (it will) consider urgently the further measures necessary to enfore this ban'' in the second stage. Britain and France first balked at the idea of an air exclusion zone for fear that it would be difficult to implement and would put U.N. peacekeeping troops on the ground at risk. ``Anybody who believes that the ban can be flouted is going to get a bad surprise,'' British U.N. David Hannay told reporters. Hannay and U.S. Ambassador Edward Perkins said the Security Council will meet again to discuss an enforcement measure for the ban if it is violated. Hannay said the monitoring process would involve the use of radar-carrying planes such as AWACs. ``Our vote in favor of the current resolution reflects our view that in the case of violations it binds the council to further action,'' Perkins told the council before the vote. Perkins urged the parties in the Yugoslav conflict to abide by the ban and to remove from the council ``the need to consider further enforcement measures resulting from non-compliance.'' ``If, however, the current resolution is violated, my government will move to seek adoption by the council of a further resolution mandating enforcement of a no-fly zone over Bosnia-Hercegovina,'' Perkins said.
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U.N. RESOLUTION IMPOSING NO-FLY BAN OVER BOSNIA UNITED NATIONS, Oct 9, Reuter - Following is the text of resolution 781 (1992), adopted by the Security Council on Friday, banning military flights over Bosnia-Herzegovina. THE SECURITY COUNCIL, REAFFIRMING its resolution 713 (1991) and all subsequent relevant resolutions, DETERMINED to ensure the safety of humanitarian flights to Bosnia and Herzegovina, NOTING the readiness of the parties, expressed in the framework of the London Conference, to take appropriate steps in order to ensure the safety of humanitarian flights and their commitment at that Conference to a ban on military flights, RECALLING in this context the Joint Declaration (S/24476) signed in Geneva on 30 September 1992 by the Presidents of the Republic of Croatia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro), and in particular paragraph 7 thereof, RECALLING FURTHER the agreement reached on air issues in Geneva on 15 September 1992 among all the parties concerned in the framework of the working group on the London Conference on confidence-building measures (S/24634), ALARMED at reports that military flights over the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina are none the less continuing, NOTING the letter of 4 October 1992, addressed to the President of the Security Council from the President of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (S/24616), CONSIDERING that the establishment of a ban on military flights in the air space of Bosnia and Herzegovina constitutes an essential element for the safety of the delivery of humanitarian assistance, and a decisive step for the cessation of hostilities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, ACTING pursuant to the provisions of resolution 770 (1992) aimed at ensuring the safety of the delivery of humanitarian assistance in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1. DECIDES to establish a ban on military flights in the air space of Bosnia and Herzegovina, this ban not to apply to United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) flights or to other flights in support of United Nations operations, including humanitarian assistance; 2. REQUESTS UNPROFOR to monitor compliance with the ban on military flights, including the placement of observers where necessary at air fields in the territory of the former Yugoslavia; 3. FURTHER REQUESTS UNPROFOR to ensure, through an appropriate mechanism for approval and inspection, that the purpose of flights to and from Bosnia and Herzegovina other than those banned by paragraph 1 above is consistent with Security Council resolutions; 4. REQUESTS the Secretary-General to report to the Council on a periodic basis on the implementation of this resolution and to report immediately any evidence of violations; 5. CALLS UPON States to take nationally or through regional agencies or arrangements all measures necessary to provide assistance to UNPROFOR, based on technical monitoring and other capabilities, for the purposes of paragraph 2 of this resolution; 6. UNDERTAKES to examine without delay all the information brought to its attention concerning the implementation of the ban on military flights in Bosnia and Herzegovina and, in the case of violations, to consider urgently the further measures necessary to enforce this ban; 7. DECIDES to remain actively seized of the matter.
novine.70 adzem,
Odakle stižu članci objavljeni ovde? Ponekad odštampam zanimljive tekstove i delim društvu da se malo šire informišu, ali ne umem da im objasnim odakle sve to dolazi.
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Council Imposes No-Fly Zone in Bosnia, Hints at Future Military Enforcement By VICTORIA GRAHAM Associated Press Writer UNITED NATIONS (AP) _ The Security Council on Friday banned all military flights over Bosnia in an effort to ground Serbian warplanes, but it gave no orders to shoot down violators of the ``no-fly zone.'' In what amounted to a stern warning and veiled threat, the council rejected for now enforcement measures such as aerial patrols or military action against invading aircraft. But it hinted at future enforcement, saying it would urgently consider ``further measures necessary to enforce this ban'' in case of violations. U.S. Ambassador Edward J. Perkins said if the resolution is violated, ``my government will move to seek adoption by the council of a further resolution mandating enforcement.'' The 15-nation council voted 14-0, with China abstaining, to create the air-exclusion zone effective immediately in the former Yugoslav republic, which has been besieged by Bosnian Serb forces backed by the Belgrade government. It was the first time the council has imposed such a zone on a member state's territory. But the United States, Britain and France recently imposed a no-fly zone in southern Iraq, backed by orders to shoot down invading aircraft, and are conducting air patrols over northern Iraq. The Bosnian ban covers all military flights, except for U.N. and humanitarian missions. The Serbs have about 40 aircraft left by the Yugoslav army when it withdrew from Bosnia earlier this year. Bosnia's Muslim-led defense forces, who have lost more than two-thirds of the republic to Serbs, have no aircraft. The zone will be watched by U.N. ground monitors at military airfields in the Balkans, assisted by aerial surveillance outside the borders of Bosnia Croatia and Serbia-Montenegro. ``Anyone who thinks they can flout this ban without being found out will be badly surprised,'' British Ambassador David Hannay said. ``And anyone who thinks that having been found out no action will be taken also will be badly surprised.'' But Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali hinted in a letter to the council that he might oppose enforcement on grounds it could jeopardize U.N. peacekeepers in Croatia and Bosnia. He expressed concern that there was no agreement among combatants on a comprehensive ban on military flights. Bosnian Serbs, he said, so far have indicated willingness only to suspend military flights that would coincide with humanitarian flights. Chinese Ambassador Jin Yongjian said his government abstained in part because China objected to the future use of force. Bosnian Ambassador Muhamed Sacirbey was skeptical the ban would be respected. He said force was needed to show the Serbs that the world body is serious. So far, Sacirbey said, the United Nations has issued only resolutions and condemnations ``and therefore their words, their ultimatums in the eyes of Serbian extremists are not worth very much.'' _____________________________________________________________________________ Bosnia Beginning Trials for Ethnic Serbian `War Criminals' By JOHN DANISZEWSKI Associated Press Writer SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) _ With his close-cut hair, bony face and deferential manner, Zdravko Grujic looks more like the waiter he once was than a convicted war criminal. On Friday, in the dock of a shell- and bullet-pocked courtroom, the 39-year-old Grujic, an ethnic Serb, was sentenced to 10 years in prison by a five-judge panel for betraying his country and possessing a weapon without permission. There have been 60 war-crimes trials held since Sept. 1 by the military court of Bosnia-Herzegovina in besieged Sarajevo. Another 118 trials are planned, said Senad Kreho, a 32-year-old lawyer acting as president of the military court. Authorities say any Bosnian Serb who takes up arms against the elected Muslim-led government is a traitor and a criminal. Grujic was captured May 30 wearing a Serbian uniform, clutching a semi-automatic rifle and carrying two hand grenades. But he says he is a hapless victim, pressed into the Serbian rebel forces under threat that his house would be destroyed and his relatives killed unless he agreed to fight. He said he was taken prisoner near Bosnian lines when he went to help a neighbor whose house was burning. ``I didn't know it was forbidden to have a gun. I swear I didn't know!'' he protested during an interview shortly after his trial. The two burly guards sitting across the table from him couldn't help laughing. ``I am a prisoner of war, not a criminal,'' Grujic asserted. ``I did not fire one bullet. My hands are not bloody.'' Grujic, married and with an elderly mother, was a waiter in the cafe in Sarajevo's Central Hotel before the war. Now, he is incarcerated a short distance away in a former army barracks converted into a military prison and court complex. Of his court-appointed lawyer, he said: ``For over 20 years I was serving him coffee.'' In the four months since his capture, Grujic said his weight has dropped from 185 pounds to 130 pounds because of the prison diet and because of ``fretting'' about his situation. Interviewed in the presence of guards, he said he no complaints about his treatment. But that weight drop is not all that unusual in Sarajevo where most of the population has lacked reliable food supplies since the siege of the Bosnian capital began in April. The court is located uncomfortably near one of the fiercest battle zones in Sarajevo, and bullets and shrapnel frequently fly through the windows, leaving holes in the curtains and pockmarks in the plaster. ``This is crazy hell, madness totally,'' Grujic said. ``Somebody has to stop this. Even in my cell I am a little bit frightened.'' Judges for the military court were transferred from the civil courts. Every five-judge panel has at least one ethnic Serb and one ethnic Croat to ensure fairness, said Kreho, the court's president. The trials vary in length depending on the number of witnesses and evidence, he said. ``They have the opportunity to defend themselves. They have a jury in the court. They are innocent until proven guilty,'' he said, adding that he hopes international observers will come to see the proceedings. The trials are public, and the laws applied are the same as those of the old republic of Yugoslavia, he said. Eighty percent of the cases involve charges of illegal weapons possession, he said, with the remaining 20 percent ``serving in the aggressor army, murder, robbery.'' Some cases involve homicide by Bosnian soldiers shooting members of their own units. Although the maximum penalty for treason is death, Kreho said the court does not intend to impose it. Grujic's sentence is one of the stiffest so far. After three years, with good behavior, he will be eligible for parole. He said he is still hoping to have the 10-year sentence reduced on an appeal in the next few weeks. Even if he is freed or traded to the Serbian side in a prisoner exchange, Grujic said, he will never again pick up a gun. ``I would prefer it if they killed me. I would cut off my hand so I could not hold a gun.'' _____________________________________________________________________________ LAST MOSLEM-HELD TOWN IN NORTH BOSNIA BOMBARDED By Stephen Nisbet BELGRADE, Oct 9, Reuter - The last Moslem-held town in north Bosnia came under intense air and artillery attack by Serb forces on Friday hours before the U.N. Security Council banned military flights over the republic. The stepped-up attack on Gradacac, reported by Bosnian radio, came as the United Nations spoke of new horrors of ethnic cleansing taking place in the region. ``Hell in Gradacac,'' declared the radio, adding that waves of enemy planes blasted the town with bombs and air- to-ground missiles in a 40-minute barrage soon after midday. It said eight dead and 30 wounded had been counted so far, but other bodies could not be pulled from wreckage while artillery of the Serb rebel army still pounded the town. The attacks were not confirmed by the Serbs, who issued conflicting statements about a ceasefire agreed with the Croats, their other foe in the six-month civil war. The Bosnian Serb army press centre in Banja Luka, quoting Serb defence minister Bogdan Subotic, said the ceasefire had begun at midnight on Thursday. But Bosnia's rebel Serb leader Radovan Karadzic said in Geneva that no official ceasefire had been signed. ``We haven't signed any document yet although we have been talking about this for a few weeks,'' he told Reuters. ``Our assembly (parliament) has announced its platform for cessation of hostilities with the Croats and Moslems. It looks like the Croats have agreed and that it has happened.'' He added: ``But nothing is signed. There is maybe just an agreement at a local level.'' A spokesman in Zagreb for Croatian President Franjo Tudjman and a senior Bosnian Croat politician in Geneva said they knew nothing of such a ceasefire. Mariofil Ljubic, a Croat and a member of the Moslem-led Bosnian government delegation to the Geneva conference on former Yugoslavia, told Reuters: ``All ceasefires are good, but the main thing is that there must be a ceasefire throughout Bosnia-Herzegovina. Ljubic, a vice-president of the Bosnian parliament, added: ``There can be no deals between two peoples of the republic against the third.'' Ceasefires are frequently called and just as frequently broken in the war pitting Serbs against Croats and Moslems, who voted at a referendum earlier this year to back Bosnia's birth as a sovereign state with a seat at the United Nations. Subotic's statement about a ceasefire will heighten -- perhaps deliberately, some diplomats think -- suspicions that Serbs and Croats did a deal to allow the Serbs to take the north Bosnian town of Bosanski Brod on Tuesday night. Bosanski Brod, just across the Sava river from Croatia, had been heavily defended, and some diplomats wondered whether the Croats agreed to give it up against the promise of territorial concessions elsewhere by the Serbs. In New York, the U.N. Security Council, in a blow against Serb air supremacy in Bosnia-Herzegovina, barred military flights over the republic but without authorising fighter patrols to enforce the ban. A resolution imposing the no-fly zone, adopted by a vote of 14 in favour and none against, with only China abstaining, opens the way for possible combat patrols at a later stage if the ban is ignored. Giving details of continuing ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, Sylvana Foa, spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said thousands of Moslems and Croats were being brutally pushed from their homes. Foa described this as ``the last stages of ethnic cleansing'' in northern Bosnia. ``The situation in Banja Luka and surrounding areas is deteriorating rapidly with regard to ethnic cleansing,'' Foa said. ``The expulsion of people from these areas is being carried out systematically with enormous repression. Really horrible things are happening.'' _____________________________________________________________________________ Serbs Launch New Ethnic Purges; U.N. Creates `No-Fly' Zone By JOHN DANISZEWSKI Associated Press Writer SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) _ Rebel Serbs reportedly carried out air attacks on two Bosnian cities Friday even as the U.N. Security Council imposed a ban on military flights over the former Yugoslav republic. In voting Friday to establish a ``no-fly'' zone over Bosnia, the Security Council rejected enforcement measures such as aerial patrols or orders to shoot down violators. Rebel warplanes bombed the northern Bosnian town of Gradacac eight times, Croatian radio said. It said air attacks also were carried out in the northern town of Jajce, which has been without power and water for three months. Elsewhere in Bosnia, rebel Serbs launched a new round of ethnic purges in the north and drove thousands of Muslims and Croats from their homes, U.N. officials said. With winter approaching, the push to bring food and water to Sarajevo has taken on added urgency. For a second day, U.N. troops escorted utility crews trying to restore electricity and water service. But bad weather hampered the week-old international airlift of food. Only four flights were able to land in Sarajevo on Thursday, a fraction of what is necessary to stave off starvation and sickness. ``The people are living in miserable conditions,'' said Mik Magnusson, spokesman for the U.N. peacekeepers in Sarajevo. ``You have no heating. Food is extremely limited now.'' ``Many people clearly have nothing and are living on the handouts from neighbors, maybe a bit of sugar,'' he said. ``There is no running water and no toilet facilities and no electricity.'' More than 14,000 people have been killed in Bosnia since Serbs rebelled against a vote in February by majority Muslims and Croats to secede from Serbian-dominated Yugoslavia. The Serbs are trying to carve out their own republic within Bosnia, possibly as a prelude to uniting with Serbia. The Muslim-led government in Sarajevo wants to preserve a single state with decentralized authority. Croats, while nominally accepting the Muslim-led government, also seek greater autonomy. Although the three warring groups have been accused of purging areas they control of other ethnic groups, the international community has blamed the Serbs most for creating concentration camps and committing atrocities. In Geneva, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said Bosnian Serbs began new expulsions of non-Serbs this week around the northern city of Banja Luka and opened a camp 20 miles south of there. Spokeswoman Sylvana Foa said 6,500 ethnic Croats and Muslim Slavs driven from Serb-controlled areas reportedly were being held in an open field surrounded by barbed wire. She said about 20,000 non-Serbs had fled the city in recent days. ``The situation in Banja Luka and surrounding areas is deteriorating,'' she said in Geneva. ``The expulsion of people from these areas is being carried out systematically and with enormous repression.'' She said the camp is apparently a transfer point for people being loaded on buses headed for Travnik, a city to the south controlled by Bosnian government forces. The director of the Bosnian government's refugee bureau in Croatia, Mosadik Borogovac, said 50 to 100 people were killed after being taken from a bus en route to Travnik. He said young men who could be drafted into the Bosnian army are routinely killed in areas that are ``ethnically cleansed.'' In the town of Kljuc, Serbs gave the remaining 4,000 people _ mostly Muslims and some Croats _ 24 hours to get out of town Thursday, triggering a mass dash to Travnik, Foa said. Many Bosnian Muslims fear Croatia and Serbia will carve up Bosnia, and they dread any agreement between Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Serbs. On Friday, the defense minister for Serbian rebels in Bosnia, Col. Bogdan Subotic, announced an ``unconditional cease-fire'' between ethnic Croats and Serbs in southeastern Bosnia. But in Geneva, Aleksa Buha, foreign minister for Bosnian Serbs, said there was no truce. International mediators demand that Muslims be a party to any agreement. In the Croatian capital, Zagreb, U.N. civil affairs officer Cedric Thornberry said all three sides would meet Monday in Sarajevo. It would be the first meeting of all three sides since June. Fighting was reported in several Bosnian cities Friday. The Bosnian Health Ministry said 32 people were killed and 147 wounded in scattered fighting throughout Bosnia- Herzegovina during the previous 24-hour period.
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STATE DEPARTMENT TRAVEL INFORMATION - Bosnia-Hercegovina ============================================================ Bosnia-Hercegovina - Warning October 7, 1992 U.S. citizens are warned not to travel to Bosnia-Hercegovina for any reason, due to the ongoing civil war. Additional information can be found in the Department of State's Consular Information Sheet on Bosnia-Hercegovina. No. 92-001 Bosnia-Hercegovina - Consular Information Sheet October 7, 1992 Warning: The Department of State has a Travel Warning for Bosnia-Hercegovina. U.S. citizens are warned not to travel to Bosnia-Hercegovina for any reason, due to the ongoing civil war. U.S. Assistance: The U.S. has not yet opened an Embassy in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia-Hercegovinia. The United States Information Service (USIS) Center formerly located in Sarajevo is closed. U.S. citizens who choose to visit or remain in Bosnia-Hercegovina despite the warning can register at the U.S. Embassy in either Belgrade or Zagreb and obtain updated information on travel and security. U.S. Embassy assistance is limited, however, due to conflict in the area, lack of communications and reduced Embassy staffing. The U.S. Embassy in Belgrade is located at Kneza Milosa 50; telephone 645-655. The U.S. Embassy in Zagreb is located at Andrije Hebranga 2, tel 444-800. Entry Requirements: At the present time, Bosnia-Hercegovina entry permission is granted at the border on a case-by-case basis. Areas of Instability: A state of war resulting in deaths, destruction, food shortages and travel disruptions affecting roads, airports and railways make travel to all parts of Bosnia-Hercegovina extremely hazardous. Travel to Sarajevo, Mostar and the religious shrine at Medjugorje, is particularly dangerous. Medical Facilities: Health facilities are minimal or non-existent; most medicines are unobtainable. Further information on health matters can be obtained from the Centers for Disease Control's international Travelers hotline on (404) 332-4559. Crime Information: General lawlessness and deteriorating economic conditions have brought an increase in crime. Adequate police response in the event of an emergency is doubtful. Anti-American sentiments run high in many parts of the country, particularly in Serbian-dominated areas. Currency Regulations: It is impossible to use credit cards or to cash traveler's checks. Other Information: Roadblocks manned by local militias are numerous. These militia groups frequently confiscate relief goods and trucks, and may otherwise behave unprofessionally. Registration: U.S. citizens visiting or remaining in Bosnia-Hercegovina, despite the Warning, can register at either the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade or in Zagreb and obtain updated information on travel and security within the area. No. 92-009
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ANALYSIS: What If Columbus Had Never Stumbled Upon America? By Richard O'Mara (c) 1992, The Baltimore Sun What if the legend is true and St. Brendan of Clonfert and his Irish monks did discover the New World? Would we be speaking a remnant of the Gaelic tongue, reading illumina ted manuscripts in Latin instead of Elmore Leonard in paperback? Would our inheritance from such pious founders have left our society softer, gentler than it has turned out to be? Probably not. Suppose the Norsemen had stayed. They left signs of their presence, s tony monoliths in places like Maine. Would we have inherited Viking inclinations? Would pillage be acceptable behavior _ generally, that is, not just on Wall Street? Again, probably not. Which only goes to prove that H.M. Tomlinson was wrong when he wrote, in ``The Sea and the Jungle,'' that the way things turn out can always be discerned in their genesis. You never can tell what will happen. Consider Christopher Columbus. If the New World had been named with reference to Columbus' navigational skills, it would have been called the Lost World. Some discoverer. He never even knew where he was. Until he died, afte r four voyages, he still thought he was in Asia. He blundered around the Caribbean asking the way to Chipangu. Take me to the Great Khan! The Caribs smiled indulgently. He thought he found the Japanese in Cuba. The question of what might have come to pass in the Americas had Colu mbus never landed has not been asked much amid the arguments surrounding the approach of the 500th anniversary of the Discovery. The revisionists are trying to convince everybody that he introduced a cataclysm, nothing less, that he was bad juju. Indigenous people were wiped out by the millions. Africans were brought in and enslaved. The land was raped, the forests cut down, the atmosphere despoiled. What's to celebrate? The traditionalists look around at all that has been built up: the gr eat cities, the high culture, the scientific achievements, beauty contests, Velcro. They don't understand the cranky questions. What cataclysm? they ask. So we made a few mistakes. So we put a hole in the ozone. So what if the rain forest is a little sickly? Is that a reason not to take the day off? A new word has emerged from the debate. It is Eurocentrism. Did Europ eans discover the New World? What about the indigenous people? Do their perspectives command no respect? Obviously, they came here long before any European. They discovered this part of the planet first. You would think that in these days of rampant multiculturalism they would get some of the credit for it, or blame. Nobody seems to have had the curiosity to ask what might have eventua ted had Columbus not come upon Watling Island early on the morning of Oct. 12 a half-millennium ago. Suppose his caravels had sunk in a storm, with all hands lost? Suppose the shock discouraged Europe from further costly expeditions out our way? Would things have turned out better for all concerned? It is at least worth thinking about. The pre-Columbian civilizations, without the Spanish interruption, mi ght have gotten along quite nicely, advanced to the wheel, devised an alphabet, maybe even given up the practice of human sacrifice and cannibalism, all those barbecues at the pyramid. The Plains Indians in North America might have invented firearms on their own and annihilated the buffalo before anybody ever arrived. This is not sour cynicism, just a necessary corrective to the prevale nt noble-savage idealism that encourages the notion of the Indian as a being perfectly attuned to nature. There's little reason to believe Indian people, given the same technological capacities available to the Europeans, would not have used them as recklessly. Which is not to suggest they would have used them more recklessly. Still, maybe it's not fair to speak against the ancient Indians, even those who had unspeakable practices, such as the Caribs, who used to descend on their neighbors, the peaceful Arawaks, ``to steal their women and castrate and fatten their young men for food.'' (J.M. Cohen, ``The Four Voyages.'') They didn't invite Columbus here. They didn't ask to be discovered. But neither Columbus nor Amerigo Vespucci, who later explored the ent ire East Coast of South America, ever saw its centers of civilization. ``Everywhere it was the same: no ports, no cities. Naked Indians,'' wrote the historian German Arciniegas. How were they to know that unlike in Europe, where cities grew on the coasts and by rivers, here they developed inland, in the Yucatan, in the Andes Mountains and on the high plains of Mexico. And what cities they were. Cortes, in 1519, recalled nothing in Spain to equal the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan. Francisco Pizarro had the same humbling experience in the Inca empire's Cuzco. It was more glittering than any city of 16th-century Europe. So there was a lot of potential here, and it is hard to believe that left to develop on its own it would not have advanced, become better able to defend itself had the encounter with Europe been postponed. In 1492, two powerful civilizations dominated the New World: the Azte c in Mexico and the Inca in Peru. Everything else, from Patagonia to Alaska, to the forests of the Amazon and those of the Eastern seaboard of North America, was primitive by comparison. They were good at mathematics (calendars and astronomy), engineering (roads, buildings, canals, bridges, terrace farming), and more important, political organization over vast areas. The Aztecs knew what the wheel was; it was evident in their toys, though they never exploited it. The Incas did brain surgery. The prospect of a delayed, or even missed, encounter between the Euro pean explorers and the New World raises other questions: What would life have been like here? And there? What would we both have had to get along without? Europeans would have been denied the delights of the potato, the exqu isite tastes of corn, tomatoes and chocolate. They would have been spared the inconvenience of syphilis and the deadly pleasures of tobacco, but they would have been denied quinine for their fevers. They would have had no rubber for the wheels of their future vehicles. They would have avoided the curse of cocaine but been denied pineapples, red beans or chili. And what would we Americans have missed out on? Much. We would have b een ignorant of cows, horses, pigs, chickens, sheep and donkeys. We would not know the taste of bananas, rice, mangoes, peaches, apricots, apples, pears, oranges, grapes (no wine!), olives, lemons, garlic, onions. We would have no wheat. No roses. Also, had no one come, this would probably be written in Nahuatl. The people on both sides of the oceans were enriched by the Discovery . It changed both worlds. Like it or hate it, it can't be undone. And it is a bit perverse to heap all the blame for the grief it brought upon the head of Christopher Columbus, without giving him the credit for the good that came of it. It is not easy to honor Columbus. He was obsessed with gold and socia l advancement. He was inhumane (``They would be good servants ... '' he wrote of the generous, welcoming Arawaks, some of whom he kidnapped.) And he was dishonest: He cheated Juan Rodriguez Bermeo out of his reward for sighting the New World first. But Columbus was more a force of nature than a man, and to blame him for all that ensued is like shouting at the storm that ruins your picnic. It is a futile gesture. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bosnian Muslims Flee Renewed Serb Sweep (Trnopolje, Bosnia) By Mary Battiata (c) 1992, The Washington Post TRNOPOLJE, Bosnia _ Serb forces have stepped up what appears to be a final drive to sweep the remaining Muslim population out of northern Bosnia-Herzegovina, setting off a mass exodus that has filled the Trnopolje detention camp with 3,500 civilians only days after it was evacuated of its male Muslim prisoners. ``Some really horrible things are happening. I think we are in the fi nal stages of ethnic cleansing in northern Bosnia,'' Sylvana Foa, spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said in Geneva on Friday. In the town of Kotor Varos, about 65 miles northwest of the Bosnian c apital, Sarajevo, 6,500 Muslim civilians are gathered in an open field, behind barbed wire and under deteriorating weather conditions, hoping international agencies will evacuate them, according to U.N. officials. In Kljuc, 30 miles farther west, Serb authorities gave the town's rem aining 4,000 Muslims 24 hours to leave the area. Panicked Muslim families, many of them burned out of nearby villages last summer, were said to be using every available vehicle to get out, U.N. officials said. Foa said the situation also was ``deteriorating rapidly'' in the Serb-stronghold city of Banja Luka, where 200,000 people, mostly Muslims, are fearful of violent attacks by local Serb forces. A U.N. official said at least 16 buses of mostly women and children h ave left the Kotor Varos camp for Muslim-controlled Travnik, about 30 miles to the southeast, since Tuesday. Unconfirmed reports said 60 men attempting to join the group were dragged off one bus by armed Serb guards and taken to an unknown destination, according to U.N. officials. At least 188 Muslim men and boys were pulled from a similar convoy on Aug. 21 and executed by Serb police. Serb authorities here at Trnopolje, near the Serb-controlled town of Prijedor, 130 miles northwest of Sarajevo, insisted late last week that Trnopolje is an ``Open Reception Center.'' They said the Muslims flocking here are leaving home of their own volition and are simply looking for an easy way to depart Bosnia for Western Europe. ``This is an El Dorado for them. They think this is a guaranteed way to go abroad. Many people have closed their houses and apartments in order to come here,'' said Pero Crguz, an official from the local branch of the Serbian Red Cross, which is administering the camp and has no affiliation with the International Committee of the Red Cross. A tour of the camp revealed the Muslims to be living in conditions of medieval squalor, openly fearful of the uniformed and plainclothes Serb police who keep the camp under constant surveillance. Asked why they had left their homes and come to Trnopolje in the past week, several Muslim adults pantomimed guns pointed at their heads and drew fingers across their throats. ``Prijedor, genocide,'' whispered one man. ``Prijedor, finished,'' whispered another. One agitated young woman followed a visitor around, saying over and o ver, ``Help us. Help us.'' Adults interviewed at the camp said they had been burned out of their villages this past summer by Serb forces and had taken shelter since then with relatives in Prijedor while trying to arrange transit out of the area. Last Monday, they said, armed Serbs entered Muslim neighborhoods in P rijedor and began shooting guns and demanding that the Muslims leave. Prijedor and Banja Luka are considered the strongholds of militant Bo snian Serb authority and have been the headquarters of the six-month campaign of terror against Muslims known as ``ethnic cleansing.'' Targets of that campaign have included the old Muslim quarter of Prij edor, which was burned on May 30, and a string of Muslim towns outside Prijedor known as Kozarac, which was surrounded by Serb tanks and artillery in late May and destroyed. The Trnopolje camp is in an abandoned school complex on the edge of a village by the same name. Until it was emptied on Oct. 1, it was part of a group of Serb-run detention camps in the Prijedor area. The camp was evacuated under the supervision of the International Red Cross as part of an agreement by all parties in the Bosnian conflict to close the camps. Now it is run by Crguz, of the Serbian Red Cross, who sits in the kitchen of an abandoned house, surrounded by burly plainclothes police. Most of the camp's residents live outside in Dickensian squalor. Duri ng heavy rain and hail last week, they attempted to keep themselves dry under small pup tents improvised from blankets and thin plastic sheeting. Many residents are sick, and they complain of bad sanitation and not enough food and water. The relatively fortunate 300 people who are squeezed inside the schoo l building have arranged their few belongings around blankets laid over thin piles of straw. A thick pall of wood smoke hangs over the dingy, concrete-walled room. There appear to be only eight toilets in the entire compound. The Muslims fleeing to Trnopolje and other points are unlikely to fin d safe haven soon. International agencies worried about abetting ethnic cleansing are not sure how much to help them, and most countries in Europe remain unenthusiastic about offering asylum to hundreds of thousands of refugees. Austria, Germany, France, Britain and Denmark continue to press for accommodation of the Bosnians in safe places near the Bosnian border, in the hope of avoiding the creation of a Bosnian population in permanent exile. That scenario points to the neighboring former Yugoslav republic of C roatia. But last month, Croatia, already burdened with 700,000 Croat and Muslim refugees from Bosnia _ about 17 percent of Croatia's total population _ formally closed its borders to all Bosnian refugees except those in transit to third countries. The Croatian government also has refused to allow the construction of any new refugee shelters on its soil and is suggesting that donor money be used to rebuild and repopulate Croatian villages destroyed during Croatia's war last year with the Yugoslav army and local Serbs. Croat-dominated communities in western Herzegovina, the southern part of the Bosnian republic, have turned down U.N. requests to establish Muslim refugee centers within their borders and have refused to allow U.N. deliveries of aid. With the doors to Western Europe closed, Bosnia's terrified Muslims h ave only one escape route left: down into central Bosnia, across front lines, and into besieged and overcrowded Muslim-controlled towns such as Travnik. Serb authorities already are charging steep prices for limited protection on that journey. Because the 10,000 Muslims now massing at Trnopolje, Kotor Varos and Kljuc are technically not prisoners or detainees, they do not fall under the mandate of the International Red Cross, although that agency continued last week to deliver food supplies for about 1,000 people to the Trnopolje camp. But the increasing desperation of the Muslims, and the widening scale and sustained violence of Serb-sponsored ethnic cleansing, has convinced many U.N. and International Red Cross field officers that humanitarian principles must now override any worries about aiding the Serbs' ``cleansing'' policy. ``Ethnic cleansing has been accomplished _ it is a fact. Everyone wan ts to get out,'' said Beat Schweizer, an International Red Cross representative in Banja Luka. ``Now the international community has got to find a solution to this problem.''
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U.S. Expanded Role to Save Aid to Bosnia, Eagleburger Says (Washn) By John M. Goshko (c) 1992, The Washington Post WASHINGTON _ U.S. efforts to bar Serb aircraft from flying over Bosni a have gone beyond the limits the Bush administration tried to set for military involvement in the Balkans civil war, but the move was approved reluctantly to protect delivery of humanitarian aid, acting Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger said. ``The principal focus of our policy for some months has been what do you do to get humanitarian assistance there,'' Eagleburger said in an interview. ``There is a relationship between the no-fly zone (mandated by the U.N. Security Council on Friday) and the provision of humanitarian assistance, particularly if you consider that the Bosnian Serbs have been using aircraft to tail planes in and out and using them against roads where you're trying to get trucks in with humanitarian supplies.'' ``So if you ask, does it go beyond the major thrust of our policy bec ause we're telling the Bosnian Serbs that they can't use their aircraft for any purpose at all, the answer is yes,'' he said. ``It's qualitatively different from what we've been doing specifically with regard to humanitarian assistance.'' The United States took the lead in pressing the Security Council to establish the no-fly zone and initially argued for tougher action than the council was willing to take. In the resolution adopted Friday, the council turned aside a U.S. offer to use American warplanes to enforce the air ban and said questions of enforcement should be deferred until there is evidence of whether the Serbs are obeying the order to halt flights over Bosnia. However, said Eagleburger _ who spent seven years as a diplomat in Yugoslavia, four of them as U.S. ambassador _ President Bush decided to seek the no-fly zone only after he concluded that disruption of U.N. relief operations could mean death during the coming winter for thousands of Bosnian Muslims displaced or besieged by Serb irregular forces that have occupied about 70 percent of Bosnia. Bush's decision capped a heated debate among his senior advisers abou t whether greater involvement in the fighting that has shattered the former Yugoslav federation would expose the United States to the same kind of military frustration and political dissension that it suffered during the Vietnam War of the 1960s and 1970s and the Lebanon intervention of a decade ago. Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, argued p ublicly that military force should be used to achieve decisive victories and said he opposed intervening in Bosnia because it meant using limited measures to pursue political goals that were not clearly defined. In the end, Bush sided with Eagleburger and other senior officials who argued for the no-fly zone. ``I don't think it's all unhealthy that everybody understands there i s a major debate _ not dispute but debate _ that's going on in the U.S. government about the use of force as it applies to Yugoslavia,'' Eagleburger said. ``It relates to the imperatives of trying to stop an awful slaughter now when we see winter coming and a lot of people potentially about to starve to death, contrasted against the very real serious military questions that any military plan has got to ask. ... I don't find it the least bit bothersome that there was a disagreement between various parts of this government about what we ought to do, and the no-fly zone issue raises those kind of questions.'' ``That does not mean, nor should it imply, that anything else comes a fter that,'' he said in acknowledgment of how memories of Vietnam and Lebanon haunt policymakers trying to decide how the United States should approach the Yugoslavia situation. ``There is the concern of the military, and perfectly justified, that you do X and it doesn't work and then well we've got to do X plus Y. There are some of us who are old enough to remember we did that a couple of times, and it got us into a mess,'' he said. ``(The no-fly zone) is not a commitment to something else.'' Serbian Patriarch Blames `Atheistic' Military Leaders For Violence (Washn) By Rick Allen (c) 1992, The Washington Post WASHINGTON _ Serbian Orthodox Patriarch Pavle of Belgrade, visiting t he United States for the first time, blamed what he called atheistic Serbian, Muslim and Croatian military leaders for the bloody ethnic violence that now racks the former Yugoslav federation. Patriarch Pavle also reminded local Serbian Orthodox church members w ho gathered in St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Washington this past week of the Serbian people's troubled past. That history includes, he said, the ``500-year oppression under the T urkish yoke,'' when the Ottoman Empire controlled Serbia and many converted to Islam. He also mentioned Serbia's ``new martyrs,'' the thousands of people who died at the hands of pro-Nazi Croatian secret police 50 years ago. But the patriarch, the spiritual leader of 12 million Serbian Orthodo x Christians worldwide, including about 2 million in the United States, urged Serbs to act ``uprightly'' during the present conflict. Before coming to the United States on Oct. 1, the patriarch met with Cardinal Franjo Kuharic, the Roman Catholic primate of Croatia to issue a joint appeal to secular leaders for an end to the violence. They also condemned the practice of ``ethnic cleansing'' and the ``blasphemous destruction of all prayer and holy places, Christian and Muslim.'' Serbians and some Americans of Serbian descent have criticized Wester n leaders and the media for playing down a complex history of mutual antagonisms among ethnic groups. They say Serbia, therefore, has been unfairly isolated and branded the aggressor in the eyes of the world. Speaking through a translator, Patriarch Pavle, 78, echoed this perce ption to local Orthodox faithful. ``We have no one in whom we can turn to for help ... so we turn to our Orthodox brothers,'' he said. The patriarch told listeners at St. Sophia that all Serbians must be like their ancestors, acting as ``true humans ... not inhumanely.'' In an interview later, the patriarch acknowledged that resentments be tween ethnic groups in the former Yugoslav federation are especially bitter and deep, and he said he tells members of his own church: ``The church of Christ always calls all people to peace. She never ca lls anyone to revenge. In the Holy Bible, God himself says, `Mine is revenge. I shall pay it back.' It will be God who does the judging.'' At the same time, Patriarch Pavle said Serbs should not be ``passive. '' In a letter earlier this year to Britain's Lord Carrington, who headed the European peace effort in Yugoslavia, the patriarch said Serbia must protect Serbian lives and Serbian territories ``by every legitimate means,'' including ``armed defense.'' ``But defending ourselves from evil, doesn't allow us to commit crime s or atrocities,'' he said. Patriarch Pavle deplored the current military leadership in Serbia an d the newly independent republics. ``The leaders of the Serbians, Muslims and Croatians were all Tito's generals before, and under the influence of an atheistic ideology. And for that reason they came out so easily to that inhuman desire to fight the war,'' he said. Eurocentrism: Columbus' Lasting Gift to Black Nation (Santo Domingo) By Ron Howell (c) 1992, Newsday SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic _ In the Dominican Republic, where a majority of the people are said to be of black ancestry, critics charge President Joaquin Balaguer of elaborate denials of the country's African heritage. The controversy takes on significance Monday, as the Dominican Republ ic commemorates the epic voyage of Christopher Columbus to the New World, a holiday known throughout Latin America as the Day of the Race, referring to the ethnic mix in their countries. Many Latin American countries, such as Mexico, boast of their mestizo background and celebrate that mixture of Indian and European roots planted 500 years ago. But the Dominican Republic is largely a mulatto nation, a blend of African and white, and there have been increasing protests of alleged anti-black bias on the part of Balaguer, who is said to be of ``pure'' Spanish stock. Dominicans are a people with gradations of color ranging from black t o white. The darker people tend to be found in the poorest neighborhoods, while in the professional classes, lighter mulattoes predominate. ``It is very evident that this is a country of blacks and mulattoes, but the government ... wants to exalt the cultures of Europe and not say anything about the African roots. Everything is Spain, Spain, Spain. Balaguer is a racist, and in addition to that, he is an elitist,'' said Nicolas Guevara, the dark-complexioned coordinator of the Committee for the Defense of Neighborhood Rights. The committee has opposed the government's relocation of thousands of poor families to make way for tourist-oriented projects such as the multimillion-dollar Columbus Lighthouse dedicated last week. The first floor of the seven-story lighthouse, which serves as an international museum, presents exhibits from Spain, the United States and Japan. Displays from Latin America and the Caribbean are on the upper levels, said one of the architects, Adrian Ganan. Balaguer, 86, has spent considerable intellectual energy downplaying African influence on the Dominican Republic. In his 1983 book, ``The Island Inside Out,'' Balaguer cites evidence denying that Dominican dances such as the merengue have African elements, arguing instead that they are ``exclusively associated ... with Spanish culture.'' He goes further, maintaining that descendants of Africans have had a deleterious impact on New World societies, from the United States to the Caribbean, because of their alleged oversexuality. ``The black,'' Balaguer writes, ``giving himself over to his instincts and without the restraints of a higher level of conduct imposed by all countries on reproduction, will multiply rapidly almost as species of vegetables do.'' Given the historical importance of the quincentenary, Dominicans are discussing their past as never in recent memory. Some suggest the controversy surrounding the spending on the lighthouse, coupled with Balaguer's emphasis on European over African and Indian heritage, may have an effect on the next presidential election in 1994. Columbus arrived on the island of Hispaniola, which the Dominican Rep ublic shares with Haiti, on his first voyage in 1492 and established the New World's first colony in the name of the queen and king of Spain and the Roman Catholic Pope. Forced into slavery by the Spaniards, the native population of perhap s a million Arawak Indians died off by the middle of the 1500s. Some were slaughtered, others committed suicide and many died from disease. Before the Indians disappeared completely, Bartolome de las Casas, a Spanish priest, protested vigorously against their mistreatment. In his desperate attempt to save the lives of the natives, he and others advocated the importation of African slaves, who were thought to be stronger and more suited to the back-breaking rigors of labor in the tropics. Although the number of African slaves was relatively small, Spaniards cohabited with blacks at a greater rate than the British did in their colonies, historians say, producing mixed-race descendants. Then, 304 years later the Dominican Republic began to import laborers from predominantly black islands of the West Indies. More recently tens of thousands of black Haitians poured into the Dominican side of the island in search of menial work. The result is the largely mixed black and white population of 7.3 million that is the Dominican Republic today. Sensitive to the emotion-packed controvery, Pope John Paul II, who is visiting the Dominican Republic through Wednesday, is planning to meet separately with black and Indian groups during his stay, church officials have said. Debate Rages Over Columbus Role By Barbara Vobejda (c) 1992, The Washington Post On this much, all agree: In the early morning darkness of Oct. 12, 1492, the sailor posted as lookout on the Pinta cried out ``Tierra!'' The cannon was fired, signaling the sea-weary crews on the Nina and the Santa Maria that their long voyage was over. At daylight, the Captain General, Christopher Columbus, the Admiral himself, was taken ashore in his longboat, where he met the naked people. That momentous landfall, the meeting of two worlds, would forever cha nge the course of history. The agreement ends there. Virtually all else about Columbus and his extraordinary voyage across the Atlantic is now the subject of a deeply emotional and often vitriolic debate that has drawn in racial and ethnic groups, scholars, religious organizations, political commentators, educators and environmentalists. As the nation celebrates the 500th anniversary of Columbus's arrival in the Americas on Monday, the explorer's legacy poses a vexing predicament: Should we revere him, as most of us were taught in elementary school, as the Great Discoverer, a hero of enormous courage and vision? Or should we, as many now argue, recognize him as the exemplar of Old World arrogance and rapacity, a greedy seafarer who stumbled upon the New World, then went on to exploit the indigenous people, condoning violence and slave trading, ultimately opening the door to what would become centuries of crime against American Indians? The current dispute has taken on such fervor, scholars say, because i t is really about something more _ a larger struggle over our national identity, an identity that is inextricably entwined with the image of Christopher Columbus. ``We reconstruct him about every 50 years,'' said Helen Nader, a hist orian at Indiana University. ``Because he represents us, when we begin to see ourselves in a different way, then we have to reconstruct him to fit us. ``Now, we're finding it very hard to figure out what our national cha racter is, so it's hard to figure out what we want him to be.'' The controversy falls roughly into three factions: those who believe that celebrating Columbus glorifies a colonial, racist past; those who want to protect the traditional, venerable view of Columbus; and those who view the entire debate as an attack on Western civilization. The national discomfort is ubiquitous, extending from the discredited Quincentenary Jubilee Commission, whose former chairman resigned amid charges that he steered contracts to friends, to the lackluster 500th anniversary celebration _ once expected to be bigger than the nation's bicentennial but now unlikely to extend beyond a handful of annual Columbus Day parades. The tensions have erupted between American Indians and Italian Americ ans. And they have rippled through every corner of our popular culture, producing a wave of films (''1492: Conquest of Paradise'' and ``Christopher Columbus: The Discovery''), scholarly treatises, novels (Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris: ``Crown of Columbus''), television specials, essays and revised curricula. For most Americans, however, the overwhelmingly positive view of Colu mbus is deeply entrenched. A recent Associated Press poll, for example, showed that 64 percent of those surveyed said they see Columbus as a hero. Just 15 percent see him as a villain and, to 9 percent of the population, he is both. For President Bush, who issued a Columbus Day proclamation earlier th is month, the hero image prevails. Columbus, he proclaimed, was ``one man who dared to defy the pessimists and naysayers of his day.'' His voyage ``provides us the timeless lessons about faith and courage ... and about the rewards of cultural and commercial exchange among nations.'' Nonetheless, most mainstream scholars acknowledge that Columbus was responsible for terrible acts against the native people he encountered. Robert Royal, author of ``1492 And All That: Political Manipulations of History,'' writes that Columbus kidnapped natives, failed to restrain violent men under his command and required Indians to pay a heavy tax in gold. There were mitigating factors, he said, but nevertheless, ``he should have simply known that some of these things were wrong.'' At the same time, Royal contends that Columbus was motivated not so m uch by personal greed as an evangelical desire to spread Christianity. Conspicuously muted in the national debate is the sense of the cultur al milieu from which Columbus emerged. By contemporary standards, the 15th century was a brutal period in Europe and elsewhere. Royal and others say that Columbus's actions actually compare favorably to standard practice in much of civilization at the time, including to many of the colonists who served under him when he administered the island of Hispanola. The story of Columbus, said Royal, ``is not like the conquest of Mexi co or the Aztecs by Cortes.'' Many historians hasten to point out that the native tribes of the Ame ricas also maintained brutal practices, including human sacrifice and cannibalism. The rule of the Aztecs, Incas and Mayas, writes historian Stephan Thernstrom, ``was as cruel and exploitative as anything Europeans were guilty of in the New World.'' Most of the debate today, Royal says, has less to do with new informa tion about the past than it does ``current politics and current interest groups.'' Ultimately, he says, ``it's deeply unfair to load on Columbus's shoul ders ... postmodern discontents.'' Kirkpatrick Sale, author of a new book entitled ``Conquest of Paradis e: Christopher Columbus and the Columbia Legacy,'' disagrees, saying ``there is no other way to look at history than with the eyes of the present, no other way to understand the past than through our knowledge of the present.'' Over time, the dimensions of this debate _ villain versus hero _ have clearly widened. But William McNeill, a leading historian and retired University of Chicago professor, argues that Americans have always managed to yank Columbus out of context and fashion him as a symbol for the times. ``A balanced, neutral or sensible treatment of Columbus has never bee n part of our national iconography,'' he said.
novine.75 milan,
> Odakle stižu članci objavljeni ovde? Ponekad odštampam zanimljive > tekstove i delim društvu da se malo šire informišu, ali ne umem da > im objasnim odakle sve to dolazi. Kako odakle, pa sa SEZAM-a! ;) Šalu na stranu, to .bale. skida sa raznih agencijskih servisa. Naime, mnoge svetske agencije, pa čak i naš siroti TANJUG preko SEZAM-a (i to ovih istih brojeva pa razne novine i radio-stanice mrze nas što "visimo" po SEZAM-u jer ne mogu da dobiju vezu kada hoće da skinu "taze" vesti pred emisiju ili prelom, a mi mrzimo njih jer povećavaju promet i vreme potrebno da se priključiš na SEZAM), distribuiraju svoje vesti. Konačno, uz svaku vest ti stoji čija je, tj., sa čijeg ticker-a je skinuta. To se, u principu, i to debelo plaća - TANJUG, recimo uzima 1/2DM do 2DM po vesti i 3DM po minuti "kačenja" - ali ako ide u redistribuciju. Ovako ti je fraj, štampaj i deli ortacima, samo nemoj da se pojavi u nekim novinama pod firmom "sa SEZAM-a". Pl poz M
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A Funeral, A Hospital _ Another Miserable Day in Sarajevo By JOHN DANISZEWSKI Associated Press Writer SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) _ Eight-year-old Darko Vapetic lay in his hospital cot Sunday after surgery for shrapnel wounds, calling for his parents. No one at the Children's Surgery Clinic had the heart to tell him they wouldn't be coming. The boy's parents were killed in the same shelling that almost took off his leg. Across town, the Islamic faithful buried one of the republic's senior Muslim religious leaders, a 32-year-old imam struck down in the doorway of his house by another shell. It was a typically miserable day in Sarajevo. Weeks after leaders of Bosnia's Serb rebels promised to put their artillery around Sarajevo under international supervision, mortar shells still rain down on civilians with deadly regularity. Ripping up flesh and families, they leave an aftermath of tears and funerals. Hadzi Abdulah Celebic, deputy president of Mesihat, the Islamic spiritual community of Bosnia-Herzegovina, was buried under mournful gray skies in the tree-shaded yard of the Carina Mosque. In a ceremony attended by more than 400 men _ soldiers, police, fellow imams, even a Bosnian rock star _ he was buried a little more than 24 hours after a shell hit just as he left his home to minister to Egyptian U.N. peacekeeping troops camped nearby. His wife suffered only minor injuries, but their 5-year- old daughter was fighting for her life in a hospital. Old women watched the burial through iron-grill windows in the mosque's stone outer wall, clutching handkerchiefs as tears streamed down their cheeks. Cebelic had been chosen as a leader during time of war precisely because of his youth and energy. A professor of theology, speaker of three languages, a brilliant future _ and now he was gone. ``You can tell how I felt about him by looking at my face,'' said an elderly imam, his eyes red from crying, after the hourlong service. ``This was a great man.'' ``He was the kind of man who could organize whatever he touched,'' said Celebic's brother-in-law, Hajdar Plakalo. At the Children's Surgery Clinic, Dr. Mirjan Lomas was sorting through more misery. On Saturday evening, shells hit a tight cluster of stone houses in a neighborhood near the city orphanage, which now houses refugees. Four children were killed and 12 others were badly wounded, including eight who required amputations. ``It was more than usual, more children killed than usual, but we've had worse days,'' said Lomas, a six-year veteran of the hospital, rubbing his hands across his balding head. According to Bosnia's health ministry, 16 people died and 118 were wounded in Sarajevo from Saturday to Sunday. ``The casualty figures wouldn't tell you that it was a bad day,'' said Lomas. ``It's just that we had more children than usual.'' Among the survivors was young Darko, crying softly in his cot, unaware of the greater blow to come. Across the aisle, Sinan Karic hovered protectively over his 5-year-old daughter Mirkva. He stroked her cut forehead tenderly, explaining that the shell had landed while she played in front of her house. All the children hit were either inside their homes or playing in the yard, said Dr. Sadeta Begic-Kapetanovic. Because of the shelling, the city's children are never allowed to wander far, she said. Lomas said it is getting harder and harder for his staff to function. Because buses have all but stopped running, they walk miles in the autumn rains to get to work. There is no electricity service and often no fuel for the hospital's auxiliary generator, meaning the staff must work by candlelight. During their long shifts, the 10 doctors and 15 nurses have no warm food. Begic-Kapetanovic said they usually share a loaf of bread and, if they are lucky, some tinned meat. Water is also shut off, and supplies of medicines and bandages are low. Mortars frequently fall on the hospital complex itself. All but a few of the 50 young patients are war casualties. ``We did have optimism. But day by day it's running out,'' said Lomas. ``We're getting more melancholy and losing hope.''
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New York Times: October 11. US WEIGHTS SENDING ARMS TO MUSLIMS IN BOSNIA Final decision is delayed until after the election by Eric Schmitt Washington,Oct. 10 -Pentagon and State Departmant officials are exploring the idea of sending arms to the outgunned Muslims in Bosnia, but such intervention is opposed by senior officials and complicated by by the Administration's hesitation to make a major reversal in policy so close to the Presidental election. The Administration is caught between Washington's reluctance to involve American military forces in the Balkan conflict and its goal of ending what President Bush last week called "a flagrant disregard for human life" in the Bosnian fighting. Because of fears that such intervention would exacerbate the fighting , Acting Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger and Gen. Colin L. Powell , Chairman of the joint Chiefs of Staff , opose supp- lying arms to the bosnians. Administration officials who favor sending weapons to Bosnians say that any decision about changing course on Balkan policy has been delayed until after the Presidential election. And any such effort would require washington to persuade the UN to lift its arms embargo on the area. The Administration's policy dilemma comes at a time when american intelligence officials say that a Security Council decision on Friday to ban combat flights over Bosnia would make only a marginal diffe- rence in reducing civilian casualties. The CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency have concluded that tanks , artillery and other weapons the Serbs control on the ground are more than sufficient to prevent any change in the balance of power , Administration officials said. "Even if there's a no-fly zone , it won't make a substantial change in the battlefield balance," said one administration official. "It's largely a political signal that international community has put the Serbs on notice." Proponents of the UN resolution approved on Friday say that the flight ban is essential in ensuring the safe delivery of relief aid as well as a first step toward ending hostilities. The ban does not include any enforcement action, althought the US says it will introduce a new resolution to that effect if it detects violations. Just a day after the UN resolution banning military flights over the area was approved, there were reports of violations. But serbian forces denied the charges , and the United States European Command said today it had no information to confirm reports of Serbian air attacks. The Serbian forces in Bosnia have about 24 Orao and Galeb combat planes that had reportedly been flying as many as 30 missions a day, dropping cluster bombs and other munitions , according to Administration officials. "These aircraft are so inefficient that most anything they could do from the air , the Serbs could do with artillery and tanks on the ground," said an Administration official. Based in Serbian-controlled Banja Luka ,Serbian commanders have used the combat aircraft for three main purposes ,Administration officials said. The planes have attacked factories in northern Bosnia in efforts to cripple what remains of the republics' industry. serbian planes have has also provided support for Serbian ground forces to attack position in Croatia and Bosnia. Finally, Serbian aircraft have been used effectively as" weapons of intimidation"to strafe and bomb civilian centers , Administration officials said. The Bosnian forces have no combat aircraft. What steps the international community takes next in Bosnia depend on the whether the Serbs honor the flight ban, the officials said. President Bush said last week that the US was ready to use its military forces to enforce the ban , but did not specifically commit American aircraft. Friday's resolution represents a compromise between President Bush , who favored an immediate ban with teeth in it, and britain and France who sought to maintain UN neutrality in Bosnia to avoid the risk of turning the Serbs against peacekeeping forces there. Mr. Bush signed into law this week a foreign aid bill that authorizes the White House to transfer $50 million in American military equipment to Bosnia if the UN sanctions are lifted. The White House has not indicated whether it would send the arms to Bosnia. A senior State department official said recently that arming the Bosnians "is a much more complicated question that it appears to be." "I'm not shure you could ship a tank into Bosnia tomorrow and expect somebody to know how to drive it." the official said.
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Date: 10 Oct 92 20:30:22 GMT MOSCOW (UPI) -- Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev met with international mediators on former Yugoslavia Saturday and broached the possible easing of sanctions against Serbia and Montenegro for humanitarian reasons this winter. Kozyrev met U.N. mediator Cyrus Vance and European Community negotiator Lord David Owen Saturday to discuss efforts to end the conflict in Bosnia-Hercegovina, where the war has been blamed primarily on Serbians backed by the hard-line government in Belgrade. ``We've discussed the question of weakening a bit sanctions against Yugoslavia, or Serbia and Montenegro, as they face winter,'' Kozyrev told reporters after the meeting. ``It mainly concerns the humanitarian situation in those republics.'' There was no indication, however, of a serious move to ease the sanctions. Owen repeated longstanding international conditions for lifting the sanctions that the Serbians have refused to meet, including recognition of Bosnia-Hercegovina and other former Yugoslav republics, serious efforts to stop the fighting by Serbians and recognition of Albanian minority rights in the Kosovo region of Serbia. While Russia supported U.N. economic sanctions against the rump Yugoslav republics of Serbia and Montenegro, the Moscow government is also trying to appear fair to vocal Russian conservatives who complain the Kremlin should not abandon its former friends in Belgrade. ``We discussed the necessity of a balanced approach toward the problem, recognition of the fact that there are no angels there,'' Kozyrev said. ``Croatia, the Muslim community and other forces demand a lot of work as well.''
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Date: 10 Oct 92 20:16:32 GMT SARAJEVO (UPI) -- A Ukrainian member of U.N. forces in Sarajevo was killed and three others were injured Saturday when their armored personnel carrier hit a landmine while traveling to Sarajevo airport, U. N. and Serbian officials said. The troops assigned to the U.N. Protection Force apparently lost their way on a well-traveled route to the airport when they hit the mine planted a month earlier by Serbian forces, said Capt. Indic Milenko, a Serbian liaison officer at UNPROFOR headquarters in Sarajevo. UNPROFOR spokesman Mik Magnusson said one Ukrainian soldier was killed and three other Ukrainian soldiers inside the armored vehicle were injured, one seriously,. The two less seriously injured soldiers were flown later in the day to Zagreb while the third remained in surgery at UNPROFOR headquarters and was expected to be flown out of the city on Sunday, Magnusson said. Milenko said the personnel carrier hit the mine sometime after 11 a. m. near the Energoinvest facility on the western frontline of the Bosnian capital. He said Serbian forces had probably placed the mine a month ago but said UNPROFOR troops should have known to avoid the area. ``They completely missed their way to the airport,'' Milenko said of the Ukrainian troops. ``It's not a new road (to the airport). It was probably a mistake by the Ukrainian driver.'' Another Serbian liaison officer with UNPROFOR was quoted by the Serbian-controlled Tanjug news agency as saying Muslim Slav forces fired on the armored carrier while Serbian forces helped pull the Ukrainians from the vehicle. Magnusson said the landmine detonated when the Ukrainian personnel carrier tried to avoid an obstacle in the road in the vicinity of Stup section of Sarajevo. The UNPROFOR troops were traveling to the airport from the Ukrainian base at the Marshal Tito barracks. He said he could not comment on whether the Ukrainians were traveling outside the normal route to the airport. Five peacekeeping troops have been killed and more than 50 wounded in the Yugoslav conflict since May.
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Date: 11 Oct 92 15:37:35 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercogovina (UPI) -- Croat-Muslim forces Sunday held a short stretch of roadway captured in two days of heavy fighting, severing a strategic land corridor connecting Serbia with Serb-held areas of northwestern Bosnia-Hercegovina, news reports and Western witnesses said Sunday. Bosnian Vice President Ejup Ganic said the government was considering pulling out of peace talks in Geneva after confirming reports that Serbian jets staged attacks during the fighting for the corridor in violation of a U.N.-imposed ban on military flights over the republic. ``We are considering that very seriously,'' said Ganic, who complained that the U.N. ban lacked any enforcement means. ``Certainly some moves will be made.'' Representatives of the republic's Muslim Slav-dominated government and its Croatian and Serbian communities have been meeting in Geneva under U.N.- and European Community-mediation in negotiations aimed at ending the war ignited by a more than 6-month-old Serbian drive to capture a self-declared state. Sarajevo radio said the Bosnian administration of Muslim Slavs, moderate Serbs and Croats planned to boycott U.N.-mediated talks set for Monday in Sarajevo with Serbian negotiators on restoring electricity and water supplies to the extremist Serb-encircled capital. Stjepan Siber, the vice commander of the Bosnian army, was quoted as saying that U.N. officials have done nothing to end Serbian disruptions in the services that contravened an agreement under which both sides undertook not to use water and electricity as weapons against civilian populations. Bosnian military officials declined comment on reports Croat-Muslim forces Saturday captured a slice of territory near the Serb-held town of Brcko, cutting a road used by Serbian forces to truck vital supplies from Serbia to their northwestern stronghold of Banja Luka, from where some are then forwarded to Serb-held areas in western Croatia. Western journalists who arrived in Belgrade from the area Saturday night said that Croat and Muslim fighters captured a 2-mile stretch of road near the village of Gorica, 3 miles west of Brcko on the Sava River border between Bosnia-Hercegovina and Croatia. They said the fighting forced them to make a massive detour that took them across the Sava River into an area of central Croatia protected by U.N. peace-keeping troops. SRNA, the official organ of the self-declared Serbian state, confirmed that Croatian and Muslim Slav fighters attacked Serbian positions near Brcko Friday night with infantry and artillery and cut the corridor. Tanjug, the official news agency of Serbia-controlled rump Yugoslavia, said that traffic through the corridor remained ``closed for security reasons.'' Heavy fighting reportedly persisted Sunday in the region, particularly around Gradacac, which has been targeted since last week by a Serbian offensive. Bosnian officials and media reports said Gradacac was one of three Muslim Slav-dominated towns attacked Saturday by Serbian warplanes a day after the U.N. Security Council declared the military flight ban over Bosnia-Hercegovina. Sarajevo radio said Serbian jets dropped 30 cluster bombs Saturday evening on areas held by Muslim Slav and Croatian fighters near Brcko. Eleven people were killed and 32 wounded, it said. There was no independent confirmation of the report but Ganic said the violations were confirmed by both the Bosnian and Croatian governments. The U.N. resolution authorized only humanitarian and U.N. flights and called for international monitors at all airfields in the six republics of former Yugoslavia. But it lacked a mechanism to enforce the ban on flights by warplanes supplied the Serbs by the Yugoslav army. Croatian and Muslim Slav forces do not have jet fighters. At least 53 people were killed and 260 wounded across Bosnia- Hercegovina in the 24 hours that ended at 10 a.m., including 11 dead and 118 wounded in Sarajevo, republic health officials said. The victims included three children killed and 13 wounded, many seriously, when Serbian shellfire struck a Sarajevo orphanage Saturday, officials said. One dead child was a resident of the orphanage and most of the others were neighborhood children playing outside the building, they said.
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Date: 10 Oct 92 21:04:35 GMT BELGRADE (UPI) -- A senior leader of Serbia's ruling communist party Saturday rejected opposition charges that a regime-sponsored referendum on early presidential and assembly elections was merely a scheme for avoiding a test of the mandate of hard-line President Slobodan Milosevic. In a related development, the main party of the independence-seeking ethnic Albanian majority in Serbia's restive province of Kosovo called for a boycott of Sunday's vote. ``I expect a positive result in Sunday's referendum on the constitutional amendment that would open the way for early elections,'' Nebojsa Covic, the president of the Belgrade chapter of Milosevic's Socialist Party of Serbia, told a news conference. The amendment would allow the holding of early elections for president and the republic's 250-seat Assembly before the end of the year. Voters were to cast ballots at 9,500 polling stations across Serbia and first results were expected Monday, said Zoran Djumic, a spokesman for the Serbian election commission. Covic denied opposition charges that the referendum plan was rammed through the legislature by the communist majority in a bid to avoid a challenge to Milosevic, who led his party to a five-year term in a landslide victory in December 1990. ``After the referendum, we shall have elections,'' Covic asserted. Opposition leaders have argued the referendum was a master political stroke by the regime in a mounting power struggle pitting Milosevic against federal Prime Minister Milan Panic and his chief ally, Dobrica Cosic, the president of the truncated Yugoslav federation forged by Serbia and its tiny dependent, Montenegro. Milosevic launched an unprecedented attack on Panic and Cosic in a television interview broadcast Saturday. He said all federal institutions in the rump Yugoslav union of Serbia and Montenegro ``must act in the interests of Serbia, not the other way around.'' Milosevic accused Panic of receiving orders from the White House, saying, ``His coxswain is in Washington.'' Panic, a naturalized U.S. citizen and self-made millionaire, regards the ouster of Milosevic and his party as the prime requisite for the lifting of sanctions imposed on the two republics by the United Nations for their support for the Serbian territorial conquests in neighboring Bosnia-Hercegovina. The sanctions have deeply aggravated the raging economic chaos and social discontent first unleashed in Serbia by the dissolution of the former Yugoslav federation and last year's war in Croatia, and then fueled further by the current conflict in Bosnia-Hercegovina. Recent public opinion polls have shown a significant swing of support away from Milosevic to Panic and Cosic. But, for the early elections amendment to pass, more than 50 percent of Serbia's 7 million registered voters must turnout for the balloting and more than half must vote for the measure, something that regime's critics charge Milosevic was well aware of when he hit on the idea of the referendum. ``Experience teaches us that it is very difficult to reach 51 percent of voters in situations when only about 60 percent of the electoral body (normally) goes to polling stations,'' said Vesna Pesic, the president of the Reformist Party of Serbia. The boycott announcement by the Democratic Alliance of Kosovo, representing the province's 2 million ethnic Albanians, was expected to deprive the referendum of the votes of up to 20 percent of the republic's electorate. Opposition leaders pointed out a referendum was not required, as Milosevic could have called early elections simply by dismissing the Assembly and resigning. By holding the referendum, they said, Milosevic avoided a step that would have been regarded as an admission of responsibility for the republic's economic convulsions and international isolation. And, in case the amendment is approved, Milosevic will maintain control of the state election apparatus, police and mass media throughout the electoral campaign. Milosevic's party and the opposition still have to agree on guidelines and a law for early elections for the 138-member Chamber of Citizens of the Yugoslav Parliament. Date: 11 Oct 92 11:46:12 GMT BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (UPI) -- Voters went to the polls Sunday in a referendum on holding early elections that the opposition claims is a scheme to avoid a test of the mandate of hardline President Slobodan Milosevic. Polls opened at 7 a.m. but there were no immediate reports of a trend in turnout, amid cold and heavy rain in the Serbian capital. Voters were to cast ballots at 9,500 polling stations between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. across Serbia, and first results were expected Monday, said Zoran Djumic, a spokesman for the Serbian election commission. Nebojsa Covic, the president of the Belgrade chapter of Milosevic's Socialist Party of Serbia, said Saturday, ``I expect a positive result in Sunday's referendum on the constitutional amendment that would open the way for early elections,'' The amendment would allow early elections for president and for the republic's 250-seat Assembly before the end of the year. Covic denied opposition charges that the referendum plan was rammed through the legislature by the communist majority to avoid a challenge to Milosevic, who led his party to a five-year term in a landslide victory in December 1990. ``After the referendum, we shall have elections,'' Covic asserted. Opposition leaders have argued that the referendum was a political move by the regime in a mounting power struggle pitting Milosevic against federal Prime Minister Milan Panic and his chief ally, Dobrica Cosic, the president of the rump Yugoslav federation of Serbia and its tiny dependent, Montenegro. Panic, a naturalized U.S. citizen and self-made millionaire, regards the ouster of Milosevic and his party as the prime requisite for the lifting of sanctions imposed on the two republics by the United Nations for their support for the Serbian territorial conquests in neighboring Bosnia-Hercegovina. The sanctions have aggravated the economic chaos and social discontent first unleashed in Serbia by the dissolution of the former Yugoslav federation and last year's war in Croatia, and fueled further by the conflict in Bosnia-Hercegovina. Recent public opinion polls have shown a significant swing of support away from Milosevic to Panic and Cosic. But, for the early elections amendment to pass, more than 50 percent of Serbia's 7 million registered voters must turn out to vote and more than half must vote for the measure, something that the regime's critics charge Milosevic was well aware of when he proposed the referendum. ``Experience teaches us that it is very difficult to reach 51 percent of voters in situations when only about 60 percent of the electoral body (normally) goes to polling stations,'' said Vesna Pesic, the president of the Reformist Party of Serbia. A call Saturday by the Democratic Alliance of Kosovo for a boycott of Sunday's vote was expected to deprive the referendum of the votes of up to 20 percent of the republic's electorate. The Alliance represents the province's 2 million ethnic Albanians. Opposition leaders pointed out that a referendum was not required as Milosevic could have called early elections simply by dismissing the Assembly and resigning. By holding the referendum, they said, Milosevic avoided a step that would have been regarded as an admission of responsibility for the republic's economic convulsions and international isolation. And, in the case that the amendment is approved, Milosevic will maintain control of the state election apparatus, police and mass media throughout the electoral campaign. Milosevic's party and the opposition still have to agree on guidelines and a law for early elections for the 138-member Chamber of Citizens of the Yugoslav Parliament. Date: 11 Oct 92 13:55:03 GMT BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (UPI) -- Voters in Serbia cast ballots Sunday in a referendum on holding early presidential and assembly elections but federal leaders vowed there would be elections no matter the outcome of what is widely viewed as a scheme by the republic's ruling communists to retain power. The 12-hours of polling began at 7 a.m. and the republic Election Commission reported that 35 percent of the more than 7 million qualified voters had cast ballots by mid-day amid rainy, chilly weather. The communist-controlled panel said the results would be known on Tuesday. In the opposition stronghold of Belgrade, voting appeared brisk, with lines of mostly middle-aged and elderly residents waiting to cast their ballots. Reports from the restive province of Kosovo confirmed a boycott by the independence-seeking ethnic Albanian majority to protest repressive Serbian rule condemned by Western governments and human rights groups as one of Europe's worst human rights crises. The referendum asked voters to approve or reject a constitutional amendment that would authorize early elections before the end of the year for the republic's presidency and 250-member assembly. But, opposition leaders charged that the referendum was merely a scheme devised by Milosevic and his Socialist Party of Serbia to avoid a test of the five-year mandates they won in December 1990 as demanded by their main rivals, federal Prime Minister Milan Panic and his chief ally, Dobrica Cosic, the president of the rump Yugoslav union forged in April by Serbia and Montenegro. The referendum, opposition leaders pointed out, required a hard-to- achieve turnout of more than 50 percent of the electorate to be legitimate and the amendment could only pass with the support of the same proportion of registered voters, something considered almost impossible. A defeat would prohibit the holding of another referendum for six months. Casting their ballots at separate times in Belgrade's posh residential neighborhood of Dedinje, Panic and Cosic vowed that early elections would be held in Serbia no matter the outcome. ``If the referendum in Serbia fails, then we shall act under another possibility, dissolve the Assembly and act according to the constitution of Serbia,'' said Cosic, a 70-year-old former communist censor-turned- popular author and ultra-nationalist. Asked if there would be early federal elections, Panic replied: ``Absolutely, and there will be a Serbian one as well.'' ``If there is a need, we will find another way to go to the polls,'' said Panic, 62, a Belgrade-born naturalized U.S. citizen and multi- millionaire businessman. Neither man elaborated on their statements. Both believe that the ouster of Milosevic and his party is the prime requisite for the lifting of U.N. economic sanctions imposed on Serbia and Montenegro in May for underwriting the Serbian territorial conquests in the neighboring former Yugoslav republic of Bosnia-Hercegovina. The sanctions, which included an embargo on oil imports, have gravely exacerbated economic chaos triggered by the breakup of former Yugoslavia and Milosevic's support for last year's Serbian uprising in Croatia and the ongoing land-grab in Bosnia-Hercegovina, both of which are viewed as components of a plan to create a ``Great Serbia.'' Recent public opinion polls have showed a significant drop in support for Milosevic as Serbian citizens increasingly blame him for the lack of gasoline, shortages of milk, flour, and cooking oil, raging inflation, widespread plant closings, rising unemployment and international isolation. ``I shall vote in favor of the early elections because we need changes,'' said Tvrtko Grgurevic, a 61-year-old engineer, as he waited to vote in Belgrade's Vracar area. ``It is a high time that the situation calms down, that we reach peace. There is no need for people to wage war.'' But, Milosevic sounded a defiant note in a television interview Saturday night, saying: ``If I had to do it all over again, I would do the same.'' He launched a vicious attack against Panic and Cosic, a onetime ally, saying the former took his orders ``from Washington. We'll see about the other one.'' Opposition leaders said the referendum was not required, as Milosevic could have called early elections simply by dismissing the Assembly and resigning. But by using the referendum, they said, Milosevic avoided a step that would have been regarded as an admission of responsibility for Serbia's deep woes. And, they pointed out, in case the amendment was approved, Milosevic would be able to maintain control of the state election apparatus, police and mass media throughout the electoral campaign. Milosevic's party and the opposition still have to agree on guidelines and a law for early elections for the 138-member Chamber of Citizens of the Yugoslav Parliament.
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Declassified 1976 CIA Report Saw Soviet Buildup for War By Don Oberdorfer (c) 1992, The Washington Post The most controversial intelligence estimate of the Cold War era, aut horized in 1976 by then-CIA Director George Bush, depicted sharply growing danger from a Soviet Union bent on gaining military superiority over the United States as part of preparations to fight World War III. According to the top secret report written by critics of previous est imates, the Soviet Union's willingness to pursue policies of detente and to negotiate strategic arms limitations were secretly aimed at furthering ``unilateral advantages'' over the United States in the military field. Many of the drafters of the report went on to oppose ratification of the SALT II arms control treaty and advocate greatly expanded U.S. military programs. The so-called Team B report by conservative experts who were given unprecedented access to U.S. secrets created a storm of controversy when its existence became known through news leaks in late 1976. The classified document touched off a congressional investigation and led to disputes that still continue about its validity, its impact on U.S. views of the Soviet Union and Bush's attitude toward it. Early this month, the CIA quietly declassified both the Team B report and its own official National Intelligence Estimate of 1976 on Soviet strategic forces, often known as the Team A report. Without any announcement, the agency sent the controversial documents to the National Archives, where they became available last week. CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield said that the documents were declassifie d because of a new CIA policy of providing increased access to historical materials and that the White House had nothing to do with the Team B decision. Freedom of Information Act requests had been filed with respect to Te am B documents by the National Security Archive, a nonprofit research institute, and Anne Cahn, who is writing a book on the Team B episode, had filed a lawsuit. But Mansfield described the release as essentially unrelated to either. The reports provide direct evidence of the heated intelligence debate s of the mid-1970s about Soviet military programs and, especially, about Soviet intentions. The Team A report is replete with internal dissents from the State Department, which took a less alarmed view of the Soviet buildup, and from Air Force and other military agencies, which felt the Team A report had not expressed strongly enough the seriousness of the Soviet threat. The Team B report has even more foreboding views of the Soviet Union than it was thought to contain at the time. For example, the report raised the specter of ``a relatively short-term threat cresting, say, in 1980 to 1983'' as Soviet military power grows at a faster rate than that in the West. The CIA was chastised for not taking seriously such a threat, which never appeared. The CIA also declassified a letter from Director Bush calling the Tea m B exercise ``a worthwhile experiment'' and saying the conservative views ``did have some effect'' on U.S. intelligence. At the same time, seeming to straddle the conflict over the unusual procedure, Bush denied that the official CIA estimate of Soviet strategic forces had been ``shaped by pressure from the Team B.'' U.S. intelligence estimates of Soviet military strength and intention s, while available only to a select group of top officials during the Cold War, undergirded the governmental debate about how the United States should react and provided the rationale for massive American military programs. All sides considered the estimates of great importance. Team B, headed by Harvard professor Richard Pipes, was established in early 1976 by Bush at the recommendation of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. The board was disturbed by allegations that U.S. intelligence had consistently underrated Soviet military programs and asked for a ``competitive analysis'' by an outside group with access to U.S. secrets. The 10 Team B members included such conservatives as Paul H. Nitze, l ater the Reagan administration's arms control negotiator, and Paul Wolfowitz, currently undersecretary of defense for policy. The team, according to its declassified report, was ``deliberately selected from among experienced political and military analysts of Soviet affairs known to take a more somber view of the Soviet strategic threat than that accepted as the intelligence community's consensus.''
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NPR - Monday, October 12, 1992. National Public Radio (NPR), said that Serbs used aviation to bomb northern bosnian cities Brcko and Gradacac. Serbs denied those allegations, but some U.N. observers confirmed that there were some activities on the Banjaluka Airport. After capturing northern Bosnian town of Bosanaski Brod, Serbs seemed to hold the land corridor which connects the territories under the Serbian control with rump Yugoslavia securely. But now this corridor is cut, there are Croatian and Muslim troops on the road. All the traffic stopped, there is a mile long line of vechiles on both sides. Some Serbs are trying to escape to Serbia to spend long and cold winter there, because the winter can be pretty rough without food and heating. NPR also said the Muslims and Croatians rejected the Serbian offensive near Gradacac.
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New York Times: October 12. SARAJEVO'S GRIEF SEEMS EXHAUSTED WHEN 3 MORE CHILDREN DIE By JOHN BURNS SARAJEVO, B&H,Oct.11 - Samra Kapetanovic lay dead in the Sagrdjia mosque today, a 16-year-old girl who went looking for her little sister when the shells started falling and ran into a mortar instead. Beside her, in the darkness of the morgue in the mosque's basement, were a boy of 10 and a girl of 5 who died in the same flash of high explosives. The death of three children in the lunchtime blast on Sa- turday on Dvarska street, and the wounds suffered by 10 other children , including three amputations, made the front page of Oslobodjenje, the city's principal newspaper. Children playing in the clearing between three apartment blocks was a precious token of normality in a situation that has become increasingly grotesque. More than 600 children have been killed in the six month siege , and nearly 800 children are listed as missing and are likely to be dead. People seem hardly able to react anymore when still more children die. The 20-year-old man knocking on the door of the main city morgue at midafternoon was perhaps not typical, since his pur- pose, in walking several miles through streets sooden with driving rain was to see if his mother was in any of the morgues. She had failed to come home three days ago after going out to buy bread. When somebody produced a flashlight and played it over the faces of the dead , it became clear the woman was not at the morgue, and the young man was relieved. But the bitterness of his experience showed through when another visitor explained that he, too, had come in search of somebody , a teenager killed in Dvarska Street, and that he wanted to know more about her so he could write about her death. "Why do you bother?" the young man said, in a reaction increasingly common among the 400 000 people trapped by the siege. "Do you think the world realy cares?" The reaction is of one of a population numbed by what they have endured, and by the conclusion, after months of hoping that outside powers would intervene to halt the killing and destruction, that the hope is finally lost. At mid-summer, a foreign reporter could hardly pause on a street corner here without having a stranger approach to ask about the likelihood of US intervention. In the 24 hours that followed the death of Samra Kapeta- novic, nobody- not among the stunned survivors at the scene, not at Kosevo Hospital where the surviving children where taken, nor up the stairs off Dvarska Street where Fajko and Izeta Kapetanovic, Samra's parents struggled with bereavement - nobody spoke of outside help. Instead, everywhere, there was bitterness and desperation coupled with the sense that whatever lies ahead, it is something Sarajevo will have to face substantially alone. "We know that we must fight this by ourselves," said Samir, the dead girl's 19-year-old brother, on furlough from Bosnian Army unit. "But tell me this: why won't you at least lift the arms embargo, so that we have the means of defending ourselves? Or do you want us to end up fighting with our bare hands?" The call for an end to the arms embargo is voiced more often even that the pleas for the UN headquarters here to do something about the cutoff of electricity and virtually all running water. Serbs who are besieging the city have promised to help restore power and water, but UN commanders say Serbian forces have found one way after another to block repairs. The atack in which Samra kapetanovic died provided a study in how degraded the most basic services have become. with most of the ambulances destroyed, the wounded children had to wait while some of the few private cars still running were flagged down. At the hospital, one amputation took place under an oil lamp because an acute fuel shortage had forced the shutt-down of the diesel generators. Doctors and nurses moved about with candles. Supper consisted of a cup of watery chocolate or lemonade and a slice of bread. "As you can see , our situation is terrible, just terrible" said Mufid Lazovic, the43-year-old pshysician in charge of the children care. Back on Dvarska Street , the mourning for the children had begun to the tattoo of continuing mortar fire. But explosions loud enough to make others jump seemed inaudible to mrs. Kapetanovic, 38, who sat in the darkness, wailing as she clutched a pile of her dead daughter's clothes. "Oh, my Samra," she cried."She was running to help.Oh God why are we punished so?" holding fast to her mother was the dead girl's 11-year-old sister, samira. She had been outside playing when the first mortar fell in the neighborhood, sending Samra, a quiet, a studious girl who had hoped to be nurse ,running into the street Samira was uninjured. Amid her weeping, she offered her own eulogy."she wanted to save me , but now she's dead." Samira said. "I wish it could have been me."
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New York Times , October 12 Presidential Debate - 1992 Question: Mr. President, how can you watch the killing in Bosnia and the "ethnic cleansing", or the starvation and anarchy in Somalia, and not want to use America's might, if not America's military to try to end that kind of suffering? Bush: Ann, both of them are very complicated situations. And I vowed some- thing, because I learned something from Vietnam, I am not going to commit U.S. forces until I know what the mission is, till the military tell me it can be comppleted, until I know how they can come out. We are helping, Ame- rican airplanes are helping today on humanitarian relief for Sarajevo. It is America that's in the lead in helping with humanitary relief for Soma- lia. But when you got to put somebody else's son or daughter into war, I think you've got to be a little bit careful and you have to have -- be sure that there's a military plan that can do this. You have ancient ethnic rivalries that have cropped up as Yugoslavia has dissolved, or getting dissolved, and it isn't going to be solved by sending in the 82nd Airborne. And I'm not going to do that as Commander in Chief. I am going to stand by and use moral persuasion of the United States to get satisfaction in terms of prison camps -- and we're making some progress there -- and in terms of getting humanitarian relief in there. And right now, as you know, the United States took the lead in a no-fly operation up there in -- a no fly order up in the United Nations. We're working through the international organizations. That's one thing I learned by forging that tremendous and highly successful coalition against Saddam Hussein, the dictator. Use -- work internationally to do it. I'm very concerned about, I'm concerned about ethnic cleansing. I'm concerned about attacks on Muslims, for example, over there. But I must stop short of using American force until I know how those young men and women are going to get out of there, as well as get in -- know what the mission is and define it. And I think I'm on the right track. Question: Are you designing a mission ------- Moderator: Ms. Ann, sorry, time is up. We have to go to Mr. Perot for a one-minute response. Perot: I think, if we learned anything, in Vietnam it's you first commit this nation before you commit the troupsto the battlefield. We cannot send our people all over the world to solve every problem that comes up. This is basically a problem of European Community. Certainly we care about the people, we care about the children, we care about the tragedy. But it is inappropriate for us, just becasue there's a problem somewhere around the world, to take the sons and daughters of working people and make no mistake about it, our all-volunteer armed force is not made up of the sons and daughters of the beautiful people, it's the working folks who send their sons and daughters to war, with a few exceptions. It's very unlike World war II when F.D.R.'s sons flew missions, everybody went. It's different world now and very important that we not just, without thinking it through, just rush to every problem in the world and have our people torn to pieces. Moderator: Mr. Clinton, one minute. Clinton: I agree that we cannot commit ground forces to become involved in the quagmire of Bosnia or in the tribal wars of Somalia. But I think that it's important to recognize that there are things to be done short of that and that we do have interest there. There are after all, two million refugees now because of the problems in what was Yugoslavia, the largest number since World War II. And there may be hundreds of thousands of people who will starve or freeze to death in this winter. The United States should try to work with its allies and stop it. I urged the president to support this air cover and he did and I applaud that. I applaud the no-fly zone and I know that he's going back to the United Nations to try to get authority to enforce it. I think we should stiffen the embargo on Belgrade Government and I think we have to consider whether or not we should lift the arms embargo now on the Bosnians since theye are in no way in a fair fight with a heavily armed opponent bent on ethnic cleansing. We can't get involved in the quagmire but we must do what we can. ...
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SERBS STEP UP OFFENSIVE ON NORTHERN BOSNIAN TOWN By Kurt Schork SARAJEVO, Oct 12, Reuter - Bosnian Serbs stepped up their offensive on the northern Moslem stronghold of Gradacac on Sunday, Bosnian and Croatian radio said. The radio stations reported that seven people were killed and 12 wounded, but they gave no details of the casualties other than to say that the first two killed were civilians. The Serb rebels threw reinforcements into the fray, seeking to establish military dominance across northern Bosnia that would help destroy Moslem dreams of a unitary Bosnian state. Croatian radio said the Serbs launched a three-pronged infantry attack on the town, while the Sarejevo-based Bosnian station said the assault failed to crack Gradacac's defences. Croatian radio said air raid sirens were sounded and Serb aircraft were sighted but did not attack, unlike on Saturday when it reported heavy air bombardment in violation of a U.N. Security Council ban on military flights over Bosnia. The Bosnian Serbs denied they were flying combat missions and accused those who alleged the contrary of trying to provoke the West into military intervention against them. According to Croatian radio, shelling was intense on the west and northwest frontline while the town centre was also pounded. A desperate local commander of Bosnia's army threatened to put cisterns full of chlorine on front lines near Gradacac, risking a major environmental disaster, unless Serbs halted their attacks, Bosnian radio said. Zeljko Knez, regional commander in the northeast town of Tuzla, warned, without elaborating, of horrific results as far away as Croatia, Hungary and Austria if the chlorine containers were hit in a Serb artillery attack. Tanjug news agency said fighting continued late on Sunday in the area around Brcko 30 km (20 miles) east of Gradacac, where it said Moslem and Croat forces were attacking Serb positions. It said a corridor of mostly Serb-controlled land across the northern end of Bosnia had been broken by the fighting and one convoy of travellers and refugees was backed up for several kilometres (miles) waiting for roads to reopen. In Serbia, people voted on Sunday in a referendum on whether to allow early presidential and parliamentary elections which the opposition hopes will oust hardline nationalist President Slobodan Milosevic. An electoral office spokesman said unofficial estimates from several polling stations put voter turnout at between 40 and 55 per cent. A majority of registered voters must vote in favour in order to pass the necessary constitutional amendment. The war in Bosnia began after its Serbs rebelled against international recognition of the former Yugoslav republic as an independent state and occupied some 70 per cent of its land. Croats control most of the rest while Moslems, Bosnia's largest ethnic group, hold only Sarajevo and some other pockets. In Sarajevo, Bosnian military commanders turned down a plan for them to meet their Serb foes face-to-face on Monday. Mik Magnusson, senior United Nations political affairs officer, said the Bosnian presidency had declined to attend tripartite talks, also involving Bosnian Croats, because of the failure to restore water and power supplies to the city. Sarajevo has been without water or electricity for weeks because of war damage, and some United Nations- escorted utility crews on repair missions in the past week have been fired on despite assurances by Bosnian Serb leaders that their side would launch no such attacks. The tripartite talks were intended to establish a ``mixed military working group'' to handle practical issues such as the security of flights and truck convoys carrying relief supplies as the United Nations Protection Force expands its presence in Sarajevo.
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BOSNIANS REFUSE TALKS WITH SERBS IN SARAJEVO By Kurt Schork SARAJEVO, Oct 11, Reuter - Bosnian military commanders have said they will not attend talks with their Serb foes on Monday because water and power have not been restored to Sarajevo. ``The Bosnian presidency notified us their representatives are unable to attend the talks because their conditions -- water and electricity in Sarajevo -- have not been met,'' said Mik Magnusson, senior United Nations political affairs officer in the besieged Bosnian capital. ``We hope they will change their minds,'' Magnusson added. Sarajevo has been without water or electricity for weeks because of war damage to pipes and power lines. Some U.N.-escorted utility crews on repair missions around the city over the past five days were fired on despite assurances by Bosnian Serb leaders last week that their side would launch no such attacks. Bosnian radio said the decision not to attend tripartite talks with their Croat allies and Serb opponents had been relayed to the U.N. Protection Force (UNPROFOR) in a message from General Stepjepan Siber, deputy commander of the Bosnian army. General Philippe Morillon, UNPROFOR deputy commander, attempted to host a similar tripartite meeting at Sarajevo airport last Wednesday, but both Bosnian and Serb officials refused to attend at the last minute. Morillon returned to Sarajevo late on Sunday afternoon and immediately began working towards the first face-to-face meeting among the three combatants since the fledgling Bosnian state erupted in civil war last April. The talks are intended to establish a ``mixed military working group'' to handle security and coordination issues in and around Sarajevo as UNPROFOR expands its presence in the area. Serb officials withdrew from Wednesday's scheduled meeting because of protocol issues. The Bosnians said participation was impossible so long as Sarajevo remained without basic utility services. The third party to the talks, the Bosnian Defence Council (HVO) is a Croat organisation. Nominally an ally of the Bosnian government, it frequently pursues its own political and military agenda. U.N. officials say the general wants to focus on practical issues, such as the security of flights and truck convoys carrying relief supplies into Sarajevo.
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SERBS SHELL AND BURN VILLAGES IN NORTHERN BOSNIA By Paul Holmes KOTOR VAROS, Bosnia, Oct 12, Reuter - Thousands of Moslems and Croats are being driven out of northern Bosnia by Serb forces in systematic shelling and burning that has reduced entire villages to deserted wastelands. Hundreds of homes have been razed around Kotor Varos, a Serb-controlled ethnically mixed town 35 km (20 miles) southeast of the Bosnian Serb stronghold of Banja Luka. Rebel Serb commanders who gave three Western reporters access to the area at the weekend say their aim is to crush by all means remaining resistance to their control by heavily outgunned Moslem and Croat fighters in villages and woods. Although the authorities deny they are driving minorities out, we saw substantial evidence during a two-day visit to Kotor Varos to support U.N. assertions that Serbs are involved in ``the last stages of ethnic cleansing'' in northern Bosnia. Jakotina, a settlement of six hamlets -- five Croat and one Moslem -- in hills a few km (miles) southwest of Kotor Varos, was taken by Serb forces 12 days ago, according to Major Milorad Vulin, commander of the Bosnian Serb Knesevo brigade. Only three houses remain intact. Of an original population of 800 in Jakotina, just 16 people, all Croats and all female, are still there, under armed guard and waiting to leave. ``See that house? There was a sniper there,'' said Vulin, pointing to a burned-out shell on the slope of a hill. What about the other torched houses around it? ``There were fighters in those as well.'' Vulin took us to Jakotina when we asked for evidence of Serb claims that Moslem and Croat fighters had dug underground bunkers in private houses in villages around Kotor Varos. We saw only defensive slit trenches and dugouts around one of the Jakotina hamlets. Hundreds of square metres (yards) of hilltop grassland in front of one shallow ditch had been burned to deny the hamlet's defenders cover. Further down the valley, four abandoned houses in the village of Sokoline burned fiercely on Saturday night. Columns of smoke rose on Saturday in the Moslem village of Vranic. ``We are destroying their shelters and bunkers...so there is nowhere for them (Moslem and Croat fighters) to come back and stay,'' said Lieutenant Colonel Dusan Novakovic, commander of the Bosnian Serb Kotor Varos brigade. ``We have adopted the rules of guerrilla war. Our units are in every forest and behind each bush,'' he said. On Sunday, Serb forces rained tank shells on Vecici, a Moslem village where 1,200 people -- civilians as well as fighters -- have been trapped under siege for four months. Nedjeljko Djekanovic, leader of the Serb martial law authorities in Kotor Varos, said the Vecici villagers had been given until next Thursday to surrender their weapons and leave northern Bosnia or face a full military assault. ``They can go wherever they want as long as it not on the territory of the Bosnian Serbian Republic,'' said Djekanovic. ``This applies to people carrying arms and to all people who want to go. Whoever wants to stay has to accept the legal state of the Serbian republic. ``We are going to liberate the entire territory and we will destroy every house which shows resistance.'' Djekanovic confirmed that up to 2,000 Moslems and Croats who had come down from villages around Kotor Varos had joined Serb-organised bus convoys last week to Travnik, in Moslem-held central Bosnia, in return for payment in hard currency. Several sources said the refugees massed in fields in the hamlet of Sibovi waiting for the convoys, of seven to eight buses a day, but there was no evidence of an organised camp. Authoritative Bosnian Croat sources said that of 21,000 Moslems and Croats who lived in the Kotor Varos district with 14,000 Serbs during peacetime, only 4,500 remained. They said the nightmare began when Serb special units from Banja Luka came to Kotor Varos on June 11 to depose the elected local authorities and round up males aged between 14 and 60. The Croat mayor, Anton Mandic, was still under arrest. Sylvana Foa, spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva, said last week that many of the remaining 200,000 Moslems and Croats in northern Bosnia were being given deadlines by Serb forces to leave the area. ``What we feel is that we are now in the last stages of ethnic cleansing,'' Foa said.
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RFE/RL DAILY REPORT No. 196, October 12, 1992 SUCCESSOR STATES TO THE USSR FIGHTING CONTINUES IN ABKHAZIA. Two Georgian civilians were killed and three wounded when Abkhaz troops opened fire on a Georgian helicopter on 11 October, ITAR-TASS reported. Abkhaz defense ministry forces also claimed to have shot down a Georgian fighter-bomber over northen Abkhazia. Speaking to reporters in Tbilisi, Georgian State Council Chairman Eduard Shevardnadze cast doubt on his participation in the meeting planned for 13 October between Russian President Boris Yeltsin, Abkhaz Parliamentary Chairman Vladislav Ardzinba and himself. (Liz Fuller, RFE/RL Inc.) SUMMIT PRODUCES MIXED RESULTS ON NUCLEAR WEAPONS CONTROL. CIS Commander-in-Chief General Shaposhnikov on 9 October stated that Belarus had concluded an agreement with Russia on nuclear weapons control, while in Kazakhstan on 10 October Presidents Yeltsin and Nazarbaev signed an agreement containing unspecified provisions on nuclear weapons. Ukraine rejected Shaposhnikov's proposal that Russia control all former Soviet nuclear weapons. Negotiations between Ukraine and Russia over nuclear control are to take place within the next month. The summit appears to have codified the transfer of control over Russian, Belarussian, and Kazakh nuclear weapons to the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces, with Shaposhnikov retaining a role in mediating between the Russian and Ukrainian defense ministries. The results of the summit were reported by Interfax and Western news agencies. (John Lepingwell) UKRAINIAN POSITION AT CIS SUMMIT. Ukraine's overall position at the CIS summit in Bishkek was, according to President Leonid Kravchuk, to develop exclusively as an independent state, Ukrainian TV reported on 9 October. This was reflected in its refusal to sign the agreement on setting up a consultative economic committee. The Ukrainian delegation signed only five of the fifteen documents, with numerous reservations and additions based on its unwillingness to participate in any centralized structures. (Roman Solchanyk, RFE/RL Inc.) SIX CIS STATES TO CREATE COMMON BANK. Although the CIS states could not agree on creating a supranational economic policy-making body at last week's Bishkek summit, six of the countries have decided to establish a common bank, The Los Angeles Times reported on 10 October. The bank would initially settle interstate trade payments, but later, according to Russian Central Bank Chairman Viktor Gerashchenko, it would take on the functions of a central bank controlling the issuance of currency and credit in the ruble zone. The creation of such a supranational central bank is considered an essential measure for achieving economic stability within the ruble zone. The six states that have agreed to remain within the zone are Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia, according to Interfax on 9 October. (Erik Whitlock, RFE/RL Inc.) AKAEV ON CIS. In an interview carried by Reuters on 11 October, Kyrgyzstan President Askar Akaev is quoted as saying that his state could soon leave the CIS, which he described as a temporary grouping. Akaev said the Commonwealth was needed to slow down the negative consequences of the collapse of the Soviet Union, but Kyrgyzstan felt it should cease to exist politically in the near future. Economic links between the member-states should be retained, however. Akaev said the four Central Asian republics would have to rely on Russia for the foreseeable future to stop their economies collapsing, but all would go their own way once they could stand on their own feet. (Ann Sheehy, RFE/RL Inc.) PARLIAMENT APPROVES DRAFT LAW ON FORMING GOVERNMENTS. On 9 October, the Russian parliament approved after a single reading a draft law on how future governments would be formed. According to ITAR-TASS, the draft revokes President Yeltsin's right to appoint the cabinet of ministers directly. The draft gives the parliament the right to approve the president's choice for prime minister. Parliamentary commissions will have a final say in the selection of government ministers. Some further revisions to the draft were suggested at the parliamentary session on 9 October. The parliament will return to discuss the draft later this week. (Vera Tolz, RFE/RL Inc.) FURTHER DELAY REQUESTED IN RUSSIAN DEBT REPAYMENT. Russian Minister of Foreign Economic Relations Petr Aven told Interfax on 9 October that at the end of October, Russia will probably ask for a two-month delay in repaying its debt to Western creditor nations. (Many observers feel that Russia will be unable to repay more than a token share of its convertible-currency debt for the next three to five years, RFE/RL Inc.). Aven spoke of the difficulties involved. If, for instance, the debt repayment deferred from 1992 is carried over to 1993, then the total debt repayment due that year will amount to some $40 billion. Yet, he predicted, Russia will have a negative balance of payments in 1993 of some $4-5 billion. (Keith Bush, RFE/RL Inc.) MANDATORY SALES OF HARD-CURRENCY EARNINGS DEFERRED. In what appears to be a separate interview with Interfax on 10 October, Aven said that Russia is not yet ready to introduce the mandatory sales by state enterprises of 100% of their convertible currency earnings. (Such a move was announced as "imminent" two weeks ago and the call was repeated by President Yeltsin on 6 October). The minister explained that, although such a measure is necessary, it cannot be implemented at the present time because of the "full absence of bank control over the outflow of currency to the West," and owing to "the wild fluctuations of the ruble [exchange] rate." (Keith Bush, RFE/RL Inc.) FACE VALUE OF PRIVATIZATION VOUCHERS. The Russian parliament adopted a resolution on 9 October to the effect that the state must guarantee the face value of privatization vouchers for three years, Interfax reported. (Their face value is 10,000 rubles, but they were marked down to 6,100 rubles on the first day of trading on 1 October on the Moscow stock exchange). The resolution specified that a privatization check may be used to buy, among other things, apartments and land. (Keith Bush, RFE/RL Inc.) PARLIAMENT AGAIN APPROVES RESOLUTION ON GOVERNMENT. The Russian Supreme Soviet again passed a resolution criticizing the way the government was implementing its economic reforms, Russian news agencies reported on 9 October. On 8 October deputies approved the resolution, but the vote was annulled after the voting procedure was deemed improper. The resolution calls on the government to present within one month a series of measures to combat the country's economic crisis. It also gives the Russian central bank one month to present a monetary stabilization plan. On 9 October, Komsomolskaya pravda published an interview with the speaker of parliament, Ruslan Khasbulatov, who said he was against the dismissal of the Russian government at the present time. (Vera Tolz, RFE/RL Inc.) YAKOVLEV CONDEMNS CPSU AND PREESENT RUSSIAN AUTHORITIES. In a 45 minute address to the Constitutional Court on 9 October, former Politburo member Aleksandr Yakovlev condemned both the ideology and practicies of the Soviet communist party, which, Yakovlev said, had always been based on violence and deception. There were always reformers in the world communist movement, Yakovlev said, recalling Valentin Plekhanov's dispute with Lenin, the 1968 "Prague Spring," and Gorbachev's perestroika. However, Yakovlev noted, these reformers had always been in the minority, and their reactionary opponents had always succeeded in crushing them. The current Russian government is not entirely democratic either, since it bears traces of "neo-Bolshevism," Yakovlev stated, recalling how he had passed the police cordon to enter his office in the Gorbachev Foundation only one day earlier. Yakovlev's speech was broadcast on Russian TV during its report on the CPSU hearings late last night. (Julia Wishnevsky, RFE/RL Inc.) COMMUNISTS HOLD CONFERENCE IN MOSCOW. Communists from twelve former Soviet republics opened a conference in Moscow on 10 October aimed at preparing for a restoration congress of the now-banned Communist Party, Interfax reported. According to the agency, 252 delegates attended. The speakers at the gathering accused the former CPSU leadership of treachery for allowing the party to disintegrate. Some communists objected to the conference being held at the present time. Co-chairman of the parliamentary group, "Commmunists of Russia," Gennadii Sasenko, said he feared the conference would have a negative effect on the current hearings in the Russian Constitutional Court on the legality of Boris Yeltsin's ban of the CPSU. (Vera Tolz, RFE/RL Inc.) POLTORANIN ACCUSES GORBACHEV FOUNDATION OF IMPROPRIETIES. In an interview with Western correspondents on 10 October, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Mikhail Poltoranin attempted to justify the police seizure of the Gorbachev Foundation and the confiscation of its property by claiming that it had leased out space on its premises to make money in spite of its stated scholarly goals. He also said that the foundation was "...a second Zurich, a Bolshevik centre from which he [Gorbachev] watches to see how he can start firing the Aurora guns at the present authorities to launch another coup." Poltoranin promised to publish information about in inappropriate leasing of space, which, he added, "smells of millions of rubles." (Julia Wishnevsky, RFE/RL Inc.) RUSSIANS, CHINESE DISCUSS MILITARY COOPERATION. Russian Deputy Defense Minister Andrei Kokoshin--the highest ranking civilian in the Russian defense establishment--met with Chinese Defense Minister Qin Jiwei in Beijing on 9 October. The ITAR-TASS account of their meeting said the two officials announced their intention to contribute to the further development of relations between their two ministries "on the basis of mutual benefit and equality." The report also said that Russo-Chinese working groups carried out negotiations on military cooperation between the two countries. (Doug Clarke, RFE/RL Inc.) CEREMONIAL ROLE FOR ADMIRAL CHERNAVIN. Admiral Vladimir Chernavin, recently the commander-in-chief of the Soviet Navy, welcomed military attaches on 9 October to a Moscow exhibit on the Russian Navy in his new role as honorary president of the Naval Center. Chernavin was quoted by ISAR-TASS as saying that the Russian Navy was passing through a hard period "due to obvious reasons." He added that Russia had always been a great sea power and would always have a navy "worthy of its grandeur." Although Chernavin had been the head of the interim CIS Navy following the breakup of the Soviet Union, Admiral Feliks N. Gromov was appointed to lead the Russian Navy in August of this year. Three of the four former Soviet fleets have been claimed by Russia while the fourth--in the Black Sea--is shared between Russia and Ukraine. (Doug Clarke, RFE/RL Inc.) RUSSIAN MILITARY OVERTURES TO THE UAE. Colonel General Vladimir M. Semenov, the commander-in-chief of the Russian ground forces, led a Russian military delegation that arrived in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on 8 October. In an ITAR- TASS account the following day, Semenov was quoted as saying at that his first visit to an Arab country was a "friendly business trip." He said that his delegation would draw up proposals for promoting military cooperation between Russia and the UAE. While the Gulf Arab states have long been dependent on Western nations for their military equipment, Abu Dhabi reportedly ordered a number of Russian infantry combat vehicles earlier this year. (Doug Clarke, RFE/RL Inc.) UKRAINIAN STUDENTS' DEMANDS. Ukrainian students, who have set up their a tent city in Kiev's central square, are demanding Ukraine's immediate withdrawal from the CIS, a parliamentary decision on new parliamentary elections in the spring of 1993, and the naming of a new prime minister and government only after the decision on parliamentary elections has been made, SR-Press reported 11 October. (Roman Solchanyk, RFE/RL Inc.) GEORGIAN ELECTIONS. Georgia's Central Electoral Commission estimated that about 65% of the electorate voted in parliamentary elections on 11 October, Western agencies reported. No voting took place in eight districts in northern Abkhazia occupied by Abkhaz troops, in South Ossetia or in three raions in Mingrelia, which is a bastion of support for ousted President Zviad Gamsakhurdia, thus excluding some 10% of Georgia's population. Thirty-six individual political parties plus three blocs representing a further eleven are competing for 234 parliamentary seats on a mixed party-list/majority basis. Eduard Shevardnadze, standing unopposed for the post of parliament chairman, is expected to receive the minimum 30% of the vote needed to win. (Liz Fuller, RFE/RL Inc.) MOLDOVA CONCERNED OVER RUSSIAN PEACEKEEPERS' BIAS. Major Trofim Stefan, spokesman for the Moldovan side of the Joint Control Commission supervising the peacekeeping troops in eastern Moldova, told an RFE/RL correspondent that Moldova is concerned by the Russian side's increasingly open bias in favor of the "Dniester" insurgents. In violation of the ceasefire convention, the insurgents maintain armed units and arms stockpiles in the disengagement zone. They have seized by force the Moldovan prosecutor's office and courthouse in Bendery, and have entrenched themselves in several Moldovan villages around Bendery on the right bank of the Dniester. The Russian peacekeepers openly condone these violations. The Moldovan leadership, which has gambled on cooperation with Russia in settling the conflict, is reluctant for political reasons to publicize its growing concern over the Russian peaceekepers' partiality. (Vladimir Socor, RFE/RL Inc.) CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE UN BANS FLIGHTS OVER BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA. International media reported on 9 October that the Security Council adopted Resolution 781 banning all flights over Bosnia except UN flights engaged in humanitarian missions. Only the Serbs have aircraft, and Serbian planes reportedly had been shadowing UN flights to sneak up on Bosnian and Croatian positions. The resolution did not, however, specify any penalties or means of enforcement. The BBC on 10 October quoted Bosnian radio as claiming that the Serbs were continuing to attack Gradacac and other northern Bosnian towns by air in defiance of the ban. (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL Inc.) CONFUSION OVER DEVELOPMENTS IN NORTHERN BOSNIA. Gradacac, Brcko, Orasje, and other centers came under renewed Serbian attack in an apparent effort to consolidate the land corridor across northern Bosnia linking Serbia with Serb-held enclaves in Bosnia and Croatia, the BBC reported on 10 and 11 October. Serbian sources denied that they were using air power in defiance of the UN ban, Reuters reported on 10 October. Elsewhere, speculation continues that the Croat surrender of Bosanski Brod on 6 October might have been part of a Croatian-Serbian deal to enable each side to consolidate its holdings. According to this theory, Croatian and international media said, current fighting around Gradacac and Orasje is aimed at providing an escape route for Croat troops which have been defending Gradacac. On 11 October, Croatian President Franjo Tudjman told the VOA that he continues to favor setting up ethnically based cantons as the best political arrangement for Bosnia, but Muslim critics charge that cantonization after months of ethnic cleansing would be tantamount to partition. (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL Inc.) SECOND ROUND IN ROMANIA'S PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS. Romanians went to the polls on 11 October to elect the country's president. Ion Iliescu, the candidate of the Democratic National Salvation Front, who was backed by 47.34% of the voters in the first round on 27 September, faced the candidate of the Democratic Convention of Romania, Emil Constantinescu, who was then endorsed by 31.24%. Western agencies reported that an unofficial exit poll conducted by the Pro-Democratia association at 222 voting stations indicated Iliescu would win the election with approximately 58% of the votes and 42% of the vote would go to Constantinescu. According to the Central Electoral Bureau, participation in the elections was 75.6%, slightly below the 76.2% voter turnout on 27 September. (Michael Shafir, RFE/RL Inc.) SEJM ACCEPTS GOVERNMENT ECONOMIC PROGRAM. Prime Minister Hanna Suchocka survived another parliamentary test on 9 October when the Sejm voted, 171 to 159 with 8 abstentions, to send the government's economic policy guidelines for 1993 to committee. The vote followed thirteen hours of acrimonious debate, during which even the coalition parties criticized the government's program. In her opening speech, Suchocka said that Poland could achieve steady economic growth on certain conditions: if wage controls were retained, government spending on social benefits was limited to a minimum, and resources were channeled to investment rather than consumption. She stressed the need to assess Poland's situation honestly. "The fact that we are entering the path of economic growth does not mean that we can expect rapid improvement in living standards," she concluded. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL Inc.) POLAND REVISES BUDGET: BIGGER DEFICIT, HIGHER TAXES, SPENDING CUTS. Meeting on 10 October, the government agreed on revisions to the 1992 budget that would raise the deficit from the planned level of 65.5 trillion zloty ($4.7 billion) to almost 82 trillion zloty ($5.9 billion). Also proposed were across-the-board spending cuts of 3.5%, increased sales taxes, and reduced indexing of pensions to inflation. Income taxes on the highest earners would rise to 50%. An additional 6% tax would be imposed on imports to protect Poland's balance of payments. "If the Sejm does not accept these revisions," Finance Minister Jerzy Osiatynski warned, "we won't have money for anything but wages and pensions." Although the IMF has signaled initial acceptance of the government's plans, fierce criticism of planned spending cuts and new taxes is to be expected from the opposition parties. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL Inc.) CZECH AND SLOVAK GOVERNMENTS AGREE ON CUSTOMS UNION. The two republican governments met on 10 October near Prague to discuss the post-Czechoslovak relationship between the Czech Republic and Slovakia. According to news agencies, Czech and Slovak Prime Ministers Vaclav Klaus and Vladimir Meciar agreed to introduce a customs union between the two republics and, at least initially, keep a common currency. According to a spokesman for the Slovak government, the two Prime Ministers discussed the possibility of keeping a single currency until 30 June 1993. Meciar said after the talks that trade exchanges between the two republics would continue unhindered after the dissolution of the country. Klaus made it clear that the setting up of a common market seemed to be "beyond our technical, organizational, and legislative possibilities" and that the republics would adopt only partial accords on labor and capital movement. Representatives of the two governments also said that while there are no territorial demands between the two republics, the issue of citizenship remains controversial. The Slovaks have proposed dual citizenship which Prague has categorically rejected. All agreements between the governments must be approved by the respective republican parliaments. (Jan Obrman, RFE/RL Inc.) SERBIA'S REFERENDUM ON EARLY ELECTIONS. Radio Serbia reported on 11 October that more than half of Serbia's eligible voters cast ballots in a referendum to determine whether a constitutional amendment should be adopted to allow for early general and presidential elections. Results are expected on 13 October. More than 50% of Serbia's 7 million voters must approve the referendum if elections are to take place by the end of December. A poll published by the Belgrade daily Politika on 7 October showed 68% of those questioned favored early elections. Current law stipulates that the mandate of Serbia's parliament expires in 1994 while President Slobodan Milosevic's runs out in 1995. The referendum does not effect the scheduling of elections either at the federal level or in Montenegro. Milan Panic, Prime Minister of rump Yugoslavia told reporters Serbia must approve the amendment if the republic wants the UN-imposed sanctions lifted. He added that if the voters rejected early elections he would "find another way to have the elections." Belgrade's state-controlled media largely ignored the event until this weekend. According to Radio Croatia, Kosovo's Albanian majority boycotted the balloting. (Milan Andrejevich, RFE/RL Inc.) CARDINAL GLEMP IN ROMANIA. The Polish primate, cardinal Glemp, arrived in Bucharest on 9 October for a three-day visit. Glemp, who is the guest of the Roman-Catholic bishop of Iasi, Petru Gherghel, participated in services in several Catholic churches in the Suceava county , met representatives of the Polish minority in Romania, and visited Iasi. Radio Bucharest said Prime Minister Theodor Stolojan and Foreign Affairs Minister Adrian Nastase would receive the Polish primate before his departure. (Michael Shafir, RFE/RL Inc.). SLOVAK FOREIGN MINISTER DISMISSES COMPLAINTS OF ETHNIC HUNGARIANS. Slovak Foreign Minister Milan Knazko was quoted by CTSK on 9 October as having said after a meeting with French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas in Paris that he had never seen a specific example of abuse of the Hungarian minority in Slovakia. Knazko reportedly told Dumas that "increasing nationalism from Budapest" had caused members of Slovakia's ethnic minorities to protest "some sort of fictitious violations of their rights." He said that minority demands in Slovakia were aimed at the destruction of the civil society and the state. (Jan Obrman, RFE/RL Inc.) WEU FACT-FINDING MISSION IN ROMANIA. A delegation of the West European Union (WEU) arrived in Romania on 11 October on a fact-finding mission focusing on Romania's compliance with the UN embargo on trade with the rump Yugoslav state, Western agencies reported. The delegation will spend five days in Romania speaking with government officials and touring the common border with rump Yugoslavia, as well as the 200 kilometer stretch of the Danube river that runs through the country. (Michael Shafir, RFE/RL Inc.). BULGARIA REGRETS EC'S TOUGHENING. Bulgaria's negotiations toward an association agreement with the European Community are being hampered by individual EC states' economic problems, Bulgarian officials told Reuters on 11 October. Deputy Prime Minister and chief negotiator Ilko Eskenazi said some EC members were "extremely jealous" regarding their positions in sectors such as textile, agriculture and metals, the areas in which Bulgaria is considered to be most competitive. Last Tuesday the EC cut its original offer on farm imports, a decision which contradicted a June declaration speaking about the need for boosting economic ties with Eastern Europe. (Kjell Engelbrekt, RFE/RL Inc.) LATVIAN DEFENSE MINISTRY PROTESTS RUSSIAN FLIGHTS. During the first 8 days of October Russian military aircraft based in Latvia violated Latvia's flight regulations 18 times, an official of the Latvian Defense Ministry told Radio Riga on 9 October. The Latvian Foreign Ministry had sent protest notes over previous flight violations and he pointed out that the attitude of the Northwestern Group of Forces leadership seems to be hardening toward Latvia as shown by recent statements saying that they would abide only by the results of Russian-Latvian negotiations, not the resolutions of the Latvian authorities. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL Inc.) NWGF OFFICERS: MORATORIUM ON WITHDRAWAL FROM THE BALTICS. Col. Vitalii Kandalovsky told Diena of 9 October that the Coordination Council of the Baltic Officers Organizations has called upon the Russian government to suspend the pullout of troops from the Baltic States. The organization represents both active Russian and retired Soviet officers in the Baltic States. Kandalovsky said that his organization was dissatisfied with the unresolved "social problems" awaiting the officers when they are transferred to Russia and with the way the Russian army property is being sold private individuals. The organization has also asked the Russian court to examine the validity of the accords on troop withdrawal from Lithuania. While in Riga, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Vitaly Churkin commented on the officers' declaration, saying the government decides on troop pullouts, and that public organizations could merely express their views, BNS reported on 10 October. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL Inc.) ESTONIA REJECTS RUSIAN CONDITIONS FOR TROOP WITHDRAWAL. Ministry official told reporters on 10 October that Russia is breaking its promises by demanding that troop withdrawals be linked to human rights. Toivo Klaar, chief of the MFA Political Department, told ETA that Russia had repeatedly assured Estonia that withdrawals were not linked to Estonia's treatment of its substantial Russian population. Last week, Russian President Boris Yeltsin said the forces would not be withdrawn until Russian residents' rights were guaranteed. Estonia maintains that such guarantees are already in place. (Riina Kionka, RFE/RL Inc.) GASOLINE SALES STOPPED IN LITHUANIA. On 10 October sales of gasoline to private and state motor vehicles in Lithuania were stopped except for ambulances, police, firemen, prosecuting bodies, National Defense Ministry, food delivery, and some other special services, Radio Lithuania reports. The sole exception will be six hard-currency stations operated by the Lithuanian-Finnish joint venture "Litofinn Service" that will sell a liter of gasoline for $.82 and of diesel fuel for $.62. The move is unlikely to halt all vehicle traffic since many individuals, learning from the Soviet economic blockade in 1990, have stored gasoline in their garages. (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL Inc.) HUNGARIAN-AUSTRIAN DEPORTATION AGREEMENT. Hungarian and Austrian Interior Ministers signed a deportation agreement in Salzburg on 10 October, Hungarian radio reported. The agreement had been sought by Austria, but Hungary could not sign before it had similar agreements with its other neighbors. An agreement was recently concluded between Hungary and Romania. Both agreements stipulate that illegal immigrants and refugees can be sent back to the country of their origin. (Karoly Okolicsanyi, RFE/RL Inc.) BULGARIAN SCHOOL STRIKE ENDS. After a one-week strike that virtually paralyzed Bulgarian schools, teachers' unions on 10 October announced they had struck a deal with government negotiators. According to Bulgarian and Western agencies, an agreement was reached through "mutual concessions." Although no details have yet been released, reports say teachers will receive a substantial salary increase. (Kjell Engelbrekt, RFE/RL Inc.) MACEDONIAN DENAR DEVALUED. The parliament of the Republic of Macedonia, meeting in extended session on 9 October, devalued its currency, the denar, by 67%, reports an RFE/RL correspondent in Skopje. The measure, intended to restore economic stability and save the largely successful antiinflationary program put in place on 26 April 1992. The program became necessary as a result of the legislature's July decision, made under pressure from the trade unions, to allow up to 50% wage hikes, thus initiating a new cycle of inflation. (Duncan Perry, RFE/RL Inc.)
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--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Federal leaders say referendum will not force elections Subject: Published report says U.S. considering arms for Bosnia Subject: Game 18 a draw in Fischer-Spassky series Subject: Bosnians to boycott U.N.-brokered military chiefs meeting Subject: Ethnic Albanians protest Serbian education policies, repression --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Federal leaders say referendum will not force elections Date: 11 Oct 92 13:55:03 GMT BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (UPI) -- Voters in Serbia cast ballots Sunday in a referendum on holding early presidential and assembly elections but federal leaders vowed there would be elections no matter the outcome of what is widely viewed as a scheme by the republic's ruling communists to retain power. The 12-hours of polling began at 7 a.m. and the republic Election Commission reported that 35 percent of the more than 7 million qualified voters had cast ballots by mid-day amid rainy, chilly weather. The communist-controlled panel said the results would be known on Tuesday. In the opposition stronghold of Belgrade, voting appeared brisk, with lines of mostly middle-aged and elderly residents waiting to cast their ballots. Reports from the restive province of Kosovo confirmed a boycott by the independence-seeking ethnic Albanian majority to protest repressive Serbian rule condemned by Western governments and human rights groups as one of Europe's worst human rights crises. The referendum asked voters to approve or reject a constitutional amendment that would authorize early elections before the end of the year for the republic's presidency and 250-member assembly. But, opposition leaders charged that the referendum was merely a scheme devised by Milosevic and his Socialist Party of Serbia to avoid a test of the five-year mandates they won in December 1990 as demanded by their main rivals, federal Prime Minister Milan Panic and his chief ally, Dobrica Cosic, the president of the rump Yugoslav union forged in April by Serbia and Montenegro. The referendum, opposition leaders pointed out, required a hard-to- achieve turnout of more than 50 percent of the electorate to be legitimate and the amendment could only pass with the support of the same proportion of registered voters, something considered almost impossible. A defeat would prohibit the holding of another referendum for six months. Casting their ballots at separate times in Belgrade's posh residential neighborhood of Dedinje, Panic and Cosic vowed that early elections would be held in Serbia no matter the outcome. ``If the referendum in Serbia fails, then we shall act under another possibility, dissolve the Assembly and act according to the constitution of Serbia,'' said Cosic, a 70-year-old former communist censor-turned- popular author and ultra-nationalist. Asked if there would be early federal elections, Panic replied: ``Absolutely, and there will be a Serbian one as well.'' ``If there is a need, we will find another way to go to the polls,'' said Panic, 62, a Belgrade-born naturalized U.S. citizen and multi- millionaire businessman. Neither man elaborated on their statements. Both believe that the ouster of Milosevic and his party is the prime requisite for the lifting of U.N. economic sanctions imposed on Serbia and Montenegro in May for underwriting the Serbian territorial conquests in the neighboring former Yugoslav republic of Bosnia-Hercegovina. The sanctions, which included an embargo on oil imports, have gravely exacerbated economic chaos triggered by the breakup of former Yugoslavia and Milosevic's support for last year's Serbian uprising in Croatia and the ongoing land-grab in Bosnia-Hercegovina, both of which are viewed as components of a plan to create a ``Great Serbia.'' Recent public opinion polls have showed a significant drop in support for Milosevic as Serbian citizens increasingly blame him for the lack of gasoline, shortages of milk, flour, and cooking oil, raging inflation, widespread plant closings, rising unemployment and international isolation. ``I shall vote in favor of the early elections because we need changes,'' said Tvrtko Grgurevic, a 61-year-old engineer, as he waited to vote in Belgrade's Vracar area. ``It is a high time that the situation calms down, that we reach peace. There is no need for people to wage war.'' But, Milosevic sounded a defiant note in a television interview Saturday night, saying: ``If I had to do it all over again, I would do the same.'' He launched a vicious attack against Panic and Cosic, a onetime ally, saying the former took his orders ``from Washington. We'll see about the other one.'' Opposition leaders said the referendum was not required, as Milosevic could have called early elections simply by dismissing the Assembly and resigning. But by using the referendum, they said, Milosevic avoided a step that would have been regarded as an admission of responsibility for Serbia's deep woes. And, they pointed out, in case the amendment was approved, Milosevic would be able to maintain control of the state election apparatus, police and mass media throughout the electoral campaign. Milosevic's party and the opposition still have to agree on guidelines and a law for early elections for the 138-member Chamber of Citizens of the Yugoslav --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Published report says U.S. considering arms for Bosnia Date: 11 Oct 92 17:19:58 GMT NEW YORK (UPI) -- Pentagon and Defense Department officials are weighing the idea of sending arms to Muslim Slavs in war-torn Bosnia- Hercegovina, but some top administration officials are opposed, The New York Times reported Sunday. The Bush administration is hesitant to change its policy toward Bosnia so close to the Nov. 3 presidential election, the newspaper said. Washington is also reluctant to involve the U.S. military in the conflict in the former Yugoslav republic, the report said. The Times said Acting Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger and Gen. Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other senior administration officials oppose sending arms to Bosnia. They fear such intervention would escalate the fighting, the newspaper said. However, administration officials are also torn by the need to end the conflict in the Balkans, which President Bush last week described as ``a flagrant disregard for human life.'' The Muslim Slavs in Bosnia- Hercegovina are heavily outgunned by Serbians seeking to carve a Serb state out of the fledgling nation and annex it to the Yugoslav federation of Serbia and Montenegro. Bush signed into law this past week a foreign aid bill that authorizes $50 million in military aid to Bosnia once a U.N. arms embargo on the troubled area is lifted. However, there remain obstacles to sending arms to Bosnia. ``Administation officials who favor sending weapons to Bosnians say that any decision about changing course on Balkan policy has been delayed until after the presidential election,'' the Times said. ``And any such effort would require Washington to persuade the United Nations to lift its arms embargo on the area.'' Meanwhile, U.S. intelligence officials said the ban imposed Friday by the U.N. Security Council on military air traffic over Bosnia really does not mean much in terms of reducing civilian casualties. Tanks, artillery and other ground weapons controlled by the Serbs are enough to prevent a shift in the balance of power, they said. However, the Times said these officials see the ``no-fly'' zone as essential for the safety of flights carrying humanitarian relief and as a first step in the peace process. ``It's largely a political signal that the international community has put the Serbs on notice,'' the newspaper quoted one administration official as saying. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Game 18 a draw in Fischer-Spassky series Date: 11 Oct 92 21:26:00 GMT BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (UPI) -- Former world chess champion Bobby Fischer and longtime rival Boris Spassky played to a draw in the 18th match of their controversial chess series. Fischer, who played black in a ``queen's gambit accepted'' strategy, offered the draw after Spassky's 36th move. He retains a 7-games-to-3 lead in the series, just three victories away from wrapping it up. ``This game was quite unimaginative. I think both Fischer and Spassky should be satisfied with the outcome,'' said Aleksandar Matanovic, a Yugoslav chess expert. It was the eighth draw in Fischer and Spassky's $5 million match, which started Oct. 3 in the plush Adriatic resort of Sveti Stefan. The series was moved to Belgrade after three weeks. The next game is scheduled for Wednesday. Fischer still faces a $250,000 fine and a maximum 10 years in jail for playing the match in the rump Yugoslav union of Serbia and Montenegro. The U.S. Treasury Department warned before the series that Fischer would violate the U.N. ban on economic and financial transactions with Yugoslavia if he competed. The sanctions were introduced because of Serbia's role in the war in neighboring Bosnia-Hercegovina. Fischer literally spat on the department's cease-and-desist order during a news conference on the eve of the match, Sept 2. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Bosnians to boycott U.N.-brokered military chiefs meeting Date: 12 Oct 92 14:06:38 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- The government accused Serbian forces Monday of new violations of a U.N.-imposed ban on military flights over Bosnia-Hercegovina amid conflicting reports on fighting for a land corridor of vital importance to the Serbs on the northern flank of the former Yugoslav republic. In another development, the Bosnian government reportedly planned to boycott talks called in Sarajevo between the warring factions by U.N. officials to discuss humanitarian operations and the restoration of electricity and water supplies to Sarajevo. Sarajevo radio said Stjepan Siber, the Bosnian army vice chief, sent U.N. Protection Force Gen. Phillipe Morillon a letter in which he accused the French commander of being duped by Serbian promises not to use water and electricity as weapons against civilian populations. The radio, quoting government allegations, said Serbian warjets made 25 to 30 sorties Sunday over central and northern Bosnia-Hercegovina in a second consecutive day of violations of a ban on military flights declared Friday by the U.N. Security Council. The council authorized only U.N. and humanitarian flights, but provided no enforcement mechanism. There was no independent confirmation of the Sarajevo radio report. Serbian officials have denied their Yugoslav army-supplied warjets have violated the ban, but Western reporters this weekend observed overflights of northern Bosnia-Hercegovina by at least a half-dozen Serbian aircraft. Bosnian and Croatian forces do not possess military planes. Serbian forces claimed that they succeeded in reopening the land corridor linking Serbia with Serb-held areas of northwestern Bosnia- Hercegovina after their units recaptured a stretch of road seized Friday by Croat-Muslim Slav fighters in the village of Gorica, near the Serb- held northeastern town of Brcko. ``As of this morning, traffic has been restored and vehicles are driving without problems,'' said a Serbian statement carried by Tanjug, the official news agency of the Serbia-controlled rump Yugoslav federation. Serbian forces ``destroyed four enemy tanks,'' said the statement, which added that Serbian positions were shelled overnight by regular Croatian army units that crossed the Sava River into Bosnia-Hercegovina from Croatia. State-run radio in the Croatian capital of Zagreb, however, claimed that units of the Croatian Defense Council, the main Croatian paramilitary force fighting in Bosnia-Hercegovina, maintained their grip on the Gorica area despite heavy fighting, and that the corridor remained cut. The corridor comprises territory claimed as part of a self-declared state that Serbian forces have been fighting to conquer since the runup to international recognition of Bosnia-Hercegovina's independence from the defunct six-republic Yugoslav federation in early April. The partition of the republic is opposed by Muslim Slavs, moderate Serbs and Croats loyal to the Bosnian government. The corridor is of extreme importance to the Serbs because it is the only efficient way they can transport large amounts of military and other supplies from Serbia, their main political and economic patron, to Serb-held areas in northwestern Bosnia-Hercegovina and western Croatia. The talks between military representatives of the warring factions called by Morillon at the U.N. headquarters in Sarajevo were aimed at advancing humanitarian aid operations, including U.N.-assisted efforts to reconnect water and electricity supplies to the beleaguered Bosnian capital. The supplies have been cut for weeks to most of the city, and the natural gas mains were disconnected within the past week, prompting citizens to chop down trees and rip apart wooden furniture in frantic preparations for winter. Telephone service, which had continued to work within the city and some of its suburbs, was cut Monday morning in western areas. Telephone officials blamed previous outages on shortages of diesel fuel for generators. The U.N. High Commission for Refugees said 16 aircraft were scheduled to arrive during the day with 160 tons of food and medical supplies as part of the international humanitarian airlift to Sarajevo. Four trucks bearing 30 tons of aid were also expected from Croatia's Adriatic port city of Split, the agency said. Sarajevo enjoyed one of its quietest nights. The calm was broken in the morning by sporadic artillery fire and sniper attacks. Soldiers attached to the U.N. headquarters launched a search for a sniper after the gunman wounded a man waiting at the building's front gate. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Ethnic Albanians protest Serbian education policies, repression Date: 12 Oct 92 15:38:09 GMT BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (UPI) -- About 30,000 ethnic Albanians staged a peaceful one-hour march Monday in the Kosovo provincial capital of Pristina to protest the hard-line rule of the communist regime of Serbia and demand the right to formulate their own educational programs, witnesses said. The witnesses, reached by telephone, attributed the lack of incidents to the very small number of Serbian police deployed for the first demonstration held in months in the restive nominally autonomous southern province. The protest began at midday outside Pristina University, with some 30,000 ethnic Albanian students and teachers shouting slogans, including ``Open schools for us'' and ``Police keep out of our schools,'' the witnesses said. The protesters, holding their fingers aloft in ``V'' for victory signs, marched down the main street of Pristina, some 200 miles south of Belgrade, before dispersing peacefully, witnesses said. Similar protests were also reportedly held in towns across Kosovo, home to 1.7 million ethnic Albanians and some 200,000 Serbs. The demonstrations were called by ethnic Albanian opposition parties to demand the right to replace with one of their own an educational curriculum imposed last year by Belgrade. Ethnic Albanians contend Belgrade's curriculum is overly weighted toward Serbian history and literature. They regard its imposition as part of the hard-line tactics of Serbia's communist regime to repress their demands for independence for Kosovo. Tens of thousands of ethnic Albanian high school and university students and teachers declared a boycott of classes to protest the Serbian educational curriculum. Serbian authorities responded by shutting down schools across the province and suspending ethnic Albanian teachers and professors. The regime of President Slobodan Milosevic has been condemned by Western governments and international human rights groups for employing some of the most repressive steps still in effect in Europe to maintain its grip on Kosovo, cherished by Serbs as the ``cradle'' of their centuries-old culture and religion. In July 1990, Milosevic took total control of the provincial administration, dissolving the assembly and government and replacing virtually all ethnic Albanian officials, enterprise managers, and other professionals with Serbs from Serbia.
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----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: First referendum results suggest early Serbian elections unlikely Subject: U.N. commander optimistic after meeting Serbs ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: First referendum results suggest early Serbian elections unlikely Date: 12 Oct 92 20:50:18 GMT BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (UPI) -- A constitutional amendment that would require communist President Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia to call early presidential and assembly elections was almost certain to fail because of an insufficient voter turnout in a weekend referendum, incomplete returns showed Monday. The amendment's failure would represent a major setback for Yugoslav Prime Minister Milan Panic and federal President Dobrica Cosic and force them to intensify an ongoing power struggle with Milosevic, whose ouster they view as the main condition for the lifting of chaos-fueling U.N. economic sanctions. ``Milosevic may win this particular skirmish and now it is up to them (Panic and Cosic) to figure out how to crank up the pressure,'' said a Western diplomat. ``The referendum failed because people are tired of the people who designed it, not because they don't want radical changes,'' said Svetozar Stojanovic, a chief advisor to Cosic, in an interview given to independent Studio B Television late Monday. ``We've got to have the early elections, and we will find a constitutional way to allow them,'' he said, clearly blaming Milosevic's regime for the failure. Announcing incomplete returns from Sunday's referendum, the republic Election Commission said that only 46 percent of the voters in 181 of Serbia's 190 electoral districts cast ballots. Under Serbia's communist-authored constitution, more than 50 percent of the 7 million-strong electorate must turn out for a referendum to be legitimate. An Election Commission spokesman said final results would be known on Tuesday. The vast majority of the ballots counted by late Monday afternoon favored the constitutional amendment that would authorize early elections for Serbia's president and 250-seat Assembly before the end of this year, he said. Reports from the tense province of Kosovo showed that most voters among the independence-seeking 2 million-strong ethnic Albanian majority boycotted the referendum to protest Belgrade's repressive rule. Ethnic Hungarians from Vojvodina province also boycotted the referendum, and so did Muslim Slavs from the troubled region of Sandzak, the Election Commission spokesman said. Opposition leaders argued for weeks that Milosevic hit on the referendum as a scheme to avoid a test of the five-year mandate he won in December 1990 polls that also saw his Socialist Party of Serbia win a massive majority in the republic assembly. They contended that Milosevic was well aware of how difficult it would be to obtain a turnout of more than 50 percent and that he was also knew that passage of the constitutional amendment would require the approval of more than half the electorate. Opposition leaders said that had he really favored early elections, Milosevic could have simply dismissed the Assembly and resigned. Milosevic has also obstructed efforts by Panic and Cosic to hold early polls for the federal Parliament by using the massive communist majority he controls to block approval of a new election law. Early elections are being demanded by Panic, a Belgrade-born naturalized U.S. citizen, and his chief ally, Cosic, as a way of ending Milosevic's grip on power and advancing their efforts to free Serbia from the U.N. sanctions imposed for its support for the Serbian territorial conquests in adjacent Bosnia-Hercegovina. The sanctions, which became effective May 30 and included an oil embargo, have fueled raging economic havoc in Serbia and its tiny dependent, Montenegro, which forged a union in April to replace the defunct six-republic Yugoslav federation. Many observers have expressed fears that without the safety valve of early elections, seething anti-government discontent could explode into civil strife in Serbia and Montenegro. Panic and Cosic, who played a key role in Milosevic's ascent to power five years ago, on Sunday vowed to see that early elections are held in Serbia irrespective of the outcome of the referendum. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: U.N. commander optimistic after meeting Serbs Date: 12 Oct 92 20:43:19 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- The U.N. military commander for Bosnia-Hercegovina met Serbian leaders Monday and said he won their support for a permanent land corridor to bring humanitarian supplies into Sarajevo. French Gen. Phillipe Morillon, in a somewhat upbeat assessment after a morning of talks also attended by Croat military chiefs, said he expected the city's electricity and water to be restored within days or perhaps hours. Morillon, facing reporters in a city highly skeptical of such promises after enduring more than six months of siege, insisted he was willing to take the Serbian commitments at face value and declined to discuss any deadlines or ultimatums. ``I hope I am not being a dreamer...I believe that every interlocutor facing me is sincere,'' said Morillon, named this month to head the U.N. Protection Forces republic-wide operation. Morillon also said he was not in a position to confirm or deny reports that Serbian warplanes have repeatedly violated the ban on flights over Bosnia-Hercegovina imposed Friday by the U.N. Security Council. Bosnians boycotted what would have been the first scheduled UNPROFOR- supervised meeting of military leaders of their republic's three main warring factions, contending that U.N. forces have done too little to restore Sarajevo's utility supplies. Fighting was reported to be relatively light Monday throughout Bosnia-Hercegovina. Serbian forces, however, said they had recaptured a key land link in the northern part of the republic that Bosnian forces had cut over the weekend. The Bosnians, meanwhile, accused Serbian forces of again violating the U.N. flight ban. Sarajevo Radio, which relays official Bosnian reports, said Serbian forces made 25 to 30 flights Sunday over the central and northern parts of the republic, violating for a second straight day the U.N. flight ban. Separately, the Red Cross made plans to run two land convoys to carry women, children and the elderly out of Sarajevo, Serbian and Bosnian media said. The convoys destined for Split and Belgrade were scheduled to leave sometime after Wednesday, Sarajevo radio said. Morillon said Serbian military leaders at the talks Monday agreed to a further series of daily meetings at which the three warring factions will discuss matters such as the delivery of humanitarian aid. He said he was pushing first for guarantees to allow the delivery of humanitarian supplies through the western Sarajevo suburb of Ilidza, the city's only reliable access route during winter. Ilidza has been the scene of some of the heaviest fighting around the capital as Serbian and Bosnian forces vie for control of the winter route. Morillon said he proposed that the United Nations take control of the route and then establish checkpoints at which the warring factions could ensure only non-military goods were being allowed to pass. ``Without this condition, peace can never be established,'' he said. He gave no timetable for reaching an agreement on opening the corridor, but said it was particularly crucial as cold weather moved into the region. Bosnian Vice President Ejub Ganic, whose side refused to participate in the talks before the city's utilities are restored, suggested before the meeting that Morillon should resign to demonstrate to the world community that he has been given an impossible mission. Morillon said he realized the ``vicious circle'' he faced and said he and everyone else involved in the conflict ultimately had to wait for success from the U.N.- and European Community-mediated Yugoslav peace talks now taking place in Geneva. ``The real location where the definitive solution will be found is Geneva,'' he said. UNPROFOR spokesman Mik Magnusson said several of the UNPROFOR- escorted trips by utility workers to locations needing repair work have been successful, although he reported one case Friday in which a local Serbian commander controlling the area of Moscanica, northeast of the capital, refused to permit work at a water pumping facility. Water and electricity supplies have been cut off for weeks to most of the city, and Sarajevo's natural gas supplies were disconnected during the past week. Sarajevo's citizens have been chopping down trees and ripping apart wooden furniture in a frantic bid to prepare for winter. Telephone service, which has continued to operate within the city and some of its suburbs, was cut off Monday morning in western areas of Sarajevo. Telephone officials have previously blamed the outages on shortages of diesel fuel necessary to run generators, although the outages have repeatedly occurred in lines affecting the UNPROFOR headquarters and U. N. officials have suggested it may be designed to win fuel deliveries. The U.N. High Commission for Refugees said it expected Monday to receive 16 relief flights into Sarajevo, carrying about 160 tons of supplies, and another four trucks, carrying 30 tons. The UNHCR's Sarajevo operation on Sunday received about 280 tons of humanitarian aid which arrived by plane and land convoy. It is the first time it has surpassed its daily goal since aid flights resumed on Oct. 3. A Serbian forces statement said Monday the land corridor near Brcko in northeastern Bosnia-Hercegovina, recaptured from Bosnian forces over the weekend, was open to traffic, allowing the movement between Serbia and Serb-controlled enclaves in western Bosnia-Hercegovina and Croatia. Serbian guerrillas, in clashes over the weekend against Bosnian forces made up mainly of Muslim Slavs but also including Croats and moderate Serbs, ``destroyed four enemy tanks'' during their assault to recapture the small road section at Brcko, it said. The Serbian statement said forces of the ``regular Croatian army'' entered Bosnia-Hercegovina from neighboring Croatia and ``overnight opened intermittent artillery fire'' on Serbian positions outside Brcko and the villages of Grbavica, Grcica and Gorica. Two civilians were injured in Grcica, the statement said. Sarajevo radio, after being quiet on the matter over the weekend, only Monday confirmed the Bosnian military's short-lived weekend success in cutting the land corridor at the village of Gorica in Brcko. It also said that Serbian forces to the west of Brcko made several failed infantry attempts to establish control of a corridor between Doboj and Teslic, and fired grenades overnight throughout the region. Artillery attacks and fighting also was reported Monday around the northern towns of Maglaj, Gradacac, Bihac and Tuzla, and along the southern Bosnian front lines in Capljina. At least 36 people were killed and 146 injured across Bosnia- Hercegovina in the 24-hour period ended at 10 a.m. Monday, including six killed and 20 injured in Sarajevo, republic health officials said. The victims included four children in the capital who were killed, and another 12 injured, many seriously, when a shell exploded Saturday near an orphanage.
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RFE/RL Daily Report No. 197, October 13, 1992 SUCCESSOR STATES TO THE USSR RUSSIA CALLS FOR ABKHAZ CEASEFIRE; YELTSIN-SHEVARDNADZE SUMMIT POSTPONED. On 12 October, the Russian government issued a statement characterizing the fighting in Abkhazia as a threat to the entire North Caucasus, and called for an immediate, unconditional ceasefire in the region, ITAR-TASS reported. Western news agencies quoted a Russian presidential spokeswoman as stating that the three-way talks between Shevardnadze, Yelstsin and Abkhaz parliament Chairman Vladislav Ardzinba scheduled for 13 October had been postponed because the necessary documents are not ready. Shevardnadze cast doubt on Ardzinba's participation; he went on to blame Russian generals acting on their own initiative for exacerbating the bloodshed in Abkhazia. (Liz Fuller, RFE/RL Inc.) GEORGIA, UKRAINE PROTEST RUSSIAN USE OF NAVY IN ABKHAZIA. Ukraine's naval command reported on 12 October that Russia had dispatched nine ships of the Black Sea Fleet to positions off Abkhazia without consultation, despite the agreement to share command of the fleet. The deployment is reportedly under the personal command of Admiral Kasatanov, Commander of the Black Sea Fleet. Initially the ships were to provide security during a planned shipboard meeting between Yeltsin and Shevardnadze, but the deployment continued even after the summit's cancellation. Georgia protested an incident in which two Russian warships sailed into Sukhumi harbor, which is still under Georgian control, and reportedly pointed their guns at the city while ignoring attempts to communicate by local officials, according to Reuters. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL Inc.) RUSSIANS SEIZE GREENPEACE SHIP. Russian border troops seized the Greenpeace ship "Solo" off the arctic island of Novaya Zemlya the morning of 12 October. ISAR-TASS reported that the ship was on a mission to inspect what Greenpeace labeled a "nuclear graveyard" in the Kara Sea where 15 atomic submarines and 17,000 drums of nuclear waste had been dumped. The Russians claim the vessel was within Russian territorial waters at the time, although Greenpeace claims that it was 23 miles outside the Russian 12-mile limit. (Doug Clarke, RFE/RL Inc.) KRAVCHUK SELECTS NEW PRIME MINISTER. Leonid Kuchma, head of the Yuzhmash concern that produced Soviet tactical nuclear missiles, says that Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk has asked him to form a new cabinet, Reuters reported on 13 October. "I have received an official invitation [from Kravchuk] but want to think about this overnight," Kuchma is quoted as saying. Kuchma's name had surfaced in the press earlier as a possible choice for the prime minister's post. Various political parties have proposed the candidacies of Volodymyr Lanovyi, Volodymyr Chernyak, Ihor Yukhnovsky, Volodymyr Pylypchuk, Ivan Plyushch, and others. On the morning of 13 October, Kuchma fielded questions in parliament on the policies he would adopt. (Roman Solchanyk, RFE/RL Inc.) SHAPOSHNIKOV ON RESULTS OF BISHKEK SUMMIT. In a 12 October press conference reported by ITAR-TASS and Interfax, CIS Commander-In-Chief Shaposhnikov stated that he was satisfied with the summit's decision to agree on a joint military security concept as well as a new structure for the CIS command. The CIS command will take on responsibility for peacekeeping operations within the CIS, coordinating operational and mobilization preparations, military-scientific research, and coordinating the interaction of the military commands of the member states. Shaposhnikov will also be developing a military "concept" that will function like a doctrine for the CIS military. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL Inc.) COMMANDER OF CIS STRATEGIC DETERRENT FORCES REMOVED. General Yuri Maksimov was removed from his position at the Bishkek summit, and his responsibilities are to be shared between CIS Commander-in-Chief Shaposhnikov and the Commander of the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces (SRF), General Smirnov, according to Interfax reports of 10-12 October and Nezavisimaya gazeta of 8 October. The move eliminates a duplication between the CIS and Russian military command structure and recognizes the fact that all command, control, and support elements, for the SRF, apart from those in Ukraine, are under Russian control. The move is also consistent with Shaposhnikov's aim to entrust all nuclear weapons control to Russia, a proposal which Ukraine blocked at the summit. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL Inc.) KHASBULATOV CALLS FOR POLTORANIN'S DISMISSAL. Russian Supreme Soviet Chairman Ruslan Khasbulatov has asked President Boris Yeltsin to dismiss Deputy Prime Minister Mikhail Poltoranin, Interfax reported on 12 October. In a letter to Yeltsin, Khasbulatov said that Poltoranin should be fired because of comments he made last week, which Khasbulatov said were aimed at inciting anger against him. Poltoranin, who is also Russian Information Minister, accused Khasbulatov on 9 October of attempting to "provoke a social explosion in Russia" by trying to take over Izvestiya. He was also quoted, in Izvestiya, as saying that Khasbulatov was "undermining the stability of Russia." (Keith Bush, RFE/RL Inc.) BELARUSIAN PESSIMISM OVER RUBLE ZONE. Two top Belarusian government officials expressed doubts whether their country would stay within the ruble zone. Prime Minister Vyacheslav Kebich told a press conference in Minsk on 12 October that, although Belarus remains interested in maintaining a single currency zone, it may have to introduce its own currency, if the "purchasing power of the ruble falls further," Belinform-TASS reported. The Interfax account of the same conference portrayed Belarusian withdrawal from the currency zone as a foregone conclusion, however, quoting the Belarusian speaker of parliament, Stanislav Shuskevich: "It will be difficult for us [to rapidly introduce our own currency], but I'm afraid we must. . ." Shuskevich did not disclose when this might happen. (Erik Whitlock, RFE/RL Inc.) OTHER RUBLE ZONE DEVELOPMENTS. On 12 October, several reports appeared on the use of the ruble in former Soviet republics. According to ITAR-TASS, Tajikistan announced that it has decided to retain the ruble as its national currency and that it has agreed to maintain a single monetary policy with Russia. Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev told Reuters that Kyrgyzstan will leave the ruble zone by 1995 and introduce its own currency. And the new Azeri minister of finance, Salekh Mamedov, told Azerinform that he believed that the manat should be the only unit of currency in Azerbaijan and that the ruble should be withdrawn from circulation. (Keith Bush, RFE/RL Inc.) SECOND 29TH CP CONGRESS IN SPRING 1993. Leaders of the banned CPSU said on 12 October that they will hold a congress next spring aimed at renewing the party in an alliance across the former USSR, ITAR-TASS reported. Konstantin Nikolaev, the president of the organizing committee for the congress, was quoted as saying that the meeting would mark an attempt to convene a successful 29th Party Congress. Nikolaev also said that his committee has decided to reestablish the Komsomol. An attempt to convene a Communist Party congress earlier this year was largely unsuccessful when the authorities refused to allow the party to rent a hall in Moscow and when few attended the meeting at an obscure location outside the city. (Keith Bush, RFE/RL Inc.) GORBACHEV DOES NOT FEAR ARREST. Interviewed by French TV on 10 October, Gorbachev said he does not fear arrest due to his current dispute with the Russian authorities. The government has not completely "lost its head," Gorbachev explained. He also denied as "crazy" the government's claim that he planned a Leninist-style political comeback. Earlier that day, the Moscow newspaper Kuranty reportedly published the government audit papers which document that the Gorbachev foundation had indeed leased space to Russian and Western businessmen. However, according to "Vesti," the government knows about similar pratices by hundreds of other organizations, and yet it does not seize their buildings. It is noteworthy that no Russian TV newscast has yet informed their respective audiences about protests by the French and Italian governments against the Russian government's treatment of Gorbachev. (Julia Wishnevsky, RFE/RL Inc.) NATO DOUBTS ALL TACTICAL NUCLEAR WEAPONS WITHDRAWN FROM RUSSIAN NAVY. According to an AFP report of 12 October, NATO officials are concerned that Russia is not fulfilling a commitment made by the USSR in October 1991 to withdraw all sea-based tactical nuclear weapons. The report noted that NATO officials are likely to express their concern at a meeting of the NATO Nuclear Planning Group on 20-21 October. Russia has withdrawn all tactical nuclear weapons from the other former republics, including any stationed with the Black Sea Fleet, but sea-based tactical systems might remain on board the Baltic, Northern, and Pacific Fleets. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL Inc.) MOSCOW CONFERENCE ON CONVERSION. The Russian Institute of Strategic Research will hold a conference in Moscow on October 14-16 to discuss the problems associated with the conversion of military factories to civilian output, according to an ITAR-TASS report of 7 October. Entitled "Conversion and Cooperation," the gathering is being held at the initiative of the Russian parliamentary committee for defense and security. The plenary meetings will examine military, strategic, financial, and social problems connected with conversion. (Doug Clarke, RFE/RL Inc.) YELTSIN ANNULLS EDICT ON FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE AFFILIATION. In an unusual step, President Yeltsin cancelled the change of the name of the foreign intelligence service of the Russian federation, which was envisaged in his edict on the reorganization of the government, published by Rossiiskaya gazeta on 7 October. The new name was expected to be "the Russian federal service for foreign intelligence." The title implies that the agency will become an agency of the executive branch of government. On 9 October, however, Rossiiskaya gazeta published Yeltsin's new edict, which left intact the old name and stressed that the foreign intelligence is subordinated directly to the Russian president. According to the law, the agency will also be accountable to the parliament. Yeltsin's retreat reflects the ungoing political struggle for control over the spy agency: the law on foreign intelligence adopted in July includes provisions for accountability of the foreign intelligence agency to the legislative and judicial branches. (Victor Yasmann, RFE/RL Inc.) RUSSIANS SEEK EMPLOYMENT ABROAD. According to Interfax on 10 October, figures from the migration department of the Russian Ministry of Labor suggest that about 100,000 Russians have already found jobs abroad independently, without any mediation on the part of the state. Other studies carried out by the Ministry suggest that a further 1.5 million want to emigrate and 4.5 million are seriously considering this option. The Ministry is concerned to control this emigration process in order to protect the interests of Russian workers abroad, and is attempting to set up intergovernmental agreements to this effect. According to Interfax on 9 October, such "organized" labur migration is seen as one way of easing prospective reform-related unemployment. Particular reference is made to employment opportunities abroad for skilled specialists from defence industry enterprises. (Sheila Marnie, RFE/RL Inc.) CRIMEAN TATAR MEJLIS RULED UNCONSTITUTIONAL. An extraordinary session of the Crimean parliament ruled on 8 October that the Crimean Tatar Mejlis and the Organization of the Crimean Tatar National Movement (OKND) are unconstitutional bodies, Nezavisimaya gazeta reported on 10 October. The Mejlis and the OKND are characterized as having taken a confrontational course towards the local authorities from the time that they were established. The stand taken by the Crimean lawmakers has, in essence, been supported by Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk and the Crimean parliamentary speaker, Mykola Bahrov. The two met in Kiev on 12 October and condemned an "extremist group" acting in the name of the Mejlis. Kravchuk added that he would cooperate only with the legally elected organs of power in the Crimea, which is bound to exacerbate already strained relations between Kiev and the Crimean Tatars. (Roman Solchanyk, RFE/RL Inc.) SHEVARDNADZE ELECTED GEORGIAN PARLIAMENT CHAIRMAN. Officials of the Georgian Central Electoral Commission told Western journalists on 12 October that according to preliminary estimates, Eduard Shevardnadze received approximately 90% of the votes cast in the previous day's elections. Speaking on Georgian TV on the night of 11 October, Shevardnadze professed to be "ashamed" at the figures, according to the Iberia News Agency. No information is yet available on the composition of the new parliament, but Prime Minister Tengiz Sigua, Mkhedrioni militia leader Dzhaba Ioseliani and Defense Minister Tengiz Kitovani all won election as independent candidates, ITAR-TASS reported. (Liz Fuller, RFE/RL Inc.) RUSSIAN-AZERBAIJANI SECURITY AGREEMENT SIGNED. Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Azerbaijan President Abulfaz Elchibey signed an agreement in Moscow on 12 October on mutual security and friendly relations, Western agencies reported. Under the terms of the agreement, both sides recognize each other's sovereignty and undertake to respect human and minority rights. Yeltsin and Elchibey also discussed bilateral concerns including the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh. (Liz Fuller, RFE/RL Inc.) KYRGYZ PARLIAMENT TO DISCUSS PEACE-KEEPING FORCE FOR TAJIKISTAN. The Kyrgyz parliament is to hold an extraordinary session on 14 October to discuss the deployment of about 400 peace-keeping troops in Tajikistan, ITAR-TASS and Interfax reported on 12 October. Kyrgyz Vice President Feliks Kulov told Interfax in Dushanbe that troops from Kazakhstan are also to be sent. He said the main task of the peacekeeping forces is not to disarm the warring groups, but to give Tajikistan's leadership the opportunity to strengthen its power structure and law enforcement agencies and to stabilize the economic situation as winter approaches. An RFE/RL correspondent was told in Bishkek that the troops could be airlifted to Tajikistan on 15 October. (Ann Sheehy, RFE/RL Inc.) CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE ILIESCU ELECTED PRESIDENT. Emil Constantinescu the candidate of the Democratic Convention of Romania, has conceded defeat in the second round of the presidential elections held on 11 October. With the vote counted in nearly 99% of the polling stations, the Central Electoral Bureau said on 12 October that incumbent president Ion Iliescu, who was backed by the Democratic National Salvation Front, has won 61.27% votes and Constantinescu was endorsed by 38.73% votes. In remarks carried by Radio Bucharest Constantinescu congratulated Iliescu and said he hoped the president would "fulfil his great role with honour." Iliescu said that he intended to put the country's social and political life on a decent, dignified and normal path through dialogue and collaboration with all political parties represented in the parliament. (Michael Shafir, RFE/RL Inc.) ROMANIAN COALITION TALKS. Foreign affairs minister, Adrian Nastase, has been chosen by the Democratic National Salvation Front (DNSF) to conduct negotiations on forming a new coalition government, RFE/RL's correspondent in Bucharest reported on 12 October. Nastase, who is a vice-president of the DNSF, has already begun discussions with the seven parties that won seats in the Chamber of Deputies in the 27 September elections. Corneliu Coposu, the president of the Democratic Convention of Romania, said in an interview with Radio Bucharest on 12 October that the convention would not join the government, its position being that of a "constructive opposition." On the same day, the daily Evenimentul zilei reported that Mihai Botez, an exiled antiCeausescu dissident, might head the new government. However, Reuter said that Botez's relatives in Bucharest stated he was unlikely to accept, even if the reports of the offer were true. (Michael Shafir, RFE/RL Inc.) MAZOWIECKI COMPLAINS OF "TOO MUCH INDIFFERENCE" OVER BOSNIA. UN human rights envoy and former Polish prime minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki returned to the Yugoslav area for a second visit on 12 October, Reuters said. He again attacked human rights abuses by all sides and especially criticized European countries for failing to take in enough Bosnian refugees, particularly those newly freed from detention camps. Mazowiecki said that the human rights situation has worsened in the former Yugoslavia since his first trip there in August. Besides Bosnia and Croatia, he will visit Kosovo, Vojvodina, and the Sandzak. (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL Inc.) MASS PROTESTS IN KOSOVO. Radio Serbia reported on 12 October that more than 50,000 Albanians demonstrated peacefully in Pristina, Urosevac and other Kosovo towns for nearly 90 minutes. The ethnic Albanian majority is boycotting schools and Pristina university to protest the Serbianization of the curriculum since 1990. Radio Croatia reported that 100,000 took part in the protests and that Serb police clashed with protesters in Pec. Radio Croatia reports a large number of Serbian army reservists were mobilized on 10 and 11 October. Serbian officials say the mobilization was ordered as a precautionary measure after Rexhep Osmani, Education Minister of the self-proclaimed Kosovo Albanian government, was released from prison on 9 October. Osmani helped organized the rallies and told Radio Croatia that the protests would continue. (Milan Andrejevich, RFE/RL Inc.) WILL THERE BE EARLY ELECTIONS IN SERBIA? According to preliminary results of an 11 October referendum to determine whether a constitutional amendment should be adopted to allow for early general and presidential elections, the proposal has apparently failed to win enough support. Though nearly 96% of the ballots cast backed early elections, approval required the support of more than half of Serbia's 7 million eligible voters. Only 3.1 million eligible voters went to the polls, according to a Radio Serbia report. (Milan Andrejevich, RFE/RL Inc.) SMALL BUSINESS CONGRESS OPENS IN WARSAW. On 12 October President Lech Walesa and Prime Minister Hanna Suchocka attended the opening session of the 19th World Congress of Small Business, held for the first time in Eastern Europe. A thousand delegates from 61 countries are participating. In his address, Walesa emphasized the symbolic importance of staging the congress in Poland, where pioneering economic reforms had led to a boom in private production. Poland's minister for private enterprise, Zbigniew Eysmont, told PAP on 8 October that the contribution of small and medium-sized private businesses to national income had risen from 6% to 20% in the past three years. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL Inc.) HUNGARY'S 1993 DEFENSE BUDGET. Pending approval by parliament, Hungary's defense expenditures will be raised some 10% to 66 billion forint in 1993, MTI reported on 11 October. The amount, while covering the army's day-to-day needs, is not enough to maintain its combat and operational capability at the present level. The pay of conscripts, military students, and low-earning regular soldiers and civilian employees will be raised; 10.9 billion forint are to be spent on the maintenance of the military's assets (worth 660 billion forint) and 1.9 on repairs, with emphasis on ground and air force units. Because of budget restrictions, pilots will be able to fly only 60 to 65 hours instead of the present 80 to 85. Essential parts to be obtained from the former Soviet Union cannot be purchased next year for the lack of the necessary 3 billion forint. (Alfred Reisch, RFE/RL Inc.) CSURKA SPEAKS OUT AGAIN. The controversial Vice President of the ruling Hungarian Democratic Forum party, Istvan Csurka, repeated his extreme views in an interview in the latest edition, 12 October 1992, of the German news-magazine Der Spiegel. Csurka said that his idea of a Hungarian living space was not equivalent to the German Lebensraum concept, because his objective was not to expand but to protect the existing living space of Hungarians. Csurka said that the Slovak constitution did not recognize the rights of the Hungarian minority there which suggested that the Hungarian minority was in danger. Responding to the charge that his views that because of their alleged links with the Kadar-era nomenklatura and the international finance and bank world, the Jews were the eternal and sworn enemy of Hungarians, Csurka said,"this is not something I have invented but a fact." (Karoly Okolicsanyi, RFE/RL Inc.) RUSSIAN EMIGRATION FROM THE BALTICS IN 1992. According to data of the Russian Migration Service, emigration of ethnic Russians from Estonia and Latvia is increasing, but decreasing from Lithuania. Some 17,000 Russians are reported to have left Estonia (9300--up from 8200 for all of 1991) and Latvia ( 8,500 as compared with 13,000 for all of 1991) during the first six months of 1992. About 6000 people left Lithuania during this period, as compared with 10,000 for all of 1991. Migration Service Director Tatiana Regent claimed that Baltic policies on citizenship were responsible for these figures. The data also showed that in 1989, 1990, and 1991, all three Baltic States registered more people leaving for Russia than settling in the Baltics: for Estonia, the respective net emigration figures are 582, 4300, and 4164; for Latvia--546, 3900, and 5838; and for Lithuania--1136, 5000, and 4379, BNS and ITAR-TASS reported on 9 and 10 October. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL Inc.) LITHUANIA TO BE ACCEPTED TO COUNCIL OF EUROPE. On 9 October parliament deputy Jonas Tamulis, one of Lithuania's observers at the Council of Europe session in Strasburg, said that Lithuania would become a member of the council at its next session in 1993, Radio Lithuania reported. The EC had set two conditions for membership: holding of new elections to the parliament and the adoption of a new Constitution. The new Seimas will be elected on 25 October with run-offs two weeks later. The Lithuanian parliament is holding a special session on 12 October that is expected to approve the holding of a referendum on the Constitution on 25 October. (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL Inc.) RUSSIA TO RESUME OIL SUPPLIES TO LITHUANIA. After meeting with Lithuania's Premier Aleksandras Abisala, Russia's Acting Prime Minister Egor Gaidar told the press on 12 October that they had made progress in working out a mechanism for settling accounts between their countries. He noted that while some 10 billion rubles from Lithuania had not been received by Russian oil suppliers, Russia owed Lithuania sums estimated at 6-10 billion rubles. Russia's Vice Premier Aleksandr Shokhin told the press that Russia would adhere to the prearranged quotas of oil and gas to Lithuania; until a system of payments acceptable to both sides was in place, Lithuania would have to pay Russia for oil and gas products in hard currency. His Lithuanian counterpart Bronislavas Lubnys expressed satisfaction with the conditions agreed in Moscow, Baltfax reported on 12 October. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL Inc.) IMF POSITIVE ABOUT LATVIA'S ECONOMIC POLICY. After a week-long visit to Latvia, International Monetary Fund experts gave a positive assessment of the economic policy pursued by the Latvian government, a spokesman for Latvia's Finance Ministry told BNS on 12 October. Latvia is to receive the second installment of the IMF loan as soon as IMF experts make certain corrections in the memorandum defining Latvia's economic policy until the end of this year. The IMF loan of $70,000,000 is being dispersed to Latvia in four installments. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL Inc.) RUTSKOI THREATENS ESTONIA. Russian Vice-President Alexander Rutskoi reiterated Russia's threat to impose economic sanctions on Estonia unless it altered its citizenship laws. According to Reuter, citing BBC on 12 October, Rutskoi's major objection was the language requirement. Last year Estonia officially set minimum competence at some 1,500 words, approximately the level of a three-year-old native speaker. (Riina Kionka, RFE/RL Inc.) ESTONIAN DEFENSE FORCES DON'T TRUST GOVERNMENT. Four of sixteen units of the Estonian Defense Union (Kaitseliit) have announced they will henceforth take orders only from the President, not the Ministry of Defense. According to Paevaleht of 12 October, the units made the decision because they do not trust the Ministry leadership. Reacting to the announcement, outgoing deputy Defense Minister Hannes Walter told reporters it was time for Estonia to subsume all armed units under full state control, saying that any other initiatives could be dangerous both in domestic and foreign terms. (Riina Kionka, RFE/RL Inc.) UNEMPLOYMENT CONTINUES TO RISE IN LATVIA. Diena reported on 7 October that in the period from 1 January to 6 October, 19,130 persons had become unemployed (the previous week the number was 18,588) or about 1.3% of the total labor force of about 1,477,000. Unemployment benefits are being received by 16,988 persons. Some 70% of the jobless are women and the rate of unemployment is rising the fastest in Riga where already 5,334 persons are getting unemployment benefits. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL Inc.) POLISH UNEMPLOYMENT GROWTH SLOWS. Poland's Main Statistical Office announced on 9 October that 2,498,500 people (13.8% of the work force) were unemployed at the end of September. Although this amounts to an overall increase over August, unemployment declined in six voivodships and remained unchanged in three others. One-third of the registered unemployed have lost their benefits, and 43.3% have been seeking work for over a year, PAP reported. Deputy Labor Minister Michal Boni told journalists on 9 October that unemployment should cease rising in 1994. Active methods of fighting unemployment are having some effect: the number of people who found work through employment offices rose 50% from August to September. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL Inc.) POLISH FOREIGN MINISTER IN HUNGARY. Hungarian radio reported that Poland's Foreign Minister, Krysztof Skubiszewski, arrived in Budapest, to coordinate the views of the countries of the Visegrad Triangle before the forthcoming EC summit in London. Skubiszewski also dicussed issues related to a free-trade-zone agreement between Poland, Hungary and Slovakia, which is to be signed on 30 November 1992 in Krakow. (Karoly Okolicsanyi, RFE/RL Inc.) CZECH PREMIER VISITS FRANCE. On 12 October, Czech Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus was on a one-day visit to France, where he met with French officials and opposition leaders. Speaking to journalists after his meeting with French Prime Minister Pierre Beregovoy, Klaus said that he had reassured French leaders that the breakup of Czechoslovakia would be peaceful. After his return from France, Klaus told CSTK that the possibility to talk to French leaders was important because "everyone in Western Europe is afraid of the symptoms that have accompanied the disintegration of former Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union." (Jiri Pehe, RFE/RL Inc.) 150,000 FOREIGNERS LIVE IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA WITHOUT PERMISSION. The 12 October issue of Rude pravo, quoting police sources, said that 150,000 foreigners live in Czechoslovakia without official permission and another 22,000 have been detained by police trying illegally to enter Germany. CSTK reported on 12 October that the Czech Ministry of Internal Affairs had received 1480 applications for Czech citizenship in the previous six weeks. Fifty-five of the applicants were citizens of the Slovak Republic. In a related development, Marian Calfa, a Slovak politician who served as Czechoslovak Prime Minister from December 1989 to June 1992, said in an interview published in the 12 October issue of the Prague daily Blesk that he would probably apply for citizenship of the Czech Republic.(Jiri Pehe, RFE/RL Inc.)
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Romanian TV Takes Low-Key Approach to Vote Coverage (Bucharest) By Peter Maass Special to The Washington Post BUCHAREST, Romania _ When it comes to journalistic impartiality, Roma nia's state-owned television network set an untouchable standard in this country's just-concluded presidential election campaign. It ignored virtually everything said by the former communist incumbent and his centrist opponent. Instead of running in-depth campaign reports and political analyses, the network broadcast _ at the end of the regular evening news program _ brief videotapes provided by the rival campaign committees. There was none of the opposition bashing or ruling-party boosting in which state broadcast services still indulge throughout most of Eastern Europe. When polls closed after the first round of balloting last month, the network timidly interrupted a dubbed episode of ``Dallas,'' the country's favorite program, and reported exit polls that indicated President Ion Iliescu had taken a commanding lead. After a few minutes, the talking heads gave way to J.R. Ewing. Neither was there much fanfare Monday when returns from Sunday's second round confirmed Iliescu's reelection by a ratio of 3 to 2 over challenger Emil Constantinescu. The minimalist formula for eliminating slanted television coverage of the campaign was welcomed by the opposition and by diplomats who applauded the self-muzzling as preferable to blatant bias, and it highlighted a paradox among the former totalitarian nations of Eastern Europe: Romania, the country with the strongest legacy of old-style communist control, has allowed less state meddling in its broadcast media than any of its neighbors. Romania is trying to peel off its ``neo-communist'' label by taking t he lead in freeing both its broadcast and print media, according to Western diplomats who have warned Iliescu _ a former top aide to longtime communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu _ that his country will remain an outcast unless it decisively breaks with communist-era habits. Foreign investment in Romania has been minimal, and the U.S. Congress refused earlier this month to grant it most-favored-nation trading status, even though every other East European country, except Yugoslavia, has it. The unrestrained zest of Romania's print media is reflected in a new daily called Evenimentul Zilei, or Event of the Day, which has given people something to grin about in hard times. The paper's tabloid mix of brash truth, thrills and titillation has pushed its daily circulation from 30,000 at start-up three months ago to more than 400,000 now-far more than its nearest competitor. It's easy to understand why. While many other Romanian papers devote endless space to warmed-over political speculation and high-flown economic theory, Evenimentul Zilei jolts its readers with screaming tales about the really important things in life. Now, Romanians are confronted with headlines like: ``Unhappy Husband Kills Wife Because She Grilled Chicken.'' ``We don't say it's a masterpiece of journalism,'' said Cornel Nistor escu, director of the media company that publishes Evenimentul Zilei. ``But people smile when they read it. I smile when I read it.'' On the radio dial, Bucharest listeners can tune into six privately ru n radio stations, one named Radio Fun. The most popular station, Radio Contact, offers a finger-snapping mixture of pop music and impartial news programs in Romanian and English from the British Broadcasting Corporation. The station, partly owned by the Luxembourg-based media giant RTL, pl ans to set up a nationwide network next year that would compete head-to-head against the state-owned radio network. It's the kind of business plan that entrepreneurs can only dream about in neighboring Hungary, where the government continues to impose a ban on new radio and television stations. According to Christian Constantinescu of the U.S.-backed Internationa l Media Fund, Romania now has more privately owned television companies _ eight _ than any other East European nation. The companies, located in different cities, rent time on local state transmitters to broadcast their programs. Besides its main national television channel, the Romanian government has a second channel that covers a smaller number of urban areas, and it has signed a contract to sell it to a British-led company _ a move that has surprised and pleased many Western diplomats here. ``Contrary to its image,'' said one, ``Romania is actually ahead (of its East European neighbors) in terms of moving to private broadcasting.'' U.S. `Father' of Soviet Defenses Regrets His Work (St. Petersburg) By Elizabeth Shogren (c) 1992, Los Angeles Times ST. PETERSBURG, Russia _ In America, he is known as Joel Barr, an enthusiastic communist from Brooklyn who disappeared without a trace in the late 1940s. In Russia, he is known as Iosif Veniaminovich Berg, half of a team of brilliant Americans who designed the first Soviet computer and pioneered the microelectronics industry so critical to the Kremlin's defense machine. But in his St. Petersburg apartment, he is just a 76-year-old eccentr ic, balding, stooped and worried that the modest attention he has received since he came out of hiding will bring troubles he avoided for more than 40 years. Sitting at a kitchen table recently with his worn Soviet passport and newly acquired U.S. passport, Barr said he now believes that working for the Soviet defense industry was wrong. ``I am ready to confess, or whatever the word is, to say that really I made a tremendous mistake,'' he said. ``Knowing what I do now, it was a tremendous mistake to have done what I did.'' He insists that he never meant for his work to ``put the United State s in peril.'' Instead, he was motivated by a desire to help communism thrive in Russia, so that someday it would spread to America. Other Americans immigrated or defected to the Soviet Union over the y ears. But Barr and his partner, Alfred Sarant, stand out because they had such a significant impact on Soviet industry and military strength and because the question of whether they were spies is still shrouded in mystery. Barr re-established his American identity three years ago when two of his four children, both Czechoslovak citizens, defected to the United States. A year ago he sought his own U.S. passport. While in the United State s on a Soviet passport, he applied for a U.S. passport like any other American, through the passport office of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. On that trip he was surprised to find that many elements of socialism have become part of American society, and he is gladly taking advantage of some of them. Although he still lives and works primarily in Russia, Barr now recei ves Social Security benefits of $244 a month, which he began getting after simply applying for them. ``It galls me that a guy who works for a foreign power that is basica lly our enemy for 30 or 40 years can now be drawing Social Security,'' said Robert Lamphere, a retired FBI agent who investigated the espionage ring of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who were executed in 1953 for passing atomic bomb secrets to the Kremlin. ``There's something wrong with our system.'' Raised in Brooklyn by parents who had emigrated from Russia, Barr say s his most vivid childhood memories are of newspaper photos showing businessmen jumping out of windows during the stock market crash of 1929 and of Depression days when his industrious father could not feed the children. In his neighborhood, soapbox politicians preached about an alternativ e system that would end America's poverty forever. He read books about communism and joined the Young Communist League. As an idealistic youth at City College of New York, he was drawn to a group of young intellectuals planning to remake America on the models of Marx and Engels. Julius Rosenberg signed up young Barr for the Communist Party, and they became good friends. ``Half of our electrical engineering class at City College was in the Young Communist League,'' recalled Morton Sobel, a college chum of Barr who served 18{ years in prison for conspiracy to commit espionage in the Rosenberg case. ``You have to understand, 1938 was a very special time. We were fighting against fascism. Some from our class even went off to Spain to fight (on the side of the Communist-aided loyalists) against the Fascists. ``We were all very idealistic,'' Sobel added. ``Joel fit into this mo ld.'' After a long job search following his graduation from the City Colleg e of New York, Barr's career finally took off, thanks to America's World War II industrialization. But after the war, he was fired from a high-paying job at Sperry Gyroscope, a defense contractor, when it was learned that he was a member of the Communist Party. He later traveled to Europe, first to Paris and then to Prague, where he got his first glimpse of socialism in action. In Czechoslovakia, he was joined by a friend and former colleague, Sa rant. By now calling himself Joseph Berg from Johannesburg, South Africa, Barr married a Czech woman and started a family. He kept his real identity secret even from his wife, Vera, who learned the truth only after 20 years of marriage. Then-Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev invited the two American engi neers to Russia in 1956 and set them up in their own institute in Leningrad, as St. Petersburg was then known. Russian colleagues credit Barr and Sarant with being the fathers of S oviet microelectronics, which enabled the regime to compete in the Cold War arms race and thereby strengthen its position at home. ``I think communism would have fallen apart earlier if not for them,' ' said Raphael A. Lashevsky, a lab chief at Svetlana Electronic Devices Manufacturing Corp. in St. Petersburg, the huge electronics enterprise where Barr still works. Friends and colleagues say that Sarant, known in Russia as Filipp Georgievich Staros, was a perfectionist and the leader of the two. Barr, they say, was ``childlike,'' capable of bizarre and careless behavior. The decor of Barr's St. Petersburg apartment is testament to his eccentricity. The floors, panels and makeshift furniture, all fashioned out of the same thin wood squares, have jagged edges and strange shapes and give the impression of a gigantic furnished treehouse. His command of Russian also shows a propensity to cut corners. After 40 years as his main language, even spoken with his children, Barr's Russian is ungrammatical and carries a thick Brooklyn accent. Barr was crushed by Sarant's death in 1979. After their children were grown, Barr and his wife separated; she now lives in Prague. With his old friend dead and his wife gone, there may be no one left who really understands Barr. Even people who have known him for decades describe him as enigmatic. Barr's commitment to communism remained strong even after the crimes of dictator Josef Stalin were partially revealed by his successor, Khrushchev. Barr says he abandoned his faith in communism only after Mikhail S. Gorbachev came to power and more fully disclosed the atrocities of past regimes. He spent no time mourning the death of the theory that he had served during his whole adult life. ``I have a peculiar character,'' he said. ``I don't waste my time cry ing over spilled milk.'' Now he has become a troubadour for the American dream. ``I believe that now history will show that the Russian Revolution wa s a tremendous mistake. It was a step backward for mankind,'' Barr said with a smile. ``The real revolution for mankind that will go down for many, many years was the American Revolution.'' Instead of preaching communism to Russian friends, he spends his time thinking up ways to convince his still-radical American friends that Marxist-Leninist theory is fatally flawed. For now, he plans to spend most of his time in Russia. ``Here I am a rich scientist, and in America I'm just a poor pensione r,'' he said. Promised Western Aid Effort for Bosnia Falling Short As Cold Weather Looms (Zagreb, Croatia) By Mary Battiata (c) 1992, The Washington Post ZAGREB, Croatia _ Western efforts to provide massive humanitarian aid to hundreds of thousands of Bosnian refugees this winter are far behind schedule, vastly underfunded and still lacking the troops and equipment needed to deliver even minimal food and other supplies before the first snowfall, according to U.N. relief officials. ``We're behind schedule on everything; it's scary,'' said Chris Thorn e, chief representative of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in the Croatian port city of Split, hub of the relief effort for war-ravaged Bosnia. ``Heavy snows will be starting in three to six weeks,'' Thorne said. ``If we don't get massive support soon, a lot of people are going to die.'' Thorne did not offer a specific figure, but CIA estimates put the pot ential death toll in Bosnia this winter at 150,000, while international aid officials have said that as many as 400,000 could succumb to exposure and starvation. Last July, officials from more than 60 world governments pledged in G eneva to do all in their power to prevent wholesale suffering and death in Bosnia this winter, but U.N. aid officials said this week that the relief operation is still at least $100 million short of the bare minimum needed. Morever, the officials said, deliveries of currently available relief supplies have been severely hampered by a critical shortage of trucks to haul the goods from Croatia over steep mountain roads to beleaguered Bosnian cities. The refugee agency said it is now providing less than 20 percent of t he food needed in Bosnia each week and that it has shipped virtually none of the building materials needed to make urgent repairs on bombed and burned-out houses or to erect temporary shelters. Since the July conference in Geneva, the refugee agency has repeatedl y requested contributions of 200 to 500 trucks from U.N. member governments, but it is still working with just 89 _ most of them old, and many in such poor repair that their frequent breakdowns impede food deliveries rather than help them. Bridge and pavement repairs along a key road from Croatia to Sarajevo , the embattled Bosnian capital, have not yet begun despite repeated pleas by aid officials. As a result, U.N. relief convoys are still using a side road that one senior U.N. aid official said is already ``a sea of mud.'' The aid effort is also short of military personnel to protect the tru ck convoys from renegade elements of Bosnia's warring factions and to help distribute the aid where it is most needed. Britain, France and the Benelux countries have promised to reinforce the 1,500-member U.N. humanitarian relief force in Bosnia with an additional 6,000 troops, but their arrival is said to be at least 30 to 40 days away. U.N. Refugee Commissioner Sadako Ogata had specifically appealed for swift deployment of these troops to help offset the continuing campaign by powerful Serb nationalist forces in Bosnia to expel all non-Serbs from territory they control _ the notorious practice of ``ethnic cleansing.'' Meanwhile, hungry Slavic Muslims and Croats in Serb-besieged towns throughout Bosnia are beginning to feel the cold. In the Muslim-held towns of Travnik and Jablanica, for example, tens of thousands of Muslim and Croat refugees have no winter clothing and no access to medicine. Despite the onset of freezing autumn rains, most of the refugees are still wearing the summer clothing they had on when they were chased from their villages by Serb militia forces this summer. Most sleep on concrete floors in cold, damp gymnasiums or abandoned army barracks. In both these towns, and many others across Bosnia, frantic refugees are beginning to compete with destitute local populations for the limited supply of food aid. In Jablanica, many refugees eat only one meal a day, and thousands of underfed children must subsist on a diet of white bread and tea for breakfast and a saucer of rice at night. In Serb nationalist strongholds, such as Banja Luka and Prijedor in n orthern Bosnia, the relief operation is dogged by political problems as well. Western aid workers say they are subjected to constant harassment and threats from local Serb officials, who they say have commandeered large quantities of relief food for themselves. In public at least, U.N. aid officials say they are baffled at the sl owness with which Western governments have moved on their promises of aid. ``Where there's a will, there's a way,'' declared Sylvana Foa, spokeswoman for the U.N. refugee agency. ``So where's the will? Where are the troops? Where are the trucks? If you want to repair a bridge, you can repair a bridge very quickly. If there's a war on, you can have troops where you want them overnight.'' ``We don't have what we need,'' Foa said, ``and the general feeling i s that the donor countries just don't realize the gravity of the situation. Are we all going to wait until babies start dying before our eyes on television this winter and public opinion pushes governments to immediate action?'' In unguarded moments, however, some aid officials and diplomats descr ibe the tepid response by Western governments as an attempt to disguise political paralysis with a low-budget, low-risk aid operation. ``This relief operation is providing the illusion of action, just like all the (Balkan peace conferences) in London and Geneva,'' said one Western diplomat with long experience in the region. ``Governments are trying to treat this as a humanitarian problem, like the devastation following a hurricane, rather than as a problem between aggressor and victim.'' This view was even more forcefully expressed earlier this month by Ro ny Brauman, head of the international medical aid group Doctors Without Borders. ``Humanitarian aid in these conditions is no more than a mask for political inaction, the modern name for cowardice and resignation,'' Brauman told the Council of Europe. ``The lesson (from Bosnia) for any budding dictator ... is to massacre, deport, purify, build (detention) camps _ do what you want as long as you let a few humanitarian convoys through.'' While the ineffectual efforts of Western governments to negotiate an end to the Balkan bloodshed have been widely criticized, some diplomats and internatinal aid officials also blame the U.N. refugee agency for agreeing to mount a humanitarian operation in the middle of a nasty war that Western leaders have declared too complicated or dangerous for direct intervention. ``Relief workers will tell you that Mrs. Ogata should have (declared that the U.N. refuge agency) is pulling out,'' said the Western diplomat. All told, about 2 million people are believed to be at risk in Bosnia as factional warfare among the republic's Serbs, Slavic Muslims and Croats continues into its eighth month. At least 15,000 have died in the fighting, but many times that number are likely to die in coming months for want of food and shelter, U.N. officials say. Many are trapped in unheated homes with no windows, heating fuel or electricity. An estimated 30,000 Muslims and Croats _ burned or shelled out of their homes by Serb forces earlier this year _ are thought to be living in forests and abandoned mines; at least 10,000 more are believed confined in wretched conditions in dozens of Serb-run detention camps. And hordes of new refugees are being created by the hour. As many as 10,000 homeless civilians were reported on the move in northern Bosnia last weekend, as Serb security forces began an accelerated round of ``ethnic cleansing,'' which aid officials say is calculated to beat the arrival of the additional U.N. humanitarian relief troops in northern and central Bosnia at the end of next month. ``We've been told the order has gone out to `clean' Banja Luka before November,'' said one Western aid worker in northern Bosnia. Leaders of the 25,000 Muslims still in the city told Western reporters late last month that the arrival of extra U.N. troops in the region must be speeded up to save Muslim lives. ``The extra troops may not be able to save us, but at least there wi ll be eyewitnesses,'' said Mohammed Krzic, head of the leading Muslim political party in the city. ``November is too late,'' he said. ``By November, there will be no one left here.'' With Croatia and the rest of Europe no longer accepting Bosnian refu gees, this latest exodus will strain already-overcrowded refugee centers in central Bosnia, where the distribution of relief food has grown tense and chaotic. In Travnik and Jablanica, where refugees outnumber the resident popu lation, irregular deliveries of food are divided among the refugees, needy local residents and hungry military recruits being sent off to the front. ``We're all in bad shape here,'' said Zenaida Malovic, director of the local refugee effort in Jablanica, whose prewar population of 10,000, has been swelled to at least 40,000 by the influx of refugees. Malovic and other town officials confirmed refugee complaints that a s much as 50 percent of the relief food delivered to the town is going to non-refugees. ``A hungry person is a hungry person,'' she said. ``There are a lot of people standing in line for food. We've had 36,000 refugees come through this town since May. In the beginning we helped them all _ with food, gasoline, everything. Now all the stocks are spent. ... '' Asked what would happen if she refused to distribute refugee food to townspeople, Malovic shook her head wearily. ``There would be a riot,'' she said. Growing Deprivation in Bosnia Could Spark Violence, U.N. Representative Says (Zagreb, Croatia) By Mary Battiata (c) 1992, The Washington Post ZAGREB, Croatia _ Chris Thorne, chief representative of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in the Croatian port city of Split, said growing deprivation in Bosnia could spark violence among the needy: ``Anyone who's ever seen a food riot _ and I have _ knows what people are capable of when they're hungry. This is a region where there are going to be a lot of very desperate people this winter, and everybody has a gun.''
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STOP SERBIA. BOMB SERBIA. by Don M. Snider From The NYT Tuesday - October 13, 1992 Don M. Snider, deputy director of political military studies at the Center for the Strategic and INternational Studies, served on the staff of the National Security Council in the Reagan and Bush administrations. --- The risks of doing nothing are greater. Western intervention in the former Yugoslavia has been impeded by a lack of agreement on long-term goals and by the urgency of attending to humanitarian help. In Sunday's debate, president Bush repeated that he was opposed to committing U.S. forces to the region. But the ends that Mr. Bush and other Western leaders should seek are now clear , if they were not earlier. With Serbia prepared to move on two new fronts - against the Hungarian minority in the Voivodina region of northern Serbia and the Albanian majority in the Kosovo region - the West cannot just provide another hapless negotiator with no power to back up its words. To keep the conflict from spreading a coalition of democratic powers under the U.N. should use a military force against Serbia, including a strategic air campaign, along with economic and political pressures. Fortunately, U.S. technological strength makes this undertaking possible, in concert with our allies. Make no mistake: this would be a campaign to isolate Serbian leaders from the civilized world and inflict maximum destruction on their military. The aim is not simply to punish, but to demonstrate to Serbian leaders that only through accommodation can they avoid such continuing pain in the future. Exploiting this ability to hurt creates bargaining power for ultimate diplomatic resolution. The campaign would have three components. First, the coalition should tighten the U.N. economic and arms embargo to quarantine Serbia. All commerce must stop, including telecommunications and transportation links to other countries. The coalition would need a naval contingent for the Danube as well as ground forces on major transportation arteries. The militaries of our European allies have the means to do this. Second, since Western powers are wisely unwilling to join an unconventional ground war, the coalition should arm - and perhaps train the Bosnian forces willing to fight and sacrifice for their freedom. Right now, the Yugoslav Army backing the Serbs in Bosnia has an uncontested military advantage. Banning Serbian military flights in the region would negate Belgrade's overwhelming air- power advantage within Bosnia. At the same time, U.N. forces should greatly increase humanitarian aid. The third component is a strategic air campaign by the coalition against Serbian military targets, wherever they are located. These would include airfields, military installations, arms depots, power plants and communications lines. As they did against Iraq, American and coalition air forces, with Stealth aircraft and cruise missiles, can quickly neutralize Serbian air defenses. The allied air forces could then strike with relative impunity from bases close by in NATO countries, as well as from offshore carriers and other vessels. Such a military plan certainly carries risks. The Serbians may respond by stepping up their brutal "ethnic cleansing" in the near term. There may be more casualties among civilians and U.N. forces in Bosnia. The air campaign would put American fliers in danger. But there will be no risk of escalation, since coalition forces will use maximum force from the start. Perhaps the greatest risk of this campaign is that it sets up a potentially protracted contest of political will between the coalition and the renegade nation. The West must be prepared to inflict punishment longer than Serbian leaders can tolerate. Yet these risks are less of a threat to U.S. interests than doing nothing and allowing Serbia, and every other renegade nation, to flout norms of international and human relations. The objectives are clear as are the measures of success. And most important, this plan emphasizes the strengths of the U.S. and coalition military forces. We need to respond to the crisis now and fight on our terms, not theirs.
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RFE/RL Daily Report No. 198, October 14, 1992 SUCCESSOR STATES TO THE USSR NEW UKRAINIAN PRIME MINISTER CONFIRMED. The Ukrainian parliament on 13 October approved by an overwhelming majority Leonid Kuchma as Ukraine's new prime minister, ITAR-TASS and Western correspondents reported. Kuchma, fifty-four, is director of the "Yuzhmash" production association in Dnipropetrovsk, which is said to be the world's largest armaments manufacturer. The new head of government holds the degree of candidate of technical sciences and is said to be a technocrat favoring a gradual transition to a market economy. Observers have likened Kuchma to Arkadii Volsky, one of the leaders of the Civic Union in Russia. Vyacheslav Chornovil, who leads the opposition, is quoted as saying that nothing can stop the collapse of the economy and that sooner or later the new government will have to change. (Roman Solchanyk, RFE/RL Inc.)) RUSSIA REJECTS PROTESTS OVER BLACK SEA FLEET DEPLOYMENT. The Russian Navy reacted harshly on 13 October to charges by Georgia that it had violated its territorial waters. According to Reuters, the Russian Navy questioned the current Georgian government's legitimacy and sovereignty over the waters, stating that "when the [Georgian] State Council issues such statements it should explain how, after illegally toppling President Zviad Gamsakhurdia, it established its sea border and how this was made known to sailors around the world." The tone and content of the statement tend to confirm reports that the Russian government is adopting a tough stand towards Georgia in the conflict over Abkhazia. According to ITAR-TASS, most of the ships returned to base on 13 October, although some Gwere still conducting exercises at sea. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL Inc.) GRACHEV CALLS FOR RESUMPTION OF NUCLEAR TESTING. On 13 October after returning from a visit to the Novaya Zemlya nuclear testing ground, Russian Defense Minister Pavel Grachev called for a resumption of nuclear testing, according to Interfax. Grachev claimed that two to three nuclear explosions per year are essential to improve weaponry, although tests couldn't be resumed before the middle of 1993. Although Grachev did state that Russia would halt all testing if the US did the same, he did not comment on the recent signing by President Bush of a measure that would impose a nine-month moratorium on US testing, followed by limited testing and a complete halt to testing in 1997. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL Inc.) POLTORANIN ACCUSES KHASBULATOV OF ABUSE OF POWER. On 13 October, Deputy Prime Minister Mikhail Poltoranin gave an interview to ITAR-TASS, in which he accused the Russian parliament's speaker Ruslan Khasbulatov of trying to usurp power in Russia and attempting to create a "nest of revanchist forces directed against President Yeltsin." The interview followed Khasbulatov's demand that Yeltsin should fire Poltoranin. The latter denied, however, that there was any connection between his latest accusations against Khasbulatov and the speaker's demand. Poltoranin alleged that Khasbulatov was gathering communists around him while supporting everyone opposed to Yeltsin. (Vera Tolz, RFE/RL Inc.) POLTORANIN CRITICIZES PARLIAMENT. Mikhail Poltoranin also criticized the parliament's decision to convene the Congress of People's Deputies on 1 December, ITAR-TASS reported. He said illegal communist party forces were planning to act precisely at that time against the president and that their actions were being coordinated by the parliamentary leadership. (Vera Tolz, RFE/RL Inc.)) RUSSIAN NATIONALISTS RAID MOSCOW NEWSPAPER OFFICE. Twenty-five members of the Russian nationalist organization "Pamyat" raided the offices of the newspaper Moskovsky komsomolets, Interfax reported on 13 October. Interfax said the intruders tied up a guard and demanded the names and addresses of the authors of several newspaper stories about "Pamyat." They also said the newspaper should "stop humiliating the Russian people." They made various threats in case their demands were not met within three days. Police arrived twenty minutes after the intruders left, Interfax reported. But a newspaper employee said he photographed several of the intruders and wrote down their license plate numbers. The same day, an official from "Pamyat," Aleksandr Potkin, confirmed that his organization was responsible for the incident, but he denied that the intruders tied up the guard. (Vera Tolz, RFE/RL Inc.) YELTSIN FORMS GOVERNMENTAL MONETARY AGENCY. President Yeltsin has created a new commission composed of top government officials to oversee the use of state credits, Interfax and "Novosti" reported on 13 October. The commission will coordinate its work on these matters with the Russian Central Bank, and may be interpreted as a means to smooth out the antagonistic relationship between the government and the bank. The nine-member commission will include Prime Minister Gaidar, Deputy Prime Ministers Aleksandr Shokhin, Anatolii Chubais, Georgii Khizha, Finance Minister Vasilii Barchuk, and Economics Minister Andrei Nechaev. (Erik Whitlock, RFE/RL Inc.) GERMAN STUDY ON WESTERN AID TO RUSSIA. A joint report on the Russian economy by three leading independent German economic institutes was released on 13 October, Western agencies reported. The authors are the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), the Institute for World Economics (IW), and the Institute for Economic Research (IWF). A principal conclusion of the report is that Western aid to Russia must be strictly targeted and that untied aid should no longer be given. This is because the Russian central government is unable to put its reforms into practice because of blockages on lower political levels. The report calls for legal reform in Russia, the reduction of internal economic barriers, and safeguards for foreign investment. (Keith Bush, RFE/RL Inc.) RUSSIAN CONVERSION AND ARMS EXPORTS GOALS RESTATED. On the eve of the Moscow conference on conversion, senior Russian officials gave a news conference on 13 October, Reuters reported. President Yeltsin's adviser on conversion, Mikhail Malei, restated his earlier estimates that it will cost about $150 billion and take some fifteen years for Russia to convert 70% of its military industrial complex to civilian use. The funding for such a program must come from the sales of Russian arms to convertible-currency customers. Malei said that the former Soviet Union's peak annual income from arms trade was about $14 billion but that only $4-5 billion of this was in cash. (Keith Bush, RFE/RL Inc.) GORBACHEV ALLOWED TO TRAVEL ABROAD. President Yeltsin asked the Russian Constitutional Court to permit Mikhail Gorbachev to travel abroad despite his refusal to attend the court's hearings on the CPSU, ITAR-TASS reported on 13 October. (The Russian Ministry of Security and the Foreign Ministry imposed a ban on Gorbachev's travel at the request of the court after the former president ignored the court's summons). Several Western countries have pressed Yeltsin in recent days to let Gorbachev travel abroad. The court's chief justice, Valerii Zorkin, said that the court still "deems it possible to hear Gorbachev's testimony either before or after his scheduled visit to Germany. . ." Gorbachev is to attend the state funeral of former West German Chancellor Willy Brandt. Gorbachev's aide, Vladimir Tumarkin, told Interfax, however, that Gorbachev was willing to answer the court's questions only "outside" the hearings--i.e. at an informal meeting with the court's officials. (Vera Tolz, RFE/RL Inc.) RUBLE EXCHANGE RATE HOLDS STEADY. The dollar ended the Tuesday's trading on the Moscow Inter-Bank Currency Exchange valued at 334 rubles, Interfax reported on 13 October. The ruble has remained more or less steady for two straight trading sessions after losing some 30% of its value during the previous two sessions. Trade volume on Tuesday was $46.8 million. (Erik Whitlock, RFE/RL Inc.) NEW ST. PETERSBURG SECURITY CHIEF OPPRESSED DISSIDENTS. Viktor Cherkesov will replace Sergei Stepashin as the chief of the St. Petersburg state security service, DR Press and Sankt-Peterburgskie vedomosti reported on 11 October and 3 October, respectively. Stepashin, who is also the chairman of the parliamentarian commission on defense and security, left his position because the law prohibits officials from serving simultaneously in elective and administrative capacities. Cherkesov, who since the mid-1970s headed the investigative branch of the Leningrad KGB, was responsible for conducting investigations of Mikhail Meiman, Rostislav Evdokimov, and dozens of the other dissidents. Former political prisoners, the historical society, "Memorial," and the St. Petersburg division of "Democratic Russia" have protested this appointment to city authorities. (Victor Yasmann, RFE/RL Inc.) KRAVCHUK MEETS WITH PROTESTING STUDENTS. Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk met with leaders of the Ukrainian Students' Union on 12 October, Ukrainian TV reported. The students have put up a tent city on Kiev's main square and are demanding new parliamentary elections next year and Ukraine's withdrawal from the CIS. The following day, student protestors clashed with police outside the Ukrainian parliament. Several were injured and others were detained. (Roman Solchanyk, RFE/RL Inc.) KIEV, ASHKHABAD REJECT MOSCOW-DOMINATED "INFORMATION SPACE." As more details emerge about the recent CIS summit in Bishkek, the Ukrainian media has reported that, among other things, Ukraine and Turkmenistan rejected the idea of a "single information space" covering most of the territory of the former USSR but still centered on Moscow. The two states declined to support the idea of forming an "international" TV and radio company that would utilize existing Ostankino facilities. (Bohdan Nahaylo, RFE/RL Inc.) BELARUS TO SPEED ELIMINATION OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS. President Stanislav Shushkevich has stated that Belarus will eliminate all its nuclear weapons in two and a half years, according to an Interfax report of 13 October. While Belarus had earlier agreed to eliminate the weapons in seven years, Shushkevich had recently ordered studies of ways to accelerate the process. There are fifty-four SS-25 single-warhead missiles in Belarus. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL Inc.) US DOUBTS KAZAKHS SOLD NUCLEAR WEAPONS TO IRAN. US State Department spokesman Joe Snyder on 13 October said that the department had no evidence to confirm recent claims by an Iranian resistance organization that Kazakhstan has sold four tactical nuclear weapons to Iran. Western news agency quoted Snyder as saying the department had made "aggressive" attempts to investigate these claims. At one time Western analysts estimated that there were as many as 650 former Soviet tactical nuclear weapons in Kazakhstan. The Kazakh government agreed to repatriate these weapons to Russia and indicated in January of this year that the transfers were complete. In March, however, there were rumors that three weapons were missing. (Doug Clarke, RFE/RL Inc.) AZERBAIJAN SOFTENS POSITION ON NAGORNO-KARABAKH. Speaking to journalists in Moscow on 12 October after signing a bilateral security agreement with Russia, Azerbaijani President Abulfaz Elchibey ruled out the deployment of CIS peacekeeping troops in Azerbaijan as his country is not a CIS member, ITAR-TASS reported. Elchibey claimed that "reactionary forces" in both Armenia and Azerbaijan were actively hindering a settlement of the Karabakh conflict, but that the participation in negotiations of such world figures as George Bush, Helmut Kohl and Francois Mitterand could contribute to reaching a settlement. In a letter to the UN Security Council, which is to debate the Karabakh issue on 14 October, Armenia's representative to the UN, Alexander Arzoumanian, called for the immediate deployment in the area of UN peacekeeping observers as Elchibey no longer opposed their presence on Azerbaijani territory, Western agencies reported. (Liz Fuller, RFE/RL Inc.) TAJIKISTAN'S NATIONAL SALVATION FRONT DISSOLVES. Chairman of the Democratic Party of Tajikistan Shodmon Yusuf (Yusupov) announced on 13 October that the National Salvation Front was dissolving itself because its task was completed, Ekho Moskvy reported. Yusuf called for support of Acting President Akbarsho Iskandarov, suggesting that the Tajik opposition sees an identity of interest between themselves and the government. The Front was created by the coalition of Tajik opposition parties after some oppositionists became members of the government in May. Its most prominent spokesman, filmmaker and former presidential candidate Davlat Khudonazarov, saw the Front as a means to restore peace to the country, but officials in Kulyab Oblast who oppose the government in Dushanbe were unwilling to accept the Front's peacemaking efforts. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL Inc.) KABUL ACCUSES UZBEKISTAN AND TAJIKISTAN OF INTERFERENCE. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, leader of the Afghan fundamentalist Hezb-i-Islami Party, issued a statement on 13 October accusing Uzbekistan and Tajikistan of arming the formerly Communist militia forces of Afghan Uzbek General Rashid Dostum and forces loyal to the Afghan Tajik General and Defense Minister Ahmad Shah Masood, Reuters reported. The Uzbek and Tajik forces control northern Afghanistan. Leaders of both Uzbekistan and Tajikistan have complained that Afghanistan is supplying weapons being used in Tajikistan's civil war; according to various reports, these weapons have come from Hekmatyar's group. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL Inc.) CLARIFICATION OF KYRGYZ POSITION ON CIS. The press service of Kyrgyz President Askar Akaev has refuted an earlier report that Kyrgyzstan plans to leave the Commonwealth of Independent States, Interfax reported on 13 October. The refutation refers to a Reuters interview of 12 October with Akaev, who was then quoted as saying that his country intended to seek complete independence and that the CIS was a "transitional institution." The press service stated that, on the contrary, Akaev "favors a stronger CIS and closer cooperation between its members in the economic, military, and humanitarian spheres." In another interview with Le Monde, cited by ITAR-TASS on 13 October, Akaev referred to the transitional nature of the CIS, "although it could last for a decade." (Keith Bush, RFE/RL Inc.) CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE KOSOVO UPDATE: CLASHES REPORTED, TRUCE ANNOUNCED. On 13 October, Radio Serbia reported that Serbian police prevented a protest of ethnic Albanians in Pristina, capital of Serbia's province of Kosovo. Several thousand Albanians tried to gather in front of Pristina University but were stopped by police using tear gas and batons. For a second consecutive day Albanians protested in several Kosovo towns to demand the reopening of Albanian-language schools closed by Serbia in 1990. The demonstrations were organized by the Association of Albanian School Teachers. Radio Croatia quoted a protest leader as saying that the demonstrations had been temporarily suspended pending the outcome of talks with Serbian and federal officials. Milan Panic, Prime Minister of the rump Yugoslavia, appealed for calm and announced he would travel to Kosovo on 15 October. Panic reiterated his promise to reopen Albanian schools despite Serbian government opposition. The protest took place as international representatives of the Geneva conference on the former Yugoslavia began a fact-finding mission in the predominantly Albanian populated province. (Milan Andrejevich, RFE/RL Inc.) WAR OF WORDS IN BELGRADE. Belgrade's independent youth Radio B-92 commented on 12 October that new battle lines have been drawn between Serbia's President Slobodan Milosevic and Milan Panic. Panic is said to have met with Milosevic for more than six hours this past weekend, according to B-92 and Belgrade TV. Panic emerged from the meeting blasting Milosevic for his insensitivity and stubbornness and called for his resignation. No further details have been made public. On 10 October, Milosevic criticized both Panic and federal President Dobrica Cosic. In an interview with Belgrade TV, Milosevic criticized a recent agreement signed between Cosic and Croatia's President Franjo Tudjman which called for the return of Croatian refugees to UN protected zones in Serb-held areas of Croatia. Milosevic stated that he would "never have signed any agreement" that did not take into consideration the "legitimate interests" of the Serbs of Croatia's Krajina region. He added that it was Serbia's task to help all Serbs. On 13 October, the government of the self-proclaimed Republic of Serbian Krajina accused Cosic and Panic of working "for American interests." (Milan Andrejevich, RFE/RL Inc.) BOSNIA ROUNDUP. International media on 14 October reported that an agreement was reached in Geneva between EC mediator Lord Owen and Bosnia Serb leader Radovan Karadzic calling for the transfer of Bosnian Serb military aircraft to Serbia-Montenegro under UN supervision and safe-keeping. Radio Serbia quoted Karadzic as saying that the agreement was aimed to dispel accusations that Serb aircraft were bombarding Bosnian towns controlled by Muslims. Several UN Security Council members have begun talks aimed at reaching a new resolution on enforcing the ban on flights over Bosnia-Herzegovina. Radio Croatia reported on 13 October that Bosnia's President Alija Izetbegovic would condone the use of chlorine gas in self-defense against Serb forces whom he described as "murderers." (Milan Andrejevich, RFE/RL Inc.) GROWING AUTHORITARIANISM IN CROATIA? Following President Franjo Tudjman's overwhelming reelection victory in August and the corresponding strong position of his party (HDZ) in the legislature, many observers across the political spectrum fear that Tudjman and the HDZ might try to stifle opposition and the independent media. The weekly Novi Danas has effectively been hounded out of existence, administrative pressure was applied to Rijeka's Novi list, and more recently to the leading independent daily Slobodna Dalmacija. Vecernji list of 11 October also reports that some liberal spokesmen are warning against apparent government plans to jail neofascist leader Dobroslav Paraga and to ban his Croatian Party of [Historic] Rights (HSP). Paraga and his party are accused of supporting terrorism, but many feel Tudjman and the HDZ simply want to silence their most vocal right-wing critics. Paraga and the HSP finished fourth in the August poll and did especially well in embattled districts of eastern Slavonia where their paramilitary group HOS is credited with holding the Serbs at bay. (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL Inc.) CZECH GOVERNMENT COALITION AGREES ON DRAFT CONSTITUTION. On 13 October, Czech Premier Vaclav Klaus's government coalition agreed on the basic principles of a future constitution of the Czech Republic. Czech Deputy Prime Minister Jan Kalvoda told CSTK that a special government commission could have the final version of the constitution ready within 12 days. The coalition agreed on four previously disputed points, namely the need to amend the current Bill of Fundamental Rights and Liberties before incorporating it into the Czech Constitution; the creation of a second chamber of parliament (a Senate) elected for eight years; a new territorial structure of the Czech Republic based on municipalities and higher-level self-governing units of at least one million inhabitants; and a proposal that constitutional laws need to be approved only by a simple majority in both chambers of parliament. The opposition parties have already said that they will not support a constitution that would require less than a three-fifths majority for the approval of constitutional laws. (Jiri Pehe, RFE/RL Inc.) REFERENDUM APPROVED FOR LITHUANIAN CONSTITUTION. On 13 October the Lithuanian parliament passed a draft Constitution by a vote of 98 to 2 with 6 abstentions, the RFE/RL Lithuanian Service reported. The parliament also approved holding a referendum on the draft Constitution on 25 October when elections to the new parliament, Seimas, will be held. Elections of a president should be held in January 1993, but the Seimas was authorized to postpone them for several months if necessary. (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL Inc.) CALL FOR RESIGNATION OF LATVIAN GOVERNMENT. After hearing reports of ministers accounting for their own and their ministry's work, the Satversme faction of the Latvian Supreme Council has called for the government's resignation. According to the faction's deputy chairman, Rolands Rikards, the government has not performed its job satisfactorily, either in the economic nor in the political realm. According to the law on the council of ministers, the motion will be discussed next week and at least 61 deputies have to vote for it for it to be approved. The Satversme faction has 34 members. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL Inc.) COALITION MANEUVERING CONTINUES IN POLAND. Deputy Prime Minister Pawel Laczkowski told a press conference in Radom on 12 October that there might still be place in Poland's ruling coalition for the Center Alliance, despite its opposition to the government's economic policy guidelines. To join the coalition, however, the Center Alliance would first have to accept the government's program. The Center Alliance announced on 10 October that it would opt for "determined and responsible opposition" to the government, which it charged with pursuing "left-wing policies." This exchange reflects the bargaining now underway in Warsaw as the government strives to add one more party to the coalition to ensure a parliamentary majority for revisions to the 1992 budget and other vital legislation. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL Inc.) ILIESCU PROPOSES EMERGENCY MEASURES AGAINST CRIME AND CORRUPTION. In the first press conference held after his re-election as Romania's president on 13 October, Ion Iliescu identified areas for immediate action, Rompres and Western agencies reported. In particular, he proposed a six-month period in which emergency steps against crime and corruption should be instituted to "remove dishonest people from office." (Michael Shafir, RFE/RL Inc.) FINAL RESULT OF ROMANIA'S PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. According to the Central Electoral Bureau, the final result of the presidential run-off elections held on 11 October was 61.43% of votes for Ion Iliescu, the candidate of the Democratic National Salvation Front, and 38.57% for Emil Constantinescu, the candidate of the Democratic Convention of Romania, Radio Bucharest reported on 13 October. The turnout was 73.2%. (Michael Shafir, RFE/RL Inc.) HUNGARIAN PARLIAMENT STARTS ABORTION DEBATE. Laszlo Suranyi, Social Welfare Minister, presented the draft of a new abortion law to parliament on 13 October 1992, Hungarian radio reported. The draft offers parliamentarians two options: one, staunchly supported by the Christian Democratic Party, would forbid abortion, giving personal rights to the fetus. The other would somewhat restrict the present abortion law and require mandatory education, but still be liberal. The ruling Hungarian Democratic Party allowed its members to vote as they see fit. Suranyi said that there have been over 4 million abortions in Hungary since 1956. The draft also introduces prenatal benefits from the fourth month of pregnancy. (Karoly Okolicsanyi, RFE/RL Inc.) PROGRESS ON THE HUNGARIAN MEDIA LAW. Prime Minister Jozsef Antall and the six political parties represented in parliament agreed to set up a committee that will hammer out a compromise draft media law, MTI reported on 13 October. The committee, which includes two members from each party, has two weeks to come up with a result. In a related development, Antall said that he agreed with President Arpad Goncz that if no agreement was reached by 27 October 1992, whoever was able to muster a two-third's majority in parliament's cultural committee should be appointed the new head of Hungarian radio and television. (Karoly Okolicsanyi, RFE/RL Inc.) FIRST ANNIVERSARY OF UDF'S ELECTION VICTORY. On 13 October, at a public meeting marking the first anniversary of the UDF's election victory over the BSP, UDF chairman and Prime Minister Filip Dimitrov spoke about the challenges facing the ruling coalition. According to BTA, Dimitrov told UDF sympathizers his government's struggle against resistance to radical reforms was often more demanding than the pre-election campaign itself. In a clear reference to the recent political clashes with the mainly Turkish MRF party and President Zhelyu Zhelev, he said the UDF wished no confrontation, but would "not retreat a single step." In a written statement, Zhelev gave a positive assessment to the achievements of the UDF, but urged the coalition to help re-establish "dialogue" with Bulgarian society. (Kjell Engelbrekt, RFE/RL Inc.) NATO MILITARY COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN VISITS BALTIC STATES. On 12 October NATO Military Committee chairman General Vigleik Eide held talks with Estonian defense forces officers. At a press conference in Tallinn Eide noted that the three Baltic States belonged to NATO's sphere of interest because "NATO is interested in maintaining the stability and freedom of European countries." He also said that surplus military equipment could be sent to the Baltic States, but that specific arrangements should be made by individual NATO states. On 13 October Eide visited Riga where he held talks with the Deputy Parliament Chairman Andrejs Krastins on the consequences of the Russian army's presence in Latvia, BNS reported. He travels on to Vilnius on October 14. (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL Inc.) ROMANIAN OFFICIAL ON RELATIONS WITH MOLDOVA. Theodor Melescanu, Secretary of State at the Romanian Foreign Affairs Ministry, said on 13 October that Bucharest wanted close ties with Moldova, but that depended on Moldova's own policies. Melescanu told an RFE/RL correspondent in Bucharest that if Moldova were to integrate with the CIS states, "as desired by some elements in Chisinau," it would be difficult to maintain the type of relationship envisaged by Bucharest. He said Romania's policy was "based on the existence of two independent Romanian-speaking states coming closer together and reunifying sometime in the future" but the formal entry of Moldova into the CIS would destroy this concept. The proponents of the entry into the CIS, Melescanu continued, argued that Moldova could benefit from the low prices of energy, but the energy situation could change since Russia was under strong pressure to upgrade energy prices even in internal trade. (Michael Shafir, RFE/RL Inc.). CIA CHIEF VISITS WARSAW. CIA director Robert Gates paid a visit to Poland from 11 to 13 October, State Security Office officials announced late on 13 October. Gates met with President Lech Walesa and Prime Minister Hanna Suchocka, as well as with the foreign, defense, and internal affairs ministers and the heads of civil and military intelligence. Although US officials described these as "routine consultations," the visit was kept secret until it ended. The unusually elaborate security measures used during the visit nonetheless alerted reporters that something was afoot, and Gazeta Wyborcza broke the story in its 13 October issue. PAP reported that Gates is now due to travel on to the countries of the former Soviet Union. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL Inc.) NEXT ROUND OF LATVIAN-RUSSIAN TALKS: 21 OCTOBER. Eriks Tilgass, adviser to the Minister of State, told the press on 13 October that the next round of Latvian-Russian talks has been postponed from 14 to 21 October; the talks are to take place in Moscow. The agenda includes technical problems of troop withdrawal, border issues and economic problems. The previous talks in Jurmala in September ended in a stalemate. Meanwhile Russian aircraft have continued to violate Latvian government regulations and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has sent a protest note to its Russian counterpart, Diena and BNS reported on 13 October. That same day the Foreign Ministry also issued a document expressing concern over Russian President Boris Yeltsin's recent statement linking troop withdrawal from the Baltic States with Baltic legislation on human rights and the rights of Russians living there. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL Inc.)
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SERB SECRET WEAPON MIGHT BE TELEVISION by Trudy Rubin BELGRADE - There is one weapon that can stop the brutal fighting in the former Yugoslavia from spilling over into the rest of Europe. And it isn't a plane or a missile. It is a TV transmitter, one capable of broadcasting the real picture of the fighting in Bosnia throughout the republic of Serbia. Most of the information the Serbs get now is from the rabidly nationalist, state-controlled television. Serbian TV brainwashes the population into believing that there is no alternative to continuing the fighting. Without an alternative to the state propaganda network, Serb opposition parties which want to stop the fighting will have little chance to win elections later this year. They will lose their best chance to peacefully oust Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic the communist-turned-hard-line-nationalist, whose drive to create a greater Serbia has caused much of Yugoslavia's suffering. "The opposition can't win elections so long as the media is under the control of the government" Milan Panic told me in an interview here in the Serbian capital. Panic is the Serbian American who was named prime minister of rump Yugoslavia (made up of the republics of Serbia and Montenegro) several months ago. Television, Panic stresses, is "the key" to the solution of the Yugoslav problem. "Perhaps the United States can send me a TV transmitter as a present" he adds, only half in jest. In fact such a gift might be the cheapest way for the Western allies to end the Yugoslav fighting before it spreads across the Balkans. In Serbia, television exerts overwhelming power. In Belgrade, alternative sources of information to state TV exist, including one independent radio and television station - studio B - whose range covers only the Belgrade area. This helps explain why Milosevic's popularity in the capital is waning. But in the countryside, the base of his support, most people get all their news from state television, which is under Milosevic's thumb. With sanctions causing income to drop, rural Serbs don't have money to buy newspapers. "They listen only to TV", says Panic, "and TV can manipulate minds." Frequently, television commentators attack Panic, who is leading the effort to oust Milosevic peacefully, through elections. Although Panic has vastly improved Serbia's international standing, TV editorials blame him, not Milosevic, for the U.N.'s decision not to let Belgrade government retain the former Yugoslavia's seat. Moreover, state television downplays his achievements. "They blame me for sanctions, for everything," Panic says. Opposition leaders say state TV pays Serbian Americans to come to Belgrade and denounce Panic on air, while also blasting American criticism of Milosevic. "These Serbian Americans bring documents claiming Panic is a CIA spy, even that Panic is a Muslim, not a Serb," says Vuk Draskovic, the bearded charismatic writer who is Serbia's best known opposition leader. "Compared to Milosevic," he says, "[Hitler aide] Joseph Goebbels was a child." In fact, Milosevic uses TV to convince Serbs that he is their only alternative. Watching state television news, it is easy to understand why Serbs believe the entire world has turned against them unjustly. On one evening newscast, the chief Bosnian Serb militia leader vehemently denied U.N. charges that his forces had massacred 3,000 Muslims. Then the image cut to a village where 28 Serbs had been killed by Muslims. Weeping relatives were interviewed, funeral services shown. Subsequent segments ballyhooed threats by Croatians to renew fighting and alleged that Germany permitted Muslim fundamentalists to train fighters in Munich who were then transported to Bosnia. The impact of such broadcasts can be seen when one drives through southern Serbia, the heartland of ultra-nationalism. "Please, watch TV every night and you will see what the Muslims do to Serbs", implored 52-year-old Zdravkovic Ljubisa, a friendly businessman, over coffee at a small cafe in the town of Prokuplje. "Last night [the Muslims] were cutting off [Serb's] fingers. My wife was crying. It is the international community who send arms, instead of food, to Bosnia, under the eyes of the United Nations. I know it also from TV." What those watching state television aren't told, of course, is that the United Nations is enforcing an arms boycott against Bosnian Muslims, while Bosnian Serbs get heavy weapons from the Belgrade-based ex-Yugoslav army. But facts don't count in this brutal propaganda war. Which is why the opposition is so desperate for independent TV. One hope was that Prime Minister Panic might be able to liberate the main state channel from Milosevic's control, or get access for the opposition to a second channel, now used mainly for cultural programs. So far, that hasn't worked. Another alternative, which Panic seems to favor, is to bring a new, more powerful, transmitter for the already independent studio B, giving it the potential to broadcast all over Serbia. This would take outside financial aid, estimated at $12 million - $14 million. According to producers at the tiny Studio B, it would also require immense political muscle to get Milosevic to permit them to broadcast throughout Serbia. It's hard to imagine Milosevic giving the enemy his most powerful weapon without a struggle. But unless they have open access to nationwide TV, Serb opposition leaders say they may not go to elections at all. "Milosevic would lose elections if we have free TV," says Draskovic, "but without it, it is impossible to win." So the opposition is hoping that Panic can find a way to bring in a new transmitter and overcome the political barriers to setting it up. For his part, Panic insists that the greatest barrier to liberating the airwaves is lack of money for the transmitter. It would be over for them [Milosevic's party] if Studio B had a transmitter," says Prime Minister Panic. He's clearly soliciting help from the west.
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RFE/RL Daily Report No. 199, October 15, 1992 SUCCESSOR STATES TO THE USSR GRACHEV REPORTS MISSILES OUTSIDE RUSSIA OFF ALERT. In an interview published in Izvestiya on 15 October, Russian Defense Minister Pavel Grachev stated that nuclear weapons control has not been changed in the wake of the Bishkek summit. Grachev did state, however, that missiles in Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan have been taken off combat alert and placed "in reserve" so that they could only be used for a second-strike. Some missiles in Russia have also been taken off alert. Grachev claimed that missiles on alert "have no specific targets. They are just aimed in a general direction, no more than that." This statement seems to contradict Marshal Shaposhnikov's recent statements that CIS missiles are targeted as before. It may be that missiles on alert do not have specific target information loaded, and that target information would be loaded simultaneously with launch authorization. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL Inc.) SHELOV-KOVEDYAEV ANNOUNCES RESIGNATION. Fedor Shelov-Kovedyaev, Russia's first deputy foreign minister, announced his intention to resign effective 17 October. He told a news conference in Moscow on 14 October that by leaving the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), he hopes to eliminate tension surrounding Russia's policies toward the former Soviet republics (Shelov's area of responsibility). He said, however, that he did not think his resignation would seriously affect Russia's policy towards these states. Shelov will return to his work as a people's deputy, rejoining the parliamentary committee on interrepublican relations, regional policy, and cooperation, where he served before joining the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He expects his replacement at the MFA to be Anatolii Adamishin, Russia's ambassador to Italy and formerly a Soviet deputy foreign minister, Interfax reported. Speculation in the Russian media that Shelov would be forced to resign owing to the Russian Security Council's displeasure with him began in July. (Suzanne Crow, RFE/RL Inc.) PROJECTIONS OF RUSSIAN ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE. Russian Economics Minister Andrei Nechaev and Economics Adviser Aleksei Ulyukaev gave what appeared to be separate news conferences on 14 October to release official projections for the Russian economy in 1992 and 1993, ITAR-TASS and Western agencies reported. (Nechaev was criticized by Yeltsin on 7 October for not having produced any such forecasts). Their figures differed slightly. The consensus put the GNP decline at 22% in 1992 and 5-8% in 1993. Industrial output will fall by 20% in 1992 and 7-10% in 1993. Agricultural output in 1992 is down by 8% on 1991, but is expected to remain at the same level in 1993. (Keith Bush, RFE/RL Inc.) RUSSIAN MONETARY POLICY FOR 1993: "MODERATELY TOUGH." Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandr Shokhin and Minister of the Economy Andrei Nechaev have described plans for next year's financial and credit policies as "moderately tough," Interfax and "Vesti" reported on 14 October. The phrase seems to contrast with the strict monetary line called for by Gaidar just weeks ago to stave off hyperinflation. Jeffrey Sachs, a senior advisor to the Russian government and one of many observers who have lost confidence in Russia's anti-inflationary policy, said that in the last three months, money supply had doubled. "The whole country is going over the cliff," he said, according to Reuters. (Erik Whitlock, RFE/RL Inc.) LAND AND HOUSING TO BE SOLD FOR VOUCHERS. President Yeltsin signed a decree on 14 October authorizing the use of privatization vouchers for the purchase of land and housing, ITAR-TASS reported. (He had called for this in his speech of 7 October to the parliament). Economics Adviser Aleksei Ulyukaev told the 14 October news conference, where he also made official projections on the economy, that the decree refers to all kinds of land, including agricultural land, state land reserves, and forests. Vouchers may also be used to purchase state and municipal housing as well as municipal property, and to buy land being used by factories that have been privatized. (Keith Bush, RFE/RL Inc.) YELTSIN SIGNS DECREE ON SECURITIES MARKETS. A decree signed on 14 October by President Yeltsin establishes, among other things, a framework for creating special investment funds that will serve as intermediaries for Russian citizens not wishing to purchase state assets themselves, ITAR-TASS reported on 14 October. Buying into special investment funds is one of the options open to voucher-holders envisaged by the government's voucher privatization program initiated 1 October. The State Committee on Property will license these special investment funds, and investment funds without such a license are prohibited from offering these services to voucher-holders. (Erik Whitlock, RFE/RL Inc.) US SENATORS ASK IMF TO EASE UP ON CIS. A group of US senators has written to the International Monetary Fund urging it to soften its demands on Russia and other former Soviet republics, an RFE/RL Washington correspondent reported on 14 October. The group contains sixteen Democrats and sixteen Republicans. The legislators fear that the IMF conditions set for further aid will lead to cuts in government spending that "will fan popular discontent with an already desperate economic condition." The senators write that "in the best of circumstances, this would halt any reform in its tracks. In the worst of circumstances, popular discontent could sweep away Russia's democratic government, compromising all that has been gained since 1989." (Ilze Zvirgzdins/Keith Bush, RFE/RL Inc.). GORBACHEV ACCUSED OF COVERING UP KATYN MASSACRE. On 14 October "Vesti" reported the government's release of Politburo documents from the Stalinist period concerning the massacre of about 15,000 Polish officers by Soviet secret police in the Katyn Forest in 1940. A presidential spokesman used the documents, which include a statement from the Party Politburo ordering the massacre, to support his claim that Mikhail Gorbachev knew about and helped cover up the truth of this matter since 1981. "Novosti" cited allegations by the same spokesman that this was the reason why Gorbachev was afraid to testify at the CPSU hearing. This assertion was reiterated, also on 14 October, by President Yeltsin's representatives at the Constitutional Court. In fact, in 1990, Gorbachev turned over hitherto top secret archival materials to Polish leaders concerning the massacre. The same year, TASS issued an official statement by the Soviet government which admitted Soviet responsibility for the massacre, and which confirmed that the earlier Soviet version blaming the crime on the Nazis was a falsification. (Julia Wishnevsky & Vera Tolz, RFE/RL Inc.) NEW UKRAINIAN GOVERNMENT DISCUSSED. Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk and the newly-appointed prime minister, Leonid Kuchma, met on 14 October to discuss the composition of the new cabinet of ministers, Interfax reported. Kuchma is required by law to submit his candidates for ministerial posts to the parliament by 23 October. A number of appointments, including the ministers of defense, interior, and foreign affairs, are subject to parliamentary approval. (Roman Solchanyk, RFE/RL Inc.) UKRAINIAN STUDENTS ANNOUNCE HUNGER STRIKE. A leader of the Ukrainian Students' Union, which has put up a tent city on Kiev's central square to press demands for new parliamentary elections and Ukraine's withdrawal from the CIS, told the Ukrainian parliament that the students will begin a hunger strike on the evening of 13 October, DR-Press reported on 14 October. A hunger strike by students exactly two years ago brought down the government of Vitalii Masol. (Roman Solchanyk, RFE/RL Inc.) INDIA WANTS DEFENSE TIES WITH UKRAINE. Indian Defense Minister Sharad Pawar arrived in Kiev on 14 October for an official visit. ITAR-TASS reported that Pawar would meet with President Leonid Kravchuk, leaders of the parliamentary defense and security commission, and officials involved in the production of military equipment. The report said that Pawar's visit was expected to "lay the foundation for military cooperation between the two countries, including in the military-political and military-technical areas." It also suggested that some Indian officers could receive training in Ukraine. (Doug Clarke, RFE/RL Inc.) UN MISSION VISITS ABKHAZIA. The UN fact-finding delegation that arrived in Tbilisi and met with parliament-chairman elect Eduard Shevardnadze and Prime Minister Tengiz Sigua on 13 October travelled to Sukhumi on 14 October for talks with Giorgi Khaindrava, Georgian Minister of State for Abkhazia, Interfax reported. They then met with Abkhaz parliament chairman Vladislav Ardzinba in Gudauta. Ardzinba subsequently told Interfax he was dissatisfied with the visit as the observers had not allowed enough time for their visit to the Abkhaz-controlled area and had declined to interview refugees. Meanwhile in a statement released in London the EC expressed "deep concern" about continued fighting in Abkhazia and called for new effort to reach a peaceful solution to the conflict. A delegation of Socialist deputies to the European Parliament that traveled to Georgia to monitor the 11 October elections called for EC intervention to ensure that Georgia does not become "a second Yugoslavia." (Liz Fuller, RFE/RL Inc.) GRACHEV DENIES INVOLVEMENT IN ABKHAZIA. Russian Defense Minister Grachev denied Russian military involvement in Abkhazia in an interview with Izvestiya on 15 October. Grachev dismissed claims that Russian helicopters tried to shoot down Shevardnadze's helicopter, claiming that had they attempted to, they would have succeeded. He repeated claims that Abkhaz forces had obtained their T-72 tanks from Georgian forces, and claimed that T-80 tanks were only deployed in the Moscow Military District, and not in the Caucasus. Grachev ascribed the claims to a Georgian attempt to explain away their recent military setbacks. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL Inc.) GRACHEV ON FORCES, PLANS FOR CAUCASUS. On 15 October, Russian Defense Minister Grachev noted that there are no plans to withdraw Russian units from Abkhazia, and that a Russian group of forces will replace the Transcaucasus Military, District by 1 January 1993, Izvestiya reported. According to Grachev there is only one airborne division and an antiaircraft missile unit left in Azerbaijan, with an army division each deployed in Batumi and Akhalkalaki in Georgia and in Gyumri, Armenia. Grachev also noted that the 19th Air Defense Army and the 34th Airborne army will be disbanded, with the exception of a few units. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL Inc.) REFUGEES DEMONSTRATE IN DUSHANBE. Thousands of refugees from the Vakhsh and Kolkhozabad Raions of Kurgan-Tyube Oblast assembled in Dushanbe on 14 October to protest the continuing fighting in their home regions, where local defenders have been battling armed units from the neighboring Kulyab Oblast for two days, ITAR-TASS reported. The demonstrators demanded that acting President Akbarsho Iskandarov and the Tajik government out a stop to the civil war that has ravaged the southern parts of the country. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL Inc.) UZBEKISTAN OFFERS TO SEND TROOPS TO TAJIKISTAN. According to a NEGA press agency report of 13 October, Uzbekistan has offered to send a military contingent to Tajikistan. The Tajik government has requested peacekeeping troops from Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan; 400 volunteers in Kyrgyzstan are reported to be ready to be sent to Kurgan-Tyube Oblast. Use of Uzbek troops in Tajikistan could further inflame interethnic tensions in the war-torn country. In the last two months there have been reports of Uzbek inhabitants of Tajikistan being driven from their homes by Tajik fighters. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL Inc.) KYRGYZ LEGISLATURE VOTES AGAINST PEACEKEEPING FORCES. On 14 October, a closed session of Kyrgyzstan's parliament voted against sending peacekeeping forces to Tajikistan, KyrgyzTAG-TASS reported. Supreme Soviet Chairman Medetkan Sherimkulov told a press conference after the vote that the legislators had decided against interfering in the internal affairs of a neighboring state. Kyrgyzstan would continue, however, to help in the search for a resolution of the Tajik conflict and would provide humanitarian assistance. Vice-President Feliks Kulov said that the opposing sides in Tajikistan had been unwilling to guarantee the safety of Kyrgyz peacekeepers. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL Inc.) RUSSIFICATION, IDEOLOGICAL MEASURES IN "DNIESTER REPUBLIC." The "Dniester republic" controlled by the Russian minority in eastern Moldova has ordered the introduction of "Moldovan" language textbooks in the Russian script in place of the existing ones in the Latin script in Moldovan schools. The measure was taken despite the fact that specialists considered the existing textbooks in the Latin script (produced in Chisinau for all of Moldova) as scientifically adequate and "de-ideologized," DR Press reported from Tiraspol on 14 October. Last month the "Dniester" authorities had imposed the Russian script on the "Moldovan" (i.e. Romanian) language in various spheres of public life. Also on 14 October, DR Press reported again that "Dniester University" hosted the founding conference of the "Dniester republic Communist Leninist Youth," which called a constituent congress of the "Dniester republic Komsomol" to be held shortly. The university was formed recently through the takeover by the "Dniester" authorities of the Moldovan Pedagogical Institute in Tiraspol, the last Moldovan higher education institution on the left bank of the Dniester. (Vladimir Socor, RFE/RL Inc.) NO PLANS TO WITHDRAW TROOPS FROM DNIESTER REGION. In his interview with Izvestiya on 15 October, Defense Minister Grachev stated that the withdrawal of the 14th Army from the Dniester area will only be possible when the conflict in the region is settled. He noted that 14th Army units were manned by personnel from the region and that they would refuse to withdraw unless the conflict was over. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL Inc.) CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE YELTSIN ENVOY REVEALS KATYN DOCUMENTS. On 14 October, a special envoy from Russian President Boris Yeltsin, Chairman of the Government Commission for State Archives, Rudolf Pekhoya, presented Polish President Lech Walesa with copies of documents showing that the CPSU Politburo, with Stalin at its head, had ordered the execution of over 20,000 Polish prisoners of war on 5 March 1940. While Soviet responsibility for the murders had long been obvious, the documents provide the "smoking gun" that the Poles had long sought. The documents came from top secret Soviet party archives that were transferred to the control of President Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991. Pekhoya charged that all Soviet party leaders, from Stalin to Gorbachev, had known the truth about the massacres and had participated in the cover-up. In Moscow, Yeltsin's spokesman Vyacheslav Kostikov told reporters that Gorbachev had seen the order to kill the Poles as early as April 1989. In April 1990 the USSR responsibility for the acknowledged Soviet responsibility for the massacre and Gorbachev then gave then President Wojciech Jaruzelski archival documents implicating the NKVD. The Politburo order was not among them. Polish researchers have been aware of the existence of the document since July 1992. President Walesa, visibly moved by the revelations, thanked Yeltsin for his "heroic decision." PolishRussian relations were "poisoned" in the past, Walesa said, but the transfer of the documents could help build just, equal relations in the future. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL Inc.) GROWING TENSIONS IN NORTHERN BOSNIA. The 15 October Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported that the Serbian offensive was continuing in an effort to consolidate the land corridor linking Serbia with ethnic Serb enclaves in Croatia and Bosnia. On 14 October Austrian TV showed footage of Bosnian officers discussing the besieged largely Muslim town of Gradacac. They confirmed what the Croatian media had been saying since early in the week, namely that chlorine gas tanks had been placed around the town. The Bosnians threatened to set off an "ecological catastrophe" if Serbian attacks did not stop and urged civilians to evacuate Gradacac. AFP on 14 October reported that any release of the gas could affect not only northern Bosnia and eastern Croatia but also Vojvodina and parts of Hungary. Gradacac has been under siege for months, but few if any foreign journalists have gone there. The main source of news from Gradacac so far has been Croatian media accounts for which there was no independent confirmation. (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL Inc.) VANCE AND MAZOWIECKI SPEAK OUT ON THE YUGOSLAV CRISIS. UN special envoy Cyrus Vance warned on 14 October that "a spark from Macedonia could ingite the [Balkan] region," the VOA reported. He told the Security Council that the conflict could easily spread if tension in Macedonia and Kosovo continued to mount. Meanwhile, UN human rights envoy and former Polish Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki visited a Croatian center for Serb detainees in Herzegovina. Western news agencies reported that Mazowiecki criticized the presence of women and other apparent civilians in the camp, but the Croats told him that all the inmates had committed some hostile act or other and warned him not to take up the role of "judge." (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL Inc.) SERBO-ALBANIAN TALKS BEGIN IN KOSOVO. On 14 October, after two days of protests by ethnic Albanians in the Serbian province of Kosovo for the restoration of Albanian-language teaching, officials of the main Albanian party, the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) began talks with education ministers representing the rump Yugoslavia and Serbia. Radio Serbia reported the two sides discussed ways of reopening Albanian-language schools and allowing broad powers for Albanians who account for nearly 92% of Kosovo's population to set their own curriculum. Serbia had suspended Albanian language curriculum in schools and Pristina university in 1990, resulting in the loss of jobs by Albanian teachers and the development of an extensive "underground school system." The two sides agreed that the Albanians submit a list of schools to be reopened. This will be reviewed on 22 October by federal and Serbian government officials. Milan Panic, Prime Minister of the rump Yugoslavia is expected to meet with LDK leaders on 15 October in Pristina. (Milan Andrejevich, RFE/RL Inc.) BOSNIAN CHILDREN FIND REFUGE IN POLAND. The first of two special trains carrying refugee children from Bosnia arrived in Poland on 13 October. Poland has offered to provide shelter for 1500 children and their teachers for at least six months. It has also acceded to Bosnian government requests to enable the children to attend normal school classes and maintain their ethnic, cultural and religious identity; hence the decision to house the children together in mountain resorts and not in private homes. Poland's foreign ministry said this humanitarian action reflected Polish opposition to the policy of "ethnic cleansing." Gazeta Wyborcza on 13 October described a scene of general chaos in the Croatian town of Osijek as the refugees boarded the trains, but noted the following day that no one had been left behind. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL Inc.) ROMANIAN OPPOSITION LEADER SETS CONDITIONS FOR COALITION TALKS. Emil Constantinescu, the presidential candidate endorsed by the Democratic Convention of Romania (DCR) in the elections held on 27 September and 11 October, said president Ion Iliescu and the Democratic National Salvation Front had to dissociate themselves from the "nationalist-communist" parties before coalition talks with the DCR could begin. In an interview with RFE/RL's Romanian service on 14 October, Constantinescu said that when he spoke about the "national-communists" he had in mind in particular the Greater Romania Party and the Socialist Party of Labor. Both formations had endorsed Iliescu. (Michael Shafir, RFE/RL Inc.) ROMANIA WELCOMES INITIATIVE TO RECONSIDER ITS MFN STATUS. Traian Chebelu, Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman, said that his ministry welcomed the initiative of a large number of Romanian-born and other US citizens to address an appeal to the US House of Representatives to reconsider its 30 September decision denying MFN status to Romania. He added that this was the first action of such magnitude by the Romanian diaspora and expressed the hope that it was, at the same time, just the beginning of efforts by exiled Romanians to uphold the interests of their country of origin. Chebeleu attacked US congressman Tom Lantos for his role in the congress' decision. He released the text of a letter written in 1985 by Lantos to the Romanian authorities, in which the congressman expressed hope that the US would renew MFN status for Ceausescu's regime. (Michael Shafir, RFE/RL Inc.) SOUTH KOREAN LOAN TO HUNGARY. South Korea will extend $650 million credit to Hungary, Hungarian radio reported on 14 October 1992, quoting sources in Seoul. The report said that $150 million had already been provided and negotiations were under way in Budapest for further credits from a South Korean five-year fund set up to help developing countries. (Karoly Okolicsanyi, RFE/RL Inc.) BULGARIAN PREMIER DENIES ARMS DEAL WITH MACEDONIA. Bulgarian Prime Minister Filip Dimitrov denied allegations that he had secretly struck an arms deal with Macedonia, thereby violating the UN embargo against ex-Yugoslavia, Reuters reported on 14 October. The allegations surfaced after the head of Bulgarian counterespionage, General Brigo Asparuhov, accused a government adviser of involvement in an attempt to export Bulgarian arms to Macedonia. Rejecting these claims, Dimitrov said the adviser's trip had been a normal fact-finding mission. The incident has deepened the conflict between the premier and President Zhelyu Zhelev, who, in his capacity as commander-in-chief, is also head of counterespionage. (Kjell Engelbrekt, RFE/RL Inc.) RALLY IN DEFENSE OF BULGARIAN ARMS INDUSTRY. On 14 October thousands of workers from Bulgaria's arms industry rallied in central Sofia. According to Western and Bulgarian agencies, the workers were demanding higher wages as well as government measures to stimulate arms export. The chairman of the CITUB trade union, Krastyu Petkov, told a rally that the UDF government had until the 22 October to find a solution to the present situation or the workers would go on strike. In a comment, the cabinet said there were no administrative obstacles to arms export--except in the case of embargoed states--and that 57 deals had been struck over the last three months. The Bulgarian arms industry, which in 1991-92 has experienced a steep decline in exports, is estimated to employ some 140,000 people. (Kjell Engelbrekt, RFE/RL Inc.) PROGRESS IN LITHUANIAN-POLISH MILITARY AGREEMENT. On 14 October, at a press conference ending a three-day visit to Vilnius, Poland's Deputy Defense Minister, Przemyslaw Grudzinski, said that Poland was satisfied with a draft agreement on military cooperation, Radio Lithuania reported. He invited Lithuanian National Defense Deputy Minister Sarunas Vasiliauskas to visit Poland next week to continue the discussions that had been begun in September during the visit to Warsaw of Prime Minister Aleksandras Abisala. Grudzinski expressed the hope that the future agreement would be similar to the Vyshegrad agreement between Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL Inc.) IGNALINA REACTOR SHUT DOWN. On 14 October excess radiation was detected in the non-service area of the second reactor at the atomic power plant at Ignalina, Radio Lithuania reported. Povilas Vaisnys, the head of the State Atomic Energy Safety Inspection, said that the reactor would be shut down at noon on 15 October so that the area where it is thought there might be leakage from the pipes might be inspected. The amount of radiation is slight and there is no danger even to the local community, but international concern about the plant has led Lithuania to follow Western practice. (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL Inc.) RUSSIAN BORDER GUARDS TO LEAVE LATVIA BY END OF OCTOBER? The Russian border guard leadership in Ventspils said all Russian border guards in Latvia were scheduled to leave for Russia by the end of October. So far 16 of the 18 border guard posts have already been handed over to the Latvian authorities, BNS reported on 14 October. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL Inc.) ZOTOV, VETERANS THREATEN LATVIA. Sergei Zotov, chief Russian negotiator in the troops withdrawal talks from Latvia, told Diena of 14 October that Latvia was pursuing an "apartheid policy" against nearly one half of its population, the Russians and other Slavs. He warned Latvia that Russia could at any time turn off its gas pipeline and reduce the supply of industrial raw materials. Similar threats against Estonia were recently made by Russia's Vice President Rutskoi. On 13 October Diena reported on a meeting of some 3,000 communists, Soviet military veterans and Russian military who called for unconditional voting rights in the next parliamentary elections for Russians and other non-Latvian residents of Latvia and for the restoration of their former privileges. They threatened that if their demands were not met, they would work for the establishment of autonomous Russian-speaking regions in Latvia. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL Inc.) RUSSIA TO PAY FOR FOREST FIRE DAMAGES IN LATVIA? BNS and Baltfax reported on 14 October that Russian Defense Ministry officials had given an oral promise to Latvia's Forestry Ministry to pay for damage caused by forest fires near Adazi, a principal base of the Northwestern Group of Forces in Latvia. Latvians estimate the damage at some 55 million rubles. Latvian authorities believe that Russian military activities caused most of the fires in that area--a claim previously denied by Russian President Boris Yeltsin. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL Inc.) CIA CHIEF IN HUNGARY. Hungarian radio reported that CIA Chief Robert Gates met with Prime Minister Jozsef Antall on 14 October 1992 in Budapest. Gates is on his first ever visit to Eastern Europe. He arrived from Poland and will visit the countries of the former Soviet Union. The meeting in the Prime Minister's office was attended by Hungarian Internal Affairs Minister Peter Boross, Minister Without Portfolio for National Security, Tibor Fuzessy and US Ambassador Charles H. Thomas. No details were disclosed about the subjects discussed. (Karoly Okolicsanyi, RFE/RL Inc.) ROMANIA AND THE EC. Traian Chebeleu, the foreign affairs ministry spokesman, said the fifth round of negotiations on Romania's association with the EC, which was held in Brussels on 12 and 13 October, produced agreement on a number of texts that would be included in the agreement. Citing Chebeleu, Rompres specified on 14 October that agreement had been reached on the protocols of trade concerning steel products, textiles, processed agricultural and fish produce. (Michael Shafir, RFE/RL Inc.) SLOVAK PREMIER IN BONN. Slovak Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar, on a two-day visit to Germany, told the German parliament's foreign relations committee on 14 October that Slovakia was concerned about growing nationalism within its Hungarian minority. According to international press agencies, Meciar told the parliamentarians that Slovakia was prepared to observe minority rights. He said that the Hungarians were entitled to their own schools and their own language, and that Slovakia subsidized Hungarian-language newspapers. According to Meciar, his government was not violating international agreements on minorities when it rejected demands by ethnic Hungarian parties for the right to self-determination and creation of autonomous organizations outside of Slovak jurisdiction. (Jiri Pehe, RFE/RL Inc.)
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----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Sarajevo talks hit immediate snag Subject: U.N. seeks to restore electricity in Sarajevo Subject: Serbs, ethnic Albanians hold second day of talks ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Sarajevo talks hit immediate snag Date: 13 Oct 92 22:31:26 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- A new United Nations initiative to reach agreement among warring factions in Bosnia-Hercegovina to avoid using civilian services as military weapons struck an immediate snag Tuesday with the reported destruction of several electrical facilities. The damage was discovered less than a day after French Gen. Phillipe Morillon, head of the U.N. peacekeeping operation for Bosnia- Hercegovina, said Sarajevo's electricity service was just hours from being restored. Morillon had been hoping to begin regular meetings with opposing military leaders on ways of avoiding civilian involvement, but the Bosnian side insisted Morillon was being duped by the Serbs and refused to participate until water and electricity actually was restored in the capital. The U.N. Protection Force, after investigating Bosnian reports Tuesday that an electrical supply tower was damaged overnight by an artillery shell, confirmed late Tuesday that new damage was found in at least three locations. ``It's more then one location, its more than three locations,'' UNPROFOR spokesman Mik Magnusson said of the new damage. ``It's a little bit here, a little bit there.'' Magnusson declined to blame the damage on any one side in the conflict but said it means electricity will not be restored to Sarajevo any earlier than Thursday, and probably some time after that. Sarajevo's citizens, facing increasing chilly weather in an area known for its bitterly cold winters, have anxiously awaited restoration of electricity both in real terms and as a sign of whether other essential utilities will be reconnected. The beseiged capital's electricity and water supplies have been out for weeks, the telephone service has been failing in parts of the city for lack of diesel fuel, and the city's natural gas lines, the source of heat in most residences, have been disconnected for about 10 days. Morillon, after meeting Monday with Serbian and Croat military leaders, had optimistically told reporters he believed the Serbian side was cooperative and accepted a series of regular meetings on such matters. In other developments, an UNPROFOR flight into Sarajevo Monday was fired on during its descent into Sarajevo, U.N. officials announced Tuesday. There were no injuries or casualties, but one bullet which penetrated the plane's fuselage came within four inches of the navigator's legs, officials said. Five other bullets holes were found in the left wing of the passenger plane, leaving some damage to the aircraft's systems, according to an UNPROFOR statement. Also Tuesday, in Belgrade, incomplete returns showed a constitutional amendment that would require Communist President Slobodan Milosevic to call early presidential and assembly elections was almost certain to fail because of an insufficient voter turnout in a weekend referendum. The amendments failure would represent a major setback for Yugoslav Prime Minister Milan Panic and Federal President Dobrica Cosic and force them to intensify an ongoing power struggle with Milosevic, whose ouster they view as the main condition for the lifting of chaos-fueling U.N. economic sanctions. In Sarajevo, Red Cross officials pushed ahead with plans for two large road convoys to evacuate children, sick and elderly people from the city, saying they at least for the present had Serbian assurances of cooperation. Red Cross officials also complained Tuesday about shortages of food from the U.N. distribution program, and said the city's available cemeteries were so full that bodies now were being buried at an Olympic sports complex. And Tuesday, UNPROFOR carried through on its threat to begin publishing statistics on how much artillery each side in Sarajevo is firing at the other, releasing figures showing the Bosnians received more than three times as much incoming fire as the serbs over a six-day period. Magnusson, beginning what he said would be a daily release of such figures, insisted the data must be considered somewhat incomplete and imprecise but nevertheless showed superior Serbian artillery being shot into the city and outnumbered bosnian defenders firing back at the hills. Morillon had angrily threatened to release the artillery reports kept by U.N. military observers after Serbian gunners last week used their heavy weapons to destroy a row of 20-story apartment buildings in Sarajevo. Fighting persisted Tuesday along the northern part of Bosnia- Hercegovina, where Serbian forces were trying to maintain a corridor connecting territories they hold in the northwest with the Serbian republic, Sarajevo radio reported. But the radio, which relays official Bosnian statements, reported no attacks by Serbian warplanes during the past day, after claiming dozens of flights in the two days after the U.N. Security Council ordered a ban on Friday. Authorities in Brcko, in the northwest corner of the republic, said however that radar detected planes flying overhead between 8 p.m. Monday and 8 a.m. Tuesday but without dropping any bombs, the radio said. The British Broadcasting Corp. also reported Tuesday extensive signs of Serbian ``ethnic cleansing'' operations in the northern town of Kotor Varos, where numerous homes were burned down and thousands expelled. Magnusson said the utility problems in Sarajevo were compounded Tuesday when UNPROFOR soldiers who have been providing repair workers with armed escorts had to cancel a mission because of a lack of Serbian assurances for their safety. Magnusson attributed the problem to the unexplained absence of Serbian liaison officers assigned to UNPROFOR headquarters, which he said also was posing problems for the delivery of humanitarian aid to the beseiged city. The U.N. High Commission for Refugees office in Sarajevo on Tuesday received nine humanitarian aid flights and four trucks, carrying a total of about 130 tons of food and other supplies. Telephone service also remained disconnected for a second day Tuesday in the western areas of the city, including at the UNPROFOR headquarters. UNPROFOR has repeatedly provided the city's telephone company with diesel fuel to power its electricity generators and Magnusson said he suspected the selective outages may be designed to win more donations. But telephone company officials insisted Tuesday the fuel shortages were real and said the entire system still operating inside the city and some suburbs might soon run out of electricity. Sulejman Hrle, head of the republic-wide workers union, said Tuesday he sent a letter to Morillon warning that thousands of people were preparing to march to the UNPROFOR headquarters to demand the restoration of utilities in Sarajevo, where overnight temperatures already were approaching freezing. Morillon said he was pushing first for guarantees from the warring parties to allow the delivery of humanitarian supplies through the western Sarajevo suburb of Ilidza, the city's only reliable winter outside access route. Morillon said he proposed that the United Nations take control of the fiercely contested route and then establish checkpoints at which the warring factions could ensure only non-military goods were being allowed to pass. Pero Butigan, Red Cross Secretary for Bosnia-Hercegovina, estimated some 3,000 people would join the road convoys headed from Sarajevo to the Croatian port city of Split and the Serbian capital Belgrade. He said his organization was still sorting out details of the trip, including a date of departure, provisions for certifying the illnesses of people allowed to leave and the possibility of private cars traveling alongside buses. ``We have guarantees'' that Serbian forces will permit the convoys to pass, he said, ``but who knows today in these circumstances whether the guarantees will be fulfilled.'' Emil Vlajki, head of Sarajevo's Red Cross organization, complained that many government officials and their families already have easy access to transportation outside the besieged city, often on flights by U.N. forces controlling the airport. Vlajki, speaking alongside Butigan at a news conference at the Bosnian presidency building, also complained about the meager amounts of humanitarian aid many Sarajevo residents were receiving from UHCHR distributors. He demanded the agency take immediate steps to bring in heating oil. ``We are sick of false and half-humanitarianism,'' he said. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: U.N. seeks to restore electricity in Sarajevo Date: 14 Oct 92 12:33:30 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- The U.N. mission persevered Wednesday in efforts to restore electricity supplies and other services to war-ravaged Sarajevo, seeking new assurances of cooperation from the commanders of the Serbian forces blockading the Bosnia-Hercegovina capital. In a related development, U.N. Protection Force (UNPROFOR) officials launched an investigation to identify those responsible for firing at a U.N. aircraft as it landed on Tuesday at Sarajevo airport. The Russian-built AN-32 cargo plane was struck by six bullets, but there were no injuries among those aboard or damage serious enough to ground it, U.N. officials said. Fighting persisted along Bosnia-Hercegovina's northern flank, pitting Serbian forces seeking to carve a self-declared state out of the newly independent former Yugoslav republic against a coalition of Muslim Slavs and Croats, Sarajevo radio reported. Serbian forces have been battling since the beginning of last weekend to keep open a strategic land corridor connecting territories they hold in the northwest with communist-ruled Serbia, their main military and economic patron. Egyptian Brig. Gen. Hussein Abdel Razek, the UNPROFOR commander for Sarajevo, traveled for talks with Serbian military commanders in Pale, a mountain town to the east of the Bosnian capital that serves as the headquarters of the self-styled government of the Serbian ``state.'' Razek hoped to obtain new pledges of Serbian cooperation in UNPROFOR's efforts to restore electricity supplies and other utility services to Sarajevo,where an estimated 500,000 residents and refugees have been trapped and bombarded for more than six months by encircling Serbian forces. The Pale talks were called a day after fresh damage to electricity system components forced a new postponement in a planned restoration of the regional power supply. UNPROFOR spokesman Mik Magnusson said that most of the damage detected Tuesday appeared to be ``collateral'' rather than intentional. He said UNPROFOR was still operating under the assumption that the Serbian side was sincere in wanting to restore utilities. ``I've been told by Serb authorities they want power too,'' he said. ``They don't have any power in (the Serb-controlled suburb of) Ilidza. They don't have any in Pale.'' But, Magnusson acknowledged that it appeared that Sarajevo's outside telephone links and natural gas supply lines were disconnected at points controlled by Serbian forces. The restoration of electricity has been anxiously awaited in an increasingly chilly Sarajevo. French Gen. Philippe Morillon, the UNPROFOR commander for Bosnia- Hercegovina, had been hoping to hold the first of an envisioned series of regular meetings on Tuesday with opposing military leaders on safeguarding civilians from involvement in the conflict. But, the Bosnian government of Muslim Slavs and moderate Serbs and Croats insisted that Morillon was being duped by the Serbian extremists, and refused to participate in the talks until water and electricity were restored to Sarajevo. Magnusson, meanwhile, said the attack of the U.N. plane Tuesday appeared to have been committed by someone using a machine gun in the first such incident since the U.N. airlift of humanitarian aid to Sarajevo was resumed Oct. 3 after a month-long suspension. The plane, which makes daily flights into the city carrying U.N. personnel and cargo, departed Sarajevo after the incident with Morillon among its passengers. One bullet entered the cockpit and five others scarred a wing, Magnusson said. UNPROFOR announced that its survey of artillery fire in the Sarajevo area showed U.N. observers detected a total of 21 rounds hitting Serb- controlled areas and 91 rounds blasting Bosnian-held territory during the 24-hour period that ended at 5 p.m. Tuesday. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Serbs, ethnic Albanians hold second day of talks Date: 14 Oct 92 15:22:06 GMT BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (UPI) -- Leaders of the independence-seeking ethnic Albanian majority of Serbia's Kosovo Province held a fruitful second day of talks Wednesday with federal and Serbian officials on resolving a feud over education in the wake of violent anti-government protests, news reports said. Representatives of the Geneva-based peace talks on former Yugoslavia and the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe attended the discussions in the provincial capital of Pristina, 200 miles south of the Serbian capital of Belgrade, state-run Belgrade Radio said. It was the second internationally observed meeting held in as many days on demands by ethnic Albanians that they devise their own education programs to replace those imposed by the communist regime of President Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia as part of its hardline direct rule of the province. Tanjug, the official news agency of the Serbia-controlled rump Yugoslav federation, said the negotiators ended the meeting by announcing an agreement to resume in Belgrade on Oct. 22 the first face- to-face discussions held to end the tension-stoking dispute that has kept most schools closed for more than a year. ``It is a general assessment of all participants that this was the first significant step to start solving problems in Kosovo,'' Tanjug said. The meeting was held on the eve of a visit to Pristina for talks on the issue by Yugoslav Prime Minister Milan Panic, who on Tuesday unveiled his own plan for resolving the crisis. Kosovo has long been riven by serious tensions between its 2 million ethnic Albanians, who almost unanimously want independence from Serbia, and 200,000 Serbs. The province is cherished by Serbs worldwide as the cradle of their culture and Christian Orthodox religion. Kosovo's future has become a major issue in an ongoing power struggle between Panic, who favors limited ethnic Albanian autonomy, and Milosevic, who has reaped enormous support among Serbian nationalists by employing repressive police policies to crush sessionism. Western governments and international human rights groups regard Milosevic's human rights record as the worst in Europe. Tens of thousands of ethnic Albanian students, teachers and professors have boycotted school and university classes since last year to protest Belgrade-designed programs they claim are skewed toward Serbian history and culture and ignore their own. Serbian authorities responded to the boycott by closing schools and suspending ethnic Albanian educators from their jobs. Serbian police in Pristina and a number of other towns used tear gas and clubs to disperse thousands of ethnic Albanians demanding the right to design their own educational curriculums. Milosevic dissolved Kosovo's provincial administration in July 1990, and appointed Serbs to replace ethnic Albanians in all major public posts, virtually wiping out the province's 40-year-old autonomy. Thousands of Serbian police and troops have been stationed in Kosovo in the past four years to help Milosevic maintain his iron-strong grip over the province.
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----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Vance says ``no-fly zone'' seems to work in Bosnia-Hercegovina Subject: 19th Fischer-Spassky game ends in draw Subject: Sarajevo shelling falls to 'six-month low' Subject: Yugoslav Prime Minister visits restive Kosovo province Subject: More Bosnian children arrive in Poland Subject: Britain sends enlarged UNPROFOR force to Bosnia-Hercegovina Subject: Meeting of leaders of former Yugoslavia shaping up ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Vance says ``no-fly zone'' seems to work in Bosnia-Hercegovina Date: 14 Oct 92 22:28:13 GMT UNITED NATIONS (UPI) -- The U.N. envoy to the peace talks for the former Yugoslavia suggested Wednesday that the Security Council not take any further steps to militarily enforce the ``no-fly zone'' in Bosnia- Hercegovina because Bosnian Serbs appeared to be upholding it. Cyrus Vance, who co-chairs the international conference on the former Yugoslavia with British Lord David Owen, said the decision by Bosnian Serbs to remove their aircraft from their main military headquarters at Banja Luka was a ``correct step.'' ``So far it seems to be working, let's stick with it,'' Vance told reporters after giving the Security Council a progress report on the negotiations being held in Geneva in the last month. Vance is the envoy of Secretary-General Boutros Ghali while Owen represents the European Community. Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic offered Tuesday to remove Serbian combat aircract from Banja Luka to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, now composed of Serbia and Montenegro. Karadzic was to meet with U.N. peacekeeping officials to work out details for removing the aircraft and for U.N. observers to move into the base to monitor the ban. The United Nations said the pledge was a ``desire to achieve a cessation of hostilities and to facilitate the implementation of U.N. Security Council resolution 781'' which bans Serbian military flights over Bosnia-Hercegovina. The Security Council had said that it would take a new step to enforce the ban if it were violated. The United States charged Tuesday that Bosnian Serbs violated the four-day-old ban and was consulting with the council to work out a new resolution for military enforcement. Vance said he briefed the Security Council on progress made by the conference and its committees which have been dealing with various aspects of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia. Diplomats said that progress includes work on a new constitution for Bosnia-Hercegovina and ways to demilitarize Sarajevo. Vance said he was returning to Geneva Thursday for a new round of talks with the president of Macedonia on Saturday and with the presidents of Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina next week. He said the Yugoslav conference will reconvene on Oct. 28 with the attendance of leaders of Yugoslav republics. He said the talks are ``full of pitfalls and obstacles,'' but the United Nations intends to move supplies and relief items to Bosnia-Hercegovina as soon as possible before the winter settles in. Ghali told the Security Council he will name five experts to the war- crimes commission, which was mandated by the council to analyze all information pertaining to the reported execution and torture of Muslim Slavs by Serbs or any atrocities committed in ethnic conflicts in the former Yugoslavia. The commission was set up by the council on Oct. 6 in response to widespread allegations of killings of Muslims and severe human rights violations in Bosnia-Hercegovina. Several council members had said that the commission's investigations would lead to an international trial of those charged with war crimes in the Balkans. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: 19th Fischer-Spassky game ends in draw Date: 15 Oct 92 10:07:47 GMT BELGRADE, Serbia (UPI) -- Former world chess-champion Bobby Fischer continued to lead ex-Soviet grandmaster Boris Spassky 7-games-to-3 in their controversial rematch after the pair's 19th game ended in a draw. Despite 84 moves and nine hours of play, the game ended deadlocked late Wednesday. For the second time this month, Fischer, using white pieces, played a Sicilian defense -- traditionally Spassky's favorite opening when holding white figures. The American had used the defense in the match's 17th game Saturday, scoring an easy victory over Spassky. Fischer needs just three more wins to take a $3.35 million prize offered by Jezdimir Vasiljevic, a Serbian banker who organized the re- match despite Serbia's ongoing role in the Yugoslav civil war. Fischer has ignored a U.S. government warning of possible arrest if he played in Serbia. American officials said the match -- a replay of a 1972 faceoff that Fischer won -- appeared to violate a U.N. embargo placed on the nation because of the Yugoslav war. The U.S. Treasury Department said Fischer could face up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for violating the ban. However, even if he loses the match, Fischer will receive $1.65 million in prize money. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Sarajevo shelling falls to 'six-month low' Date: 15 Oct 92 11:51:31 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- Shelling of the Bosnia- Hercegovina capital diminished Thursday after some utilities were restored, and Serbian forces began respecting a U.N. flight ban, officials and news reports said. U.N. Protection Force officials said shellfire hitting the city had been declining daily over the past week. ``I think it's probably dropped down to the lowest point it's been in the six months of the siege,'' said British Col. Richard Mole, chief of the 60-member U.N. military observers unit assigned to Sarajevo. UNPROFOR officials said a total of 11 rounds of large artillery were fired onto Serbian-controlled areas and 41 rounds reaching Bosnian- controlled territory during the 24-hour period that ended at 5 p.m. Wednesday. Meanwhile, residents were relieved Thursday after gas supplies were restored following a 10-day disconnection somewhere inside Serbian- controlled territory. ``Great, it at least means now I can cook,'' said Nedzad Masala, who found the gas turned back on at his home in the city's Old Town section. ``But unfortunately the pressure is too low to turn on the heat. The Bosnian government said electricity was restored in the town of Jajce after a 32-day outage. The reconnections appeared to indicate Serbian forces were respecting U.N. pleas to stop manipulating civilian services for military ends in the Bosnian conflict. The developments came one day after U.N. peace envoy Cyrus Vance told the U.N. Security Council that Bosnian Serbs appeared to be abiding by the flight ban it imposed Friday. ``So far it seems to be working, lets stick with it,'' Vance told reporters after giving the Security Council a progress report on the negotiations held over the past month in Geneva. Sarajevo radio said Serbian forces appeared to be refraining from using warplanes, although it claimed the Serbs still were using helicopters to transport supplies to the contested towns of Brcko and Tuzla. Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic offered Tuesday to remove Serbian combat aircraft from Banja Luka to the rump Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, comprising Serbia and Montenegro. Vance praised the initiative and told the Security Council he believed it should take no further steps at the moment to enforce the no-fly zone. Despite the positive signs, Sarajevo remained without many key utilities, including electricity, most of its water service and much of its telephone service. Bosnian military leaders were refusing to attend U.N.-mediated talks with their Serbian counterparts until both electricity and water were restored. Artillery and infantry attacks were reported Wednesday in some northern and central areas, including Gradacac, Brcko, Tuzla, Maglaj, Zavidovici, Travnik, Jajce, Kalesija and Banovici, Sarajevo radio said. Four people died and seven were injured in Gradacac, where Serbian forces continued to pull in reinforcements from Prijedor, Banja Luka and Bosanski Brod, it said. Also Wednesday, the Bosnian military set up a roadblock to stop two Red Cross convoys planning to carry some 6,500 people out of Sarajevo, saying it still needed government approval. The convoys were planned to bring children, elderly and sick people from the Bosnian capital to the Croatian port city of Split and the Serbian capital Belgrade. Speaking on Wednesday, Vance said he briefed the Security Council on progress made by the conference and its committees that have been dealing with various aspects of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia. Diplomats said that progress includes work on a new constitution for Bosnia-Hercegovina and ways to demilitarize Sarajevo. Vance said he was returning Thursday to Geneva for a new round of talks Saturday with the president of Macedonia and next week with the presidents of Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina. He said the Yugoslav conference will reconvene Oct. 28 with the attendance of leaders of Yugoslav republics. U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Ghali told the Security Council he will name five experts to the war-crimes commission mandated by the council to analyze all information regarding the reported execution and torture of Muslim Slavs by Serbs or any atrocities committed in ethnic conflicts in the former Yugoslavia. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Yugoslav Prime Minister visits restive Kosovo province Date: 15 Oct 92 16:11:33 GMT PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (UPI) -- Yugoslav Prime Minister Milan Panic held the first direct talks with leaders of independence-seeking ethnic Albanians in Serbia's Kosovo province Thursday, opening a dialogue on a series of outstanding issues. ``I am delighted to tell you that we had a very good discussion on a professional level,'' Panic told a news conference in the Kosovo provincial capital of Pristina. ``We had a very eloquent and rational review of the sitation. We defined the problems and we started to work on them immediately,'' Panic said. Ethnic Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova and Panic said they agreed to resume talks ``soon.'' ``I tried to solve all the problems today but Mr. Rugova kindly explained to me that it would take a bit more of time,'' Panic said. The two sides decided to form commissions to deal with the issues that should be resolved such as legislature, education and human rights. Panic said he and Rugova ``agreed to work together on democratization of the Yugoslav system.'' Rugova told reporters, ``I appreciate this meeting. This was a very serious discussion and we want to continue it.'' He underlined that ``the human rights issue has priority over the question of Kosovo's territorial status.'' Panic arrived in Pristina earlier in the day for separate talks with Serbian and ethnic Albanian leaders in what he said is an effort to return peace, tolerance, work and prosperity to Serbia's predominantly ethnic Albanian province. It was Panic's first trip to Kosovo and the first talks in three years between a top-ranking Serbian official coming from the former Yugoslav capital of Belgrade and leaders of the independence-seeking ethnic Albanian Democratic League of Kosovo. Panic flew from Belgrade aboard a Yugoslav Air Force plane and drove from Pristina's airport to the center of the provincial capital in an armor-plated black Mercedes-Benz limousine amid heavy security measures. Scores of uniform and plainclothes policemen stood in chilly and cloudy weather on the main street in downtown Pristina as Panic arrived for talks in the predominantly ethnic Albanian town. The prime minister first met representatives of Serbs from Kosovo, the south Serbian province where 2 million ethnic Albanians outnumber 200,000 Serbs. ``We have come to move the problems from the street and discuss them over the table,'' Panic told a group of Serbian officials. Panic discounted hopes by ethnic Albanian extremists for independence, saying international bodies including the United Nations and the European Community recognize Kosovo is part of Serbia. He urged Serbs in Kosovo to ``help in safeguarding peace...organizing democratic elections and engaging Yugoslavs of Albanian origin in political life'' in the province because these are among the conditions for the lifting of U.N. sanctions against Serbia and Montenegro. On May 30, the U.N. Security Council imposed strict economic sanctions including an oil embargo on the rump Yugoslav union of Serbia and Montenegro for its involvement in the ongoing war in the newly independent republic of Bosnia-Hercegovina. ``If we carry out a peaceful policy, if we are mutually tolerant and respect ethnic, religious and other differences, we shall succeed,'' Panic said. ``Peace, tolerance, work, prosperity and international recognition (for Serbia and Yugoslavia) is my choice. The other is war and tragedy,'' he said. Panic said that ``stories about (Kosovo's) secession (from Serbia) are not real...and instead we have to agree what to do next to re-open schools and respect human rights.'' ``This is why I came here, to help in solving the situation and to get help from whoever wants it,'' Panic said. At moments, talks between Panic and Kosovo Serbs appeared hostile, but did not disway the energetic businessman, a Belgrade-born Serb who made himself a millionaire in the United States. Panic came to Belgrade from California at the request of the Serbian regime and was appointed Yugoslav prime minister in mid-July. ``Did you come here as a real Serb which you claim to be or maybe you have a spare nationality,'' asked an official from among the group of Serbs. Another Serb, a deputy from Kosovo Province in the Serbian Assembly in Belgrade, said, ``Eighty percent of the Serbian people do not support you. Stop wasting time by asking for (Serbia's hard-line President Slobodan) Milosevic's resignation and resign yourself.'' Panic was trying to calm down Serbian fears that the Kosovo province would get back the autonomy it had before 1990 when Milosevic's communist regime took complete control of the province and dissolved its government and assembly. Following his talks with Serbs, Panic drove some 200 yards down the main street to a former Kosovo government building for talks with leaders of ethnic Albanians. Ibrahim Rugova, President of the Democratic League of Kosovo, which advocates Kosovo's independence from Serbia, led a party of ethnic Albanian leaders when they began talks behind closed doors. In Pristina Wednesday, leaders of the Democratic League of Kosovo held successful talks with Serbian and Yugoslav officials on resolving a feud over the education issue. Ethnic Albanians want to have their own education programs instead of those imposed by the Serbian regime two years ago. About 60,000 ethnic Albanian schoolchildren and 20,000 university students in Kosovo have boycotted classes in 1991. Talks concerning the education issue are to resume in Belgrade next week. Kosovo, which Serbs worldwide chersih as the cradle of their culture and Christian Orthodox religion, has been the site of ethnic tension for many years. Ethnic Albanians and Serbs have been exchanging accusations claiming each group is persecuting the other in Kosovo. Western governments and international human rights groups regard Milosevic's human rights record as the worst in Europe. The Milosevic regime in July 1990 appointed Serbs to replace ethnic Albanians in all major public posts, virtually wiping out the province's 40-year-old autonomy. Thousands of Serbian police and troops have been stationed in Kosovo in the past four years to help Milosevic maintain his iron-strong grip over the province. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: More Bosnian children arrive in Poland Date: 15 Oct 92 17:15:11 GMT WARSAW, Poland (UPI) -- A second trainload of children seeking refuge from war-torn Bosnia-Hercegovina arrived Thursday in Poland. Foreign Ministry spokesman Jakub Kozlowski told a news conference the government of Bosnia-Herzegovina asked the Polish government to accept 1,500 children and youths from the town of Bosanski Brod in northern Bosnia. Some 167 people arrived on the second train, while the first train, which arrived on Tuesday, carried 620 children. Bosanski Brod, which was originally in Bosnian hands, fell to Serbian irregulars last week and the families were scattered. By the time the children were regrouped in Osijek, some parents decided not to send their charges away. The expedition was organized so that the children will be able to continue their schooling, and several truckloads of books were being shipped also. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Britain sends enlarged UNPROFOR force to Bosnia-Hercegovina Date: 15 Oct 92 17:22:20 GMT LONDON (UPI) -- The first British troops of a new United Nations force began deploying to the republics of the former Yugoslavia Thursday in a troop operation considerably larger than first envisaged, Defense Secretary Malcolm Rifkind said. An enlarged force of about 2,400 British troops would be sent to accompany convoys ferrying humanitarian relief to villages in Bosnia- Hercegovina, Rifkind told a news conference. An advance team of 90 troops from the Cheshire Regiment based in Fallingbostel, Germany, was flying Thursday to the Croatian city of Split in a U.S. Air Force transport jet. ``The deployment will be a phased operation,'' Rifkind said. ``By the end of the month, a larger party of about 1,000 men will have reached Split, where they will marry up with their vehicles and equipment.'' The deployment is expected to be complete by Nov. 13, he said. A party of officers earlier studied the land routes from Split to the Bosnian city of Vitez under Brig. David Jenkins, the director of military operations at the Ministry of Defense. The reconnaissance made it clear that extra troops would be required to provide accommodation for the forces. ``The physical fabric of the buildings in Bosnia has been so badly damaged by the conflict that we are going to have to put extra effort to setting up accommodation in which our troops can live and work,'' Rifkin said. The 400 extra troops, most of them from the Royal Engineers, will be sent on a temporary basis. Two hundred other troops will be based at the Split headquarters, bringing the total British troops to 1,400. The MOD initially planned to send 1,800 troops after the U.N. Security Council voted to authorize sending troops to protect humanitarian aid convoys. Three hundred British troops are now in Croatia as part of a United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR). The 2,400 additional troops, along with troops from France, Canada, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, and Norway, will form part of a new command known as UNPROFOR II, led by a French major general. The British troops will be commanded by Brig. Andrew Cumming. The troops will protect humanitarian aid convoys traveling from the port city of Split into central Bosnia-Hercegovina in the embattled former Yugoslav republic. Rifkind said the aim of the deployment was to help relieve the ``desperate plight'' of the suffering Bosnians and to try to avert a tragedy as winter approached. ``I believe public opinion realizes this is an essential humanitarian task which our forces should be undertaking,'' he said. The British troops would be authorized to fire in self-defense if attacked, and reserved the right to withdraw if the fighting was seen to pose too great a risk. ``The role of these troops is not to fight their way through to their destination,'' Armed Forces Minister Archie Hamilton said. ``There can be certain cases when the risks are unacceptable.'' ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Meeting of leaders of former Yugoslavia shaping up Date: 15 Oct 92 17:43:30 GMT GENEVA (UPI) -- A meeting of leaders of the former Yugoslavia appeared Thursday to be shaping up for the weekend and early next week as leaders of Croatia, Bosnia-Hercegovina and federal Yugoslavia announced plans to be in Geneva. Derek Boothby, a spokesman for Cyrus Vance and Lord David Owen, the United Nations and European Community mediators in the ongoing conflict in Bosnia-Hercegovina, said he was unable to provide a detailed schedule of who would be meeting whom. But he said the presence of so many persons in Geneva ``will provide a splendid opportunity for the co-chairmen (of the mediation effort) to meet with as many people as possible.'' Radovan Karadzic, leader of the Bosnian Serbs, has spent the week in Geneva and was scheduled to meet Friday with federal Yugoslav Prime Minister Milan Panic to discuss the transfer of Serbian planes from Bosnia to federal Yugoslavia -- a task Boothby said he hopes can be completed by the weekend. Karadzic made the surprise offer in a late night meeting with Owen Tuesday to transfer the planes, which have been based in Serb-held areas of northern Bosnia-Hercegovina and used to strafe Croatian and Moslem- held areas. Details of the transfer to airfields held by the Yugoslav air force in and around the Belgrade area are being discussed in Belgrade by U.N. military officials, Boothby said. But he said Panic would be finalizing matters with Karazdic and also meeting with Owen and Vance, who was due back from New York on Friday. Vance has been reporting on the Bosnian peace talks to U.N. Secretary General Boutros Ghali. Traveling with Panic was Yugoslav President Dobrica Cosic, who was scheduled to meet with Croatia's President Franjo Tudjman on October 20 -- the second time the two have met in Geneva within a month. Sources in the Croatian delegation said it was likely Tudjman would also meet with Bosnian President Alija Izbekovic, who was coming in over the weekend and was expected to meet with Cosic on Monday. The presence of all these major players in the Yugoslav crisis does not necessarily mean that a peace agreement in Bosnia-Hercegovina is in the offing, sources close to the Owen-Vance office said. But they said it was significant that all the major players were gathering in Geneva at the same time and would be able to exchange views not only with Vance and Owen but with each other. A delegation from Macedonia, hitherto a comparatively minor player in the talks, was also expected in Geneva over the weekend and was scheduled to meet with the Vance-Owen office Monday. The only person missing from the equation, observers pointed out, was Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic.
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----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Winter likely to stretch U.N. resources to limit, official says Subject: Bosnian officials accuse Serbs of creating another Auschwitz Subject: Bosnian government forces barricade Sarajevo airport road ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Winter likely to stretch U.N. resources to limit, official says Date: 15 Oct 92 18:40:17 GMT BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (UPI) -- A senior U.N. official warned Thursday that the United Nations may be pushed ``to the limit of its capabilities'' as it tries to provide food, clothing and shelter for refugees and besieged communities in war-torn Bosnia-Hercegovina during the harsh Balkan winter. Cedric Thornberry, deputy chief of mission of the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) in the republics of the former Yugoslavia, said that however difficult the situation may have been in Bosnia until now, it ``may be even more awful in the upcoming few months'' of winter. ``The impact of winter on so many refugees, the lack of food, clothing and shelter, may push the international community to the limit of its capabilities,'' Thornberry told a news conference in the Yugoslav capital of Belgrade. ``We as UNPROFOR are beginning to wonder if the international community is fully aware of the dimensions of this threat,'' he said. ``All of us in this region, working for the U.N., are profoundly concerned with the situation developing in Bosnia-Hercegovina,'' stated Thornberry, adding that he feared the spread of a humanitarian crisis to other countries in the region. The UNPROFOR is to expand its peace-keeping mission in Bosnia- Hercegovina to 22,500 personnel by the end of November, making it the largest U.N. operation in the world, Thornberry said. ``Although it is difficult to say how many troops there will be in Bosnia-Hercegovina, my guess is that we will have around 22,500 personnel there by the end of November,'' said Thornberry, who also serves as the director of civil affairs for UNPROFOR. The current size of the mission in former Yugoslavia numbers 15,718 people, out of which 613 are members of the U.N. police force, 585 are civilians and the rest are military personnel. But Thornberry said that the expansion of the U.N. mission will pose some operational problems. ``It is going to be extremely complicated in terms of engineering, planning and looking for additional supplies, elements for adding contruction capability which we need for accommodations,'' said Thornberry. But Thornburry said that there was a ``gleam of hope'' in the UNPROFOR mission,which is trying to organize a gradual protected return of refugees to the homes they fled during the Serbo-Croat war last year. ``At the moment we are trying to bring back both Serbs and Croats to their homes for the day, let them have a look at what is left, if anything, and let them decide what they want to do,'' said Thornberry. So far the UNPROFOR has been able to return people to 13 villages in Croatia. The residents have begun reconstructing their homes, slowly putting their lives back together again. But in many cases it has been difficult to obtain cooperation of local authorities in Croatia's Serbian enclaves for the return of refugees to their homes located in disputed areas. Incidents of vandalism and terrorism have increased as neither Serbian or Croatian extremists wish to have other nationalities living in their midst. ``Indeed, the highly publicized return of refugees to their homes has been counterproductive and made it more difficult for us to do our job,'' said Thornburry, recounting a recent incident in the village of Korane where eight Croatian houses were set ablaze by extremists in an effort to keep refugees from returning home. Thornburry said that serious problems have arisen in UNPROFOR- monitored areas in Croatia due to the failure of ``special militia to disarm and demobilize'' under an agreement reached between Serbian and Croatian forces at the time of the January cease-fire between the two republics. ``The so-called special police are still in charge of sector East (an UNPROFOR-monitored region) and our reports show that these are mainly the people who perform these terrorist acts,'' said Thornberry. ``We are dealing with small-time gangsters who have been put in uniform to give them credibility,'' Thornberry added, saying that the phenomenon occurs on both the Serbian and Croatian side. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Bosnian officials accuse Serbs of creating another Auschwitz Date: 15 Oct 92 20:13:09 GMT UNITED NATIONS (UPI) -- A delegation from Bosnia-Hercegovina accused Bosnian Serbs Thursday of creating an ``instant Auschwitz'' during their ethnic cleansing campaign and cited one instance in which they claimed some 5,000 people were cremated. The delegation, headed by Bosnian Foreign Minister Haris Silajdzic, also sent an open letter to President Bush, calling for an end to the arms embargo so Bosnia-Hercegovina can defend itself against Serb-led attacks which have captured at least 70 percent of the republic's territory. Silajdzic, accompanied by five other officials representing the Parliament, Bosnian Serbs, Croats and Muslim Slavs, said a total of 613, 000 non-Serbs had been drived out of their homes and towns by the ethnic cleansing campaign in the 6-month-old war. One member of the delegation, professor Muhammed Filipovic, claimed satellite pictures in August showed a massive grave at a mining region in Prijedor where Serbs maintained three detention camps at the Tomashica town in western Bosnia-Hercegovina. Filippovic said 5,000 were cremated at the camps. ``It's an instant Auschwitz there,'' Silajdzic said referring to the city in southwest Poland where Nazi leaders established an extermination camp for Jews during World War II. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed at the camp. The delegation said the Bosnian government has had no information on at least 200,000 people since the war began and assumed they were killed during fighting or executed. The delegation claimed that mass graves had been found throughout Bosnia-Hercegovina and said the government's institute for war crimes has been compiling information on human rights violations committed by Serbs. The delegation met with Secretary-General Boutros Ghali and Cyrus Vance, the U.N. envoy to the peace talks for the former Yugoslavia, to appeal for an end of the Security Council-imposed arms embargo. But Silajdzic said both Ghali and Vance showed no reaction to their request. The arms embargo was imposed last year on the whole of the former Balkan federation when fighting broke out in Croatia. In May this year, the Security Council decreed a trade embargo against Serbia and Montenegro to punish it for Serb-led attacks in Bosnia-Hercegovina. U.N. agencies and the International Committee for the Red Cross have warned that up to 400,000 people may die during the harsh winter if humanitarian assistance is not given to the population in Bosnia- Hercegovina, most of whom have lost homes to the Serbs. Silajdzic said Bosnia-Hercegovina will become a ``disaster of gigantic proportion'' if it will not receive outside help immediately. In his letter to Bush, Silajdzic said 100,000 people were killed in the past six months and over 1 million were expelled from their homes, ``and those who do not escape are waiting to die of hunger, cold and disease.'' Silajdzic said his government has never asked for American ground troops. ``All we ask for is the recognition of our right to self-defense under the U.N. charter,'' he said. He said the arms embargo is ``absurd and unjust'' to Bosnia- Hercegovina. He said Sarajevo, the capital city under siege for six months is a ``gigantic death camp'' where the 400,000 people who live there have had little food, running water, electricity or electricity. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Bosnian government forces barricade Sarajevo airport road Date: 15 Oct 92 20:48:11 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- Bosnian forces barricaded the airport access road Thursday in violation of a promise to U.N. peace- keeping forces, totally halting U.N. humanitarian aid deliveries in what was described as a defensive operation to block a planned Serbian offensive, U.N. officials said. Bosnian forces moved a large cargo container across the main airport access road around noon Thursday and rejected U.N. requests that they remove it, U.N. Protection Force spokesman Mik Magnusson said. The action disrupted what had been a series of calming actions in recent days in the capital and republic, including a reduction in shelling, a halt in flights by Serbian warplanes and signs that long- severed utility supplies were being restored. ``I think it (the shelling of Sarajevo) has probably dropped down to the lowest point its been in the six months of the siege,'' said British Col. Richard Mole, chief of the 60-member U.N. military observers unit assigned to Sarajevo. UNPROFOR officials, in their daily survey, said only 11 rounds of large artillery were fired onto Serbian-controlled areas around Sarajevo and 41 rounds reached Bosnian-controlled territory during the 24-hour period that ended at 5 p.m. Wednesday. However the blockade of the airport access road violated an agreement of free passage for U.N. convoys that both Serbian and Bosnian forces had accepted this summer when the Serbs willingly turn over control of the airport to U.N. forces. It cut off the route used both by truck convoys delivering U.N. aid to the besieged Bosnian capital along land routes and the route used by trucks ferrying in aid unloaded from planes reaching the airport. U.N. officials met Bosnian military leaders in the afternoon and asked that the blockade be removed, but the Bosnians refused and suggested the U.N trucks use an alternate route, Magnusson said. The U.N. officials said they could not begin any new route without first completing a safety survey and getting the approval of all sides in the conflict, he said. A spokesman for the U.N. High Commission for Refugees said the new route proposed by the Bosnians was ``very circuitous'' and of unknown safety. ``We can't really judge the long-term consequences'' of the blockade, said UNHCR spokesman Michael Keats, ``but in light of the serious situation Sarajevo is facing, this does not help matters as winter is setting in.'' The UNHCR has been trying to catch up on its program for supplying Sarajevo with winter stocks of food and medicines after a month-long interruption in the humanitarian airlift prompted by the shooting down Sept. 3 of an Italian flight over Croat-controlled territory west of the capital. Eight trucks arrived in the city along the land route Thursday before the blockade was installed and these were forced to spend the night in Sarajevo, UNHCR officials said. Three planes arrived at the airport during the day, they said. Also Thursday, fighting continued across northern parts of the republic, where Serbian forces were trying to maintain control of a land corridor connecting the Serbian republic with the large Serb-controlled region of northwest Bosnia-Hercegovina, Sarajevo Radio reported. Some 1,400 rounds of artillery were fired Thursday at Gradacac, where seven people were killed and 16 injured, the radio said. The towns of Brcko, Maglaj and Celic also faced artillery and infantry attacks, the radio said. Artillery attacks also were reported against the southern town of Capljina and the city of Mostar, which faced its heaviest barrage in a week, the radio said. Bosnian forces in Sarajevo fought off Serbian infantry attacks Thursday in the western regions of Otes and Azici, the radio said. The ground fighting followed one day after U.N. peace envoy Cyrus Vance told the U.N. Security Council that Bosnian Serbs appeared to be abiding by the flight ban it imposed Friday. Earlier Thursday, Sarajevo residents expressed relief that gas supplies were restored following a 10-day disconnection somewhere inside Serbian-controlled territory. ``Great, it at least means now I can cook,'' said Nedzad Masala, who found the gas turned back on at his home in the city's old town section. ``But unfortunately the pressure is too low to turn on the heat,'' he said. The Bosnian government also said electricity was restored in the town of Jajce after a 32-day outage. The reconnections indicated Serbian forces may be respecting U.N. pleas to stop manipulating civilian services for military ends in Bosnian conflict. But Sarajevo still remained without many key utilities, including electricity, most of its water service and much of its telephone service. Bosnian military leaders were refusing to attend U.N.-mediated talks with their Serbian counterparts until both electricity and water were restored in the capital. In Geneva a summit of leaders of the former Yugoslavia appeared Thursday to be shaping up for the weekend and early next week as leaders of Croatia, Bosnia-Hercegovina and federal Yugoslavia announced plans to be in town. However Derek Boothby, a spokesman for Cyrus Vance and Lord David Owen, the joint United Nations and European Community mediators in the ongoing conflict in Bosnia-Hercegovina, said he was unable to provide a detailed schedule of who would be meeting whom. Radovan Karadzic, leader of the Bosnian Serbs, has spent the week in Geneva and was scheduled to meet Friday with federal Yugoslav Prime Minister Milan Panic to discuss the transfer of Serbian planes from Bosnia to federal Yugoslavia -- a task Boothby said he hopes can be completed by the weekend.
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Tape Transcript Describes Last Moments of KAL 007 (Moscow) By John-Thor Dahlburg (c) 1992, Los Angeles Times MOSCOW _ Nine years after they were killed by a Soviet warplane, the crew of Korean Airlines Flight 007 can now be heard again, gripped by terror and bewilderment, as they plunge to their deaths in the frigid waters of the Sea of Japan. ``Get it up!'' cries one voice in the cockpit, after two heat-seeking missiles slam into the Boeing 747 and it starts losing altitude. ``It's not working!'' someone protests. Anyone who has flown can visualize only too graphically the sheer pan ic of the 269 people aboard by extrapolating from the sounds and voices captured by the jet's cockpit voice recorder. Suddenly, at 35,000 feet, there is smoke. A recorded message, in Engl ish, Japanese and Korean, kicks in: ``Emergency descent. Fasten seat belts. Put on oxygen masks.'' ``I'm Korean Air 007. Don't break off contact, give instructions!'' a voice calls from the plummeting jetliner, vainly seeking help by radio from flight controllers in faraway Tokyo. The crew apparently does not know their aircraft has been attacked af ter entering Soviet airspace over the island of Sakhalin early on Sept. 1, 1983. In as few as 75 seconds, Flight 007 will be no more. ``We've got rapid (de)compression,'' continues the message for assist ance. ``I'm going down to 10,000.'' Tokyo radios back: ``Korean Air 007, don't understand, don't understa nd you.'' It is already too late. Five seconds later, the tape from the Boeing's cockpit voice recorder abruptly ends, according to a formerly top-secret Russian-language translation handed by President Boris N. Yeltsin to U.S. and South Korean officials and published Thursday by the Izvestia daily. The esteemed Moscow newspaper, whose own investigation last year into the shoot-down of KAL 007 blew away much of the official Kremlin propaganda, said that the transcript and other released papers prove incontrovertibly that a passenger jet, and not a military spy plane, as some conspiratorially minded Soviets maintained, was destroyed. But the documents released nine years after the tragedy leave many tr oubling questions unsolved _ including why the Boeing was 300 miles off its usual flight path, and how its cockpit crew could not have realized that fact if its motives were totally innocent. ``One thing definitely beats me: how a crew of experienced pilots sta yed quite a ways off course for about five hours, and never even bothered to check,'' said Nikolai V. Burbyga, an Izvestia reporter who has specialized in the KAL tragedy. ``Of course, under any circumstances, the Soviet side had no right by any standard, moral or military, to shoot down what was all too obviously a passenger plane. ... ``But somebody must have deliberately sent the plane on an off-course route with the likely aim of probing Soviet defenses in this area, believing they wouldn't dare shoot down a passenger plane,'' Burbyga said. ``This `somebody' must share equal responsibility. The Americans stil l keep their archives closed on this subject. Why don't they open up, as we have?'' A South Korean Foreign Ministry official, speaking in Seoul, complain ed that the files handed over by Yeltsin on Wednesday were incomplete. The voice recorder transcript, for example, was very fragmentary. ``There was nothing in the information received that we did not alrea dy know,'' the South Korean representative said. Dissatisfied officials in Seoul said that they want the recorder itse lf to help determine why the plane was destroyed. The Itar-Tass news agency said that the apparatus would be handed over to U.S. and South Korean representatives in Moscow. The documents released by Yeltsin and published in Izvestia show the Kremlin's overwhelming desire to cover up all evidence that did not square with its loudly proclaimed thesis that Flight 007 was on a U.S.-South Korean spy mission. ``We haven't succeeded in receiving direct evidence of the espionage nature of the plane's flight,'' Defense Minister Dmitri F. Ustinov and KGB Chairman Viktor M. Chebrikov admitted in a top-secret report to Soviet leader Yuri V. Andropov in December 1983. Nevertheless, the two officials concluded the violation of Soviet air space must have been ``premeditated'' as a way of probing local air defenses, and surmised that the crew was radioing false positions to give itself an alibi in the event the plane was forced down by Soviet fighters. Tellingly, Ustinov and Chebrikov recommended that the Soviet Union ke ep the flight recorder data secret because they could be used to buttress American claims just as well as the Kremlin's, and might ignite a ``new round of anti-Soviet hysteria.'' Among the other revelations in the formerly top-secret documents: _For years, including those of Mikhail S. Gorbachev's tenure as Sovie t leader, the Soviets denied that they had found the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder. In reality, the ``black boxes'' were dredged up a month and half after the plane's destruction, in the 600-foot-deep waters of the Sea of Japan. To deceive the world, search parties feigned to continue the hunt. _The Soviet fighter-interceptor did not attempt to make radio contact with KAL 007 before it opened fire, as Kremlin officials long claimed. Because that is evident from flight recorder data, experts from the defense and aviation ministries and KGB recommended keeping the recorders' recovery a secret. U.S. Stops Selling `Mein Kampf' at Military Bookstores in Germany (Bonn) By Steve Vogel Special to The Washington Post BONN, Germany _ Under pressure from the German government, U.S. offic ials have stopped selling ``Mein Kampf,'' Hitler's Nazi blueprint, at military bookstores in Germany. The U.S. military command in Europe pulled all copies of the book fro m the shelves of its 150 bookstores in Germany this month after the Foreign Ministry complained the Americans were breaking the law by selling it. ``It is an agreement to get out of the `Mein Kampf' business in Germa ny completely,'' said John Kominicki, a spokesman for Stars and Stripes, the U.S. military newspaper that operates a chain of bookstores for the nearly 200,000 American service personnel and their families stationed in Europe. The book is still available at Stars and Stripes bookstores elsewhere in Europe. German officials contended that the United States was ignoring laws restricting sales of the book in this country, and was violating the German copyright owned by the state of Bavaria since 1951. ``It's simply a sensible step,'' a Foreign Ministry official said. In the past, the U.S. military had insisted that its installations we re exempt from restrictions on ``Mein Kampf,'' which has been available to service personnel since the mid-1960s. About 1,000 copies a year have been sold at Stars and Stripes bookstores, according to Kominicki, generally to soldiers interested in military history. U.S. military spokespersons denied that American troops are being sub jected to censorship. ``It's a copyright problem, not a political problem,'' said a spokeswoman for the Army's V Corps in Frankfurt. The sale of ``Mein Kampf,'' which means ``My Struggle,'' is not, as popularly believed, completely banned in Germany. The law prohibits the distribution of literature that advocates Nazism and racial hatred. But Germany's highest court ruled in 1979 that copies dating back to 1945 or earlier were of historical value, and they are still occasionally sold in used-book shops. In addition, special ``commentated'' editions are available for scholarly research. The book's removal from Stars and Stripes bookstores followed a lette r sent by the German Foreign Ministry to the U.S. Embassy in Bonn in August protesting the sale of the book. ``The embassy did receive a request ... from the foreign office, poin ting out that the state of Bavaria holds exclusive rights to the sale and distribution of `Mein Kampf' in Germany, and that the state does not agree to the sale and distribution of the book in Germany,'' said Capt. Gordon Peterson, a spokesman for the U.S. European Command headquarters in Stuttgart. ``The relevant issue is German law.'' After lawyers for the command researched the matter and confirmed Bav aria holds copyright, Stars and Stripes pulled all copies off its shelves in Germany Oct. 1. But four years ago, when the controversy last flared up during the da ys before German unification, American officials ruled differently. The issue arose in 1988 after a German television journalist went int o a Stars and Stripes bookstore in Berlin, and was shown emerging from the store with a copy of ``Mein Kampf.'' ``It made a gigantic scandal,'' a Foreign Ministry official said. The book was pulled then from the shelves by order of U.S. officials, but following a legal review, military lawyers concluded that its sale on U.S. installations did not violate German law, and the book was restocked. U.S. officials said the difference this time is that the German gover nment has raised the copyright question, and that in the past the controversy ``was not raised as a government-to-government issue,'' Peterson said. But one American official familiar with the issue complained that the military and Stars and Stripes had ``wimped out'' under pressure from the German government. U.S. officials ``sort of saw the writing on the wall and saw they were determined to stamp this out,'' he said. Hitler wrote ``Mein Kampf'' while imprisoned after the failure of his 1923 Beer Hall Putsch. Amid diatribes against Jews, he outlined his plans in the book for conquering Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Bavaria took custody of Hitler's property and copyrights after the war.
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Yugoslav Leader Urges Serbian President to Step Down (Belgrade) By Carol J. Williams (c) 1992, Los Angeles Times BELGRADE, Yugoslavia _ Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic suffered a serious blow to his already waning power and prestige Friday when Yugoslav President Dobrica Cosic, the ideological godfather of Serbs, called on him to resign for the good of the nation. Cosic's denunciation of the Serbian president kicks away the last maj or pillar of political support under the Milosevic regime, which stands accused of fomenting ethnic bloodshed in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina and of exposing Serbs to international scorn and financial ruin. The federal president's action also draws an unmistakable battle line between the new Yugoslav leadership and the bellicose nationalists still siding with Milosevic. But in a disturbing sign that Milosevic will fight the intensified ef forts to oust him, radical backers used a publicly broadcast parliamentary debate to pounce on Cosic and Prime Minister Milan Panic for allegedly selling out the interests of Serbs now divided among several pieces of fractured Yugoslavia. Milosevic still controls a wide network of warlords and secret police , especially in volatile Kosovo Province where ethnic tensions are on the verge of explosion. As the conflict at the highest levels of power sharpens, many fear that the Serbian president may be willing to take his nation down with him in a desperate attempt to cling to power. In an interview with the main Belgrade daily Politika, Cosic said tha t he and Milosevic ``differ essentially in our understanding of democracy'' and how to rescue Yugoslavia from the pain and humiliation of U.N. sanctions. ``If people wrote and spoke at home and abroad about my resignation a s they do about Slobodan Milosevic, I would resign,'' Cosic told Politika, which until recently was a mouthpiece for Milosevic and his Serbian Socialist Party. Cosic, a revered nationalist writer, was the inspiration for Milosevi c's powerful rallying cry that all Serbs have the right to remain together in one nation, despite the independence votes taken in other republics that were once part of Yugoslavia. After Croatia seceded in June 1991, Belgrade funneled troops and arms into predominantly Serbian areas of the republic to support insurrection. More than 10,000 were killed on Croatian battlefields last year. Serbian guerrillas also rushed to the side of their fellow militants in Bosnia after Slavic Muslims and Croats voted for independence in March. Fierce fighting in the ravaged republic continues, with the official six-month death toll at more than 14,000, another 50,000 people listed as missing and presumed dead and nearly 2 million forced from their homes by gunfire and ``ethnic cleansing.'' U.N. sanctions were imposed May 30 on what is left of Yugoslavia, the republics of Serbia and Montenegro, in hopes of pressuring Belgrade to cease supply and encouragement of the deadly sieges in Bosnia. President Bush symbolically increased the pressure Friday, signing a bill that deprives Yugoslavia of most-favored-nation trade status. The trade status allows the lowest U.S. tariffs for a country's exports to the United States but with the U.N. embargo in place, the move is merely an expression of U.S. displeasure. The global oil and trade embargo have begun to inconvenience many Ser bs, whose bankrolling of the recent wars had already sapped their economy. Hyperinflation, rampant unemployment and fuel shortages have eroded s upport for Milosevic and prompted former allies like Cosic to distance themselves from him in hopes of surviving a looming popular revolt. But the heavily armed secret police and paramilitary forces ruling Ko sovo and some parts of vanquished Bosnia remain loyal to Milosevic. More Trouble for Gorbachev: Institute Accused of Tax Fraud (Moscow) By John-Thor Dahlburg (c) 1992, Los Angeles Times MOSCOW _ Should anyone doubt how fleeting the honors of this world ar e, consider the most recent twists of fate in the life and reputation of the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev. The former Soviet president flew out of Moscow Friday afternoon on a commercial flight to attend the funeral in Berlin of yet another Nobel Peace winner, former West German Chancellor Willy Brandt. Most probably, Gorbachev was glad to go, even if it was to attend the burial of a friend. For only a few hours before takeoff, yet more anti-Gorbachev charges were filling the Russian media. The think tank on Moscow's Leningradsky Prospekt that he heads has now been accused of tax fraud and cooking the books on a massive scale. According to the weekly publication Arguments and Facts, Yuri Danilev sky, head of financial inspection for the Russian Finance Ministry, has charged after an audit that the Gorbachev Foundation dodged payments to state of at least 7.2 million rubles, or about $22,500, in the first quarter of 1992. Danilevsky said that although the supposed non-profit foundation repo rted losses, it actually made the equivalent of $70,000 in profits. Through bookkeeping gymnastics, the government auditor said, the foundation did not pay profit taxes or a valued-added tax of $119,000 on its hotels and subleases. The image of Gorbachev as an alleged tax deadbeat was just the latest indignity suffered by the former Kremlin leader, who has already had 75,000 of the 85,000 square feet occupied by his foundation seized by the Russian government. He also had his passport impounded, although an exception was made to allow him to attend the rites for Brandt. Earlier this week, the head of Constitutional Court called Gorbachev a liar in everything but name. And his old nemesis, Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin, delivered a body blow to Gorbachev's good name by charging that he hid important information about the 1983 shooting down of a Korean passenger plane and the slaughter of more than 21,000 Polish officers by Stalin's secret police in 1940. Valery D. Zorkin, chairman of the Constitutional Court, has been tryi ng unsuccessfully to force Gorbachev to testify before the tribunal. Thursday, Gorbachev vehemently denied covering up anything and said t hat the ``special file'' he supposedly concealed was actually an entire roomful of 1,500 to 2,000 documents that he could not have possibly read. Yeltsin's government countered Friday that a memo from Valentin M. Fa lin, former chief of the Communist Party's International Department, dated Feb. 22, 1990, and signed by Gorbachev, showed that he was ``fully informed'' about the massacre of the Poles. Whatever the truth, the way much of the world looks at the statesman who made glasnost, or openness, his clarion call has probably been altered. It was only two years ago that the Norwegian Nobel Committee praised Gorbachev thus: ``During the past few years, dramatic changes have taken place in the relationship between East and West. Confrontation has been replaced by negotiations. Old European nations have regained their freedom. ...'' No single person could have done all that, the committee said, but no one was more responsible than Gorbachev. World leaders overwhelmingly agreed, but at home in the disintegratin g Soviet Union, many citizens lashed out at Gorbachev as an ineffectual reformer, closet Communist tyrant or run-of-the-mill Russian chauvinist. Gorbachev denies he believes that he is ``God Almighty,'' but wants n o part of what he calls a show trial.
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FOREIGN PRESS BUREAU, October 16, 1992 ZAGREB - The Croatian parlaiment continues to meet for the third day today with the main topic of discussion being the proposal to revoke parlaimentary immunity for three of their colleages from the Croatian Party of Rights (HSP). If the revocation is passed and the members are stripped of their immunity, they will then be brought up on charges of crimes against the government and country while forming and arming a military force within their party. The three members are Dobroslav Paraga, Ante Dapic, and Ante Prkacin. A spokesman for the HSP said this process should not be allowed due to an amnesty law that has been passed by the Croatian government. SARAJEVO, B-H - Heavy fighting continued into the night Thursday as Muslim and Serbian forces battle for control of key areas of the city. The suburb of Stup was under attack today as Serb forces try to gain control of the main road towards the airport. If successful, the Serbs would then be able to link their forces in Ilizda in the western part of the city with forces stationed to the south, in Vogosca. Power service was restored to most of the city last night. Radio Sarajevo reported most institutions, including the hospital, were back on line while other buildings are expected to be on the main circuits within two days. Engineers in the city also indicated that water service could be returned in about a week after all electricity is restored. Gas service was also restored to parts of the city after Serbian forces reopened a pipeline running into Sarajevo. While utility services are slowly being restored to the city, the inhabitants remain skeptical of such services continuing. In the past, Serbian forces have demonstrated a willingness to use utility services as a weapon against the residents of the city by restoring then cutting service. A senior UN official, Mr. Cedric Thorn- berry, said yesterday he feared it was already too late to save tens of thousands of lives of people who would perish this winter. In what has been the strongest warning yet, Mr. Thornberry indicated that it was no longer a question of preventing people from dying this winter but now a matter of reducing the number of deaths as much as possible. At the same time, the deployment of British troops has been stepped up and the initial contingent of some 2,500 peacekeepers arrived in Split today. TUZLA, B-H - Tuzla came under attack on Thursday when Serbian forces opened artillery fire on the town. Apartment buildings ad the indus- trial zone were the hardest hit with extensive damage reported. Although there have been reports of people wounded, casualty figures are not available. GRADACAC, B-H - The northeastern Bosnian town remained under heavy attack from Serbian artillery and tank units. The entire defense line was targeted as well as the town itself and several outlying villages. Infantry attacks received support from Serbian tanks but were repelled by defense forces. The information center in Gradacac also advised that Belgrade radio and television have been claiming the capture of Grada- cac. The center added that some defense positions have been pulled back but the town is not in Serbian hands. BRCKO, B-H - The entire Brcko region was under sustained attack on Thursday from Serbian artillery. The town, outlying villages, and defense positions were targeted in the shelling, while infantry clashes were also taking place. JAJCE, B-H - Bosnian radio reports that a ceasefire took place yesterday at 7:00am to allow ameeting to take place between the Jajce and Mrkonjic Grad branches of the Red Cross to arrange for an exchange of prisoners and the dead. Mrkonjic Grad officials turned over the bodies of 6 members of the Jajce defense force. Another ceasefire is scheduled for Monday Oct. 19th to allow civilians who wish to leave Jajce, Sipovo, and Mrkonjic Grad to do so. Attacks were renewed overnight with mortar fire reported in Jajce while Serbian forces attempted an infantry advance on the front lines. BIHAC, B-H - The center of town was hit by some 20 mortar shells in attacks Thursday evening. Attacks have taken place throughout the day with heavy shelling reported along defense lines and surrounding vil- lages. Material damage in these villages is heavy and several people were wounded. MOSTAR, B-H - The northern part of the city came under artillery fire Thursday afternoon. The medical hospital reported no injuries. The Croatian Defense Council (HVO) positions around Mostar, Capljina, and Stolac were also targeted in attacks yesterday but details regarding casualties are not available. NEW YORK - The foreign minister of Bosnia-Hercegovina, Mr. Haris Silajdzic, asked United Nations Secretary General Butros- Ghali and UN negotiator Cyrus Vance yesterday to use their influence to lift the arms embarge against his republic. Mr. Silajdzic said that there are so many who are dead yet so many excuses. He said they have never asked for ground troops, or for anyone else to die for them, but only to lift the embargo, and he added that the world did not have to give them weapons, they would buy them. The foreign minister said that Bosnia-Hercegovina was being denied the right to defend itself against the Belgrade regime. Mr. Silajdzic said he had evidence that Serbian forces were being with- drawn from Croatia into Bosnia, especially the trops leaving the Prev- laka peninsula under a UN arranged agreement. Mr Vance indicated that he was unwilling to assist in lifting the arms embargo because it would only fuel the conflict. Mr. Silajdzic went on to say that a disaster of gigantic and historic proportions was and still is taking place in Bosnia, with more than 600,000 thousand people killed or forced from their homes as a result of the Serbian policy known as ethnic cleansing. Other officials with Mr. Silajdzic said that by their calculations 613,000 civilians who had in no way participated in the fighting are either dead or forced from homes. One anthropology professor said that he has evidence that in August 5,000 people were forced into crematori- ums and burned alive at three concentration camps in Tomashica. The Sarajevo government has established an institute for investigating war crimes and will prepare a report for the War Crimes Commission being established by the Security Council. Later in the day, the Security Council issued a statement expressing great emosion at the tragic incident which cost the life of a Ukranian "blue helmet" on October 10 and left three others seriously wounded. The members of the council also expressed their concern about the continuation of hostile actions committed against members of UNPROFOR.
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Contribution by: Sejo_od_Bosne Tamo daleko ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Tamo daleko,daleko na Balkanu moja "BOSNA" je u ratnome stanju, uzdise jeci i u nesvjest pada i sve to zbog mrskog srbina gada. Taj isti zlotvor sto rusi i pali htio bih s njome da se dici i hvali, kao bajagi ona mu trba zbog,radi srbskih Velikih zelja. Raseliti narod, sve sto srbsko nije unistiti Crkve i Dzamije, drumove nase i mostove mnoge Srbski je moto Civilizacije - Slobode. O, zlotvore kleti, bez ljudske vrline nestat ce i tvoje krvolocne sile, a onda se pazte prokleti bili oprosta vam nema u "BOSNIJI" SEJO
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New YorkTimes: Editorials Friday October 16 HOW TO SLOW THE SLAUGHTER While Americans focus increasingly on who will win on Nov. 3, embattled Bosnians worry about a simpler question: Will they live that long? Serbia's planes continue to pound Bosnia's towns. Brutal ethnic cleansing accelerates in northern Bosnia after Croatia's forces nominally allied to Bosnia, faithlessly abandoned the area to Serb control. Short of fuel as winter apporache, panicky resi- dents of Sarajevo chop down the city's trees. Cyrus Vance, the United nations mediator, warns of a catastrophe of "untold dimen- sions" unless the world acts soon. Steadily, a question inscibes itself ever deeper into American and Wetsren consciences: Is the world doing all it can at least to slow the slaughter of the people of Bosnia? There are five ways for the wolrd to help: ESTABLISH A PROMPT U.N. PRESENCE. British, French and Canadian troops have been slow to move in as promised. They can monitor the border and keep Serbian troops from attacking northern Bosnia. They can secure corridors for urgently needed food and medicine. Their very presence can reassure residents who might otherwise enlarge the refugee tide. When will the troops finally get there? ENFORCE THE NO-FLY ZONE. U.S. planes observe continuing Serbian sorties against unprotected Bosnian towns. They need U.N. autho- rity to shoot down helicopters as well as fixed-wing planes. REPEAL THE ARMS EMBARGO. The Serbs and others have all the arms they need, and can circumvent the embargo to get more. The present embargo disarms only Bosnia. The U.S. can persuade the Security Council to drop the embargo, then help arm the Bosnians with big guns to resist aggression. SPEED UP RELIEF SUPPLIES. People in Sarajevo and other Bosnian towns will die by the hundreds of thousands this winter unless they get food, water and heat. Yet Serbs have only now opened natural gas pipelines and they still permit only a trickle of water to flow. And the U.N. relief effort is behind schedule and underequipped, providing what one western diplomat derides as merely "the illusion of action". For instance, only 87 of the requisitioned 200 trucks have arrived. TAKE IN REFUGEES. Neighboring Croatia has been hospitable but is owerwhelmed by refugees fleeing the fighting in Bosnia. Other countries need to help, especially the U.S. and Britain, which have so far slammed their doors. The world shrinks from waging a war of conscience against the slaughter. How will Americans and others answer, after the election, after the winter, after thousand more have perished?
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Iz propovedi Patrijarha Pavla, u crkvi Svetog Save, San Gabriel, Kalifornija 17. oktobra 1992, sa pocetkom u 17 casova [ "...ako treba da stradamo, neka bude na putu pravde, bez mrznje prema ikome..." (iz sluzbe)] Patrijarh Pavle: Braco i sestre, po veri i po krvi... Mi ponekad kazemo, da zivimo u neko drugo, bolje vreme, pokazali bi vise i bolje od ovoga sto jesmo. Ali to je samo izgovor. Jer ne zivimo mi slucajno u vremenu u kome zivimo, takva je volja bozja... Nase je da ucinimo onoliko koliko mozemo. O svemu drugome Bog vodi racuna. ...U nasem starome kraju se strada, proliva se krv i Srba, i Hrvata, i Muslimana... Nase je, ne da se ne branimo, vec da to cinimo kao ljudi, kao narod bozji, kao ne-ljudi, nikada! Samo tako mozemo da sacuvamo nas obraz, nase grobove i nasu zemlju. ...Neprijatelji nasi su nam cesto govorili da ja to pozivam narod srpski na osvetu, da ubijaju Hrvate, da progone i istrebljuju Muslimane... Nikada! Osveta ne pripada nama, osveta je Bozja... ...Nasa vera, vera nasih otaca, nasa muka i stradanja, oni nama govore da po cenu jedne nove Jadovne, jednog novog Jasenovca, Velika Srbija ne moze i ne treba da se stvori. I ne samo Velika nego ni Mala... ...Budimo ljudi...A ne da se onome kome je puska izbijena iz ruku vade oci, pore grudi, da se zivi i mrtvi bacaju u jame... Mi znamo sta su jame! ...Samo ako smo ljudi, ako smo narod bozji, mozemo se opravdati i pred svetom, i pred precima, i pred Bogom. ...Kao sto je rekla Jevrosima majka: "...bolje ti je sine izgubiti glavu, nego danas izgubiti dusu!" Dusu mozete izgubiti i vi ovde, u dalekoj zemlji, kao i narod u nevolji u starome kraju. ...Mislite da vas odozgo sa neba gledaju oci nasih napacenih predaka, iznad njih nebo sa ocima andjela, a iznad njih, jedno, svevidece oko bozje... pred njegov sud mozemo da izadjemo samo sa pravdom, istinom i covecnoscu... ...Ovo je moja poruka vama, ovde u dalekoj zemlji, i nasem narodu u otadzbini...
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RFE/RL Daily Report No. 200, October 16, 1992 SUCCESSOR STATES TO THE USSR GORBACHEV DENIES KNOWLEDGE OF KATYN DOCUMENTS. At a news conference in Moscow on 15 October, Mikhail Gorbachev denied prior knowledge of the decision of Stalin's Politburo to have 20,000 Polish officers massacred in 1940, the "Novosti" TV newscast reported. The previous day, Yeltsin's representatives persuaded the Constitution Court to accept documents alleged to prove the personal responsibility of Gorbachev in a cover-up of the Stalin leadership. Gorbachev said he obtained access to the files at the same time Yeltsin did, in late 1991. In April 1990, Gorbachev gave a number of previously top secret documents showing Soviet responsibility for the massacre to then Polish President Wojciech Jaruzelski. (Julia Wishnevsky, RFE/RL Inc.) GORBACHEV TO BE PROSECUTED FOR REFUSAL TO TESTIFY? Gorbachev also told the press conference that the chairman of the Constitutional Court, Valerii Zorkin, had threatened him with a criminal charge for his refusal to testify at the hearing on the Communist Party. Apparently Zorkin intends to punish Gorbachev twice for the same thing: he has already tried to fine the former Soviet president 100 rubles for refusal to testify. (Julia Wishnevsky, RFE/RL Inc.) GORBACHEV VOICES HARSH CRITICISM OF YELTSIN. Mikhail Gorbachev was quoted in two French publications on 15 October as saying that Boris Yeltsin was dangerous, destructive and incompetent. L'Evenement du Jeudi quoted Gorbachev as saying the Yeltsin administration was "heading toward dictatorship." He said Yeltsin was "a destroyer, not a builder" and "he knows neither how to use his power nor how to delegate it." In an interview with Paris Match, Gorbachev said many of the democrats who surround Yeltsin "are thieves and looters--and they are not even good at their jobs." Western and Russian agencies reported the same day that the Russian ambassador to Italy was told by the Italian government that Italy was very surprised and concerned that Gorbachev was forbidden to travel to Italy by the Russian leadership. (Vera Tolz, RFE/RL Inc.) ABKHAZ PEACE TALKS DEADLOCKED. Talks in Moscow on 15 October between Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev and his Georgian counterpart Aleksandre Chikvaidze failed to produce a mutually acceptable formula for resolving the conflict in Abkhazia, ITAR-TASS reported. Kozyrev said he had the impression that both the Georgian and the Abkhaz side were still relying on the use of force. Georgia is insisting that Abkhaz forces withdraw from Gagra, while the Abkhaz demand that all Georgian forces should be withdrawn from Abkhazia as a precondition for a settlement. (Liz Fuller, RFE/RL Inc.) YELTSIN ORDERS INVESTIGATION OF PAMYAT ATTACK ON NEWSPAPER. President Yeltsin ordered an investigation into an attack on Moskovsky komsomolets by the right-wing nationalist group "Pamyat." On 13 October, several members of "Pamyat" broke into the newspaper's office and demanded the names and addresses of authors whose articles were newspaper critical of the Russian nationalists. On 15 October, ITAR-TASS quoted Yeltsin's press secretary as saying that the president "will not tolerate threats to the free press and will take the necessary measures to prevent the recurrence of such provocations." Kostikov said that Yeltsin had ordered the interior and security ministers to investigate the incident and punish those responsible. (Vera Tolz, RFE/RL Inc.) SOVIETS WITHHELD DATA ON KOREAN AIRLINER. The long-secret files connected with the 1983 downing of a Korean Airlines 747 show that Soviet officials had refused to admit they had the airplane's inflight recorder since information in the so-called "black box" did not support their claim that the airliner was on a spying mission over Soviet territory. Parts of these files were published in Izvestiya on 16 October. UPI reports that they show that Soviet ships mounted a phony hunt in the Sea of Japan for the recorder to make the Americans and Japanese think they had not found it. The black box recorded the Korean crew's conversations and radio transmissions--which gave no hint of any intelligence mission. (Doug Clarke, RFE/RL Inc.) RUSSIANS WARN ANOTHER GREENPEACE SHIP. Four days after seizing a Greenpeace ship in the Kara Sea, Russian border guards on 16 October warned Greenpeace's Rainbow Warrior that it was violating Russian waters en route to Nakhodka on the Pacific Coast. Western agencies report that a Greenpeace spokesman in Moscow said that the ship was gathering data on pollution near Vladivostok and its route had been approved in advance by Russian authorities. He said that the Russian Navy had tried to stop the ship from entering the submarine base at Chashma, near Vladivostok, despite a Greenpeace permit for the visit. The crew was allowed to measure ITAR-TASS reported that the ship seized on 12 October, the (Doug Clarke, RFE/RL Inc.) YELTSIN CALLS FOR MORE POWERS FOR RUSSIAN REPUBLICS. The leaders of the republics of the Russian Federation agreed unanimously on 15 October to set up a council of the heads of the republics under the chairmanship of Russian president Boris Yeltsin, ITAR-TASS and Interfax reported. The decision was announced after a meeting with Yeltsin that ended a two-day meeting attended by representatives of all the republics apart from Chechnya and Ingushetia. Yeltsin called for an expansion of the powers of the republics beyond those outlined in the Federal Treaty, while the republican leaders in their turn expressed their support for the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation. The new council, which comes under the aegis of the Security Council, will participate in working out all important decisions, but the final decision will rest with the president. (Ann Sheehy, RFE/RL Inc.) UNION OF INDUSTRIALISTS AND ENTREPRENEURS FAVORS "HARSH" FORM OF FEDERATION. While Yeltsin was proposing concessions to the republics to preserve Russia's territorial integrity, Arkadii Volsky, president of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, presented a report by the Union's experts which said that a "harsh" form of federation, providing for substantial dependence of the regions on the center, was necessary to preserve the unity of the state, ITAR-TASS reported. Volsky stressed that reforms in Russia were impossible without strong power. The report said it was necessary to work out a new, more precise concept of federalism capable of realizing the transition to the market. (Ann Sheehy, RFE/RL Inc.) NUCLEAR ARMS REDUCTION TALKS STALL. Western news agencies reported on 15 October that new Russian positions are delaying efforts to codify the June 1992 US-Russian agreement on nuclear weapons reduction in a treaty. The agreement called for Russian forces to be reduced to approximately 3000 warheads and for the elimination of land-based multiple warhead missiles. Russian negotiators have requested that the US allow it to convert silos for the large SS-18 missile into silos for the much smaller SS-25 missile. They have also suggested removing five warheads from the six-warhead SS-19 in order to convert it to a single-warhead missile. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL Inc.) SOUTH KOREA CONSIDERING ORDERING RUSSIAN ARMS FOR TESTING. According to an AFP report of 15 October, the South Korean government is considering ordering samples of Russian arms for testing and "opposing forces" exercises. Most of North Korea's arsenal consists of Russian-made weaponry, and the South Korean Defense Ministry would like to obtain copies in order to determine their strengths and weaknesses. Since most of South Korea's weaponry is of Western origin, the arms purchase would be small and would not be used for combat units. Some of the arms being considered include MiG-29 fighters, surface-to-air missiles, mines and torpedoes. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL Inc.) RUSSIA REPORTS DRAFT RESULTS, PLANS FOR CONTRACT SERVICE. The Russian Defense Ministry reports that 7 percent of conscripts (18,000 persons) failed to report for duty during the spring 1992 draft, more than twice the number of the previous year according to Interfax on 15 October. Only 38 have been prosecuted for draft-dodging. In Moscow the sign-up rate was only 9 percent, and low turnouts were also recorded in the North Caucasus and Volga-Urals regions. On October 20 the Defense Ministry will submit to the government a plan for a large contract-service (for volunteers) experiment to prevent further personnel shortfalls. The current Russian military reform plan calls for a gradual transition to a mixed professional and conscript force. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL Inc.) RUSSIAN DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER ON DEFENSE BUDGET, CONVERSION. According to an Interfax report of 13 October, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Georgii Khizha criticized conversion efforts and said that Russian defense production was down "by 67 percent over an extremely short time period." He said that this drop was unreasonable and urged that the aerospace industry be given top priority in conversion because of its scientific and technological strength. Khizha also suggested that Western governments and firms make room for Russian exports in order to facilitate the conversion process. A week earlier, on 8 October, Interfax reported that Khizha was calling for a 70 billion ruble increase over current budget plans for defense procurement in 1993. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL Inc.) PROGRESS ON RESOLVING RUSSIAN INTERENTERPRISE DEBT. The Russian Central Bank seems to be making headway on resolving the inter-enterprise debt crisis that peaked in mid-summer. The bank began a process of mutual debt cancellation in late July and early August that, according to Kommersant No. 36, reduced the volume of enterprise non-payments from 3.2 trillion in June to just above 500 billion in mid-September. The next stage, according to Interfax on 15 October, is settling claims on Russian enterprises from the state budget, banks and enterprises in other CIS states. The fate of enterprises unable to meet debt payments after all these transactions is still unclear. (Erik Whitlock, RFE/RL Inc.) RUBLE's VALUE SLIPS SLIGHTLY. The dollar to ruble exchange rate dipped to 1:339 from 1:334 on Thursday's trading at the Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange, Interfax reported on 15 October. Volume traded was 37.86 million dollars. (Erik Whitlock, RFE/RL Inc.) RUSSIA SIGNS AGREEMENT ON REFUGEES. On 6 October the Russian government signed an agreement with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees which provides for the opening of an office of the UN body in Moscow, ITAR-TASS reported. Vyacheslav Bakhmin, the Russian Foreign Ministry official who signed the agreement, said Russia was keen to cooperate with all international organizations dealing with refugees, since refugees were a new problem for Russia and it lacked experience and qualified specialists in this area. In his speech to the Russian parliament on 6 October, Yeltsin said there were currently more than 460,000 refugees and a further 700,000 who were involuntarily resettled on Russian territory. He said that any further delay in adopting the laws on refugees and those involuntarily resettled would be amoral. (Ann Sheehy, RFE/RL Inc.) RUSSIAN "WHITE BOOKS" ON HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENT RELEASED. During his speech to the parliament on 6 October, Yeltsin mentioned the completion of two "white books" on health and environmental problems in Russia. The two books were officially released at a Moscow news conference on 7 October, ITAR-TASS and Western agencies reported. The government advisers who briefed the news conference were quoted as using adjectives such as "appalling," "shocking," and "deplorable" to describe the findings. Not only have the country's health and environment been sadly neglected over the past 70 years, but their condition continues to worsen "daily." (Keith Bush, RFE/RL Inc.) UKRAINIAN INDUSTRIALISTS JOIN FORCES. Heads of Ukrainian industrial enterprises in the eastern and southern regions of the country met in Donetsk to form an interregional association, Ostankino TV's "Novosti" reported on 15 October. The group said that its disagreement with many political decisions taken in Kiev was motivated by the serious fall in production, which, they maintained, could result in the collapse of the economy. The industrialists characterized the CIS summit in Bishkek as having yielded little, and criticized Ukraine's decision to leave the ruble zone. The group announced that it intends to exercise more influence on politics. (Roman Solchanyk, RFE/RL Inc.) CEASEFIRE IN TAJIKISTAN BROKEN. A ceasefire between the opposing sides in the Tajik civil war was broken after only a few hours, ITAR-TASS reported on 15 October. Supporters of deposed President Rakhmon Nabiev from Kulyab Oblast took control of a bridge over the Vakhsh River, apparently as part of their attempt to break the blockade of Kulyab Oblast by pro-government forces that has reduced the region to near-starvation. An article in Sobesednik No. 41 presents a sympathetic picture of the Kulyab fighters, who are usually dismissed as procommunist; this publication portrays them as a bulwark against Muslim fundamentalism. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL Inc.) CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE MAZOWIECKI CALLS FOR INTERNATIONAL BROADCASTS TO FORMER YUGOSLAVIA. UN human rights envoy and former Polish Premier Tadeusz Mazowiecki ended his visit to BosniaHerzegovina on 15 October, Reuters reported. He said that Croatian Herzegovinian leader Mate Boban had promised to release all prisoners in his forces' custody by the end of the following week. Mazowiecki blamed the Serbian and Croatian media for inciting ethnic hatred, and called for international independent broadcasting, especially to Belgrade and Zagreb. (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL Inc.) BOSNIAN FOREIGN MINISTER WARNS OF "TOTAL DISASTER." An RFE/RL correspondent on 15 October quoted Haris Silajdzic as again telling both the UN and the US that Bosnia wanted the arms embargo lifted so that it might defend itself. He called Sarajevo a "gigantic death camp." The RFE/RL report also cited Serbia-Montenegro's Prime Minister Milan Panic as appealing to the UN partially to lift sanctions to permit vital imports of oil products for winter fuel. (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL Inc.) CROATIAN SERBS NOT STICKING TO AGREEMENT. The 16 October issue of the Los Angeles Times quoted Cedric Thornberry, who heads the UN civilian affairs office in the former Yugoslavia, as saying there was not "the slightest sign of demobilization" among Serbian irregulars and militias in parts of Croatia that are theoretically under UN control. Under the terms of an agreement negotiated by Cyrus Vance at the beginning of the year, the Serbs had agreed to disarm, but Thornberry said that many of the uniformed Serbs were "small-time gangsters and terrorists" out of control. Croatia expects to regain the areas eventually, but the Serbian civilians are firmly opposed to what they regard as Croatian nationalist rule. The Croatian parliament recently passed an unpopular measure effectively assuring most Croatian Serbs that they would not be tried for war crimes, in keeping with Zagreb's pledges to Vance. But Croatian President Franjo Tudjman is impatient with the UN for not handing over Serb-held territory to Croatia, and has threatened not to extend the UN mandate beyond February 1993. (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL Inc.) PANIC MEETS KOSOVO SERBS AND RUGOVA. On 15 October Milan Panic, Prime Minister of the rump Yugoslavia, paid a one day visit to Pristina, capital of the Serbian province of Kosovo, whose population is 92% Albanian. According to Radio Serbia, he met with the commander of the Pristina Corps of the federal Yugoslav Army, chaired a meeting with Kosovo Serb officials and representatives of local Serb political parties, and held a closed door meeting with Ibrahim Rugova, the leader of the main Albanian party, the Democratic League (LDK) and self-styled President of the Republic of Kosovo. Panic later told reporters that Albanians had been "locked out" of Serbian political life and stressed the need to remedy this situation. Problems could only be solved "step-by-step." Negotiations with Albanians would continue as "long as they do not involve the question of independence." Panic reiterated his promise to reopen Albanianlanguage schools. He also stated that Rugova did not "demand anything against Serbian interests." (Milan Andrejevich, RFE/RL Inc.) WEU SAYS ROMANIA RESPECTS EMBARGO ON FORMER YUGOSLAVIA. A mission of the West European Union (WEU), which paid a four-day visit to Romania, said that it had concluded that Romania was respecting the embargo against former Yugoslavia. The chairman of the commission, Dudley Smith, said the commission was "very impressed" by the way in which the embargo was observed. Rompres quoted Smith on 15 October to say that Romania was implementing the embargo despite heavy economic losses. (Michael Shafir, RFE/RL Inc.) UN FACT-FINDING MISSION TO LATVIA. At the request of Latvian Supreme Council Chairman Anatolijs Gorbunovs, UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali is sending UN representatives to look into alleged discriminatory practices against minorities in Latvia. The UN group is to be headed by Ibrahima Fall, director of the UN Human Rights Center in Geneva, an RFE/RL correspondent from New York reported on 15 October. Boutros-Ghali is also considering Latvia's request for UN participation in future talks with Russia on troop withdrawals. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL Inc.) KATYN CONTROVERSY CONTINUES. Controversy over the role of former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev continued to overshadow the significance for Poland of President Boris Yeltsin's decision to reveal documents proving that the Soviet Politburo authorized the execution of over 20,000 Polish prisoners of war in March 1940. In a letter praising Yeltsin's courage on 15 October, President Lech Walesa said the decision to acknowledge the full truth "opened a new chapter in the relations between our nations." Gorbachev meanwhile sent a letter to Walesa saying that he had learned of the documents' existence only in December 1991 when he transferred secret archives to Yeltsin. Gorbachev claimed he was "shocked" at the documents. The documents turned over to Poland on 14 October suggest, however, that Gorbachev, like Soviet leaders before him, was always fully aware of Soviet responsibility for the deaths and merely strove to limit the political damage of admitting the truth. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL Inc.) SUCHOCKA DEFENDS ECONOMIC POLICY. In an address to the Senate on 15 October, Prime Minister Hanna Suchocka attempted to correct the perception that her government is proposing five more years of belt-tightening. Growth in consumption is possible, but will have to be modest, and investment will take priority over higher wages. The point of the government's economic program, Suchocka said, is that better living standards cannot be achieved unless productivity rises and products are competitive. Given the state of the budget, only minimum social security payments could be raised to compensate fully for inflation. The Senate voted 58 to 8 to approve the policy guidelines. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL Inc.) KISZCZAK HINTS KGB BEHIND POPIELUSZKO MURDER. Testifying on 14 October in the trial of the two secret police generals accused of inspiring the murder of Father Jerzy Popieluszko in 1984, former Internal Affairs Minister Czeslaw Kiszczak argued that the crime was a "provocation" directed against himself and General Wojciech Jaruzelski. Painting himself as an ally of the Church, Kiszczak suggested that the four secret policemen convicted of the murder had had protectors among communist party hard-liners advocating a bloodier offensive against Solidarity, though he admitted that phone taps on CC Secretaries Miroslaw Milewski and Stefan Olszowski, as well as Stanislaw Kociolek had been in vain. He also hinted at KGB involvement in the murder, contending that the uncle of one of the murderers was a "classic agent of foreign intelligence." (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL Inc.) LATVIAN COURT REFUSES TO RELEASE OMON LEADER ON BAIL. BNS reported on 13 October that the court has refused to release OMON leader Sergei Parfenov on bail. He is standing trial in Riga for abuse of power while serving in Latvia. Parfenov was extradited from Russia and he, as well as Russian officials, have expressed the desire that his case be transferred to Russia. The trial in Riga has proceeded slowly, especially since several witnesses are not testifying before the court to everything that they told the prosecutor during the investigation; the possibility that witnesses have been intimidated cannot be excluded. Nonetheless, one former OMON official Herman Glazov upheld his earlier statements and testified in detail about the brutal measures OMON used to repress civilians in Latvia. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL Inc.) STOLOJAN PRESENTS RECORD OF HIS GOVERNMENT. At a press conference in Bucharest outgoing prime minister Theodor Stolojan presented his government's achievements during its year in office. As reported by Radio Bucharest on 15 October, he said that the government had fulfilled its main political task which was the holding of free and democratic elections. Stolojan said authoritarianism could not work in Romania and called on the next government to pursue both democracy and market reforms. He added that the economic policies pursued by his administration had been sound, if unavoidably harsh, and that the liberalization of prices had to precede privatization in the conditions of transition. The country's foreign currency reserves had improved and the balance of trade showed a surplus of 22 million US dollars; inflation had been pushed down from 19.5% in January to 3.4% in September. Stolojan said that postponing the next stage of the reforms (as suggested by president Iliescu) would be wrong. (Michael Shafir, RFE/RL Inc.) SEJM APPROVES RADIO AND TV LAW. During a session on 15 October the Polish Sejm finally approved legislation officially ending the state monopoly on radio and television. The law which was in preparation for three years sets up a nine-person national broadcasting council to oversee the licensing of private television and radio stations. Three members (including the chairman) are selected by the president, four by the Sejm, and two by the Senate. A motion to require that public television and radio programs respect the "Christian value system" was rejected by a one-vote margin, but the final version of the law mandates "respect for viewers' religious feelings" in both public and commercial broadcasting. Licenses can be withdrawn if programs threaten Polish culture, national security, or "social norms." The several pirate stations now operating will be given the opportunity to legalize their status before penalties for unauthorized broadcasting take effect. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL Inc.) HUNGARIAN TV CHIEF REMOVES PROGOVERNMENT NEWSMAN. Elemer Hankiss, embattled chief of Hungarian state television, has dismissed the pro-government director of a foreign policy program, Alajos Chrudinak, MTI reported on 15 October. The move came after Hankiss fired the pro-government director of the evening news program and amid hot political debate on a new media law. Chrudinak rejected the decision. The Prime Minister's office expressed shock at Chrudinak's dismissal and called for his reinstatement. (Karoly Okolicsanyi, RFE/RL Inc.) BULGARIA TO RAISE ELECTRICITY PRICES. From 1 November Bulgarian domestic consumers will be charged 30% more for electricity, the government decided on 15 October. Chairman of the Committee on Energy, Lyulin Radulov, told BTA that some institutions, such as schools and hospitals, would be exempt from the increase, while commercial users would have to pay 10% more. Explaining the measure, Radulov said domestic users were currently paying only 50% of actual power costs. (Kjell Engelbrekt, RFE/RL Inc.) PREPARATIONS FOR THE DIVISION OF THE CZECHOSLOVAK ARMY. Speaking at a press conference in Prague on 15 October, Czechoslovak Defense Minister Imrich Andrejcak said that "all technical and organizational measures needed to split the Czechoslovak army on 1 January 1993 have been prepared." He said that his ministry had been making preparations for the establishment of Slovakia's airforce and would soon complete selection of pilots who had expressed interest in serving in Slovakia's airforce after the split. Also on 15 October, Peter Svec, a member of the Slovak parliament's security committee, told journalists in Bratislava that Slovakia "is already capable of demonstrating some military strength, even without the Czech Republic's assistance, and thus deter potential aggressors." Svec argued that some "profederal officers who have been hurting Slovakia's interests will have to be eliminated" in the process of creating a Slovak army. One of them is the current Czechoslovak Defense Minister Imrich Andrejcak. In Svec's view, Andrejcak, who is Slovak, has done "nothing for a future Slovak army" since he was named the minister of defense in June 1992. (Jiri Pehe, RFE/RL Inc.) ARREST WARRANT FOR COMMANDER OF RUSSIAN AVIATION UNIT. On 6 October the Siauliai prosecutor's office issued an arrest warrant against Lt. Col. Pavel Ievlev, the commander of the Russian aviation unit based in Siauliai, for illegally trying to sell concrete sections of the runway at the military air field in Zokniai to private entrepreneurs, BNS and Baltfax reported on 15 October. Lithuanian law states that all buildings, equipment, and inventory used by foreign military forces in Lithuania belong to the state. Siauliai Prosecutor General Anatolijus Mirnas said that Ievlev had not left the base since the warrant was issued, although he had talked to investigators visiting the base. The Lithuanian police have not attempted to arrest him in order to avoid a political conflict. (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL Inc.) HUNGARY ASKS THE DANUBE COMMISSION TO DISCUSS SLOVAK DANUBE DIVERSION. Danube Commission's Director Helmut Strasser said that Hungarian Foreign Minister Geza Jeszenszky asked the eight-nation Commission to discuss Slovakia's plans to divert the Danube river later this month, Reuters reported on 15 October. In a related development, the Hungarian State Shippping Company made public a Slovak announcement saying that Danube shipping would be stopped on 20 October 1992 for 10-15 days in order to allow for the river's diversion to the new channels and the Gabcikovo hydroelectic dam, according to a MTI report on 16 October. (Karoly Okolicsanyi, RFE/RL Inc.) GERMAN FOREIGN MINISTER IN BUDAPEST. Klaus Kinkel paid a one-day official visit to Hungary, MTI reported on 15 October. Kinkel said that Germany supported Hungary's ultimate EC membership. He praised Hungary's achievements in restoring democracy and a market economy. Kinkel did not take a stand on the Danube diversion dispute between Hungary and Slovakia and rejected a Hungarian request to mediate. No progress was made on Hungary's request for arm from the GDR arsenal. (Karoly Okolicsanyi, RFE/RL Inc.)
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----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Bosnians plea for weapons from the U.S. Subject: Yugoslav peace talks underway Subject: Bosnians say they had no choice on blockade Subject: Last Yugoslav army troops withdrawing from Croatia Subject: ``Tired'' players draw 22nd game of re-match Subject: TV claims violations of embargo against Serbia ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Bosnians plea for weapons from the U.S. Date: 16 Oct 92 20:50:24 GMT WASHINGTON (UPI) -- The foreign minister of Bosnia-Hercegovina said Friday that he will ask National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft and other U.S. officials to lift the arms embargo on his besieged republic. Haris Silajdzic told reporters that if the administration refuses to arm Bosnians in their grossly one-sided battle against Belgrade's modern army then Washington will be party to a ``monstrous crime.'' Silajdzic and a delegation of four Bosnian legislators -- made up of Muslims, Croatians and Serbians -- also delivered their impassioned plea in a letter to President Bush. ``Mr. President, to treat the Bosnian tragedy as another humanitrian problem is not right,'' the letter said. ``To focus simply on providing aid is to ignore the real problem. ``The real issue is the slaughter of tens of thousands of civilians and the inability of the government of Bosnia-Hercegovina to defend its citizens.'' Acting Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, speaking to reporters following a meeting with Japanese officials, said the United States currently had no plans for lifting the arms embargo. ``At this stage there is in this administration no intention to lift the arms embargo, period,'' Eagleburger said. But he left out the possibility that there may come a time when the administration would be willing to reconsider its position. ``I can't predict what circumstances might develop,'' he said. ``Maybe we would change our minds.'' Silajdzic, who met with the secretary of state on two previous trips, was scheduled to visit Friday with Undersecretary of State Arnold Kanter. Prior to his arrival at the State Department, nearly 150 protestors gathered outside to urge the administration to show greater support for the Bosnian's plight and to lift the arms embargo. The demonstrators, chanting ``Eagleburger where are you'' and carrying signs that said ``Stop the Holocaust in Bosnia,'' were predominantly composed of people who appeared to be Muslims. More than 50 percent of Bosnia's population is Muslim. The forcible expulsion from Bosnia-Hercegovina of all Muslims and Croats has been one of Belgrade's main goals in its attempt to annex the nascent republic and create a zone of ``Serbian purity.'' Silajdzic said that effort has left hundreds of thousands of Bosnians homeless. He predicted that ``untold thousands'' of those displaced persons will die during the upcoming winter unless the international community gives his countrymen the means to defend themselves. ``We don't need any foreign soldiers, including the Islamic Mujaheedin, including the American troops, British, French, Japanese or any else,'' he said. ``We have enough of our people willing to fight now for their lives.'' ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Yugoslav peace talks underway Date: 17 Oct 92 15:03:44 GMT GENEVA (UPI) -- Federal Yugoslav Premier Milan Panic met with U.N. and European Community mediators Saturday on the second day of a concentrated ``mini-summit'' aimed at finding a solution to the war in the former Yugoslav republic of Bosnia-Hercegovina. The meeting with former U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and Lord David Owen took place at Panic's hotel rather than at U.N. European headquarters, where both Vance and Owen have offices. Derek Boothy, a spokesman for the mediators, said they would have no commentafterward ``because they want to keep the meeting low-key and make it clear that Mr. Panic is not their main interlocutor in ex- Yugoslavia, although of course his views are valued.'' Panic is prime minister of the truncated remains of Yugoslavia, comprised of the republics of Serbia and Montenegro. Federal Yugoslav President Dobrica Cosic arrives Sunday and will meet with Owen and Vance Monday along with Alija Izetbegovic, president of Bosnia-Hercegovina. The two presidents were to arrive within an hour of each other at Geneva airport Sunday night. An official in Panic's delegation said it was possible they and Panic could have a preliminary meeting Sunday night before the official exchange Monday. All planned to stay in the same hotel. Boothby said Vance and Owen were cautioning against too much optimism simply because of the simultaneous presence of most of the major players in Geneva. Croatian President Franjo Tudjman arrives Monday for his second meeting within a month with Izetbegovic. And Friday, Vance and Owen met with Macedonian President Kiro Gligorov. Sources in the Vance-Owen office noted that only Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic was missing from the talks. Radovan Karadzic, chief of the Bosnian Serbs, left early Saturday for Bosnia-Hercegovina after a meeting late Friday night with Panic, reportedly to try to persuade the commander of the Bosnian Serb air force to comply with U.N. instructions to move his planes to the Yugoslav federation. Reports reaching Geneva from Banja Luka, headquarters of the Bosnian Serb air force, quoted air force commander Maj. Gen. Zivomir Ninkovic as saying he would not comply with the deal that Karadzic struck with Owen on Oct. 13. A spokesman for Panic said Saturday the Yugoslav premier met with Karadzic late Friday and reinforced the necessity of persuading Ninkovic to fall into line. Karadzic was expected back in Geneva Monday in time for the Cosic-Izetbegovic meeting, although he would not attend, his office said. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Bosnians say they had no choice on blockade Date: 17 Oct 92 22:01:53 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- Bosnian leaders say they realize they cut off U.N. aid to their own trapped citizens by blockading Sarajevo's airport access road, but say they felt they had little choice. ``It was a classic military solution,'' Bosnian Vice President Ejub Ganic said Saturday of the large cargo container his government's troops placed Thursday across the wide open highway leading from the airport to the city. ``By your logic, we have no chance militarily,'' he told Western reporters, ``But as you can see, we are still alive.'' The U.N. Protection Force, or UNPROFOR, said it could not understand how the Bosnians could choke off the aid pipeline and offered to erect its own barricade if the Bosnians feel it necessary. Later Saturday, the Bosnians accepted the proposal and agreed to remove the cargo container in return for a retractable U.N. barricade and increased U.N. vigilance at the airport for violations of the agreement banning heavy weapons around the facility. A U.N.-sponsored airlift has been ferrying aid to Sarajevo, which has been beisieged by Serbian forces since last spring. The Serbians are trying to carve territory out of the former Yugoslav republic of Bosnia- Hercegovina. Ganic said the Bosnian side set up the roadblock after at least two dozen Serbian tanks in the surrounding area began pressing closer and closer to territory held by the Bosnians. UNPROFOR spokesman Mik Magnusson told reporters Friday the Bosnian army's tale of some 24 Soviet-made T-84 tanks near the airport was simply an ``extraordinary claim.'' Hours later, with U.N. inspectors still unable to find any such tanks but amid mounting reports that Serbian tanks and armored vehicles has for weeks been violating the supposedly neutral space around the airport, he explained he only meant that specific talk of T-84s was ``extraordinary.'' Saturday morning, the UNPROFOR spokesman said U.N. inspectors still had found no evidence of Serbian tanks remaining around the airport. But he said since UNPROFOR-escorted humanitarian aid convoys travel only during the day, the suggestion that Serbian tanks traveled the airport road at night out of sight of U.N. personnel was ``very legitimate, quite probable.'' However, he again called the Bosnian blockade a ``serious infringement'' of the agreement under which Serbian forces willingly surrendered control of the airport, and called on Bosnians to accept a compromise plan in which UNPROFOR would establish a retractable barrier and increase its monitoring of the road. Ganic declined to actually tell reporters he could not trust UNPROFOR's plan, but accused its leaders of being interested primarily in winning personal promotions and its multi-national troops of being unable to even communicate properly with each other. He recalled a recent indoor soccer game against UNPROFOR soldiers in which the Sarajevo team took a lopsided 17-3 victory. The top UNPROFOR commander in the city, Egyptian Brig. Gen. Hussein Abdel Razek, complained afterward that his players were at a disadvantage because they couldn't understand what they were saying to each other. ``That,'' Ganic said, ``is exactly what UNPROFOR is doing here.'' UNPROFOR Saturday acknowledged three Muslim drivers seized last month from a U.N.-protected convoy bringing foreign students out of Sarajevo were likely killed by their Serbian abductors. Also Saturday, both utility and most telephone service were again out in Sarajevo. A week ago, UNPROFOR said it had won Serbian cooperation in restoring the city's utilities. Service was restored Friday, only to be interrupted again after more artillery attacks and confrontations between both Serbian and Bosnian troops with UNPROFOR-escorted utility repair crews. Magnusson contends that at the airport, however, UNPROFOR has succeeded in keeping the area demilitarized despite some possible minor violations by Serbian tanks. He admitted if Serbian forces did decide to simply run tanks down the airport road through a U.N. barrier and into the city, UNPROFOR could do little more than lodge a protest. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Last Yugoslav army troops withdrawing from Croatia Date: 18 Oct 92 18:31:43 GMT DUBROVNIK, Croatia (UPI) -- One year after the highly criticized Serbian bombardment of the 12th century city of Dubrovnik during the war in the former Yugoslav republic of Croatia, the Serbian-dominated Yugoslav army is withdrawing the last of its troops from Croatian soil. But Croatian military sources say the army, occupying territory a few miles south of Dubrovnik, is leaving behind weapons and heavy artillery for the Serbian forces fighting in the neighboring war-torn republic of Bosnia-Hercegovina. U.N. officials would not confirm or deny the allegations that the weaponry was being left behind for Bosnian Serbs stationed in the hills above the historic Adriatic port known as the Pearl of Croatia. The withdrawal of the Yugoslav army from Croatia is scheduled to be completed by Oct. 20, but the joint U.N. and European Community brokered agreement did not stipulate what should be done with the weapons or where the army should withdraw to. ``They are not bound to tell us where they are supposed to go,'' Rashid Khan, U.N. Commander in the region said. ``This is not the end of the story, it is just the beginning. We still need areas of operations earmarked and to find a more mutual agreement regarding equipment.'' When the Yugoslav army, one of the largest and well-equipped in eastern Europe, withdrew from other areas in Croatia early this year, they left weaponry behind for local Serb forces. Ethnic Serbs -- backed by the army -- launched the war in Croatia to oppose Croatian independence. The bombing of Dubrovnik, a famous tourist attraction, was widely denounced. Now, although a U.N. cease-fire and peace plan are in effect, some Serbs in Croatia have been unwilling to disarm. Cedric Thornberry, head of U.N. civil affairs, has said the Serb's unwillingness to comply is having ``catastrophic'' repercussions on the U.N. peace plan. Croatian forces fear Serbians in Bosnia-Hercegovina will move to the north towards Mostar, a city in west-central Bosnia-Hercegovina liberated by Croatian forces in June, and launch a new assault on the area. The Yugoslav army is withdrawing from the southern tip of Croatia, which includes the strategic Prevlaka Peninsula that controls access to the neighboring Boka Kotorska bay in Serbia's allied republic Montenegro. Under the agreement, the peninsula will be put under U.N. and EC control to ensure the Yugoslav army access to the bay, Serbia's only port outlet to the west. In addition, a ``yellow zone' will be created around the entrance to the peninsula where only Croatian and Serbian police will be permitted on each of their respective territories, according to local Croatian military sources. But the U.N. and the EC only has about 20 people patrolling the area. ``It's a problem,'' said a U.N. observer who asked not to be identified. ``You never know what is going to happen.'' Although Khan said everything is going as scheduled and has had assurances the troops will withdraw on schedule, he added there were no guarantees. ``The first thing to be assassinated in a war is the truth.'' But he believes it is in the Serb's best interest to complete the process. ``If they are not finished by the 20th, then the whole world can point their fingers at them,'' he said. Preliminary agreements are being made for Croatia and the former Yugoslavia to jointly recognize each other and possibly open up transportation routes between their respective capitals, Zagreb and Belgrade. But Dubrovnik leader Zeljko Sikic said left-over bitterness will plague the normalization process. He said the old town district took hundreds of direct hits and ``nothing can be repaired to its original state.'' Sikic said the war caused approximately $4 billion in damage and destroyed the multi-million dollar tourist industry. ``I think the Serbs would like to forget what they have done -- they need our geographical position,'' he said. ``But I think the people of Dubrovnik will not so easily forget.'' ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: ``Tired'' players draw 22nd game of re-match Date: 18 Oct 92 20:28:30 GMT BELGRADE (UPI) -- Former world chess champion Bobby Fischer and his opponent Boris Spassky agreed to a draw after only 26 moves of the 22nd game of their controversial re-match Sunday, bringing the score to 8-4 in Fischer's favor. Chess experts said the two players appeared tired after Saturday's eight-hour game. ``They were obviously tired. They played just to pass the time away,'' said Dimitrije Bjelica, a Yugoslav chess expert and Fischer's former friend. ``I think that they really wanted to finish even sooner, but kept on in order to avoid playing another game today,'' added Bjelica. Fisher, playing with black pieces in the 22nd game of the match, proposed the draw after 26 moves. The draw was the 10th of the re-match, which began on Sept 2. The rules of the match say that if a game is finished within one hour, the next one has to be started the same afternoon. All games are to be played without adjournment. Fischer is now just two wins away from $3.35 million prize offered by Jezdimir Vasiljevic, a Yugoslav bank owner who organized the match. He deliberately breeched the U.S. Department of Treasury order not to play in the truncated Yugoslav federation of Serbia and Montenegro. The order endorsed the U.N. resolution banning all economic and financial transactions with Yugoslavia because of its involvement in the war in neighboring Bosnia-Hercegovina. If convicted in court, Fischer may get a maximum of 10 years in jail, and a fine up to $250,000. He publicly spat on the Treasury's document at a news conference in the eve of the match, Sept. 2. Game 23 is scheduled for next Wednesday. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: TV claims violations of embargo against Serbia Date: 18 Oct 92 20:42:12 GMT BONN, Germany (UPI) -- German officials said Sunday they were investigating claims that German firms were servicing ships from Serbia and Montenegro in violation of a U.N. embargo. ARD-German television claimed in its Monitor program that German firms had serviced about 40 ships from Serbia and Montenegro, and also alleged the ships were trading to obtain currency with which to buy weapons from the Mafia. The United Nations imposed the embargo in an attempt to stem the bloodshed in war-torn former Yugoslav republics. Serbian forces currently are battling in the republic of Bosnia-Hercegovina against Muslim Slav and Croat defense forces. A German justice spokesman said the port authorities in Bremen, Hamburg and Brake had kept a close eye on the ships, but said that all of them were flying the Maltese flag. The spokesman said if the alleged Maltese owners of the vessels were indeed front-companies for firms from the truncated Yugoslav federation, as the TV station claimed, it was up to the authorities in Malta to launch investigations. He said that the German authorities were investigatigating the matter and confirmed that it is a punishable offense under German export legislation for German firms to deliver supplies and services to ships from areas against which the United Nations has imposed an embargo. The spokesman said that the ships were sailing from Italy, some of them to South America and others to East Africa.
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----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Artillery attacks resume in Sarajevo Subject: Cosic meets again with U.N. and EC mediators Subject: Sarajevo tallies barrage damage Subject: Serbians seize federal police headquarters Subject: Greece may allow Macedonia on name domestically, premier says ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Artillery attacks resume in Sarajevo Date: 18 Oct 92 21:16:41 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- Serbian forces in the hills surrounding Sarajevo broke several days of relative calm Sunday by unleashing a city-wide artillery barrage, repeatedly hitting a hospital, damaging the main bread bakery and killing and wounding numerous civilians. ``It was terrible,'' said Dr. Ranko Covic of the city's state hospital, his white hospital gown and white shoes splattered red with fresh blood. ``The whole day we haven't stopped for a minute.'' Heavy artillery and infantry attacks also were reported during the day in towns across central and northern parts of Bosnia-Hercegovina, where Serbia-backed forces are waging an ongoing battle to carve out a self-declared Serb state. The victims of Sunday's assault on the capital included the state hospital, which took several hits, and the main bread bakery just west of downtown, which with U.N. supplies of flour was supplying much of the city's food. The heavy shelling began less than two hours after the Bosnian military permitted the resumption of U.N. relief shipments into Sarajevo by removing its blockade of the main access road connecting the city with both the airport and outside roadways. The removal followed three days of talks between Bosnian and U.N. Protection Force representatives that culminated in a meeting Saturday afternoon where UNPROFOR agreed to maintain its own barricade during nights. UNPROFOR also agreed to increase its monitoring of the airport area to guard against violations of the Bosnian-Serb agreement that banned tanks and other heavy weaponry around the facility, and to keep an armored personnel carrier stationed at the site during the day ``ready to block the road at any time.'' Bosnian soldiers, working under the watch of UNPROFOR troops who arrived at the airport roadblock shortly after daybreak Sunday, used a bulldozer to shove their large cargo container off to the side of the road as scheduled shortly after 8 a.m. ``Obviously, were glad to be back in operation,'' Jeremy Brade, head of the U.N. High Commission for Refugees' Sarajevo office, said as the white and green UNHCR-flagged trucks began plying the roadway moments later. Seventeen UNHCR trucks and 14 planes reached the city during the day, bringing in nearly 300 tons of aid, the most since the relief operation was resumed Oct. 3 after a month-long suspension caused the downing of an Italian relief flight. But the airport road settlement came at the same time the UNHCR said it was suspending temporarily the use of a road taken by trucks carrying relief supplies to the Sarajevo area through the southern city of Mostar because of two separate incidents Friday in which UNHCR trucks got caught in artillery fire. Shrapnel broke the window of one truck but caused no reported injuries, and there were conflicting opinions on whether the incidents were the result of incidental fire between the warring parties or a deliberate attack. The UNHCR said Sunday in a statement from Zagreb that the drivers believed they were intentional targets, but Brade questioned the version and called the wording ``unfortunate.'' The UNHCR statement said the agency was suspending use of the road between Mostar and Sarajevo for at least 48 hours ``to obtain fresh assurances of safe passage'' from the armies involved in the conflict. Sarajevo's 500,000 trapped residents, after passing through what U.N. forces called the quietest week of their 6-month siege, awoke Sunday to sporadic shooting that exploded around 10 a.m. into heavy grenading throughout the capital, including the city center, old town and the new Sarajevo section. The attacks killed and injured dozens of people, mostly civilians and many of whom had been out walking the streets looking for sources of water, Covic said. Another artillery shell hit the city's UNPROFOR headquarters, crashing through the roof of the main dining hall shortly before the lunch hour. ``There was a kaboom and pieces of the roof started falling in,'' said a cafeteria worker who was alone in the room at the time. UNPROFOR officials, in their daily survey, said a total of 70 rounds of large artillery were observed falling onto Serbian-controlled areas around the capital and 65 rounds were seen reaching Bosnian-controlled territory during the 24-hour period that ended at 5 p.m. Saturday. Serbian forces also waged artillery, tank and infantry attacks overnight and into the day Sunday on various central and northern towns, including Gradacac, Tuzla, Maglaj, Brcko and Jajce, causing unknown numbers of casualties, Sarajevo radio said. Also Sunday, UNPROFOR troops in Sarajevo were again escorting utility workers around the city in an effort to restore water and electricity supplies that have been out through most of the capital for almost the entire past month. Electricity was briefly reconnected Thursday evening after days of UNPROFOR negotiations with Serbian and Bosnian military leaders, but an electricity transmission tower was hit only a few hours later, knocking out both utilities. UNPROFOR-escorted repair missions have reported being shot at since then by soldiers on both sides of the war. The agreement on the airport blockade was a temporary arrangement until a more permanent solution can be found, UNPROFOR officials said. The Bosnian side, which holds a roughly oval-shaped hunk of land extending west of the capital, connecting near the point where it placed the barrier, said it installed the blockade after finding at least two dozen Serbian tanks in the surrounding territory pressing closer and closer. The Bosnians will still maintain barricades at points on the airport road a short distance beyond the disputed blockade, protecting themselves against Serbian tanks seen positioned in Serbian-held areas further north. Trucks stranded by the blockade included two UNHCR tankers carrying fuel oil that was to be delivered to city public services, including hospitals, telephone company offices, water-distribution trucks and firefighters. But the fuel, used to power both electricity generators and vehicles, was delayed Sunday by a problem with the tanker trucks and will be delivered Monday, UNHCR officials said. Others affected by the three-day airport road blockade included four officials of the Bosnian presidency who were forced to sleep nights at the airport, and three injured children who could not be put on their scheduled evacuation flights. One of the children underwent an operation during the night at an UNPROFOR field hospital and was due to be flown from the city Sunday. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Cosic meets again with U.N. and EC mediators Date: 19 Oct 92 13:01:12 GMT GENEVA (UPI) -- President Dobrica Cosic of rump Yugoslavia met Monday for the second time in 24 hours with U.N. and European Community mediators just prior to a face to face meeting with President Alija Izetbegovic of war-torn Bosnia-Hercegovina. The meeting between the two presidents and mediators Cyrus Vance of the U.N. and Lord David Owen of the EC was scheduled for Monday afternoon. Derek Boothby, a spokesman for Vance and Owen described the meeting as ``quite significant'' because it was the first time the two had ever met, at least officially. Both flew into Geneva Sunday night and are staying in the same hotel but aides insisted they had not met, although they admitted there had been ``some contact'' between the two delegations. Cosic, who met Vance and Owen in his hotel Sunday night, lunched with them prior to Monday's meeting. Izetbegovic had met the co-chairmen of the joint peace initiative in the hotel earlier Monday. Sources in both delegations said that while the agenda for the talks was fluid, both Izetbegovic and Cosic had the halting of fighting in Sarajevo at the top of their minds, and this was confirmed by U.N. spokesman Derek Boothby. ``The No. 1 priority is to stop the fighting,'' he said. ``Then we can move on to the future of Bosnia-Hercegovina, where there are a lot of ideas kicking around but none concrete enough to take precedence over the cessation of hostilities. Joining the talks later would be Cedric Thornberry, the senior U.N. political officer in Bosnia-Hercegovina, Boothby said. The Cosic-Izetbegovic talks were to be followed by a meeting between Izetbegovic and Croatian President Franjo Tudjman Tuesday, their second in a month. In a related development the International Red Cross said representatives of rump Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) and Croatia had agreed at a meeting Sunday to exchange lists of prisoners they were holding, to pave the way for their release. The two sides also agreed, the Red Cross said, to exchange information on missing people and work together to ease the return of refugees to their homes. The Red Cross, in a statement, called on all parties in the conflict in ex-Yugoslavia to proclaim an amnesty for all offenses during the conflict except war crimes. This would cover desertion and refusal to bear arms. Renewed fighting erupted Sunday around Bosnia's capital of Sarajevo. But U.N. spokesman Boothby said the fresh shelling was unlikely to affect the talks in Geneva. Cosic met briefly with Yugoslav Prime Minister Panic, who has been in the Swiss capital since Friday, but who left for Belgrade late Sunday night. It was their second second meeting in two days. Before leaving, Panic also met with Sadako Ogata, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, and Cornelio Sommaruga, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, to discuss relief operations in Bosnia-Hercegovina. At his meeting with Vance and Owen on Saturday, Panic pledged the use of Belgrade airport for U.N. support operations for getting supplies to Sarajevo as winter approaches. Sarajevo has been besieged by Serbian forces since last spring, when Serbians launched an offensive to seize territory in the newly independent republic. The UNHCR airlift to Sarajevo has been hampered by bad weather and the lack of anti-aircraft equipment to protect planes taking part in the airlift. Panic renewed these offers to Ogata and Sommaruga Sunday, sources in his delegation said. He also offered the services of the federal Yugoslav army to provide security for U.N. truck convoys passing through areas controlled by Bosnian Serbs. These assurances too were reiterated to the Red Cross and the UNHCR, Panic's office said. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Sarajevo tallies barrage damage Date: 19 Oct 92 15:48:33 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- The Bosnian capital struggled Monday to recover from another withering assault by serbian artillery that caused scores of casualties and knocked out the city's main grain refinery. Serbian forces in the hills overlooking Sarajevo bombarded the city for several hours Sunday, firing hundreds of rounds of heavy artillery that damaged apartment buildings, the city's state hospital and its main bread factory. At least 10 people were killed and 118 injured, hospital officials said. Conditions also were reported deteriorating Monday for some 80,000 people taking refuge in and around the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica, where they fled after being forced or frightened out of nearby Serbian-controlled areas. The refugees, who outnumber natives remaining in the Muslim Slav- majority town by some six-to-one, include about 8,000 children and are in dire need of food and medicine, Sarajevo radio and the Vecernje Novine newspaper reported. Most are living in wooded land around Srebrenica, where they have been shelled repeatedly and are dying from wounds that go untreated, the reports said. Doctors have been performing limb amputations with hot wires, they said. The strike on the Sarajevo bread factory destroyed the city's major grain mill, meaning U.N. relief workers already well behind schedule in stockpiling food and medicines for winter will have to begin delivering more flour. The U.N. High Commission for Refugees, which coordinates aid deliveries, said it was asked to provide another 50 tons of flour a day to replace that produced by the damaged mill. ``We'll do what we can,'' UNHCR spokesman Larry Hollingsworth said. ``The basic difference is that it'll mean 50 tons a day of something else we can't bring in.'' The mill had stored about two to three months worth of grain that it could have processed into flour, and officials estimated it would take about six weeks even in peace time to repair the damage. The capital at least had some water and electricity services restored by Monday morning, although supplies remained sporadic as warring parties continued to block repair crews and shoot at transmission facilities. Power and water were restored two days earlier after outages lasting several weeks, but an electricity tower was hit by artillery fire within hours and knocked out again. The shelling of Sarajevo slowed once more Monday, although heavy artillery and infantry attacks were reported to be continuing in several cities of northern and central Bosnia-Hercegovina, where Serbian-backed forces are fighting to establish a self-declared Serbian state. Serbian forces dropped rounds of artillery Monday on Travnik and Bugojno in the central part of the republic and Gradacac, Brcko and Maglaj in the north, Sarajevo radio said. Maglaj, completing a full month under seige, was hit throughout the night and into the morning by fire from tanks, howitzers and incendiary ammunition, the radio said. The warring parties were attempting Monday to negotiate an exchange of 90 Serbs living in the beseiged central Bosnian town of Jajce for some 1,000 Muslim Slavs and Croats evicted from other nearby towns, it said. In Geneva, the presidents of both Bosnia-Hercegovina and the Serbian- dominated rump yugoslav union met Monday with U.N. and European Community negotiators at the site of the ongoing Yugoslav peace talks. The Serbian-run Yugoslav army was removing its last troops from Croatian soil, one year after its highly criticized bombardment of the 12th Century coastal city of Dubrovnik. But Croatian military sources complained the Yugoslav army, while leaving Dubrovnik as scheduled by Tuesday, was just relocating a few miles south and was leaving behind weapons and heavy artillery for Serbian forces still fighting in Bosnia-Hercegovina. The shelling of Sarajevo began sunday less than two hours after the Bosnian military permitted the resumption of U.N. relief shipments into Sarajevo by removing its blockade of the main access road connecting the city with both the airport and outside roadways. The attacks timing was attributed by Bosnian officials to their refusal to accept Serbian demands for the release of bodies of Serbian fighters, primarily those killed in a failed offensive two weeks earlier in the southern part of the city. The Bosnian officials said the shelling began as threatened, at 10 a. m., after the Bosnians insisted on getting back bodies of their own fighters. A total of 291 rounds of large artillery fell onto Bosnian-controlled areas around the capital, compared to only 18 rounds seen reaching Serbian-controlled territory during the 24-hour period that ended at 5 p.m. Sunday, the U.N. Protection Force said in its daily survey. Also Monday, a former Bosnian military leader was being held in Bosnian custody in Konjic, south of Sarajevo, after he reportedly returned from exile to the hills around the capital and allegedly tried to take control from a local commander. Jusuf Prazina, known popularly as ``Juka,'' returned to the Sarajevo area on Friday and along with eight armed colleagues on Saturday briefly seized control of a Bosnian army headquarters on Igman Mountain, southwest of the capital, before being arrested following a shootout, Bosnian media reported. The UNHCR on Monday was bringing into the city two tanker trucks carrying fuel oil that was to be delivered to city public services, including hospitals, telephone company offices, water-distribution trucks and firefighters. The fuel, used to power both electricity generators and vehicles, was caught at the airport during the road blockade and further delayed Sunday by a problem with the tanker trucks, unhcr officials said. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Serbians seize federal police headquarters Date: 19 Oct 92 17:18:19 GMT BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (UPI) -- Serbian police seized the headquarters of the Yugoslav federal police Monday and refused to let the federal interior minister enter the building, the Belgrade-based Tanjug news agency said. Serbian police said they were acting as a result of a Belgrade municipal court decision that said that the headquarters was the property of the republic of Serbia. An official statement issued by the Serbian government said the takeover ``was simply a matter of owner's rights...There are no reasons for over-dramatizing the event.'' Tanjug said the Serbian police stopped Pavle Bulatovic, the federal minister of interior, from entering the building Monday morning. Federal police sources said that they received the court's decision about the building 10 days ago, but ``thought that it was a mistake.'' The appearance of hundreds of heavily-armed Serbian police briefly sparked rumors of a coup attempt by Serbia's hard-line President Slobodan Milosevic against the leadership of the rump Yugoslav union of Serbia and Montenegro. Milosevic and his ruling Socialist Party of Serbia have repetedly accused federal President Dobrica Cosic and Prime Minister Milan Panic of ``neglecting Serbian national interests'' in their negotiations with neighboring Croatia. Panic Sunday interrupted a visit to Geneva, where he and Cosic were participating in peace talks on former Yugoslavia, to return to Belgrade because of ``pressing business at home,'' his spokesman said. The spokesman denied that there was any connection between Panic's return and the takeover of the police headquarters. The federal government issued no official statement. ``This is a show of force by Milosevic,'' said a Western diplomat in Belgrade, who insisted on remaining anonymous. He said ``Milosevic is demonstrating to Panic who is in charge.'' ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Greece may allow Macedonia on name domestically, premier says Date: 19 Oct 92 17:47:35 GMT ATHENS, Greece (UPI) -- Greek Prime Minister Constantine Mitsotakis said Monday Athens had no quarrel with any name the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia wished to use for itself domestically. He implied that Athens would not object if the republic used the name ``Macedonia'' domestically but would remain steadfast in not allowing it to use the name externally. The Greek premier's statement came two days before the European Community was due to vote on whether to allow the former Yugoslav state to use the name ``Macedonia'' externally for trade purposes. Since Macedonia broke away from the Yugoslav federation earlier this year, Athens has blocked EC recognition of the republic so long as it insisted on using the name Macedonia, which is also the name of a Greek province adjacent to the former federation. Athens argued that use of the name implied territorial ambitions by the former Yugoslav state. Mitsotakis said Greece would continue to oppose use of the name ``Macedonia'' by the state in its external dealings, but had no quarrel with ``a name which the republic wishes to call itself domestically.'' The new policy appeared to soften the Greek stance on the issue, but opposition parties in Athens earlier said they were not ready to compromise on the name. Diplomats however pointed out that Greece called itself ``Ellada'' internally, though it was referred to as ``Greece'' or the ``Hellenic Republic'' externally. Mitsotakis also said Athens would be ready to accept a formula whereby the breakaway Yugoslav state would be referred to externally as ``the Territory of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia'' in its trade dealings with the EC. Greek officials however said the new formula was a temporary compromise, and would be used until Macedonia found another name for itelf for external use. ``The flow of oil and other products from Greece will not be resumed to this republic unless (it) accepts the stamp which the European Community has agreed to, showing that it is the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia,'' Mitsotakis said. The Greek media and officials refer to the former Yugoslav state as the ``Republic of Skopje,'' after its capital city.
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Serbian Seizure of Interior Building Sparks Coup Rumors (Belgrade) By Laura Silber and Carol J. Williams (c) 1992, Los Angeles Times BELGRADE, Yugoslavia _ Heavily armed police loyal to Serbian Presiden t Slobodan Milosevic seized the Yugoslav federal Interior Ministry building Monday in a move that may foreshadow an attempt to depose federal Prime Minister Milan Panic. The action by Milosevic forces has been explained publicly as a dispu te between the republic and federal governments over ownership of the ministry building. But in view of the increasingly tense power struggle between Milosevic and Panic, the takeover sparked fears that the Serbian strongman might be laying the groundwork for a coup d'etat. By invading the Interior Ministry building after nightfall Sunday and disarming federal police officers on duty, the Milosevic forces have flouted Panic's limited authority over his own government institutions. In a statement issued through the Tanjug news agency, Panic's governm ent said it ``strongly condemns the violent takeover'' and demands immediate restoration of federal authority over the property. ``The federal Interior Ministry is now unable to perform its legal an d constitutional functions, which gravely threatens one of the vital state and security functions of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia,'' the statement said. Panic's spokesman, David Calef, said the prime minister had no immedi ate comment on the incident. Asked if the Serbian takeover might signal an attempt to wrest power from Panic, Calef replied: ``I wouldn't engage that one way or the other.'' Panic, a naturalized American citizen who left his California- based pharmaceuticals empire in July to lead the government of his native Yugoslavia, made a mysterious detour in his travel plans Sunday when he returned to Belgrade from Geneva, where he had been expected to remain for Yugoslav peace talks that will continue throughout the week. Calef denied that Panic's early return had anything to do with the In terior Ministry situation. ``The two are not related to one another,'' he said. ``His business i n Geneva was concluded.'' Calef said Panic planned to leave again Wednesday for an official vis it to Austria, then return to Geneva for further negotiations with U.N. special envoy Cyrus Vance and European Community mediator Lord Owen, joint chairmen of the Yugoslav peace talks. The struggle for control of the ministry follows a critical blow to Milosevic's prestige delivered by Yugoslav President Dobrica Cosic last week. Cosic, an esteemed writer and prominent nationalist once closely allied with the Serbian president, called on Milosevic to resign for the good of the nation. The Serbian Orthodox Church and prominent members of the Serbian Acad emy of Sciences had earlier distanced themselves from Milosevic, who is accused by Western leaders of fomenting ethnic violence in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Cosic and Panic have joined forces in hopes of ousting Milosevic and getting the United Nations to lift the harsh sanctions imposed five months ago against Serbia and Montenegro, the last two republics remaining in Yugoslavia. While Belgrade was gripped by rumors of a possible coup, Serbian and federal officials played down the seizure as a dispute over property rights. The Serbian move followed a ruling by a municipal court that the federal Interior Ministry must abandon the building by Oct. 15. The takeover fueled speculation that the Serbian police were trying t o confiscate federal police archives. Those files are believed to contain incriminating evidence against top Serbian politicians that could be used in war crimes trials being called for in international circles. Eyewitnesses Report Torture, Many Deaths in Serb Camp (Omarska) By Roy Gutman (c) 1992, Newsday OMARSKA, Bosnia-Herzegovina _ The vast mining complex here, with its open pits and ore processing system, looks like anything but a concentration camp. The nondescript buildings in their barren frontier landscape have bee n cleaned up, and there is no trace of the blood reputedly spilled here. But during the last month dozens of eyewitnesses have provided compelling evidence of murder and torture on a wide scale at this complex, where the Serbs who conquered much of Bosnia brought several thousand Muslims and Croats. Inside the huge hangarlike building that houses earth-moving equipment, armed guards ordered tortures at gunpoint. The paved area outside was an open-air prison, where 500 to 1,000 men had to lie on their bellies from dawn to dusk. Thousands more packed the offices, workshops and storage rooms in the hangar and a glass-and-brick administration building. All were on starvation diets. The two most-feared locations were small outbuildings some distance f rom the main facilities: the ``Red House,'' from which no prisoner returned alive; and the ``White House,'' which contained a torture chamber where guards beat prisoners for days until they succumbed. Unlike Nazi concentration camps, Omarska kept no real records, making it difficult to determine exactly how many died. Newsday first reported mass murders at Omarska and other camps on Aug . 2. Five days later, as television pictures of emaciated prisoners were aired worldwide, Serb authorities closed the camp and dispersed the prisoners. But not until hundreds of survivors aided by the International Red Cross reached the West in the last few weeks was it possible to draw up a detailed account. A monthlong Newsday investigation that included extensive interviews with officials who said they were responsible for Omarska and with dozens of former detainees in Croetia, Britain and Bosnia itself, produced these main conclusions: _Eyewitness accounts of detainees indicate that well over 1,000 peopl e were killed at Omarska, and thousands more might have died from beatings, executions, disease or starvation had the camp not been closed. _A large number of detainees, possibly as many as 1,000, seem to have disappeared when the camp was closed. _All but a few detainees were civilians, mostly draft-age Muslim or C roat men, but there were many men under 18 or over 60, and a small number of women. Newsday's estimate of the death toll of more than 1,000 is based on t he eyewitness accounts of daily killings by three former detainees who spoke in separate interviews. It does not reflect other, possibly duplicating, first-person reports of mass executions or disappearances; if it did, the toll could easily be twice as high. Three Bosnian journalists who were detained at Omarska and are now be ing held in another camp estimated the death toll of 1,200 or more. And International Red Cross officials said at least 2,000 people who went to Omarska are unaccounted for. Nine hundred miles from here, outside London, Edin Elkaz lies awake n ights, his head filled with the screams of the men being tortured in the room next door at the White House. During one month at the camp, the 21-year-old said, he witnessed some of the killings and the removal of bodies the next day. The guards, he said, slaughtered five to 10 men a night, up to 30 on some nights. E.L., a 26-year-old Muslim, spent two months here and said he helped load between five and 10 corpses daily from the White House into a small yellow pickup truck that removed them to an unknown grave. Like many of those interviewed, he asked that his full name not be used. And N.J., a 23-year-old Muslim, said he kept a count each night for t he final 20 nights of inmates marched to the Red House. Some days there were as few as 17, on others as many as 42. None ever returned. Interviews with these three detainees, who are among 68 taken to Brit ain to recover from beatings and shootings, and from several hundred who recently arrived in Karlovac, western Croatia, provide chilling amplification of the original reports of atrocities at the camps in Bosnia. After conducting its own interviews recently with about 40 former det ainees in Karlovac for submission to a special United Nations war crimes panel, the U.S. Embassy in Zagreb has concluded there were massive atrocities at Omarska and other camps and in the surrounding towns, said John Zerolis, an embassy official. ``The Nazis had nothing on these guys. I've seen reports of individua l acts of barbarity of a kind that haven't come up in State Department cable traffic in 20 years,'' said another top official at the U.S. embassy, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Extensive Newsday interviews with prisoners indicate that at least 2, 500 to 3,000 detainees were held in Omarska at any one point in time. International Red Cross officials have a working estimate that up to 5,000 prisoners were taken to Omarska altogether. Serbs from nearby Prijedor, in northwest Bosnia, set up camps at Omar ska and Kereterm, a disused tile factory, on May 25, not quite a month after they seized power by force in the town of 30,000. Officials from Prijedor were eager to present their version of events. ``You have your facts. We have our facts. You have a complete right to choose between the two versions,'' Police Chief Simo Drljaca said in an interview last month. Almost nothing in the official version stands up to scrutiny. During a tour of the administration building at the camp, Zeljko Meha jic, the former commander of the guards, took a visitor to a basement room packed with rows of bunk beds. There were never more than 270 prisoners at Omarska at any one tmme, Mehajic said, and ``this is where they all slept.'' But the detainees said they had slept on the ground, on floors, or cr ouching jammed into closets _ anywhere but in beds. The beds were brought a few days after the media drew attention to Omarska, according to a foreign humanitarian aid expert. Milan Kovacevic, the city manager in Prijedor, said Omarska was an investigative facility, set up ``to see who did what during the war, to find the guilty ones and to establish the innocent so that they didn't bear the consquences.'' He said the camp was closed when the investigation was completed. Drljaca, who became police chief when the Serb minority took power, s aid 3,334 people were arrested on suspicion of resisting or plotting against the new Serb authorities and were taken to Omarska. Drljaca insisted that no one had been killed at Omarska, and that only two prisioners died between May 25 and mid-August, both of ``natural causes.'' Another 49 ``disappeared,'' including the former lord mayor of Prijedor, Mohamed Cehajic, and were presumed dead, Drljaca said. In the official version, detainees were interrogated for four days an d shipped out. But not one of more than three dozen Omarska survivors whom U.S. embassy officials interviewed at Karlovac said he had been questioned before being taken to Omarska. Only a few of several dozen interviewed by Newsday had been interrogated, and they said they were beaten before and during questioning. Most had been held more than two months. Slobodan Balaban, an ethnic Serb who was technical director of the mi ning complex, said Serbs were motivated to operate the camps by revenge for the perceived suffering of Serbs in other conflicts. ``The main factor that influenced our conduct has been the treatment of our people who were taken to Croatian camps,'' he said. Tahirovic Redzep, 52, said he was brought to Omarska with hundreds of others on May 26, after Serbs destroyed and ``cleansed'' the nearby Muslim town of Kozarac. In a sworn statement given to the Bosnian office on war crimes investigation, he said guards called out a dozen people a day for five days and decapitated them with chain saws near one of the main pits. He said Omarska prisoners were forced to witness the massacre, as well as the subsequent execution of 20 non-Serb policemen from Prijedor. There were ways to avoid beatings, detainees said. Rule 1 was never t o look a guard in the eye. Rule 2 was that if called to an interrogation, to confuse the guards by saying he had just come from one. Prisoners sometimes smeared themselves with blood from a newly beaten detainee ``so that we would be spared as much as possible in the next round,'' Kamber Midho, 31, said in a sworn statement to the Bosnian government. At least one prisoner was burned alive at Omarska. The burning occurred in late July as detainees lined up for lunch, ac cording to Nedjad Hadzic, 23, an eyewitness now in Karlovac. The man was emerging from an interrogation, and a guard ordered him to run, as if in preparation to shoot him. ``You are cowards. You know nothing but cruelty,'' the man taunted the guard. While the guards were shoving him, he grabbed a gun from one of them, but then gave it up. ``They shoved him toward the White House, poured gasoline over him and set him alight,'' Hadzic said. And Osman Hamuric, who is now recovering outside London, told Newsday he had twice witnessed forced cannibalism. On one occasion, he said, guards cut off a prisoner's ear and forced another man to eat it. The second time, a guard cut a piece of flesh off a wounded prisoner and told him to eat it. He refused. ``Why not? It's cooked,'' Hamuric quoted the guard as saying. Hamuric could not say whether the man ate his own flesh. ``All I know is that they took him away and we never saw him again.'' U.S. Embassy officials found a witness to an incident in which a man had his testicles tied with wire to the back of a motorcycle, which took off at high speed. He died of massive blood loss. During their first five days in Omarska, prisoners were generally giv en no food, witnesses said. After that, they were taken in groups of 30 to the cafeteria for the sole meal of the day, which consisted of a slice of bread and a bowl of thin soup. Dysentery was rampant, and conditions were so unclean that some pris oners counted 10 types of lice or vermin on their bodies. ``We had lice on our eyelids. They'd fall out of your beards,'' said Hadzic. Detainees said they were bathed only twice all summer. The guards ordered prisoners to disrobe in groups of 50 and then aimed firehoses at their genitals. ``It was pure sadism. They'd laugh if we fell over,'' Hadzic said. A mystery is what happened to the people transferred from Omarska at the time of its closing. Prisoners said they reckoned a population of 2,500 to 3,000 at Omarska, basing their estimates on such things as counts of the lunches served on a particular day. Of the prisoners there at the end, 1,374 were transferred to Manjaca, a POW camp, according to the International Red Cross. About 700 others went to Trnopolje, a transit camp, according to prisoners later taken from there to Karlovac. That leaves between 500 and 1,000 unaccounted for. ^ Distributed by the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service= Wounded Eye Witness Tells of Torture in Serb Camp (Omarska) By Roy Gutman (c) 1992, Newsday OMARSKA, Bosnia-Herzegovina _ Edin Elkaz counts himself lucky to have been shot in the Serb interrogation camp where Muslims and Croats were taken between May and August after Serbs captured the town of Prijedor and rounded up anyone suspected of opposing them. Elkaz had been a Bosnian soldier, one of the few Omarska prisoners wh o had actually fought the Serbs. Stuffed with 130 others into a one-car garage, Elkaz was standing near the door on May 30 when guards seized a friend of his and executed him outside at close range. The bullet penetrated the door, entered the stomach of Elkaz' brother and finally came to rest in Elkaz' leg. In the hospital for six weeks with his leg suspended from a bar, Elkaz had difficulty recovering because Serbs came by and poked the wound with a stick, repeatedly reinfecting it. ``I had a very good (Serb) neighbor who came by one day and said hell o. I came to regret it,'' Elkaz said, smiling at the irony. ``He brought 15 people to beat me up over six weeks.'' But Elkaz' weeks in the hospital reduced the time he was exposed to t he brutality of the Omarska camp. Once back in Omarska, he was taken with several other Bosnian soldiers to a room in the ``White House,'' where torture was conducted. He could see the beatings through a glass door. The guards used wooden clubs and iron bars and usually concentrated on the head, the genitals, the spine and the kidneys. Sometimes they smashed prisoners' heads against radiators. ``You'd see pieces of flesh or brain there the next day,'' Elkaz recalled. But the worst torture was to stand a prisoner against the wall and be at him with a cable. ``I think they killed at least 50 men with that cable,'' Elkaz said. Each morning, he said, detainees laid out the corpses in front of the White House. Others then loaded them into the small yellow truck that had just been used to deliver food to the camp kitchen. A four-man burial detail would accompany the truck, but only one of them would return alive.
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Report Used by White House to Defend Iraq Policy Was Flawed (Washn) By Douglas Frantz and Murray Waas (c) 1992, Los Angeles Times WASHINGTON _ A Department of Agriculture report used in recent months by the Bush administration to defend its prewar assistance to Iraq was known to be flawed and incomplete before it was released in 1990, according to internal documents and interviews. A senior federal investigator cited the deficiencies when he tried to delay release of the report, which stemmed from an inquiry into allegations that Iraq had misused U.S.-backed loans. Records show that the official complained that the report represented an incomplete and ``rosy'' picture of Iraq's abuse of the loan program, which included paying bribes to U.S. exporters and possibly trading food for arms. Releasing the report could embarrass the administration, he warned. But the Department of Agriculture, after pressure from President Bush 's national security adviser, released the report essentially unchanged. It said that the department's internal auditors had uncovered no evidence that Iraq had traded goods bought with U.S. loans for weapons, and the United States did not suspend its aid to Iraq. ``The administration's investigation of Iraqi abuses was a whitewash at best,'' said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, which has been investigating the Iraqi loan guarantees. ``At worst, it was an unsuccessful effort to hide a foreign policy failure.'' Concerns about the accuracy of the Department of Agriculture report c ome in the wake of recent questions about the thoroughness of a simultaneous criminal investigation into a massive loan scheme involving Iraq and the Atlanta branch of Italy's Banca Nazionale del Lavoro. The criticism has centered on the apparent failure by U.S. government prosecutors to pursue key evidence and the withholding of intelligence files, possibly to avoid disclosing the extent of administration aid to Iraq. The BNL case has become a major issue in the final weeks of the presi dential campaign, with Democrats accusing the administration of a coverup and administration officials denying that there was an effort to conceal information. Attorney General William P. Barr has appointed an outside investigator to examine the BNL matter. Dissatisfied with the appointment, all eight Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, asked Barr Monday for an independent counsel _ who would not report to the Justice Department _ to investigate the government's handling of the BNL inquiry. The House Judiciary Committee made a similar request Friday. A Department of Agriculture spokeswoman would not comment Monday on t he 1990 Iraqi report or the criticisms of it. The Department of Agriculture inquiry that led to the report was init iated in response to evidence uncovered in the BNL investigation. The two sets of investigators even collided later when they tried to interview the same Iraqi officials. When FBI agents raided the Italian bank's Atlanta branch in August 19 89, they found evidence of $5 billion in illegal loans to Iraq. Nearly $2 billion had been guaranteed by the Agriculture Department through its Commodity Credit Corp. to promote U.S. farm exports. Investigators discovered indications early that food bought with the loans may have been traded by Iraq for military goods. They also uncovered evidence that Iraq had demanded bribes from U.S. exporters participating in the program. Agents from the FBI and the Department of Agriculture inspector gener al's office pursued the bank case and internal auditors from Agriculture began to examine the loans. In early 1990, both teams wanted to interview the same Iraqi governme nt officials, but officials in Washington decided that only one group would be able to interview the Iraqis. The lead agent in the criminal inquiry later testified in court that it was decided that the auditors would interview the Iraqis because both groups believed that the Iraqis would lie anyway. In April, the audit team interviewed Iraqi officials in Baghdad and e xamined documents indicating possible misuse of the loans. The documents, however, were in Arabic and never were translated. In late April 1990, the first draft of the audit investigation was wr itten and, in an unusual step, sent to the National Security Council at the White House for review. It also was reviewed by Craig Beauchamp, the assistant inspector general for investigations at the Department of Agriculture, who immediately found that the auditors did not thoroughly investigate many allegations about Iraq's abuse of the program. On May 8, 1990, Beauchamp telephoned Lawrence A. Urgenson, a senior a ttorney at Justice who was supervising the criminal investigation of BNL. He told Urgenson that the report was a ``very incomplete picture of Iraqi involvement'' in abuses and warned that Justice and Agriculture ``could be embarrassed'' by its release, according to Beauchamp's notes of the conversation, which were obtained by the Los Angeles Times. Two days later, Beauchamp again complained to Urgenson, saying that t he report painted ``a rosy picture'' of Iraq. He said that he had tried to persuade his superiors to delay the report's release. Urgenson apparently took the warning seriously and responded with a l etter to Agriculture officials saying that criminal investigators had evidence of Iraqi complicity in criminal abuses of the loan program, including demanding bribes. But the letter did not address whether goods had been traded for weapons. At the time, Iraq was scheduled to receive another $500 million in lo an guarantees. Beauchamp and others were trying to halt the program, but the White House wanted to keep it open to avoid straining relations with Iraq, according to documents. On May 18, 1990, Brent Scowcroft, the president's national security a dviser, contacted then-Agriculture Secretary Clayton K. Yeutter and urged him to hold off suspending the loan guarantees, according to internal documents. Yeutter complied and did not announce the suspension of the program w hen the audit report was released on May 21. The additional $500 million was still pending when Iraq invaded Kuwait in August, 1990, according to various documents and interviews. Clinton's Record as Governor: Ambiguous, Contradictory By David Lauter (c) 1992, Los Angeles Times WASHINGTON _ During his 12 years as governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinto n has improved the schools, kept taxes low, increased the number of jobs, improved civil rights for minorities and maintained one of the cleanest environments in the country. Or, he has presided over one of the worst-educated states in the coun try, raised taxes on everything from groceries to used cars, watched as wages declined, failed to gain a civil rights law for his state's citizens and allowed the poultry industry to stall state regulation of water pollution caused by chicken droppings. Both pictures are true. Neither is complete. Clinton's record is as ambiguous and contradictory as the man himself often has been on this year's campaign trail. When he took over, Arkansas ranked as one of the nation's poorest states. It still does. But in many ways, the state has made steady progress under Clinton's tenure. The overall assessment of his record depends in large part on whether one looks at where the state stands or where it is moving. Much also depends on what year one looks at. During the first part of the 1980s, Arkansas was hard hit by the twin downturns in the nation's farm economy and its oil and gas industry. Economic statistics taken from that decade show slow growth, declining incomes and poor job markets. During the last four years, however _ while President Bush presided over a stagnant national economy _ Arkansas' picture has improved substantially. Here is a closer examination of the Clinton record: Economy The official version of the history of the Arkansas economy during t he Bill Clinton era runs something like this: When he first took office in 1978, economic development in the small Southern state amounted to ``smokestack chasing.'' State officials would look for industrial plants in the Midwest and Northeast and woo them with promises of cheap labor, low taxes and lax regulation. Clinton has said that he quickly realized that such efforts were self-defeating. Employers attracted by the promise of low wages would forever remain low-wage employers. They would stay in the state for a while but eventually would be lured away by other areas _ Mexico or Taiwan _ that could promise even lower costs. And in the meantime, such industries would do little to lift the state from poverty. And so, during his first two-year term and again in 1982 when he rega ined his office after losing it in 1980, Clinton set out to change the state's approach to encouraging development in its impoverished backwaters. He pushed for major education reforms to improve the future work force, as well as the creation of new agencies to provide capital to encourage local business start-ups. At first, progress was slow, particularly in the recessionary years o f the mid-1980s. But in recent years, Arkansas has led the nation in new job growth. This version of the story is true. But only in part. Clinton's programs may have had some impact on the state's job-growth rate, but the impact has been small. The main source of new jobs has been the state's rapidly growing chicken industry, growth that has made the poultry producers a powerful entity in Arkansas. And that, in turn, has stymied efforts to control chicken-related pollution. In addition, jobs in the chicken factories are generally low paying, as are jobs in the timber industry _ another source of Arkansas' strong employment growth in recent years. Comparing 1979 and 1991, the number of non-farm jobs in Arkansas has increased by 24 percent, a rate slightly higher than the national average of 20 percent during that period. Nationally, most of that job growth took place in the early and mid-1980s. In Arkansas, much of the growth was in the last four years. Since Bush took office, jobs nationwide have increased by only 1 percent, while jobs in Arkansas have increased by 11.5 percent. In another key economic category, Arkansas' per capita annual income has gone from $6,911 in 1979 to $14,629 in 1991. That was a healthy rate of growth, but overall only kept pace with the national averages. And the state remains near the bottom in per capita income; only West Virginia, Mississippi and Utah rank below it. Still, during the years Clinton and Bush have both been chief executi ves, Arkansas has done better than the nation as a whole. Nationally, per capita income adjusted for inflation has dropped 1 percent since 1989. In Arkansas, per capita income adjusted for inflation has grown 2 percent, making the state one of the few that can show actual income growth during the Bush years. -0- Spending and Taxes As governor, Clinton has faced strict constraints on his ability to e ither spend money or raise it. Under the Arkansas constitution, the budget must be balanced. The state has an automatic budget-cutting process that cuts spending to match revenues each quarter of the year. As for taxes, most can be increased only if three-fourths of the Legislature concurs. Effectively, that means that as few as 12 members of the state Senate can kill a tax increase, and they usually have. The exceptions to that rule are sales taxes and fees, and Clinton has turned to both to raise revenue. As governor, he put through two major sales tax increases. The first, in 1983, raised the sales tax from three cents on the dollar to four cents. The second increase, in 1990, added another half cent to the levy. Adjusted for inflation, state spending in Arkansas increased 33 perce nt between 1980 and 1991. Spending increased somewhat faster than statewide income. But despite those spending increases, Arkansas has one of the lowest tax burdens in the nation. -0- Education and Environment No issue has had a greater priority with Clinton than education. His biggest political battle was a confrontation with the state teachers union over teacher competency tests _ part of a broad package of educational reforms Clinton was able to get passed in 1983. Clinton's efforts on education even won him praise from President Bus h. In 1989, when Clinton headed a task force of governors that worked with administration officials in setting new education goals, Bush wrote him a letter complimenting his work. Nonetheless, education reforms take many years to have an impact, and so far, the measurable changes in the state's rankings are small. On the environmental front, Clinton took on the timber industry durin g his first term (1979-81) and lost a major battle over clear-cutting in the state's forests. He also staged a major fight with the state's chief utility over nuclear power. When he returned to office in 1983, Clinton took a more low-key approach on environmental concerns, playing down the issue in the interests of economic growth. The resulting problems have been most evident in northwestern Arkansa s, the center of the state's poultry industry. The chief culprit is chicken droppings, which area farmers traditionally have used for fertilizer. In limited amounts, that practice causes few environmental problems, but as the industry has grown, the amount of chicken waste has exceeded the land's ability to absorb it, resulting in runoff into lakes and streams, where the nitrogen in the chicken droppings causes sharp increases in the growth of algae. That, in turn, robs the water of oxygen needed by fish. Clinton and his aides correctly note that overall, the state remains one of the nation's cleanest. The vast majority of the state's rivers and streams are clean, and Arkansas is one of the few states that complies fully with the federal Clean Air Act _ mostly because the state industrialized late and has few old, high-polluting factories. Examination of Bush's Successes, Failures as President By Douglas Jehl (c) 1992, Los Angeles Times WASHINGTON _ That George Bush's first-term record looms as a problem even for him is evident in the strategy he has adopted for re-election. Rather than dwell upon the past four years, the president has mostly tried to change the subject. He is glad to talk about his agenda for American ``renewal.'' He is e ager to talk about Democrat Bill Clinton's record as Arkansas' governor. But he dares not ask voters whether they are better off now than when he took office. This election, he now insists, should focus on the future. That approach carries deep irony: While incumbency is usually regarde d as an advantage, Bush's past has proved a burden. Not since World War II has a president presided over an economy so stagnant. In promising better times ahead, Bush finds himself conceding that ``times have been very, very difficult for many Americans.'' The sense of ``Marching In Place,'' as a new book on the Bush preside ncy is titled, extends across a wide domestic spectrum. In his first term, Bush has done what he promised not to do _ raise taxes _ and stopped short of what he vowed to be _ the environmental and education president. If the past has become a handicap, that fate also serves as a remind er of politics' cruel tricks. With the Cold War over and the Persian Gulf war won, Bush discovered that great successes only make voters yearn for more. Victorious abroad, Americans demanded similar victories at home. Here is a closer examination of the Bush record: The Economy Bush took office with promises of massive job growth and sunny prospe rity. Instead, Americans lost ground in three crucial areas: economic growth, income and jobs. Under Bush, the economy has grown by just 1 percent a year. And media n family income, when adjusted for inflation, has actually declined. Bush promised to create 30 million jobs in eight years; but in a little less than four years, total employment has increased by just 2.8 million, and the number of private-sector jobs has actually declined. The jobless rate, 5.4 percent when he took office, has shot upward, standing at 7.5 percent in the latest report. One American in 10 is now on food stamps. The statistics are not uniformly bleak. The U.S. economy remains the world's largest; inflation, its bane a decade ago, no longer poses a serious threat. And interest rates are at their lowest level in 20 years, setting the stage for a spree of investment that Bush claims leaves that nation ``poised for a dramatic recovery.'' To listen to the president, the poor economic record is mostly Congre ss' fault. As an example, he points to lawmakers' steadfast refusal to pass the capital gains tax-cut proposal that has been the most consistent element of his economic agenda. Bush's advisers also point to the structural slowdown in the defense industry brought about by the end of the Cold War. With various major weapon programs being canceled or slowed, thousands of jobs have been loss. But it is also true that, until this year, Bush devoted little attent ion to the state of the economy. When he finally did so, his election-year proposals had virtually no chance of winning the embrace of a Democratic-controlled Congress. -0- Taxes and Spending For all his disdain of taxing and spending, Bush has presided over la rge increases in both. The income tax increase he reluctantly approved (he now calls it a ``mistake'') in a 1990 budget-agreement with Congress was the second-largest in American history. Since he took office, federal spending, adjusted for inflation, has shot up 8.7 percent a year. Bush justified his support for the tax hike as a necessary step to ma intain budget discipline. But it has not had that effect. In just four years, the federal deficit has nearly doubled, swelling to $290 billion this year. The total federal debt has increased to $4 trillion, from $2.6 trillion four years ago. To be sure, Bush tried but failed to persuade Congress to accept a cu t in the capital-gains tax rate. His own spending proposals have been consistently smaller than those ultimately approved by Congress. But as a would-be deficit-cutter, he has been less than courageous. While calling for spending cuts, he has refused to identify the programs he would shrink or eliminate. -0- Foreign Policy and Defense So much more impressive is Bush's record here that he has sought to u se it as a symbol. ``If we can change the world, we can change America,'' he has said. But just as the resulting defense build-down has contributed to economic problems at home, so too have extraordinary successes made the next steps more confusing. Since Bush took office, the Cold War has ended, the Berlin Wall falle n and the Soviet Union disbanded. Nuclear war no longer looms as a threat and arms control agreements have cut deep into the former adversaries' arsenals. Perhaps more than ever before, the United States holds an unparalleled position of world leadership. That prestige was reinforced by Bush's success in mustering the international coalition that drove Saddam Hussein's armies from Kuwait. In a standoff in which he was never seen to waver, Bush earned acclaim from a public that, polls show, even now regards his gulf war leadership as his top accomplishment. Recently, however, even his record on this front has suffered, fallin g prey to disclosures showing that his administration coddled Iraq until only days before it invaded Kuwait. -0- Environment and Education While Bush has fulfilled his specific pledges on these issues, his re cord has fallen short of the standard most voters had been led to expect. The slower course reflects in part the tension Bush perceived between environmentalism and the economy. After winning passage of a landmark Clean Air Act, the Bush administration has moved to weaken some standards on the grounds that they involved too much regulation. While putting the coasts of New England, southern Florida and California off limits to oil exploration, Bush has pressed to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling. On education, Bush's efforts have been limited by spending constraint s. He has increased education funding by 11 percent a year since taking office. But while creating an America 2000 program of goals and standards, he has resisted pressures for a more active federal role. His most innovative proposal, to guarantee ``school choice,'' remains limited: His plan to provide $1,000 vouchers that parents could use toward paying for their children's educations at public, private or parochial schools would include no more than 2 percent of the nation's schoolchildren. -0- Drugs ``This scourge will end,'' Bush said of the nation's drug epidemic. B ut after nearly four years and a doubling of federal spending to $12 billion, the end is not in sight. Drug use among teen-agers and so-called casual users has declined, but its incidence among addicts and in inner-city neighborhoods has not abated. The slow progress may have been the fault of a misdirected drug war. A so-called Andean strategy that aimed vast new resources at crackdowns in Peru, Bolivia and Colombia has shown little success; the amount of cocaine reaching the United States appears mostly unchanged.
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GENEVA, Oct 18, Reuter - After seven months of fighting, Bosnia-Herzegovina's Moslems, Serbs and Croats appear as far apart as ever on the shape of a state where they could live together again. The three main communities in the former Yugoslav republic have made clear to international mediators working in Geneva that they have widely differing views on how they could share power from foreign affairs down to customs duties. In presentations to the mediators of their views, the Moslem-led Bosnian government argues for a single if decentralised state, the rebel Serbs insist on a confederation and the Croats argue for a federation. The presentations, in copies obtained by Reuters this weekend, show the government insisting that the high degree of intermingling before the conflict erupted in April meant a split on ethnic lines would be economic nonsense. The Serbs have told mediator Martti Ahtisaari, according to the documents, that they want three clearly identified ethnic states each with their own central bank, police force and army or National Guard. Between these two positions, Croat leader Mate Boban says the country should be "a democratic and federal state of constituent and sovereign nations" where the three national groups are organised in their own "units." The presentations were made in response to a questionnaire from Ahtisaari, an experienced Finnish diplomat and United Nations negotiator who heads a working group on Bosnia set up by the Geneva conference on the old Yugoslavia. The conference co-chairmen, former U.S. secretary of state Cyrus Vance and ex-British foreign secretary Lord Owen, say that despite the continued ferocity of the conflict, progress is being made in discussions on a future constitution. But the presentations suggest there has been little change of position since European Community-brokered talks in February and March this year failed to prevent war between the Serbs and the loosely allied Moslems and Croats. Then the idea of "cantonisation" along the Swiss model was pursued but the Serbs -- just under 30 per cent of the population -- also demanded near total autonomy in their own region covering two thirds of Bosnia-Herzegovina. In a referendum on March 3, boycotted by most Serbs, the Moslems and Croats voted almost unanimously for independence from the rump Yugoslavia -- already reduced to only Serbia and Montenegro -- and it was immediately proclaimed. An EC plan for constitutional settlement, which in outline resembled that now offered by the Croats who represent 18 per cent of the country's people, was rejected by Serb leader Radovan Karadzic as too centralist. Despite apparent initial agreement, Bosnia's parliamentary president Alija Izetbegovic rejected division into ethnic cantons on grounds almost identical to those which he and his colleagues still defend. He feared the Moslems, concentrated by history in small pockets of territory and many major towns but spread thinly across the countryside, would be left with an unviable mini- state under constant threat from its larger neighbours. Although he retains the backing of some urban Serbs who reject the fierce nationalism of Karadzic, he is accused by the Bosnian Serb leaders of aiming to create an Islamic state where Moslems would dominate the rest. But in his government's presentation to Ahtisaari, he argues for a "democratic, secular and decentralised state" based on equal rights "for Croats, Moslems, Serbs and all other citizens of Bosnia-Herzegovina." Decentralisation, the presentation argues, should be based on geographic and economic criteria as well as national and cultural grounds, and be around "natural centres" in the larger towns and cities. These "constituent units-regions," the document declared, "do not have the character of a state." The Serbs, who have proclaimed their own republic and through "ethnic cleansing" have removed many Moslems and Croats, insist that they should. "Naturally," their document says, the constituent units "are sovereign states with all the consquences known in internal and international law" joining a future Confederation of Bosnia- Herzegovina "of their own free will."
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FOREIGN PRESS BUREAU, October 19, 1992 SARAJEVO, B-H - Heavy fighting was reported in the Bosnian capital Sun- day with all parts of the city coming under artillery, tank, mortar, and sniper fire. The main grain mill was hit and destroyed after taking three direct hits. Directors of the main bakery estimated that the sup- ply of bread would run out in less than two days and no more bread can be made. At least 17 people were killed and more than 100 wounded in the bombardment. The commander of the Bosnian Army said the renewed shelling was the result of a dipute between the Serbian and Muslim sides over a body exchange. A spokesman for the UN peacekeeping forces, Mik Magnusson, said the overland routes were desperately needed in oreder to supply the city and prepare it for the upcoming winter. Relief aid from the air is not enough. Building and construction materials are needed, he said, to put roofs on houses and some kind of protection where glass windows used to be. He added that the city is freezing, damp and miser- able, as well as starving. One of Bosnia's most popular guerrilla leaders, Juka, was arrested yesterday in Sarajevo. According to Bosnian government sources, he was arrested on Igman mountain for allegedly try- ing to seize control of military operations. There was an attempt by his forces in Sarajevo to try and relay a message on Sarajevo TV, which was denied to them. The Bosnian Vice-President, Ejup Ganic, said mili- tias in Sarajevo are resisting attempts by the government to unify the army. GRADACAC, B-H - Serbian infantry units have continued to try and advance through defense lines in the outlying villages and towns. Heavy fight- ing was reported Sunday with continued shelling. The situation is said to be dramatic, with shells falling near the chlorine tanks that have been placed along the front lines in an attempt to stop the shelling. Serbian 120 and 125 millimeter artilley units have kept up a continuous bombardment of the town throughout the day today, targeting civilian houses in town. Chlorine barrels have reportedly been placed in Tuzla and the Bosanska Posavina region in addition to those already in place around Gradacac. The announcement came from the Bosnian high command in Tuzla on Sunday. The command added if Serbian attacks on the sector did not cease, they would open the cannisters and release the gas. MAGLAJ, B-H - Heavy fighting continued in the northern Bosnian town over the weekend. Serbian forces shelled the road between Maglaj and Jepce Saturday night while infantry battles continued into Sunday. Shells also landed in the town itself while the defense lines were reported to be under heavy fire. Serbian forces are said to be reinforcing their positions thorough the area. MOSTAR, B-H - The front lines around Bijelo Polje were under attack from Serbian forces and the bridge at the hydroelectric station was also reported to be under attack throughout the day, yesterday. Bosnian President Alija izetbegovic, was in Mostar yesterday to discuss joint military command with the Croatian Defense Council forces. GENEVA, SWITZERLAND - A meeting between the three parties of the con- flict in former Yugoslavia will take place in Geneva today. The talks will be held under the joint chairmanship of Cyrus Vance, from the UN, and Lord Owen, from the EC. They will consider new proposals on the future of Bosnia, including plans that envisage a decentralized state split up into ten regionsall with a high degree of autonomy. Included in the proposals are plans for a new costitution for a divided republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Bosnian Foreign Minister, Haris Silajdzic, said his republics government was prepared to make a major concession to the Serb forces who have effective military control over much of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Silajdzic said the plans were being considered to split the republic into as many as 10 regions, each with a high degree of autonomy but the divisions would not be along ethnic lines.
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RFE/RL Daily Report No. 201, October 19, 1992 SUCCESSOR STATES TO THE USSR TAJIK MILITANTS TAKE RUSSIAN HOSTAGES. Supporters of the Islamic Renaissance Party blockaded a Dushanbe school for an hour and a half on 15 October in an attempt to force a Russian division stationed in Tajikistan to repossess tanks and armored transports the militants believe were given by the Russians to forces fighting the Tajik government in the southern part of the country, ITAR-TASS, quoting the Russian Defense Ministry, reported on 17 October. The school is attended by Russian children as well as other nationalities. Western press agencies reported on 16 October that the militants subsequently took a group of Russians hostage near the school. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL Inc.) IRAN OFFERS TO MEDIATE IN TAJIK CIVIL WAR. Iran has again offered to mediate between opposing sides in the continuing conflict in Tajikistan, ITAR-TASS reported on 17 October, quoting the official Iranian news agency IRNA. The offer was made by Iran's ambassador to Tajikistan, Ali Ashraf Mojtahed Shabestari, at a cultural symposium in Dushanbe. While the Iranian offer might be welcomed by some elements of the former opposition coalition, it is unlikely to be viewed favorably by forces opposed to the Tajik government, who reject any meddling by an Islamic state such as Iran. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL Inc.) GEORGIA CALLS FOR WITHDRAWAL OF RUSSIAN FORCES FROM ABKHAZIA. Addressing the final session of Georgia's state council on 16 October, Georgian parliament speaker-elect Eduard Shevardnadze stated that if the next round of Georgian-Russian negotiations on a settlement of the Abkhaz conflict fails, Georgia will be compelled to use military force to recover the territory occupied by Abkhaz forces, ITAR-TASS reported. A Georgian government statement issued on 17 October called on the Russian military command to withdraw its forces from the conflict zone. A CSCE fact-finding delegation held talks with Shevardnadze on 17 October and with Georgian officials in Sukhumi on 18 October, Interfax reported. Pope John Paul II appealed on 18 October for peace in Georgia, which he termed "a country of long-established and important Christian tradition." (Liz Fuller, RFE/RL Inc.) YELTSIN FOR POSTPONEMENT OF CONGRESS. Russian President Boris Yeltsin has asked the parliament to postpone the Seventh Congress of People's Deputies, ITAR-TASS reported on 16 October. Yeltsin argued that if the Congress was held in March and not, as scheduled, in early December, it could adopt the new Constitution which is not yet completed. He said that if convened now, the Congress would only lead to a political struggle. The leaders of the Republics of the Russian Federation issued a joint statement also asking parliament to postpone the date of the Congress. Yeltsin also accused the so-called "National Salvation Front" of attempts to set up power structures parallel to those in his administration, and he criticized the parliament for tolerating these activities. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL Inc.) CHERNOBYL BLOCK SWITCHED ON. The third block of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor was switched on again on 16 October, an RFE/RL correspondent and Ukrinform-TASS reported. Trial operations were scheduled to be run for two days, after which the block was to operate at full capacity. The second block is to be restarted at the end of October. A spokesman for the Ukrainian parliamentary commission on Chernobyl rejected the warnings of Western specialists on the potential danger of restarting the Chernobyl reactor. Several authoritative Ukrainian spokesmen have reiterated that the Chernobyl reactor will be closed permanently starting in 1993, but that Ukraine will continue to need nuclear power. (Keith Bush, RFE/RL Inc.) NEW RUSSIAN TV COMPANY ESTABLISHED. Following a recommendation by the Russian Ministry for Press and Information, President Yeltsin has issued a decree establishing a new TV company, the Federal TV and Broadcasting Agency (FTS-TV Rossiya), ITAR-TASS reported on 17 October. FTS-TV Rossiya will broadcast on the fifth channel, which has been used previously by St. Petersburg TV and RIA-TV. The boards of both TV companies have been incorporated into FTS-TV Rossiya. St. Petersburg TV will thus cease to exist as a separate body. The prominent St. Petersburg TV moderator, Bella Kurkova, has been appointed head of the new TV agency. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL Inc.) RUSSIA TAXES IMPORTED VODKA. Russia has imposed a 100% tariff on imports of alcohol in an effort to protect domestic vodka producers, Interfax reported on 16 October. The tariff had been set at 15% in early 1992, and was raised to 30% in August. Sales of domestically produced vodka have plummeted. Many Russians appear to prefer the imported brands, which are more expensive, because they are thought to be superior in quality. (Keith Bush, RFE/RL Inc.) RUSSIANS DETAIL GREENPEACE TERRITORIAL VIOLATIONS. Russian Foreign Ministry press spokesman Sergei Yastrzembski charged that the Greenpeace ship Solo, seized by Russian naval forces on 12 October off the Arctic nuclear testing ground on Novaya Zemlya, had deliberately violated Russian territorial waters. In remarks carried by Interfax on 16 October, he reported that water and soil samples had been discovered aboard the ship. He claimed that this proved that the crew had been engaged in research in violation of international law, since they had no permission for such work. The Solo arrived in Tyuva Guba, a military port near Murmansk, early on the morning of 18 October. Consular officials from six Western countries were taken to the site but not allowed aboard. Western agencies reported that, ironically, the Solo ended up towing its captor into port after the Russian ship broke down. (Doug Clarke, RFE/RL Inc.) SHAPOSHNIKOV PESSIMISTIC OVER KURILS. In an interview published on 17 October by the Japanese Kyodo news service, CIS commander-in-chief Evgenii Shaposhnikov hinted that Russia could reconsider its earlier pledge to withdraw all its troops from the four southern Kuril islands claimed by Japan. He was quoted as saying that a Russian unilateral withdrawal was "meaningless," and that it would be necessary to beef up the border guards in the area if the islands were demilitarized. Shaposhnikov suggested that the way could be opened for a settlement of the island issue if Japan were to provide more economic assistance to Russia, and if "politicians in the new [Russian] generation" understood that Japan was not an enemy. (Doug Clarke, RFE/RL Inc.) RUSSIANS STUDYING IDEA OF SPECIAL ECONOMIC ZONE IN KURILS. An AFP report on 16 October cites a statement by Russian presidential adviser Sergei Stankevich that President Yeltsin is awaiting a report by experts before signing a decree transforming the Kuril Islands into a special economic zone. The plan was first announced in Hong Kong on 15 October by Valentin Fedorov, the Governor of Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. Fedorov said that the zone would afford tax breaks and other incentives to foreign investors. (Hal Kosiba, RFE/RL Inc.) GAPS IN CIS AIR DEFENSE SHIELD. Kommersant reported on 16 October that the CIS high command is concerned over the ongoing disintegration of the former Soviet air defense system, particularly as a result of developments in Central Asia and the Caucasus. According to the report, an exodus of military specialists and funding shortfalls have forced the closing of radar stations along the Tajik-Afghan border. At the same time, plans to disband in April of 1993 the 19th Air Defense Army, stationed in the Caucasus, are likely to create a gap there that would further impair the functioning of the formerly integrated air defense system. (Stephen Foye, RFE/RL Inc.) GERMAN POLICE SEIZE ENRICHED URANIUM. According to a Reuters report of 16 October, German police seized 2.2 kilograms of allegedly highly enriched uranium in Munich on 13 October. The material was apparently smuggled in from Russia, and a German police union leader called for Russia to help prevent attempts to smuggle radioactive materials. Reports were unclear on the extent of enrichment: Reuters claimed that uranium-234, 235, and 238 were seized. Only the uranium-235, if sufficiently pure, would be of use in making an atomic bomb. Previous seizures of "highly enriched uranium" have involved uranium enriched to only 3-3.5% uranium-235 for nuclear reactor fuel, rather than the much higher 90-100% enrichment required for producing atomic bombs. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL Inc.) YELTSIN AND GATES MEET. During a three day visit in Moscow, CIA Director Robert Gates met with President Yeltsin, Evgenii Primakov, the director of the Russian foreign intelligence service, and Viktor Barannikov, the minister of state security, ITAR-TASS and Western agencies reported on 17 October. Yeltsin told Gates that the Russian and American intelligence services could cooperate in the fight against drug smuggling, the proliferation of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. He added, however, that Russia could not give away all of its secrets, including information about Russia's former KGB network in the West. Yeltsin also provided Gates copies of the declassified KGB documents concerning the shooting down of a South Korean passenger airliner in 1983. (Victor Yasmann, RFE/RL Inc.). CIA CHIEF TELLS YELTSIN ABOUT LOST SOVIET SUBMARINE. ITAR-TASS reported that during his meetings with President Yeltsin and high-ranking Russian intelligence officials, Robert Gates gave Yeltsin details of the CIA's 1974 attempt to recover a Soviet Golf-2 class submarine, which sank in the northern Pacific in March 1968. Using the research ship Glomar Explorer, the CIA secretly raised a part of the sub from the ocean floor. The remains of six crewmen were recovered. Gates explained that the six were buried at sea in a ceremony that included the playing of the Soviet anthem. He gave Yeltsin the Soviet flag that had draped the remains during the funeral. (Doug Clarke, RFE/RL Inc.) CABINET CHANGES IN UKRAINE. Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk issued three decrees affecting the composition of the Ukrainian government, DR-Press reported on 17 October. Anatolii Lobov has been appointed minister of the cabinet of ministers, replacing Volodymyr Pyekhota, a longtime Communist Party functionary. Yurii Shcherbak, who will serve as Ukraine's ambassador to Israel, was relieved of his post as environmental minister. (Roman Solchanyk, RFE/RL Inc.) BLACK SEA FLEET UPDATE. The commander of the Ukrainian Navy, Rear Admiral Boris Kozhin, told the newspaper Krymskie izvestiya that he believes the existing infrastructure of the Black Sea Fleet should belong to Ukraine. According to a 16 October Interfax summary of the interview, Kozhin also suggested that expert groups from Russia and Ukraine were completing a new agreement that would deal with the interim joint command of the fleet and the phased creation of independent Russian and Ukrainian navies. (Stephen Foye, RFE/RL Inc.) UKRAINIAN ARMS DEALS. Ukraine and India concluded a barter deal on 17 October in which Kiev agreed to supply weapons and spare parts to New Delhi in exchange for Indian goods, including medicine and cloth, Reuters reported. India also agreed to pay partly in hard currency. The talks had appeared deadlocked on 16 September when the Ukrainian Minister of Machine-Building, the Military-Industrial Complex, and Conversion, Viktor Antonov, apparently insisted on dollar payments. Meanwhile, on 17 October the press service of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry denied a report published by Komsomolskaya pravda that a deal is in the works whereby Kiev would sell the aircraft-carrying cruiser Varyag to France in exchange for several French-made submarines. The denial was reported by Interfax. (Stephen Foye, RFE/RL Inc.) BELARUS: GENERALS DISMISSED; OTHER DEVELOPMENTS. Prime Minister Vyacheslav Kebich has dismissed two Lt. Generals for "abuse of power" and "failure to manage military property," Interfax reported on 16 October. Three deputy defense ministers were reportedly also severely reprimanded and several top posts were eliminated. The corruption charges were first raised on 11 September. Meanwhile, Defense Minister Pavel Kozlovsky called upon parliament to increase the military budget, according to the same report. He said that the armed forces were having difficulties holding on to their best pilots and other specialists. He also said that the high command would not tolerate "any political organizations in the army." (Stephen Foye, RFE/RL Inc.) KYRGYZ CONSTITUTIONAL COMMISSION COMPLETES WORK. A commission drafting a new constitution for Kyrgyzstan has completed its work, Interfax reported on 16 October. The group's chairman was quoted as saying that a statement that Kyrgyzstan is in the process of a spiritual rebirth oriented toward Islamic values has been deleted from the preamble to the draft constitution. The draft permits only the state to own water and natural resources. According to Interfax, Kyrgyz President Askar Akaev told the last session of the commission that he opposes creation of a constitutional court, because the Russian experience shows it can be misused to stage political trials. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL Inc.) CENTRAL AND EAST EUROPE MAZOWIECKI TALKS ABOUT RIGHTS ABUSES IN KOSOVO. UN human rights envoy and former Polish Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki on 18 October warned that the human rights of Kosovo's Albanian majority which constitutes over 90% of the population were being "systematically violated" by Serbian authorities. He called for the establishment of a "joint Albanian-Serbian group under international auspices," and recommended one of his assistants to head the project, the BBC said on 19 October. The Albanians agreed to his suggestion, but local Serbian officials said they had no authority to accept. (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL Inc.) BOSNIAN UPDATE. International media reported on 18 October that Bosnian officers had agreed to remove a roadblock on the main highway into Sarajevo to allow the UN to resume overland relief convoys after several days' break. The BBC said on 17 October that the Bosnians had claimed they were trying to prevent Serbian tanks from using the road. Its correspondent suggested, however, that they were simply trying to be difficult since they wanted arms, not aid. Austrian and German TV said on 17 and 18 October, respectively, that there were unconfirmed rumors in Sarajevo of a coup against President Alija Izetbegovic. The putsch was allegedly staged by Vice President Ejup Ganic and several ministers reportedly regarded as hard-liners. On 18 October international media reported increased shelling in Sarajevo, while Croatian Radio said that Serbs had also intensified their attacks on Bihac and Maglaj. (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL Inc.) ROMANIAN OPPOSITION LEADER SAYS UN EMBARGO VIOLATED. Ion Ratiu, vice president of the opposition National Peasant Party Christian Democratic, said in Washington Romania was violating the UN sanctions imposed on trade with former Yugoslavia, Reuters reported on 17 October. Ratiu said the government was helping Serbia and that violations included traffic on the Danube river and sharing of electricity. (Michael Shafir, RFE/RL Inc.) SEJM REJECTS CRUCIAL SPENDING CUT. By a slim margin of three votes, the Polish Sejm voted on 17 October to accept the government's economic program for 1993 which favors investment over consumption. The Sejm voted down a motion to reject proposed revisions to the 1992 budget; these will raise the deficit ceiling by 16 trillion zloty ($1.1 billion, RFE/RL Inc.), cut spending by 3.5%, and impose new taxes. The Sejm refused, however, to consider a related government proposal to reduce cost-of-living increases in pensions from 30% to 18%. The vote on the pensions issue was the government's first parliamentary defeat and drives home the need to broaden the ruling coalition. The Sejm's decision forces the government to choose between a further increase in the budget deficit, risking the IMF's displeasure, or additional unpopular cuts in social services. Finance Minister Jerzy Osiatynski said the failure to limit pension increases required the government to find new spending cuts of up to 23 trillion zloty ($1.6 billion). (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL Inc.) LITTLE CONSTITUTION CLEARS POLISH PARLIAMENT. The Sejm voted on 16 October to reject most of the Senate's proposed changes to the "little constitution," which is designed to clarify the balance of power in the executive branch. In normal circumstances, only the president's signature would now be needed to make the bill law. But, before voting, the Sejm changed its own rules of procedure to require a two-thirds majority to accept the Senate's revisions rather than a two-thirds majority to overrule them, as had been the case up until now. A group of 52 deputies has asked the Constitutional Tribunal for a ruling on the legality of this procedural change. President Lech Walesa, who has charged that the little constitution unduly limits the powers of the presidency, announced he would postpone any decision until the Constitutional Tribunal rules on the case. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL Inc.) FIAT TAKES OVER POLISH AUTO PLANT. Representatives of Fiat and the Polish finance ministry signed "opening date" agreements on 17 October (backdated to 16 October) granting the Italian auto maker 90% ownership of the FSM firm. FSM is already producing compact Cinquecento cars. Prime Minister Hanna Suchocka attended the ceremony. The agreement makes possible the wage increases that were delayed by the summer strike at the FSM plant in Tychy. The Fiat deal, with a total value of $2 billion, is the largest Western investment in Poland so far. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL Inc.) SEJM ON KATYN. On 17 October the Sejm adopted a resolution welcoming President Yeltsin's release of documents showing that the CPSU Politburo had ordered the execution of 21,000 Polish prisoners of war in 1940. "Although the Polish nation always knew the criminals' true names," the statement said, "the release of the documents creates a new moral situation in Polish-Russian relations. The whole truth must be revealed, the crimes punished, and justice done." The statement expressed confidence that legality and truth would enable Poland and Russia to overcome the burden of the past in building the future. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL Inc.) NEW ROMANIAN PARLIAMENT CONVENES. The new Romanian parliament, elected on 27 September, convened in Bucharest on 16 October, Rompres and Radio Bucharest reported on the same day. The parties represented in the new legislature's two chambers set up new parliamentary groups. The Socialist Labor Party, heir to the Communist Party, and the extreme nationalist Greater Romania Party (GRP) set up a joint group in the Senate, named "the national bloc" (partida nationala). It will be headed by Adraian Paunescu, a former "court poet" under Ceausescu. At a press conference in Bucharest Corneliu Vadim Tudor, a new senator and the GRP leader, said the next prime minister must be an "authentic Romanian" (an allusion to former prime minister Petre Roman's Jewish origins) and should not be a "personality of the diaspora" (an allusion to rumors that Iliescu might nominate former dissident Mihai Botez as premier). (Michael Shafir, RFE/RL Inc.). KING MICHAEL AND THE ROMANIAN GOVERNMENT. Festivities were held in Alba Iulia on 17 October to commemorate the seventieth anniversary of the inauguration of the town's cathedral and the coronation of King Ferdinand as sovereign of Greater Romania. Radio Bucharest broadcast on the same day a message from exiled King Michael and the response of the government. The king said that he had been hindered from attending the ceremonies by those who in the past had "backed a regime that brought misfortune" and who were now inventing new pretexts and going back on earlier promises. In reply, the government's spokeswoman said no pretexts or new conditions had been raised for the king's visit. The prolonged electoral process, the convening of the new parliament and the investiture of the president had made it impossible to issue in time a visa for the king to attend the celebrations. There would be "other occasions" for a visit by the royal family, the spokeswoman said. (Michael Shafir) DUBCEK REELECTED CHAIRMAN OF SLOVAK SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY. Alexander Dubcek, the former First Secretary of the Czechoslovak Communist Party and symbol of the "Prague Spring," was reelected chairman of the Slovak Social Democratic Party (SSDP) on 17 October. Dubcek joined the SSDP shortly before this year's June elections but failed to lead it to an election victory. The SSDP is represented in only one chamber of the federal parliament, and has no representation in the Slovak National Assembly. Meanwhile, Dubcek's condition remains critical after several operations following a car crash on 1 September in which he suffered chest and spinal injuries. (Jan Obrman, RFE/RL Inc.) HUNGARIAN DEPUTY REPRIMANDED. Jozsef Debreczeni, a liberal deputy of the ruling Hungarian Democratic Forum was reprimanded by his party's ethics committee for publishing an article in the socialist daily Nepszabadsag criticizing a controversial essay by Istvan Csurka, one of the vice presidents of the Forum, MTI reported on 16 October. Debreczeni wrote that the essay, which had anti-Semitic overtones, was the basis of Nazi ideology. The ethics committee called attention to its earlier decision that debates among party members should be published in periodicals close to the forum. Debreczeni said that he was not familiar with this decision. (Judith Pataki, RFE/RL Inc.) HUNGARIAN CHRISTIAN DEMOCRATS MEET. The presidium of the Hungarian Christian Democratic Peoples' Party (HCDP) met on 17 October to discuss the political situation in the country. Party chairman Laszlo Surjan said that a common ideology was not enough to share in the responsibility of governing and that the HCDP was an open party ready to cooperate with any other political force that showed good will and even make ideological concessions to make a coalition work. Surjan's statements, made it clear, however, that he was not thinking about leaving the coalition before the next national elections in 1994. The meeting adopted a resolution stressing that war crimes and crimes against humanity committed after the 1956 revolution were not subject to the statute of limitations. (Judith Pataki, RFE/RL Inc.) ENERGY PRICE INCREASES IN LITHUANIA. On 17 October Lithuanian Prime Minister Aleksandras Abisala said on national television that due to the higher costs of oil and natural gas from Russia energy prices in Lithuania would be increased, Baltfax reported on 18 October. Households will have to pay 5.4 coupons (the temporary currency in the republic) for a kilowatt of electricity. The monthly charge for hot water will be 139.5 coupons, for natural gas--196 coupons, and for heating--12.6 coupons per square meter. Hot water would be supplied to apartments for no more than 6 to 8 hours a day and apartments would be heated only to 15 degrees Centigrade. (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL Inc.) SWEDISH KING CONCLUDES VISIT TO LITHUANIA. On 17 October Swedish King Carl Gustaf XVI and Queen Sylvia completed an official three-day visit to Lithuania during which they held talks with Lithuanian officials and visited Vilnius, Trakai, and Kaunas, Radio Lithuania reported. On 16 October Swedish Foreign Minister Margaretha af Ugglas and Lithuanian counterpart Algirdas Saudargas signed a treaty on free trade and protection of investments. At a press conference she noted Sweden's concern about the safety of the Ignalina plant and promised 40 million krona to help insure its safety. (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL Inc.) IGNALINA LEAK AFFECTS LATVIA. Radio Riga reported on 15 October increased levels of radioactivity in various parts of Latvia following the leaks at the Ignalina nuclear power station in Lithuania. At Daugavpils, Zilani and Dagda the monitoring stations had noted readings of 14, 13, and 12 microroentgens per hour earlier in the day. On 17 October Lithuanian officials inspecting the second reactor at the Ignalina plant that had been shut down on 15 October discovered a crack a centimeter long in a pipe in the main cooling circuit of the reactor, Western agencies reported. Another crack was found in a pipe in the emergency cooling system. The repairs of the reactor will not be completed by 21 October as previously thought, but by 23 October at the earliest. (Dzintra Bungs and Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL Inc.) ENVIRONMENT MINISTERS IN SOFIA OUTLINE STRATEGIES. At a conference on the ecological problems of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, organized by the Washington-based Center for Democracy, the Howard Gilman Foundation, and under the patronage of Bulgarian President Zhelyu Zhelev, environment ministers representing some twenty countries adopted a joint declaration outlining chief strategies in fighting pollution. BTA reported on 16 October that the Sofia conference had found that many countries had little knowledge about the environmental problems of their neighbors. It had been suggested that a network for conveying such information be created. A larger conference involving all the environment ministers of the region is scheduled for early 1993 in Florida. (Kjell Engelbrekt, RFE/RL Inc.) SLOVAK OFFICIALS TO DISCUSS GABCIKOVO IN BRUSSELS. A Slovak government delegation is scheduled to discuss the controversial Gabciko-Nagymaros hydroelectric project with EC officials on 19 October, CSTK reported. A spokesman for the Slovak Environment Ministry was quoted as saying that the Slovak delegation would present its position on the environmental, technical, and legal issues involved in the project. The Chairman of the Slovak parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, Ivan Laluha, said on 18 October that the Slovak side was willing to continue talks with the Hungarian government, but made it clear at the same time that Slovakia would commence diversion of the Danube on 20 October. Hungarian officials have argued that the diversion of the Danube would change the border between the two countries and was thus illegal. Meanwhile, more than a thousand people rallied in front of Hungary's parliament on 18 October to show their opposition to the Slovak plans. On the same day, the Hungarian Foreign Ministry formally protested to Slovakia, saying that the "unilateral opening of Gabcikovo breached EC recommendations." (Jan Obrman, RFE/RL Inc.) LATVIAN-RUSSIAN TALKS TO START ON 23 OCTOBER? Latvian-Russian talks on troop withdrawal have once again been postponed. At the request of the Russian side, they are now scheduled to start on 23 October in Moscow. Radio Riga also reported on 17 October that a group of Russian parliamentarians, after completing their fact-finding visit to Latvia, told the press that they had found that the human rights of Russian troops in Latvia were not being violated--a claim that had been made by groups wishing to restore Soviet power in Latvia. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL Inc.) GERMAN EMBASSY IN RIGA REOPENS AFTER WATER SUPPLY RESTORED. On 16 October German Ambassador Hagen von Lambsdorf told the press in Riga that he had authorized the closing of his country's consular and diplomatic offices because the building had been without water since 12 October and the Riga city authorities had still not resolved the problem. Radio Riga announced on 18 October that the water supply had been restored during the weekend, and the German diplomatic and consular offices on Basteja Boulevard would reopen on 19 October. The problem may stem from Riga's antiquated water supply system. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL Inc.)
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RFE/RL Daily Report No. 202, October 20, 1992 SUCCESSOR STATES TO THE USSR MINISTERS WARN OF COUP. State Secretary Gennadii Burbulis, information minister Mikhail Poltoranin, foreign minister Andrei Kozyrev, and deputy prime minister Anatolii Chubais warned at a press conference that conservatives in the parliament are plotting against Russian President Boris Yeltsin and his reform policy, The Guardian reported on 19 October. Poltoranin stated that the "coup" is being prepared under the direction of parliamentary speaker Ruslan Khasbulatov. He accused conservatives of attempting to replace the present judges of the Constitutional Court to make that institution more obedient to right-wing forces. Burbulis claimed that the government has lost control over the police and prosecutors' offices in many regions to the right-wing opposition. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL Inc.) KOBETS: MILITARY WOULD PREVENT COUP. General Konstantin Kobets, recently appointed as the chief military inspector of the Russian armed forces, told Interfax on 19 October that "the army will not allow an overthrow of the president." He claimed that the situation in the military was "stable enough, but its officer corps well understands the changes taking place in the country and is committed to the President and the government." Kobets, a former deputy chief of the Soviet general staff, played a prominent role in foiling the August coup attempt. Subsequently, he became a military advisor to Yeltsin. (Doug Clarke, RFE/RL Inc.) YELTSIN SIGNS NUCLEAR TEST MORATORIUM DECREE. President Yeltsin on 19 October signed a decree prolonging until July 1, 1993 the Russian moratorium on nuclear weapons tests. ITAR-TASS reported that the decision had been taken in connection with the recent suspension of similar tests by France and the United States. Yeltsin appealed to the other two declared nuclear powers, Great Britain and China, to join the moratorium as soon as possible. At the same time, Russian Defense Minister Pavel Grachev said that the moratorium could be extended throughout 1993 if the United States would agree to follow suit. However, he told the visiting New Zealand minister of defense that "a moratorium cannot be unilateral permanently. If we do not reach accord, Russia, most evidently, will resume nuclear tests in the middle of 1993." (Doug Clarke, RFE/RL Inc.) RUSSIA DENIES REPORT ON CHINA DEAL. Russian officials on 19 October denied a report published in The New York Times one day earlier--quoting US officials--that accused Moscow of fueling an arms race in Asia by selling advanced weapons systems to the China. The US charges focused on alleged sales to China of technology for enriching uranium, as well as missile-guidance technology, rocket engines and rocket technology. A Russian spokesman for "Oboroneksport," which oversees such transactions, said that Russia had violated neither the nuclear non-proliferation treaty nor other arms control agreements, and that Russia was operating strictly "within the framework of United Nations agreements." The story was reported by Western agencies. (Stephen Foye, RFE/RL Inc.) CHINA SAID TO HAVE BACKED OUT OF FIGHTER DEAL. Quoting "competent sources," Interfax on 19 October reported that China had annulled an agreement to buy 10 Su-27 "Flanker" combat aircraft from the Gagarin plant in Komsomolsk-on-the-Amur. The sale was first reported by the same agency on 3 August, and seemed to have been confirmed by Russian Defense Minister Pavel Grachev during the visit to Moscow in late August by the Chinese minister of defense. The latest report said factory officials suspected that China intended to buy Western aircraft with more advanced electronics. They said that the Gagarin factory--which had the capacity to build 10 Su-27s each month--at present had only two of the fighter-bombers under construction. (Doug Clarke, RFE/RL Inc.) GRACHEV, KOBETS ON BALTIC PULL-OUT. Russian Defense Minister Pavel Grachev said on 19 October that adverse conditions for Russian military forces in the Baltic States dictate an early withdrawal from the region, ITAR-TASS reported. Grachev pointed to training difficulties and to the prohibition against sending new conscripts to the Baltic states, saying that soon there would be only officers serving there. He said that the troops should be withdrawn "without delay" and suggested that military housing shortages in Russia should not be a factor. Grachev nevertheless appeared to hedge on the precise timetable of the withdrawal, saying it should commence "right after the pull-out from Eastern Europe in 1994," a qualification that will probably not please Baltic leaders. On the same day, Interfax quoted Army General Konstantin Kobets, the Russian Army's Chief Military Inspector, as saying that Russian terms for withdrawing from the Baltic were "completely reasonable," that "everything there is going according to schedule," and that there is "no special animosity in the process." (Stephen Foye, RFE/RL Inc.) RUSSIAN GAS DELIVERIES CURTAILED. The supply of Russian natural gas to Germany and France was roughly halved last week, The Wall Street Journal reported on 19 October. The shortfall was attributed to the pumping of gas by Ukraine from transit pipelines, resulting in lower pressure, as a consequence of a disagreement between Russia and Ukraine over transit fees. The transport director for the Ukrainian gas utility, Urgasprom, was quoted by Reuters as saying that Ukraine has a right to take its share of Russian gas in the case of any shortfall. Deliveries of gas to Western Europe are reported to be slowly returning to the normal level. (Keith Bush, RFE/RL Inc.) GAIDAR VISITS YAKUTIA AND MAGADAN. Russian Prime Minister Gaidar was on tour of the natural resource rich regions of Yakutia and Magadan on 16 and 17 October. In Yakutia, the President of the autonomous republic, Mikhail Nikolaev, and Gaidar signed a document creating a Russian-Yakut joint-stock company for mining, processing and marketing diamonds in the region. The two also discussed issues related to the decentralization of political and economic power within the Russian Federation, Interfax reported. In Magadan, Gaidar discussed the economic development of the Far East with oblast officials, and approved of their plans for attracting foreign companies to extract minerals in the territory, "Novosti" reported on 18 October. (Erik Whitlock, RFE/RL Inc.) CHERNOBYL DEVELOPMENTS. The head of environmental policy at the European Commission and the German environment minister have expressed concern over the restarting of the third block of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor on 16 October, Western agencies reported. Meanwhile, a report by the State Commission of Ecological Experts on the impact of the 1986 explosion at Chernobyl on the Russian environment was scheduled to be presented to President Yeltsin on 19 October. One of its authors told an RFE/RL correspondent in Moscow that the study puts the cost of cleaning up the after-effects of Chernobyl within the Russian Federation at 74 billion rubles by the year 2000. At current rates of exchange, this works out at about $220 million. (Keith Bush, RFE/RL Inc.) MINIMUM WAGE TO BE RAISED IN RUSSIA. ITAR-TASS reported on 19 October that the Russian Finance Ministry plans to raise the minimum monthly wage from 900 to 2,250 rubles, starting in January 1993. The average monthly wage is currently approximately 5,500 rubles. Increases to student grants and to pensions are also reported to be in the pipeline. According to Interfax, 19 October 1992, the head of the Social Security Department of the Labor Ministry has claimed that one third of the Russian population are currently living below the (unspecified) poverty line, and that living costs are expected to double by the end of the year. A new social security system is due to be introduced early next year. While extra protection is obviously required to protect the population from the effects of soaring prices and inflation, increases in the minimum wage and benefits will add extra strain to the budget deficit. (Sheila Marnie, RFE/RL Inc.) TRADE UNIONS PLAN PROTEST ACTION. According to Interfax on 19 October, the Russian Federation of Independent Trade Unions is planning protest rallies the 24 October to support its demands that the minimum monthly wage be raised to 4000 rubles, that prices for bread, potatoes and milk be frozen, and that incomes and savings be indexed. The unions have also been demanding the dismissal of the Gaidar government. The government has set up a conciliatory commission led by the Minister of Labor, Gennadii Melikyan. If current negotiations between the commission and the unions fail to produce results, strike action may follow. November 23 has already been put forward as a tentative date for such action. (Sheila Marnie, RFE/RL Inc.) RUSSIA AND MONGOLIA TO KEEP MILITARY TIES. Following the signing of an agreement on bilateral relations and cooperation in Moscow on 19 October, the Russian and Mongolian Foreign Ministers said that both sides would like to continue cooperating in the area of defense and security, Interfax reported. The Mongolian Foreign Minister said that the withdrawal of Russian troops from Mongolia does not signify an end to military cooperation with Moscow, and called for expanding these relations. (Stephen Foye, RFE/RL Inc.) YAROV PESSIMISTIC ON BLACK SEA FLEET TALKS. Yurii Yarov, head of the Russian delegation negotiating with Ukraine on the Black Sea Fleet, said on 19 October that the talks were proceeding with difficulty, Interfax reported. He said that documents regulating the fleet's activities during the 3-year "transitional period" had not been completed by 1 October, as planned. He added that some areas of common interest had been found in terms of naming a new fleet command, that Russia insisted that as few new posts be created as possible, and that the fleet would be manned equally by Russian and Ukrainian citizens. (Stephen Foye, RFE/RL Inc.) SHANIBOV IN GUDAUTA TO MEET ABKHAZ LEADERS. Musa Shanibov, president of the Confederation of the Peoples of the Caucasus, arrived in Gudauta (in Abkhazia) on 19 October. He told Interfax he had come to tell the Abkhaz leaders of the Confederation's decisions as regards political and military aid to the Abkhaz. Shanibov described the decisions as "radical" but refused further comment on them. Shanibov said that the Caucasus was well aware that its future would be decided in Abkhazia and was prepared, if necessary, to fight to prevent its occupation. Shanibov had come from a two-day session of the Confederation's parliament in Groznyi. (Ann Sheehy, RFE/RL Inc.) EXTRAORDINARY SESSION OF CONGRESS OF KABARDIAN PEOPLE. An extraordinary session of the Congress of the Kabardian People (CKP) was held on 17 October in response to statements by the Kabardino-Balkar Supreme Soviet and the republican prosecutor that the activity of the CKP's Executive Committee during the continuous protest meeting from 24 September to 4 October was unconstitutional, Nezavisimaya gazeta reported on 20 October. Participants in the session rejected the charges, blaming recent political events on the shortsightedness of the republic's top leadership, which had refused a dialog with local political movements. They also declared they would continue providing assistance to the Abkhaz until the complete withdrawal of Georgian troops from Abkhazia. A third, extraordinary Congress of the Kabardian People is to be held in November where those delegates "who showed cowardice at critical moments" will be replaced. (Ann Sheehy, RFE/RL Inc.) TAJIKS DEFEND RECORD ON MINORITIES. Tajikistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs defended the record of the Tajik government in providing help to refugees regardless of nationality, ITAR-TASS reported on 19 October. The ministry was responding to an expression of concern by its Russian counterpart, in which the Russian Foreign Ministry had called attention to the rise in Tajik nationalism and what it described as political pressure on the non-Tajik population. The Tajik response rejected the charges. The same day, acting President Akbarsho Iskandarov set up a Security Council consisting of the leadership of Tajikistan's legislature and the Cabinet of Ministers, and appointed filmmaker and opposition leader Davlat Khudonazarov his chief presidential advisor. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL Inc.) CHECHENS ORDERED OUT OF UST-KAMENOGORSK. Reuters, quoting a CIS TV broadcast, reported on 19 October that the Eastern Kazakhstan Oblast Soviet in Ust-Kamenogorsk has ordered the deportation of all Chechens from the oblast. The previous day Russian TV's "Vesti" had reported that inhabitants of Ust-Kamenogorsk demanded the deportation after a group of Chechens from Orenburg were implicated in the murders of four Kazakhs in a city dormitory. Participants in a spontaneous demonstration attempted to march on a Chechen settlement, but were stopped by the militia. Reuters quoted a report of the independent Kazreview news agency that alcohol sales had been banned, and that the deportation decision might be rescinded. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL Inc.) ANOTHER ATTACK ON BIRLIK LEADER. Two armed men attacked Abdurahim Pulatov, leader of the Uzbek opposition organization Birlik, on 19 October, Radio Rossii reported. The attack occurred in a Tashkent subway station. Pulatov told an RL/RFE correspondent that this was the third attempt on his life in six months. This time colleagues overpowered the attackers, who were armed, and handed them over to the militia. Earlier this year Pulatov was badly beaten and suffered a fractured skull. Birlik supporters believe that the attacks have been carried out at the instigation of the Uzbek government, which has cracked down on domestic opposition in the wake of the unrest in Tajikistan. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL Inc.) CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE POWER STRUGGLE IN BELGRADE. International media reported on 19 October that Serbian police had seized the interior ministry of Serbia-Montenegro and all of its files. This appears to be the latest chapter in a power struggle between Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and the rump Yugoslav leadership headed by President Dobrica Cosic and Prime Minister Milan Panic. Public opinion appears to be increasingly behind Cosic and Panic, but Milosevic can still count on the backing of the army and the police. The files would be invaluable in any future trials of war crimes, particularly those committed by Serbian forces in Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia- Herzegovina. (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL Inc.) IZETBEGOVIC AND COSIC MOVE TOWARD PEACE IN BOSNIA? On 19 October Cosic met under UN and EC sponsorship with Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic. International media reported that they agreed to stop and reverse ethnic cleansing, demilitarize Sarajevo, "eliminate" armed irregulars, and support bringing war criminals to justice. These pledges reaffirm those made at the London Conference in late August. The presidents enjoy considerable moral standing among their respective peoples, but most of the real authority in Bosnia-Herzegovina appears to be in the hands of local Serb and Croat leaders, so it is doubtful whether the promises can be kept. Izetbegovic confirmed to Vecernji list on 19 October that his government favored a "decentralized, not a unitary state," a position his people had also taken in London in an apparent departure from their previous insistence on a centralized state. They want, however, the autonomous regions based on geography rather than on ethnic criteria, which the Serbs advocate. It remains to be seen whether this is a bargaining ploy or a serious bid for compromise. (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL Inc.) CROATIAN PARLIAMENT MOVES AGAINST FAR-RIGHT PARTY. On 17 October the Croatian Sabor voted to lift the parliamentary immunity of Croatian Party of [Historic] Rights (HSP) leader Dobroslav Paraga and two other HSP deputies. They are to face charges of terrorism stemming from the activities of the HSP's paramilitary group the Croatian Defense Force (HOS). Sabor President Stipe Mesic told Novi Vjesnik on 18 October that it was the stormiest parliamentary session in living memory and that justice would now take its course, adding that no country would tolerate private armies like HOS. Others note, however, that President Franjo Tudjman's government seems to be anxious to silence its critics from any point on the political spectrum and point to administrative measures taken recently against the leading independent daily Slobodna Dalmacija. HOS is popular in some of the war-torn parts of Croatia where it is credited with putting up a better fight than the Croatian military. Vecernji list on 18 October published a poll showing that 73% of those interviewed favored banning paramilitary groups but that two-thirds opposed banning the HSP. (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL Inc.) ROMANIAN GOVERNMENT DENIES EMBARGO INFRINGED. In a communique released by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and broadcast by Radio Bucharest on 19 October, the government denied the trade embargo on former Yugoslavia was being infringed. It said that opposition leader Ion Ratiu, who made the allegation in Washington, had never before shown an interest in the problem and that his "sensational declarations" were intended to generate international "suspicion and mistrust" toward the government's policy. (Michael Shafir, RFE/RL Inc.). ILIESCU STARTS COALITION TALKS. President Ion Iliescu has begun consultations with leaders of the political parties represented in the new parliament for the purpose of designating the new premier, Radio Bucharest reported on 19 October. He said he had no "prejudices" and no "hard feelings" and that he hoped to set up a government that would be "broadly accepted." The program of economic reform and the legislation connected with it must be completed, he added, in order to overcome the present crisis. At the end of the talks, Iliescu said they had been positive but the leader of the National Peasant Party Christian Democratic, Corneliu Coposu, ruled out collaboration with the Democratic National Salvation Front. (Michael Shafir, RFE/RL Inc.) ROMANIAN OPPOSITION LEADER DENIES DCR ABOUT TO SPLIT. Corneliu Coposu, president of the National Peasant Party Christian Democratic and interim president of the Democratic Convention of Romania (DCR) denied the DCR was about to split. In an interview with the daily Romania libera on 20 October, Coposu said none of the eighteen parties and formations belonging to the DCR intended to leave it. Such a step, he said, would be "suicidal" for any formation deserting the convention. Arpress released an advance summary of the interview on 19 October. (Michael Shafir, RFE/RL Inc.) ROMANIAN PARTY TAKES "TURN TO LEFT." The Party of National Unity of Romania (PRNU), the political arm of the anti-Hungarian organization "Romanian Cradle," has taken what the independent news agency Arpress termed on 19 October as a "turn to the Left." At its extraordinary national convention held in Cluj on 18 and 19 October, the leadership of the party approved the election of Gheorghe Funar, the PRNU candidate in the last presidential election, as president of the formation. The decision confirms a 3 October move to replace former PRNU leader Radu Ceontea, considered by observers as centrist on the economy and more moderate on the national question. (Michael Shafir, RFE/RL Inc.) SUCHOCKA ON FOREIGN POLICY. Speaking on 18 October at the inauguration of the academic year at the Catholic University of Lublin, Prime Minister Hanna Suchocka said that the priorities of Polish foreign policy were European integration, association with NATO, and regional cooperation. Although optimistic about Poland's prospects of joining NATO, Suchocka said it would be naive to think that "distant alliances" could provide a substitute for secure relations with Poland's neighbors. She criticized the EC for treating the "triangle" countries as potential rivals rather than as partners; European integration would have to serve Poland's economic interests. Suchocka also warned against succumbing to the provincialism that Poland's past status as a Soviet satellite had fostered. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL Inc.) SOLIDARITY TO HELP BROADEN COALITION. Parliamentary caucus leader Bogdan Borusewicz announced on 19 October that Solidarity's deputies in the Sejm would undertake talks aimed at bringing the Center Alliance into the government coalition. Solidarity deputies brokered the original coalition agreement in July. Although the seven-party coalition needs another partner to secure a comfortable pro-capitalist majority, the Center Alliance may not be an especially attractive candidate. Guided in part by personal antagonism toward President Lech Walesa, Center Alliance leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski has voiced shrill opposition to the current government's policies. Disciplinary proceedings were begun on 19 October against four Center Alliance deputies who failed to vote with the rest of the party against the government's proposed revisions to the 1992 budget. The same four deputies had previously advocated bargaining for a place in the coalition. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Hanna Suchocka fired three voivodship heads on 19 October. Two of these were Center Alliance members who had opposed the government's budget proposals during the Sejm debate on 17 October. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL Inc.) ECONOMIC UPTURN CONTINUES IN POLAND. Economic statistics released on 19 October showed that September was the sixth consecutive month in which Polish industrial production exceeded the previous year's totals. Production in September 1992 was 13.1% higher than in September 1991. Growth was recorded in all industrial branches, with the exception of paper and food processing. Prices in September rose 5.3% over August, the largest monthly jump in inflation since January 1992. This was mainly due to huge food price increases caused by the summer's drought. Real wages dropped 0.4% in September. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL Inc.) NEW ESTONIAN PM CONFIRMED. The parliament approved Mart Laar as Estonia's new prime minister on 19 October, according to the local media. Laar, who was named Prime Minister Designate two weeks ago by President Lennart Meri, was formally confirmed after the Riigikogu approved the coalition agreement signed by the three parties forming the ruling majority. Laar has seven days to formally name a cabinet. The Riigikogu must confirm a number of the appointments, including the internal affairs, defense, foreign affairs and economics ministers. Laar has already announced his choice for five of the ministries: Marju Lauristin for social welfare, Lagle Parek for internal affairs, Paul-Erik Rummo for culture and education, Ain Saarman for economics and Kaido Kama for justice. (Riina Kionka, RFE/RL Inc.) ESTONIA'S RULING COALITION PROPOSES LIBERALIZATION ON CITIZENSHIP LAW. In the coalition agreement approved on 19 October, the ruling majority has called for liberalization of the citizenship law. The agreement, signed by the parties Pro Patria, the Moderates, and the ENIP, proposes a number of changes aimed at eliminating much of the legal ambiguity that currently exists. It includes provisions for dual citizenship and derivation of citizenship through both male and female lines. It also calls on all CIS republics to grant citizenship to those living in Estonia who wish to take the citizenship of those states, and promises help for those wishing to leave Estonia. In his statement to parliament after the signing, Laar also said all non-Estonians who wanted to stay should be integrated into Estonian society, BNS reported. (Riina Kionka, RFE/RL Inc.) RUSSIAN EMBASSY IN LATVIA PROCESSES CITIZENSHIP APPLICATIONS. BNS reported on 17 October that the Russian embassy in Riga had started to process applications for Russian citizenship from residents of Latvia. Some 300 applicants had already submitted forms which include a statement that the applicant has not already requested Latvian citizenship. Russians comprise 34% of Latvia's population of about 2.6 million. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL Inc.) BULGARIAN GYPSIES SET UP NATIONAL LOBBY ORGANIZATION. At a meeting in Sofia on 17 and 18 October Bulgarian gypsies set up a national organization, the United Roma Federation (URF). Vasil Chaprasov, a teacher from the city of Sliven who was elected chairman, told a Western agency the organization was independent and politically unaffiliated. According to Trud of 19 October, the URF adopted a declaration calling on the government to ensure Roma influence in local politics. It demanded the resignation of Culture Minister Elka Konstantinova who recently branded gypsies as "uncivilized." (Kjell Engelbrekt, RFE/RL Inc.) PARTS OF THE DANUBE TO BE DIVERTED TODAY. A 30-kilometer leg of the Danube is scheduled to be diverted by Slovak engineers today as part of the controversial Gabcikovo hydroelectric project. Although Hungarian news agency MTI reported on 19 October that the diversion might not begin as scheduled, there have been no reports from Slovakia indicating a change of plans. According to various sources, Czechoslovak, Hungarian, Austrian, and German environmentalists are planning to converge for demonstrations at the dam site. (Jan Obrman, RFE/RL Inc.) HUNGARIAN DEFENSE MINISTER ON NATIONAL SECURITY. Defense Minister Lajos Fuer, in a 19 October interview in Magyar Hirlap, said Hungary was not threatened at present by any "direct military attack from either the East, or the South, or the North." On the other hand, the serious conflict to the south "could spill over into Hungary at certain points and in certain forms," Fuer added. Hungary's army would continue to show restraint in the Yugoslav conflict but would also make clear that it would take a resolute stand against "small aggression" coming from any quarter, he concluded. (Alfred Reisch, RFE/RL Inc.) DEFENSE MINISTER OF REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA VISITS BULGARIA. Vlado Popovski, the Republic of Macedonia's Defense Minister, heading a delegation which included Chief of the General Staff, Colonel General Mitre Arsovski, met with counterparts in Sofia on 19 October. According to BTA, discussions focussed on regional security issues and Popovski informed Alexander Staliiski, Bulgaria's Defense Minister, that Bulgaria was an important and stabilizing factor in the Balkans especially for Macedonia. Both stressed that there were no problems between the republics of Macedonia and Bulgaria. Popovski noted that the Macedonian army was equipped with weapons from the former Yugoslav territorial defense forces and would seek those weapons which it lacked through normal diplomatic contacts. In order to counter recent allegations in the Bulgarian press that Bulgarian arms had been shipped to the new republic, Popovski stressed that "not one Bulgarian rifle sling has entered Macedonia." (Duncan Perry, RFE/RL Inc.) RUSSIAN TROOP TRAIN DETAINED IN RIGA. Radio Riga reported on 19 October that earlier that day a Russian troop train had been detained at Skirotava station, Riga. The echelon, carrying troops, 6 tanks and 11 missile systems, arrived in Latvia from Estonia without an entry permit and failed to halt for inspection at Lugazi border post. Radio Riga said that such activity by the Russian military was a flagrant violation of earlier accords on movement of troops and weapons in Latvia. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL Inc.) SOLDIERS SUPPORT MORATORIUM ON TROOP PULLOUT FROM LATVIA. On 15 October members of a local organization defending the rights of Russian soldiers staged a demonstration in Daugavpils. They demanded a moratorium on troop withdrawal and that the Latvian government guarantee officers' families' welfare. They also called for a halt to the transfer of military structures to the Latvian authorities, BNS reported on 16 October. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL Inc.)
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Law, Public Opinion Don't Govern Serbia (Belgrade) By Blaine Harden (c) 1992, The Washington Post BELGRADE, Yugoslavia _ When Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic orde red his police to take over the Interior Ministry of the new Yugoslav state here this week, he reminded his countrymen and his political adversaries that neither the rule of law nor public opinion governs Serbia. He also sent a sobering message to the two leaders of the Yugoslav government who are trying to force Milosevic from office and halt the factional war in neighboring Bosnia that he did more than anyone to foment. ``What happened at the Interior Ministry is a depressing reminder that Milosevic is not going to leave peacefully,'' said a Western diplomat. But the popularity of Yugoslav President Dobrica Cosic and Premier Mi lan Panic _ both hand-picked by Milosevic to give credibility to the new Serb-controlled Yugoslav state he created _ appears to be growing with each passing week, and they are defying Milosevic almost daily. Hours before Serbian police seized the Interior Ministry and its sens itive police files Monday, Cosic flew to Geneva to meet for the first time with Bosnia's Slavic Muslim president, Alija Izetbegovic, and the two men seem to have agreed to a number of peace gestures on the Bosnian crisis that Milosevic has long opposed. Here in Belgrade, capital of both Serbia and Yugoslavia, Milosevic-controlled media explained the sudden seizure of the ministry as nothing more than a normal settlement of a property dispute. They said a Belgrade court had ruled that the building belongs to the Serbian government, not to Yugoslavia _ which is essentially an unequal alliance of Serbia and its tiny seaboard satellite, Montenegro. This assertion, however, was challenged by senior Belgrade judge Bratimir Tocanac, who declared Tuesday that ``Serbian police have no legal basis for seizing the building.'' Since Milosevic rose to power here in the late 1980s, he has shown a genius for bending the law to his purposes. Under his guidance, for instance, the Serbian constitution was rewritten to disenfranchise ethnic Albanians who make up 90 percent of the population of the Serbian province of Kosovo. The new two-republic Yugoslavia is a similar Milosevic invention, con jured up last summer as a way of winning respectability for a regime that had outraged the world by inciting and supporting Serb nationalist aggression in Bosnia and Croatia. Panic and Cosic were called upon to prop up Milosevic's flagging popu larity at home and curry favor abroad, but Cosic, a novelist and oracle of Serbian pride, and Panic, a Serbia-born U.S. entrepreneur, are proving poor flunkies. Using the mantle of Milosevic's invented government, they are mending fences with the West, meeting with Milosevic's enemies and pressing for democratic elections that could boot Milosevic out of power. Until his police stormed the Yugoslav Interior Ministry, Milosevic ha d seemed uncharacteristically stymied. He had denounced Panic as an American spy, and questioned if Cosic was really a loyal Serb. But even Belgrade Television, Milosevic's chief propaganda instrument, has been unable to work up much enthusiasm for denouncing Cosic as anti-Serbian. Tuesday, as Cosic was meeting with Izetbegovic in Geneva, Cosic's chi ef political adviser was calling into question a fundamental precept of Milosevic's ultranationalist agenda. Svetozar Stojanovic told a Belgrade daily that ``conditions are now inadequate'' for the Serb populations of Bosnia and Croatia to have their own independent states. In effect, he was telling the people of Serbia that 16 months of fierce warfare _ costing tens of thousands of lives, creating 2 million refugees and making Serbia an international pariah _ had been fought for an impossible goal. Such defiance appears to backing Milosevic into a corner in which his only option is force. Before the Yugoslav leadership turned on him, Milosevic had always tolerated a limited amount of dissent, tolerance of a kind that helped him survive as that last old-style Marxist leader in Europe. Opposition politicians have been free to let off steam, but their cri ticism reached only a small Belgrade audience through a low-power television station and a small-circulation magazine. These views rarely reached the masses in the countryside, but this seems to be changing. Serbia's two biggest newspapers, Politika and Borba, are now publishing accurate and extensive accounts of the confrontation between Milosevic and the Yugoslav government. Like East European communist leaders in the revolutionary year of 198 9, Milosevic is being buffeted by an unexpectedly powerful wind, but the ministry takeover suggests he will not give way without battening down behind his police. It appears, therefore, that the model for democratic change in Serbia is unlikely to be the peaceful revolutions of Poland, Hungary or Czechoslovakia. Rather, the model may well be Romania, where a desperate dictator was driven from power in a hail of gunfire. Bosnian Leader Agrees to Partitioning of His Republic (Belgrade) By Carol J. Williams (c) 1992, Los Angeles Times BELGRADE, Yugoslavia _ In the face of growing Serbian militancy, the president of Bosnia-Herzegovina gave in Tuesday to pressures to permit the division of his war-torn republic, while federal Yugoslav authorities backed away from a confrontation with police of the Serbian republic. At the Yugoslav peace talks in Geneva, Bosnian President Alija Izetbe govic appeared to abandon hopes of preserving a united and integrated republic when he agreed with Yugoslav President Dobrica Cosic to a partitioning of Bosnia into autonomous zones. But it remained unclear whether the agreements between Izetbegovic an d Cosic would be adhered to by militants who have been emboldened by Serbian territorial gains, particularly Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and Bosnian Serb warlord Radovan Karadzic. Reversing recent assurances to mediators that Bosnian Serbs wanted on ly peace and security, Karadzic was quoted by the Yugoslav news agency Tanjug as saying that his supporters demand the right to secede. ``We can exist as an independent state or unite with others of the fo rmer Yugoslavia,'' Karadzic told Tanjug. Izetbegovic opposes division along ethnic lines, but his poorly armed republic forces have been powerless to stop the de facto partitioning by rebel Serbs who now control 70 percent of the republic. They have driven out most non-Serbs in a practice they call ``ethnic cleansing.'' The Bosnian president, a Muslim, probably softened his position in Ge neva in hopes of ending the siege of Sarajevo and other embattled cities soon enough to avert mass starvation and freezing as winter sets in throughout the republic, where six months of war have left 2 million homeless and blocked most supply routes. Izetbegovic has long insisted that ethnic division is neither necessa ry nor wanted by most of the 4.4 million people who inhabited his multiethnic republic. But his resolve to continue battling Serbian extremists bent on carving up Bosnia was dealt a blow last week when Foreign Minister Haris Silajdzic failed to win U.S. support for lifting a U.N. arms embargo against the republic. Acting U.S. Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger said that he r emained unconvinced that Western countries should allow the Bosnian government to arm itself against the Serbian onslaught, even though Washington has repeatedly identified Serbian forces as the aggressors and lamented the weapons imbalance that has given the attackers an insurmountable advantage. In Belgrade, one day after heavily armed Serbian police seized the fe deral Interior Ministry in the downtown of the joint Yugoslav and Serbian capital, the ministry's top officials moved to another government building, at least temporarily abandoning the security headquarters to its occupiers. Federal security troops, who are grossly outnumbered by republic poli ce and reservists loyal to Milosevic, will operate out of the main government headquarters until courts determine whether the building belongs to the federal or Serbian government, Tanjug reported. Dispute over ownership has been cited by both Yugoslav and Serbian of ficials as the reason gunmen infiltrated the key ministry and have prevented federal workers from entering the building. However, that version of events is widely seen as a fig leaf for Milo sevic's direct challenge to the authority of federal Prime Minister Milan Panic. Belgrade judicial authorities know nothing of a court ruling the Serbian government claims gave it the right to occupy the building, Tanjug said. Founder of Germany's Greens Party Found Dead (Berlin) By Marc Fisher (c) 1992, The Washington Post BERLIN _ Petra Kelly, the U.S.-educated founder of Germany's Greens p arty, was found dead in her home, shot in her sleep by her longtime companion, ex-general Gert Bastian, who killed Kelly and then turned his pistol on himself, police said Tuesday. The deaths of two of the most prominent figures in the world's most influential environmental party shocked a country already suffering from a wave of political violence. Prosecutors said the shootings were either a murder-suicide or the re sult of a suicide pact. Colleagues said Bastian had been upset recently by Germany's failure to halt the current wave of neo-Nazi attacks on foreigners. Kelly was said to be depressed both by her lack of political impact in the two years since German reunification and by her recent firing from a cable TV channel, where she had been moderator of a talk show. Although the Greens have had a lower profile since German voters oust ed them from Parliament in 1990, their environmentalist-pacifist message remains part of the country's political mix, and the party is part of ruling coalitions in four of Germany's 16 states. Kelly, a 1970 graduate of American University in Washington and stepd aughter of a U.S. Army colonel, was one of Germany's best-known politicians, a fast-talking dynamo who was attempting to shift from electoral politics to TV. She had been moderator of ``Five to Twelve,'' an ecological program. Kelly, 44, lived for close to a decade with Bastian, 69, a career off icer who in 1980 was forced out when he criticized the proposed deployment of medium-range U.S. nuclear missiles on German soil. Both Kelly and Bastian spent most of the 1980s in the West German Parliament. Police found the badly decomposed bodies of the couple late Monday ni ght after concerned relatives, who had not heard from Kelly or Bastian for weeks, asked a friend to look inside their Bonn rowhouse. After an autopsy Tuesday, chief homicide investigator Hartmut Otto sa id Bastian shot Kelly in the left temple with a single bullet from his .38-caliber Derringer while she lay sleeping beneath a blanket. Bastian then used the same pistol to fire a single shot into his own forehead. Otto said police could not determine whether Kelly had acquiesced. Police said no note was found at the house. Tuesday, the Greens party released the text of an open letter Bastian wrote last month decrying anti-foreigner violence in Germany. ``Evil memories of my youth in the 1930s are awakened,'' he wrote. ``Today, as then, a shameful number of good citizens watch murderous arsonists without acting, often with barely disguised pleasure.'' ``Petra was depressed because she had no leading role anymore,'' said Wilhelm Knabe, a founding member of the Greens and former Parliament member, in an interview. ``To the end, she was a wonderful messenger, carrying to people abroad the Green ideas. She helped people think in a new way. Now, after unification, Germany has no politician who offers goals and ideals as we did in forming the Green party.'' Rita Suessmuth, president of the Parliament, said Kelly and Bastian w ere committed to ``a worldwide political order without fear of war, torment and deprivation.'' Kelly was a slight, frail woman who was hospitalized several times fo r exhaustion. She emerged from six years in a Bavarian convent, her college experience in Washington, and work as a volunteer in the presidential campaigns of Robert F. Kennedy and Hubert H. Humphrey to found the Greens in 1972. The environmental group evolved into a political party in 1979, winni ng support and opposition _ both vociferous _ as it mounted huge demonstrations against nuclear power and NATO's plans to station medium-range nuclear missiles in West Germany. Bastian was arrested several times for taking part in sit-ins at U.S. military facilities. The Greens, first elected to Parliament in 1983, became a model for ecological politics in many Western countries and in the East Bloc, where Kelly was often viewed as a heroine by dissidents. In the Bonn Parliament, Greens helped change German society through a mix of traditional compromise _ making West Germany the world leader in recycling and other ecological advances _ and rebellious theatrics. These included a refusal to adhere to rules and a studied informality that precluded jackets and ties and allowed Kelly to wear T-shirts while meeting heads of state. Within the party, Kelly and Bastian were mistrusted by hard-core environmentalists, who opposed the very notion of leadership and insisted that the party adhere to a strict rotation of its top officers and Parliament members. By 1990, when the Greens were the only West German party to oppose unification with Communist East Germany, Kelly and Bastian were virtual outsiders in their own party. The long delay in finding their bodies _ as much as three weeks, poli ce said _ ``showed how they had been abandoned and pushed to the fringes, which they never deserved,'' said Konrad Weiss, a legislator whose eastern German Alliance 90 party represents Green ideas in the Bonn Parliament. ``It showed how cold the political climate has become in Germany.'' Outside the couple's rowhouse, the doorway obscured by a late-bloomin g rose bush, neighbors described the pair as reclusive and unfriendly. Signs warned salesmen to stay away.
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----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Islamic countries urge lifting of arms embargo in Bosnia-Hercegovina Subject: Serbian forces harass U.N. military chief near airport Subject: Fighting continues as Yugoslav leaders talk Subject: Little progress seen in peace talks between Croatia, Yugoslavia Subject: U.N. troops come under fire in Croat-Muslim clashes ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Islamic countries urge lifting of arms embargo in Bosnia-Hercegovina Date: 19 Oct 92 22:36:38 GMT UNITED NATIONS (UPI) -- Six Islamic countries Monday asked the Security Council to urgently consider lifting the arms embargo imposed on Bosnia-Hercegovina. ``If the government of Bosnia-Hercegovina had more adequate means to repel aggression, the likelihood of achieving a peaceful and just solution through negotiations would be enhanced,'' the six countries said in a letter to the president of the 15-nation council. Egypt, Pakistan, Senegal, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which formed the Contact Group of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, said violations by Serbian forces of the London conference's agreements and Security Council resolutions were the reason for them to call for lifting the arms embargo. The Security Council decreed the arms embargo on the whole former Yugoslavia last year when fighting broke out between Serbian minority and Croatian forces after Croatia declared independence from the Yugoslav federation. The war spread to Bosnia-Hercegovina earlier this year involving Bosnian Serbs, Croats and Muslim Slavs. The six countries said Serbs will continue to violate the London conference as long as they can use force and those countries thefore called on the council to meet urgently to ``consider and secure the lifting of the arms embargo.'' ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Serbian forces harass U.N. military chief near airport Date: 19 Oct 92 22:57:18 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- Serbian gunners peppered the Bosnian capital with artillery fire that wounded dozens of people Monday, and militiamen harassed U.N. vehicles traveling the airport road, at one point briefly detaining the top commander of U.N. forces in the city. Egyptian Brig. Gen. Hussein Abdul Razek, the head of the U.N. Protection Force in Sarajevo, described his brief detention as an ``irresponsible action'' and warned that ``UNPROFOR in Sarajevo will not accept such an action being repeated.'' Abdul Razek's armored personnel carrier was one of a dozen U.N. vehicles stopped at a Serbian checkpoint established on the city's main airport road despite earlier assurances guaranteeing U.N. forces freedom of movement. The checkpoint apparently was established in response to a Bosnian roadblock. Abdul Razek was forced out of his vehicle and briefly detained while being questioned by the Serbian militiamen at the checkpoint. No one was injured in the incident, but Abdul Razek's aides said the Serbian troops sometimes pointed their guns toward the U.N. military officials. The incident came as city and U.N. officials began to assess the damage of heavy Serbian shelling over the weekend. The shelling hit apartment buildings, a state hospital and a bread factory that authorities had been counting on to mill flour for the coming winter months. Meanwhile, an advance party of 20 soldiers of British U.N. relief are racing against time to set up a forward command post before the onset of the Bosnian winter. The troops will escort the humanitarian-aid convoys across front lines and say they are ready to shoot back if fired upon. ``It's not our intention to fight the convoys through but we are prepared if it comes to that,'' Nigel Gillies, spokesman for the British troops said. The first troops are part of 6,000 scheduled to arrive. About 1,800 more British troops will should come within the next few weeks, Gillies said. Compounding the man-made disaster in the newly independent republic, Mother Nature chimed in with a moderate earthquake that measured 4.1 on the Richter scale and was centered about 15 miles north of the city, the U.S. Geological Survey said. There were no immediate reports of damage or casualties caused by the quake, which occurred about 2:41 p.m. local time. Conditions also were reported to be deteriorating Monday for some 80, 000 people taking refuge in and around the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica, where they fled after being forced or frightened out of nearby Serbian-controlled areas. The refugees, who outnumber natives remaining in the Muslim Slav- majority town by some six-to-one, include about 8,000 children and are in dire need of food and medicine, Sarajevo radio and the Vecernje Novine newspaper reported. Most are living in wooded land around Srebrenica, where they have been shelled repeatedly and are dying from simple wounds that go untreated, the reports said. Doctors have been performing limb amputations with hot wires, they said. Heavy artillery and infantry attacks continued Monday in several cities of northern and central Bosnia-Hercegovina, where Serbian-backed forces are fighting to establish a self-declared Serbian state. The Serbian forces dropped rounds of artillery Monday on Travnik and Bugojno in the central part of the republic and Gradacac, Brcko and Maglaj in the north, Sarajevo radio said. Maglaj, completing a full month under seige, was hit throughout the night and into the morning by fire from tanks, howitzers and incendiary ammunition, the radio said. At least 34 people were reported injured Monday in Sarajevo. The shelling came just a day after a city-wide artillery barrage Sunday hit apartment buildings, the state hospital and a major bread factory and left at least 10 dead and 130 wounded. One shell exploded Monday near a government kitchen in the northwest Sarajevo neighborhood of Podhrastovi where people gathered to receive donated food. ``While I was standing in front of the public kitchen it exploded and I got shrapnel in my left leg,'' Sedik Basic said while being treated at the city's Kosevo hospital complex. Doctors at the facility Monday handled at least 34 injured patients -- 22 civilians and 12 fighters -- and one patient who died, said Dr. Jovo Vranic, the hospital's trauma director. The strike on the bread factory destroyed the city's major grain mill, meaning U.N. relief workers already well behind schedule in stockpiling food and medicines for winter will have to begin delivering more flour. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, which coordinates aid deliveries, said it was asked to provide another 50 tons of flour per day to replace that produced by the damaged mill. ``We'll do what we can,'' UNHCR spokesman Larry Hollingsworth said Monday. ``The basic difference is that it will mean 50 tons a day of something else we can't bring in.'' The mill had stored about two to three months worth of grain that it could have processed into flour, and officials estimated it would take about six weeks even in peacetime to repair the damage. The capital at least had some water and electricity services restored by Monday morning, although supplies remained sporadic as warring parties continued to block repair crews and shoot at transmission facilities. ``At exactly at 20:46 last night, Sarajevo got electricity, but unfortunately at 11:44 this morning it went out,'' said Irfan Durmic, director of Elektroprenos, the city's electrical utility. In Geneva, Switzerland, the presidents of both Bosnia-Hercegovina and the Serbian-dominated two-republic Yugoslav union met Monday with U.N. and European Community negotiators at the site of the ongoing Yugoslav peace talks. Yugoslav President Dobrica Cosic and Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic were to meet U.N. mediator Cyrus Vance and his EC counterpart Lord Owen amid reports of a possible deal for power sharing within the former Yugoslavia. The signs of movement came as the Serbian-run Yugoslav army was removing its last troops from Croatian soil, just one year after its highly criticized bombardment of the 12th century coastal city of Dubrovnik. But Croatian military sources complained the Yugoslav army, while leaving Dubrovnik as scheduled by Tuesday, was just relocating a few miles south and was leaving behind weapons and heavy artillery for Serbian forces still fighting in Bosnia-Hercegovina. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Fighting continues as Yugoslav leaders talk Date: 20 Oct 92 17:44:37 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- Fighting continued across northern and central Bosnia-Hercegovina Tuesday, officials and news reports said, as Yugoslav faction leaders met in peace talks in Geneva, Switzerland. The heaviest attacks were reported in the northeastern town of Gradacac. About 10 Serbian helicopters from the direction of Brcko and road convoys from the area of Bosanski Samac moved toward Gradacac, where Serbian forces attacked with fire from howitzers, tanks, artillery and ground troops, Sarajevo radio reported. Civilian targets were hit in heavy grenading in Jajce that followed an artillery attack Monday that killed four women and injured several other people as they were waiting outside to collect water, the radio said. Jajce, in the central part of the republic, remained without electricity, water or telephone services, it said. Artillery attacks also were reported in Tuzla, Bihac, Maglaj and Tesanj, the Bosnian radio said. Fighting also was reported in Vitez, the town north of Sarajevo where the U.N. High Commission for Refugees keeps its main storage depot for UNHCR trucks delivering humanitarian aid to Sarajevo. The U.N. Protection Force dispatched three armored personnel carriers to the area Tuesday afternoon to investigate whether UNHCR workers needed to be evacuated, an UNPROFOR spokesman said. In Geneva, Presidents Dobrica Cosic of Yugoslavia and Franjo Tudjman of Croatia met for the second time in a month Tuesday as a four-day peacekeeping effort by U.N. and European Community mediators drew to a close in a flurry of diplomatic activity. Also, the commander of the U.N. protection force in ex-Yugoslavia, Indian Gen. Satish Nambiar said Tuesday there is ``no way'' any one party could win a lasting military victory in Bosnia-Hercegovina. Nambiar also said he would be in Sarajevo Wednesday to get local military leaders to meet to discuss demilitarizing the besieged city. Sarajevo remained without much of its water, electricity and telephone services, as well as its primary grain mill, after two days of artillery attacks that added scores more to Sarajevo's six-month total of dead and wounded. The strike on the grain mill meant the UNHCR, already well behind schedule in stockpiling food and medicines for winter, will have to begin delivering another 50 tons of flour each day. A total of 57 rounds of heavy artillery fire fell onto Bosnian- controlled areas around the capital, compared to 23 rounds reaching Serbian-controlled territory, during the 24-hour period that ended at 5 p.m. Monday, the UNPROFOR said in its daily survey. Sarajevo radio reported Tuesday that male Serbs in villages surrounding the Bosnian-held northeastern town of Brcko were breaking their own arms and legs in bids to avoid compulsory Serbian military service. Separately, French Maj. Gen. Phillipe Morillon was due to arrive in the Bosnian capital Tuesday, one day after his colleague in charge of the UNPROFOR's Sarajevo operation was held at gunpoint by Serbian troops at an unauthorized checkpoint along the city's airport road. The UNPROFOR Sarajevo chief, Egyptian Brig. Gen. Hussein Abdul Razek, who was unhurt in the incident, said he suspected it may have been related to the recent controversy over a Bosnian blockade of the airport roadway and insisted any such repetitions would not be tolerated. UNHCR spokeswoman Sylvana Foa said Tuesday in Geneva that U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Sadako Ogata called off road convoys trying to ship supplies into Sarajevo from the Croatian port of Split through Mostar after they were shelled in contravention of assurances to Ogata from all three warring factions as late as last weekend that there would be no interference with U.N. truck traffic. ``Mrs. Ogata now calls into question the fact of whether the representatives of the three factions in Geneva have any control at all over what their people on the ground in Bosnia-Hercegovina do,'' Foa said. ``What were talking about here is banditry and the UNHCR is going to stop its road convoys along the Mostar road as a result of what happened,'' Foa said. The airlift into Sarajevo airport will continue despite steadily worsening weather, she said. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Little progress seen in peace talks between Croatia, Yugoslavia Date: 20 Oct 92 19:28:17 GMT GENEVA, Switzerland (UPI) -- The presidents of Croatia and Yugoslavia agreed to speed up repatriation of refugees during a day of peace talks Tuesday but failed to make substantial progress toward ending the conflict among the warring Balkan countries. The meeting between President Dobrica Cosic of Yugoslavia and Franjo Tudjman of Croatia was part of a flurry of diplomatic activity that came at the close of four-day peace-making effort by the United Nations and European Community peace negotiators. Fred Eckhard, a spokesman for U.N. mediator Cyrus Vance and EC negotiator Lord David Owen, said while the two leaders were able to agree on repatriation of refugees and condemnation of racist ``ethnic cleansing'' in Serb-held areas, they were far from finding a way to end the war in Bosnia-Hercegovina. ``There's been a lot of hard work and some movement but I'm not going to put a time frame on when the talks might end,'' Eckhard said. He said the two presidents had agreed to meet again to discuss refugee matters and the evolving situation among the former Yugoslav republics. Vance and Owen were joining the daylong talks with Tudjman and Cosic along with Gen. Satish Nambiar, commander of U.N. peace-keeping forces in the former Yugoslavia, and Cedric Thornberry, senior U.N. political officer there. Tudjman met privately Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic before the official meeting at the U.N. building here. Izetbegovic and Cosic, after a late night meeting Monday, had issued a joint appeal for an urgent cease-fire in Sarajevo as the number one priority in Bosnia-Hercegovina. That appeal was on the agenda for Cosic and Tudjman Tuesday but the talks were also expected to focus on refugee problems, sources in the Vance-Owen office said. Croatia has claimed it cannot accomodate any more refugees from Bosnia-Hercegovina and has said it will give only temporary asylum to 1,500 ex-prisoners freed by the U.N. High Commission for Refugees and the International Red Cross earlier this month from camps in Serb-held areas of Bosnia. Sylvana Foa, spokeswoman for the UNHCR, said Tuesday the relief agency now had offers of asylum for some 600 of the former prisoners from as far away as New Zealand but has so far only moved 92 out of their temporary refugee in Croatia -- to Norway. Paul-Henri Morard, a spokesman for the International Committee for the Red Cross, said the ICRC was continuing its efforts to bring ex- prisoners out of camps in Serb areas but had so far not moved more than the 1,500 already announced. Foa said Refugee High Commissioner Sadako Ogata had called off road convoys trying to ship supplies into Sarajevo from the port of Split through the Mostar road after they had been shelled -- despite the fact that all three of the warring factions in Bosnia-Hercegovina had assured Ogata as late as last weekend that there would be no interference with U.N. truck traffic. ``Mrs. Ogata now calls into question the fact of whether the representatives of the three factions in Geneva have any control at all over what their people on the ground in Bosnia-Hercegovina do,'' Foa said. ``What we're talking about here is banditry and the UNHCR is going to stop its road convoys along the Mostar road as a result of what happened.'' She described the militias of all three factions operating in the Sarajevo area as ``bandits, thugs -- guys in black hats.'' The airlift into Sarajevo airport would continue despite steadily worsening weather, she said. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: U.N. troops come under fire in Croat-Muslim clashes Date: 20 Oct 92 20:17:46 GMT GORNJI VAKUF, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- A convoy of British U.N. troops came under fire Tuesday when their vehicles crossed through a region in central Bosnia-Hercegovina where fighting suddenly erupted between Muslim and Croat forces, officials said. There were no reports of casualties. About 20 U.N. troops were caught in a hail of mortar and machine-gun fire, a soldier in the British unit said. He said one rocket-propelled grenade passedbetween two U.N. vehicles. The troops did not return fire because they did not believe they were being targeted, said John Field, unit commander of the British forces, in an interview with United Press International shortly after the incident. ``It was all noise...People were firing at everything. The situation is completely confused with a lot of people who think they are in command, and no one knows what anyone else is doing,'' Field said. The fighting erupted two days after Mate Boban, leader of the self- proclaimed Croat state of Herceg-Bosnia, announced that Travnik, a mixed Croat and Muslim town in central Bosnia, would become part of his state. Barricades and checkpoints have been set up outside nearby towns including Vitez, Travnik and Novi Travnik, Field said shortly after the incident. ``All the villages have barricades in and out. There are mines in the road and a lot of fire was coming within our vicinity,'' said Field after arriving in the town of Gornji Vakuf, some 22 miles northeast of Travnik. The British troops, who arrived on Saturday, were the first part of a 6,000-member multi-national U.N. force scheduled to come to Bosnia- Hercegovina to secure humanitarian aid convoys against heavy fighting during the winter. When asked why the supposedly allied Muslim and Croat forces were fighting each other at a newly established front line, a soldier in the Bosnian-Hercegovina army said the Croats want a republic like the Serbs, adding: ``We say no. This is Bosnia.'' Tensions have been mounting between Muslims and Croats within the last few months but this has been the most serious confrontation so far. No accurate figures on casualties among the warring factions were available.
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----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Yugoslav prime minister dubs Serbian police action 'nonsense' Subject: Aid flights suspended amid Bosnian-Croat clashes Subject: U.N. health agency returning to Sarajevo ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Yugoslav prime minister dubs Serbian police action 'nonsense' Date: 21 Oct 92 13:16:23 GMT BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (UPI) -- Yugoslav Prime Minister Milan Panic Wednesday discounted the seizure of a federal police headquarters by Serbian police as political ``nonsense'' that had no real significance. ``It was nonsense what they (Serbian police) did...It does not mean anything as we have many buildings,'' Panic told the Serbia-controlled Tanjug news agency. ``A purely political affair is in question which should have not be done, I think it was a mistake,'' Panic said in his first public comment on the incident. Panic, a Belgrade-born Serb and naturalized U.S. citizen, attended peace talks in Geneva during the weekend. He returned home to Belgrade Sunday evening when Serbian police stormed the Yugoslav federal police headquarters and seized the building. The seizure was made public Monday morning, adding fuel to the ongoing power struggle between hard-line communist President Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia and Federal President Dobrica Cosic and Panic, leaders of the rump Yugoslav union of Serbia and Montenegro. Panic and Cosic consider the ouster of Milosevic as a pre-condition for the lifting of strict economic sanctions, imposed by the United Nations on May 30 on Serbia for its involvement in the ongoing war in the former Yugoslav republic of Bosnia-Hercegovina. Serbian police kept control of the stone building in downtown Belgrade for a third day Wednesday and Yugoslav Federal Interior Minister Pavle Bulatovic moved to a new office in the federal government building, which also accommodates Panic and a number of other federal ministers. The Yugoslav Public Prosecutor's office Tuesday announced it was preparing, on behalf of the federal government, to undertake legal action against the Serbian Interior Ministry for ``trespassing'' after Serbian police refused to move out of the federal police building. The Yugoslav federal police, totalling about 1,000 men, represent no real threat to the Milosevic-controlled Serbian police of nearly 50,000 well-equipped policemen. Zoran Sokolovic, the Serbian interior minister, Tuesday tried to play down the incident, saying it was ``nothing but an ordinary owner's rights issue''. ``The building was more or less empty anyway,'' said Sokolovic, saying that the complex was assigned to the republic of Serbia by a Belgrade municipal court order. However, Belgrade news reports suggested the Serbian police seizure of the federal police headquarters might be aimed at taking over files including information on war crimes reportedly committed by the Serbian paramilitary units in Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina. Serbian police took over the federal building only three days after Cosic publicly demanded that paramilitary ``patriotic'' units be disbanded and disarmed. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Aid flights suspended amid Bosnian-Croat clashes Date: 21 Oct 92 14:56:50 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- Humanitarian aid flights into Sarajevo were suspended Wednesday while the United Nations assessed security along the approach to the airport, cutting off all main aid routes into the Bosnian capital, a U.N. spokesman said. One Canadian and one British plane flew into the capital early Wednesday before the the U.N. High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) suspended flights into Sarajevo, said UNHCR spokewsman Michael Keats. The main land route into Sarajevo was closed Tuesday after shelling in Mostar. Keats said, ``We are reviewing the security situation at the airport as the whole area is tense. There is fighting on the flight approach.'' Keats, who did not think flights would resume until the trucks start rolling again, said the UNHCR were now unloading aid supplies at Posusje, but added: ``as an interim measure, we are sending at least 20 aid trucks from Split via Zagreb to Belgrade and we will run a big convoy from Belgrade to Sarajevo on Saturday. It'll take two days to arrive. Formerly allied Bosnian and Croat forces fought each other Wednesday in towns of central Bosnia-Hercegovina, bringing new dimensions and theaters to the 7-month-old conflict in the disintegrating republic. Meantime, Lt. Gen. Satish Nambiar, overall commander of the U.N. Protection Force (UNPROFOR), making his first visit to the Bosnian capital in 1 1/2 months, acknowledged growing signs of disrespect for U.N. forces in the republic but said he would continue to ask for the cooperation of the warring parties. ``The fact that the U.N. flag and presence is not respected is one of the more uncomfortable aspects of the situation here in Sarajevo, as it is elsewhere,'' Nambiar told reporters after visiting Bosnian leaders. But, said Nambiar, who also was visiting Serbian leaders during his day-long visit, ``There's no point in making threats.'' Only a few hours earlier, a French UNPROFOR soldier was shot and wounded by a sniper firing from Bosnian-controlled territory while the soldier was escorting humanitarian aid deliveries in a Serbian- controlled section of Sarajevo. The Bosnian-Croat fighting north of Sarajevo, which in one town forced the evacuation of a main U.N. warehouse used for humanitarian aid to the beseiged capital, was prompted by growing signs of Croat dominance in their anti-Serb alliance with the Muslim Slav-majority Bosnian forces. Fighting Wednesday in Novi Travnik set fire to an apartment building in the center of the town as Croats appealed for a cease-fire to permit evacuations, Mujo Delibegovic, a Sarajevo radio reporter, said Wednesday from nearby Zenica. Croatian forces in Novi Travnik also asked for reinforcements from Vitez, Kiseljak and Fojnica, Delibegovic said, and both Bosnian and Croatian forces were reported taking civilians hostage in surrounding villages in apparent bids for bargaining leverage. In Vitez, site of the U.N. High Commission for Refugees warehouse for humanitarian supplies, both Croatian and Muslim Slav residents gathered Wednesday morning in downtown for a joint protest for peace, he said. No new fighting was reported in the town. The fighting among allies began Monday in Novi Travnik when a dispute over control of a gasoline station prompted Croat leaders to demand the town's Bosnian military leader surrender his force's weapons, Delibegovic said. It also appeared to have been touched off by the declaration Sunday by Mate Boban, leader of the self-proclaimed Croat state of Herceg-Bosnia, that Travnik would become part of his state. Barricades were set up shortly afterward outside Travnik, a mixed Croat and Muslim Slav town in central Bosnia-Hercegovina, as well as Vitez and Novi Travnik, said John Field, a commander of British troops caught briefly in Tuesday's crossfire. The fighting, the most serious so far in months of mounting tensions in the Croat-Bosnian alliance, began the same day Yugoslav leaders at the ongoing peace talks in Geneva ended four days of top-level negotiations with some agreement on the repatriation of refugees but little progress on ending the actual fighting. Iin Belgrade, the struggle for control of the city's federal police headquarters continued between Yugoslav forces loyal to Cosic and federal Prime Minister Milan Panic and those backing Serbia's hard-line nationalist President Slobodan Milosevic. Panic and Cosic, who have threatened to take legal action against Serbian police who seized the building Monday, believe Milosevic must be removed to convince the United Nations to lift economic sanctions against Serbia and its tiny ally Montenegro. Bosnian and Serbian military leaders in Sarajevo faced their own test of promises Wednesday as a planned exchange of the bodies of dead soldiers was reported moving forward. The deal approved after two days of U.N.-mediated talks involved the exchange of eight bodies of Serbian troops killed two weeks earlier when Bosnian forces blew up a restaurant along the front line, in return for those of 18 Bosnian fighters who died a few days later in the areas of Stup and Zuc. In addition, both sides agreed to turn over 18 prisoners apiece. Sunday's heavy shelling of Sarajevo, which began exactly at the 10 a. m.deadline Serbian forces set for the initial body transfer demands, broke what U.N. military observers had described as the quietest week of the six-month seige of Sarajevo, causing scores of civilian casualties and destroying city's major grain mill. The new fighting around Vitez could further hinder the UNHCR's efforts to catch up on supplying food and other aid to Sarajevo, which already was hurt in the past week by the loss of the grain mill, Serbian and Bosnian interference with U.N. use of the Sarajevo airport road, and shelling in Mostar that prompted the UNHCR to temporarily suspend the use of its main overland supply route. Nambiar said the Bosnian military, which had been boycotting a planned system of regular u.n.-mediated talks with their Serbian counterparts, now appeared ready to join, as their condition -- the restoration of sarajevo's water and electricity -- had largely been met. The wounded French soldier, who was expected to survive, was hit in the shoulder and head by a shot fired from the Sarajevo's Dobrinja neighborhood while standing on a street during aid deliveries, a UNPROFOR spokesman said. Kenan Delic, a Bosnian liaison officer at UNPROFOR headquarters, conceded Bosnian responsibility for the shooting but said: ``it must have been a mistake.'' The eight UNHCR workers in Vitez, a mixture of international and local staff, had become accustomed to occasional shelling by Serbian forces but asked for the evacuation late Tuesday after the Croat-Bosnian confrontation erupted into actual street fighting outside their building, a UNCHR official said. ``It was shelling and heavy street fighting,+ said the official, Marc Vachon. Most of the evacuated workers were to be flown to zagreb while the UNCHR decides the future of its warehouse in Vitez. Croat-Bosnian fighting was not reported in Mostar, the major city between Sarajevo and the coast, but Bosnians formed their own political alliance last week and charge nationalist Croats with seeking to dominate local government. The permanent loss of the road through Mostar would virtually cut off land access to Sarajevo, a UNHCR spokeswoman said, because other roads from the Adriatic coast that have been traveled in the past become unusable in the winter. Heavy fighting was reported continuing Wednesday between Serbian and Bosnian forces in northern and central parts of the republic, with Serbian troops forced by an armistice to leave Dubrovnik reported joining battles elsewhere. The Serbian troops leaving the historic Croatian port city, now badly damaged after months of fighting, were arriving in two main groups to the areas of Nevesinje, Stolac and Mostar, and the areas of Gacko, Tjentiste and Foca, Sarajevo radio reported. Bosnian forces nevertheless claimed military successes in routing Serbs at the mountain of Cemerena, which the Serbs had been using to rain artillery fire on Olovo, just north of Sarajevo, and in the Praca Valley east of the capital, the radio said. But the beseiged Bosnian-controlled town of Gradacac, in northeast Bosnia-Hercegovina, suffered through another day of heavy artillery and infantry attacks that killed at least nine people and left 20 injured, it said. Maglaj, Jajce and other towns in the northern and central parts of the republic also had another day of artillery attacks, it said. At least 24 people were killed and 130 injured across the republic in the 24-hour period that ended at 10 a.m. Wednesday, including three killed and 43 injured in Sarajevo, bosnian health officials said. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: U.N. health agency returning to Sarajevo Date: 21 Oct 92 16:48:54 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- The World Health Organization said Wednesday it is sending a full-time field officer to Sarajevo to help cope with what other U.N. experts have predicted could be a health catastrophe this coming winter. The planned return was anxiously awaited by the U.N. Protection Force (UNPROFOR) in Sarajevo, which has been forced to provide humanitarian services outside its expertise as military peacekeepers, and Sarajevo medical professionals, who said U.N. assistance in health matters has been seriously deficient. The absence of both the WHO and the International Committee for the Red Cross, which pulled out of Sarajevo in May after one of its workers was killed, has left the city's hospitals forced to seek supplies and help through one or two highly overworked members of the U.N. High Commission for Refugees, said Dr. Bakir Nakas, director of Sarajevo's state hospital. ``If it is a humanitarian organization, and if they really want to help people, they must be aware of the risks and the eventual casualties by going to crisis areas,'' Nakas said of the two groups. The WHO field officer, scheduled to arrive Saturday, will be in charge of monitoring U.N. food and medical supplies reaching the besieged capital, David MacFadyen, of the group's Zagreb headquarters, said in Split. The WHO, whose workers traditionally do not become directly involved in areas of ongoing combat, currently has only a health monitoring unit in Sarajevo attached to the UNHCR, MacFadyen said. The ICRC decided May 27 at its Geneva headquartes to pull out of Bosnia- Hercegovina after one of its workers, Pierre Maurice, was killed and two others injured when their medical assistance convoy was fired upon May 19 outside Sarajevo. The ICRC, which left the republic by the end of May, had ``exploratory visits'' to Bosnia-Hercegovina in June and on July 7 it re-opened some Bosnian offices and began sending convoys with assistance, said Judith Hushagen, a Canadian spokeswoman for the ICRC in Belgrade. UNPROFOR spokesman Mik Magnusson in Sarajevo said he could understand the two groups' security concerns, but said their absences have been sorely felt in such areas as evaluating injured civilians on their medical needs and arranging exchanges of prisoners and war dead. ``We need them back here,'' Magnusson said. In one recent case, a failed agreement between Bosnian and Serbian forces on an exchange of prisoners and war dead erupted Sunday into several hours of shelling by Serbs that resulted in scores more dead and wounded civilians. ``In their absence,'' Magnusson said of the ICRC, which traditionally handles such exchanges worldwide, ``we have been doing what we can to assist.'' Nakas said his hospital, where the ICRC was offered space to establish its Sarajevo headquarters, has felt the rejection in concrete terms, figuratively and literally. The absence of the ICRC we feel is shown best by the holes in the walls of the hospital caused by the numerous grenades, which we believe would not have happened if they had been here,`` Nakas said. He said his hospital also must deal with the additional red tape of seeing its requests for standard hospital supplies first passed to UNHCR offices in Zagreb and elsewhere for their approvals. ``They are working themselves to death,'' Nakas said of the UNHCR staff in sarajevo, ``but with little progess to show for it.'' ``We cannot easily work with people when they are far away and we lack proper communications,'' said Dr. Slavenka Straus of the city's Kosevo hospital complex. The absence of the WHO or other outside medical professionals also has left UNPROFOR with no expert advice on which wounded civilians it should take on its flights out of the city, Magnusson said. Other than wounded children, whose cases are handled by the Sarajevo office of the U.N. children's organization UNICEF, and wounded U.N. personnel, Magnusson said he knew of almost no other medical air evacuations. ``The only(other) cases i'm aware of are journalists,'' he said. Straus said her hospital has ``begged'' U.N. officials in vain for help in evacuating seriously wounded patients, including amputees, who have been assured space in western hospitals, and said she believed the failures were mostly due to a lack of U.N. medical expertise. The UNHCR has said the people of Sarajevo face a health catastrophe this winter when bitterly cold weather returns to a city short on food, medicine, shelter and basic utilities. The ICRC, when it returned to Bosnia-Hercegovina in July, reopened offices in the towns of Mostar, Zenica, Velika Kladusa and Banja Luka, but not as yet in Sarajevo, Tuzla or Bijeljina. ICRC officials in Geneva said they still needed guarantees from all sides that ICRC convoys and vehicles will not be attacked heading into or out of Sarajevo. ``We are still waiting from security guarantees,'' Hushagen said. ``We cannot spend the whole day in shelter, we have to be able to work.''
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RFE/RL Daily Report No. 203, October 21, 1992 SUCCESSOR STATES TO THE USSR WITHDRAWAL OF TROOPS FROM BALTIC SUSPENDED? The Russian Defense Ministry announced on the morning of 21 October that the withdrawal of Russian forces from the Baltic would be suspended for those units scheduled to be redeployed to areas in Russia that lacked adequate housing, Interfax reported. While Defense Minister Pavel Grachev said that he would "not station forces in a bare field," he nevertheless suggested that the overall timetable for the withdrawal would not be changed; the movement of individual sub-units will apparently be altered to conform with the availability of housing in Russia. Grachev said that the Defense Ministry had issued the statement to draw the public's attention to the army's housing shortage, but the obvious confusion in policy statements suggests that military leaders may themselves be split over the withdrawal issue. (Stephen Foye) STANKEVICH ACCUSES, CHURKIN THREATENS BALTIC STATES. Sergei Stankevich, an advisor to Russian President Boris Yeltsin, sent a letter to the Council of Europe in which he accused Estonia and Latvia of stripping their Russian residents of the possibility of becoming loyal citizens of the two countries and of unspecified human rights violations against the Russians, Interfax reported on 20 October. That same day Vitalii Churkin, identified by Interfax as Russia's First Deputy Foreign Minister, said that despite the fact that the European Community had advised against using "power measures" to resolve human rights issues in Estonia and Latvia, the Russian Supreme Soviet has not ruled out the possibility of using economic sanctions against the two Baltic states. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL Inc.) GRACHEV ON MILITARY REDUCTIONS, RUSSIAN MINORITIES. In a wide-ranging interview published by Rossiiskaya gazeta on 21 October, Russian Defense Minister Pavel Grachev repeated Moscow's plans to stand-down strategic missiles throughout the CIS. He also said that air defense troops on the island of Novaya Zemlya would be significantly reduced, while several radar units and fighter squadrons would be transferred to the mainland. He said that there was now little difference between nuclear and conventional war. Turning to the former Soviet republics, he said that there were no immediate plans to withdraw the 201st motor rifle regiment from Tajikistan, the 345th parachute assault regiment (or any other troops) from Abkhazia, or the 14th Army from Moldova. Russian assault troops will be withdrawn in the very near future from South Ossetia, he said. Grachev also defended orders he has issued for Russian troops to protect themselves, saying that it was "not I who sent the troops into our former republics, and it is not for me to decide how and when to withdraw them." (Stephen Foye, RFE/RL Inc.) HARDLINERS RENEW CLAIM ON IZVESTIA. The Russian parliament has renewed its claim to the newspaper, Izvestiya, ITAR-TASS reported on 20 October. Both chambers of the parliament voted in favor of taking over the founding rights for the Izvestiya publishing house, and authorized the Presidium of the parliament to appoint a new director. The bill calls on the parliamentary presidium to confirm the publishing house's charter and to appoint its director. The conservative-minded parliament had already made an attempt last summer to take the newspaper under its jurisdiction, but President Boris Yeltsin resisted the move by issuing a decree confirming the paper's independence. Information Minister Mikhail Poltoranin said that the Russian leadership will appeal the decision to the Constitutional Court. (Alexander Rahr & Vera Tolz, RFE/RL Inc.) YELTSIN ACCUSED OF CURBING FREEDOM OF SPEECH. The former director of St. Petersburg TV, Viktor Yugin, complained that President Yeltsin's latest decree abolishing the independence of his TV station by placing it under governmental control is aimed at silencing criticism of Yeltsin's policies, Western news agencies reported on 20 October. He said that the decree curbs freedom of speech. Information Minister Mikhail Poltoranin had accused St. Petersburg TV of favoring hardliners and nationalists. Yeltsin decreed that the station, which broadcast on the fifth channel, be transformed from a local into a federal Russian TV company called Rossiya. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL Inc.) PARLIAMENT CHAMBER VOTES ON FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT BILL. The Russian parliament's Council of Nationalities approved on the first reading a draft law which gives citizens of Russia the right to freely choose their place of residence within the Federation, ITAR-TASS reported on 20 October. This draft eliminates the existing system of residence permits according to which the authorities could give or deny citizens the right to live in any city or village of the country. ITAR-TASS said the Council of Nationalities called for more revisions to the draft aimed at eliminating several unclear points. (Vera Tolz, RFE/RL Inc.) RUBLE EXCHANGE RATE DROPS FURTHER. The ruble fell to 368 to the US dollar at the 20 October trading session of the Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange, Biznes-TASS reported. The rate on 15 October had been 338 rubles to the dollar. The volume traded was $46.7 million, up from $37.9 million at the previous session. Contributory factors cited included high inflationary expectations, the continuing decline in output, and a government decision to oblige state enterprises to convert 100% of their hard-currency receipts at the market rate by the end of 1993. However, this last factor may not be valid, as earlier government pronouncements suggested that mandatory full conversion of hard-currency would be enforced "soon." (Keith Bush, RFE/RL Inc.) USE OF FOREIGN CREDITS IN RUSSIA. On 20 October, the Russian Government Collegium approved a draft directive on the use of foreign credits, Interfax reported. The directive, which was proposed by Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandr Shokhin, distinguishes between trade and investment credits. To receive a trade credit, an enterprise must pay its entire cost outright, either in hard currency or in rubles at the market rate. To receive an investment credit, the enterprise will have to pay 15% of the total value in advance and undertake to repay the balance within the stipulated period. The credits will be distributed on a competitive basis through auctions instead of being administratively allocated. (Keith Bush, RFE/RL Inc.) GORBACHEV WANTS TV TIME TO REPLY TO ZORKIN. On 20 October, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev sent a letter to the chairman of the Russian State TV and Radio Broadcasting Company, Oleg Poptsov, requesting TV time to reply to accusations made against him by Constitutional Court Chairman Valerii Zorkin. At a TV press conference, Zorkin attacked Gorbachev for ignoring summons to attend the constitutional court and described them as evidence of Gorbachev's disrespect for the law. He said that Gorbachev has deprived himself of the rights of Russian citizenship. Interfax quoted Gorbachev's letter as saying that the press conference cast doubt on Zorkin's objectivity and independence. On 20 October, deputy prime minister and information minister Mikhail Poltoranin reiterated that Russian authorities hold "very serious documents" signed by Gorbachev that could incriminate the former Soviet leader. (Vera Tolz, RFE/RL Inc.) NEW UKRAINIAN PRIME MINISTER PESSIMISTIC ON ECONOMY. Newly appointed Ukrainian Prime Minister Leonid Kuchma says that Ukraine's economy is in worse condition than he had suspected, Reuters reported on 19 October. Kuchma is reported to have told the Ukrinform news agency that he could not promise "an easy life" and that the economic situation would grow worse. At the same time, he promised that his government would work "conscientiously." Kuchma is due to announce his cabinet next week. (Roman Solchanyk, RFE/RL Inc.) MEETING OF UKRAINIAN AND RUSSIAN INDUSTRIALISTS. Ukrainian and Russian industrialists and entrepreneurs were scheduled to meet in Belgorod on 20 October to discuss coordination of their activities, Radio "Mayak" reported. It was expected that Arkadii Volsky and Vasilii Yevtukhov, the heads of the Russian and Ukrainian organizations of industrialists and entrepreneurs, would address the meeting. (Roman Solchanyk, RFE/RL Inc.) NO PROGRESS IN ABKHAZ PEACE TALKS. Georgian Foreign Minister Aleksandre Chikvaidze returned to Tbilisi on 20 October after talks with Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev in which no progress was made on an Abkhaz peace settlement, Russian foreign ministry spokesman Sergei Yastrzhembsky told Interfax. Parallel talks took place behind closed doors in Sukhumi on 19 October between members of the ethnic Abkhaz and Georgian factions within the Abkhaz parliament, ITAR-TASS reported. Continued fighting between Abkhaz and Georgian troops was reported near Sukhumi and Ochamchire on 19-20 October. (Liz Fuller, RFE/RL Inc.) WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE OFFICIAL GEORGIAN ELECTION RESULTS? Ten days after the Georgian parliamentary elections, the central electoral commission has apparently still not made public the composition of the new parliament. On 20 October the unofficial Iberia News Agency cited statistics on the distribution of 145 of the total 234 seats, which confirm earlier predictions that the Mshvidoba (Peace) bloc, which is dominated by former Communist Party apparatchiks, is the largest single faction within the new parliament with 24 seats, followed by the moderate 11 October and Unity blocs with 18 and 14 seats respectively. The Neue Zuercher Zeitung reported on 14 October that 226 seats in the new parliament had been filled. (Liz Fuller, RFE/RL Inc.) ARMENIA APPOINTS NEW DEFENSE MINISTER. Former Prime Minister Vazgen Manukyan, who resigned over policy disagreements with Levon Ter-Petrossyan in September 1991, shortly before the latter's election as Armenian President, has been appointed Armenian Minister of Defence, according to Armen-Press-TASS. Manukyan replaces Vazgen Sarkisyan, who has been named special advisor to Ter-Petrossyan and envoy to the Armenian raions bordering on Azerbaijan. (Liz Fuller, RFE/RL Inc.) RESIGNATION OF VALERII TISHKOV. Valerii Tishkov, chairman of Russia's State Committee for Nationality Affairs, has resigned after only seven months in office, Radio Rossii reported on 19 October. Tishkov told Rossiiskie vesti (20 October) that one reason was his inability to get a new building in the center of Moscow or recruit the best people for the committee. More important reasons were the senselessness of many Russian laws, which were dictated by narrow political interests (Tishkov cited in particular the laws on the rehabilitation of the repressed peoples and the Cossacks which anyone aware of the situation knew would only provoke conflicts) and the failure of the top decision-making bodies to consult the committee. (Ann Sheehy, RFE/RL Inc.) YELTSIN AT OPENING OF YAKUT PERMANENT REPRESENTATION. Continuing his wooing of the Russian Federation's republics, Yeltsin attended the opening of the permanent representation of the republic of Sakha (Yakutia) in Moscow on 20 October, ITAR-TASS reported. Yeltsin said that the representations of the republics in Moscow would have a special role to play in the development of new federal relations. (Ann Sheehy, RFE/RL Inc.) CONFEDERATION OF CAUCASIAN PEOPLES' PARLIAMENT CALLS FOR DENUNCIATION OF FEDERAL TREATY. The session of the parliament of the Confederation of Caucasian Peoples in Groznyi on 18 October endorsed the decision of the October Congress of the Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus to call on the North Caucasian republics to denounce the federal treaty with Russia, Interfax reported on 20 October. Interfax said that the parliament also decided to send a delegation to Baku to discuss the Lezgin question. The consequences of the possible establishment of a state frontier between Russian and Azerbaijan that would split the Lezgin people is to be discussed at the 4th Congress of the Lezgin People in early November. (Ann Sheehy, RFE/RL Inc.) SITUATION IN TAJIKISTAN. Tajik Foreign Minister Khudoberdy Kholiknazarov and newly appointed State Advisor Davlat Khudonazarov met with Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev on 20 October to explore ways to find a way to end the civil war in southern Tajikistan, ITAR-TASS reported. None of the three described what concrete proposals had been discussed, but Kozyrev said that Russian help could not take the form of interference in Tajikistan's internal affairs. Tajikistan's highest-ranking Muslim clergyman, Kazi Akbar Turadzhonzoda, was reported by a Western news agency to have said on 19 October that Russia could end the Tajik civil war in two days if it wanted, by ending its support for fighters in Kulyab Oblast who oppose the present Tajik government. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL Inc.) LENINABAD OFFICIALS APPEAL FOR RUSSIAN HELP. Officials in Tajikistan's Leninabad Oblast have issued an appeal for more Russian troops to be sent to the country, Khovar-TASS reported on 20 October. Leninabad, which has rejected the inclusion of opposition forces in the government in Dushanbe and which is known for procommunist sympathies, has succeeded in staying out of the armed conflict that has ravaged southern Tajikistan since June. The oblast leadership denied that arms from Leninabad have been supplied to forces in the south that support deposed President Rakhmon Nabiev, who is now living in Leninabad, and it offered to host meetings between the opposing sides in the southern conflict. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL Inc.) EAST KAZAKHSTAN CANCELS CHECHEN DEPORTATION. The Deputy Chairman of the East Kazakhstan Oblast Soviet, Mukhtar Nukeshev, told an RL/RFE correspondent on 20 October that the council had reversed its earlier order that all Chechens be expelled from the oblast. The decision was reversed, according to Nukeshev, because a confrontation between Kazakhs and Chechens in Ust-Kamenogorsk had ended. Kazakhs had demonstrated for several days, demanding the expulsion of the Chechens, after Chechens were implicated in the murder of some Kazakhs. A commission was sent from Alma-Ata to examine the legality of the deportation order, and Interfax reported that a delegation from the Chechen parliament was on its way to Ust-Kamenogorsk. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL Inc.) CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE TUDJMAN AND COSIC SIGN AGREEMENT. The New York Times reported on 21 October that the presidents of Croatia and Serbia-Montenegro had signed an agreement under UN sponsorship in Geneva a day earlier. The agreement commits the two to some concrete goals, such as opening the main Belgrade-Zagreb highway as well as liaison offices in each other's capitals. An earlier agreement concluded on 30 September has not been truly implemented, though one clause was fulfilled on 20 October when Serbian forces completed their withdrawal from Croatia's Prevlaka peninsula near Dubrovnik, which is now under UN control. (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL Inc.) BOSNIAN UPDATE. The BBC reported on 21 October that UN armored personnel carriers had succeeded in rescuing a relief mission trapped by fighting between Muslims and Croats in the town of Vitez between Sarajevo and Travnik. The two sides are nominal allies in a fight against the Serbs, but the Muslims suspect the Croats of having agreed to the partition of Bosnia-Herzegovina with the Serbs and of now trying to consolidate their positions. The Croats may well be keeping all options open. There have been clashes between Muslims and Croats before, notably around Mostar, and the Muslims wonder out loud why the Croats do not move up from their strong positions in Herzegovina to break the siege of Sarajevo. The BBC also said that UN human rights envoy and former Polish Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki had visited Serbian and Muslim detention camps in Bosnia on 20 October. Mazowiecki said that the difference between the two was one of "hell and happiness," with hundreds of Muslims living in cramped conditions on the floors of the Serb camp, while a smaller number of Serbs had "proper beds and two regular meals per day" in the Muslim facility. (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL Inc.) KOSOVO ALBANIAN STUDENTS POSTPONE PROTESTS. The Committee for Albanian Education in Kosovo has suspended protests by ethnic Albanian pupils and students until officials of the rump federal Yugoslav and Serbian education ministries meet representatives of Albanian educational associations on 22 October in Belgrade. The committee warned the protests would continue if talks did not yield "concrete results," Radio Serbia reported on 19 October. Ibrahim Rugova, chairman of Kosovo's main party, the Democratic League, reiterated in the latest issue of the Albanian weekly Bujku his insistence on creating a "neutral and independent Kosovo," as the basis for all his talks with Serbian officials. Serbia opposes any form of sovereignty for Kosovo whose population is over 90% Albanian. (Milan Andrejevich, RFE/RL Inc.) WILL THERE BE EARLY ELECTIONS IN SERBIA? According to Radio Serbia on 19 October, parliamentary caucus chairmen in Serbia's National Assembly agreed at a closed-door meeting with Assembly President Aleksandar Bakocevic that early elections should be held in Serbia by the end of this year. They also agreed that republican elections should be held on the same day as federal elections. Proposals on their organization and date are to be submitted by the end of this week. A constitutional amendment allowing for early general and presidential elections failed to win public approval in a recent referendum. (Milan Andrejevich, RFE/RL Inc.) SLOVAKIA POSTPONES DIVERSION OF DANUBE... Slovakia announced on 20 October that it would postpone the planned opening of the Gabcikovo hydroelectric project which involves diverting the Danube. A spokesman for the Slovak government said that the decision was based on technical, rather than political considerations and that the river would be diverted by November. The Czechoslovak federal government will discuss the possibility of setting up a three-party commission of Czechoslovak, Hungarian, and European Community experts to settle the dispute between Hungary and Slovakia. Negotiations between the interested parties are beginning in Brussels today. (Jan Obrman, RFE/RL Inc.) ..AND ANTALL APPEALS TO WORLD LEADERS. Meanwhile, MTI reported that Hungarian Prime Minister Jozsef Antall sent a letter to leading politicians in Europe and North America (including Presidents George Bush and Boris Yeltsin) in which he made it clear that the diversion of the Danube "will seriously violate the interests of the international community and create a new source of conflict in Central Europe endangering stability and European cooperation." Antall asked the statesmen to "help rationality to prevail" and urge the Czechoslovak government to postpone the diversion "at least until international inquiry and mediation proceedings are completed." (Jan Obrman, RFE/RL Inc.) HUNGARY DENIES ALLEGED TROOP MOVEMENTS. Following a phone inquiry from the Czechoslovak Ministry of Defense about alleged Hungarian troops movements near Rajka on the Slovak-Hungarian border, Hungary's Defense Ministry has stated that there was no military nor extraordinary border guard activity in that area, MTI reported on 20 October. Hungary's Deputy State Secretary of Defense Rudolf Joo called in the Czechoslovak military attache in Budapest and proposed setting up a joint monitoring group to strengthen mutual confidence and reassure the local population, as well as to prevent misunderstandings. (Alfred Reisch, RFE/RL Inc.) SLOVAK MINISTER REJECTS COMPLAINTS OF HUNGARIAN MINORITY. Slovak Foreign Minister Milan Knazko accused Miklos Duray, the Chairman of the predominantly ethnic-Hungarian opposition party Coexistence of stirring ethnic tensions in Slovakia, CSTK reported on 20 October. Earlier, Duray told reporters that the new Slovak constitution sharply curtailed minority rights and that Hungarians were in many respects worse off now than under the communist regime. Knazko said that these statements were "unfounded and baseless." He added that Duray was a "militant, interpreting the constitution in a twisted way to hurt ethnic relations in Slovakia for political reasons." (Jan Obrman, RFE/RL Inc.) NATIONAL ASSEMBLY CHASTISED BULGARIAN PREMIER. After a closed session which carried on past midnight, a narrow majority of the Bulgarian parliament on 21 October chastised Prime Minister Filip Dimitrov for his way of dealing with a Macedonian request to buy arms from Bulgaria, BTA reported. Dimitrov was criticized for actions that might have led to "lowering the country's prestige" and "damage to national security." Parliament praised the investigation led by head of counterespionage, General B. Asparuhov, but expressed disapproval that he had stated publicly his suspicions of government involvement in illegal arms deals. All UDF deputies boycotted the vote in protest. A day earlier the UDF daily Demokratsiya published what it claimed were the minutes of a 2 October meeting between the Premier and President Zhelyu Zhelev, according to which the two had agreed that Dimitrov had acted in an appropriate manner. (Kjell Engelbrekt, RFE/RL Inc.) ILIESCU HOLDS TALKS ON FUTURE CABINET. On 20 October Romanian President Ion Iliescu held talks on forming a government with leaders of the parties represented in parliament. According to Radio Bucharest, Iliescu received leaders of the Democratic National Salvation Front (DNSF) which had backed him in the 27 September elections; the National Peasant Party--Christian Democratic; the Democratic Agrarian Party; the Civic Alliance Party; the Party of Romanian National Unity; and the National Salvation Front (NSF). NSF leader Petre Roman stated that he had offered support for the rival DNSF in parliament on condition that it promised to foster market reforms despite its pledges to the contrary during the electoral campaign. He also said that the NSF might join a coalition government that included the centrist Democratic Convention. (Dan Ionescu, RFE/RL Inc.) NEW POLITICAL PARTY IN LATVIA. On 17 October, 98 delegates convened in Riga for the formal founding of the Democratic Center Party. The main speakers were Supreme Council Deputy Janis Skapars and former Deputy Prime Minister Ilmars Bisers, who said that the party would aim to steer a moderate course both politically and economically and seek its adherents among all the nationalities living in Latvia. Among the new party's activistists are former liberal communists who supported and worked for the People's Front of Latvia when it was founded in October 1988, Radio Riga reported on 18 October. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL Inc.) POLISH GOVERNMENT PROPOSES NEW BUDGET CUTS. Responding to the Sejm's refusal to consider limiting cost-of-living increases for pensioners in 1992, the Polish government approved new spending cuts of 1.8 trillion zloty ($129 million) on 20 October. The cuts, part of a package of revisions to the 1992 budget, would reduce subsidies to the railways and defense industries, credits for farmers, central investments and budgetary reserves. At the same time, the government pledged to return to the pension issue in the draft budget for 1993. Social security payments have in recent years become a huge drag on the budget. They will amount to 20% of expenditures in 1992 and, if unchecked, could rise to 30% in 1993. Finance ministry officials argue that no normal state can afford this burden. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL Inc.) RECORD VOLUME ON WARSAW STOCK MARKET. Trading reached record levels on the Warsaw stock market on 20 October after most of the firms represented reported positive economic results for the first three quarters of 1992. Volume exceeded 55.1 billion zloty ($4 million). Demand for shares in two firms--Prochnik and Mostostal--was so great that trading in them had to be suspended. Eight of the nine firms which announced their results before the trading session opened (of the sixteen on the market) have so far recorded profits in 1992; two others reported balances in the black earlier in the month. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL Inc.) BULGARIA TO RECEIVE EC CREDITS. The finance ministers of European Community countries agreed at a meeting in Luxemburg to release 100 million Ecu in credits to help Bulgaria overcome its present balance of payments problems, Bulgarian and Western dailies wrote on 20 October. The first of two installments will be made available immediately, while the second part is to be provided when Bulgaria has renegotiated its debt agreement with the Paris Club of creditors. (Kjell Engelbrekt, RFE/RL Inc.) ROMANIA'S ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE IN SEPTEMBER. Romania's National Statistics Board released on 20 October data on the previous month's economic performance. Industrial production was up 5.5% from August, but was still 23.5% below the level of September 1991. The trade balance registered a surplus of $68.2 million. Compared to August, prices for consumer goods and staples were 10.1% and 12.1% higher, respectively. Compared with October 1990, when price liberalization began, food prices were up 1,074%. Over 869,000 people (7.7% of the labor force) were out of work. The communique said that seasonal sowing was behind schedule, with only 29% of wheat fields sown. (Dan Ionescu, RFE/RL Inc.) WALESA: SOVIET PARTY WAS "CRIMINAL ORGANIZATION." In an interview with the Russian weekly Novoe Vremya on 20 October, Polish President Lech Walesa took the part of Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Walesa said the Soviet communists who enslaved Poland were a "criminal organization." Resolving this question once and for all through the release of documents on the Katyn massacres, Walesa said, had opened the way for democratic relations between the two nations. "Without Yeltsin," Walesa said, "this would have been impossible." Walesa called the conflict between Yeltsin and former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev a "contest over Russia's future policies." Only Yeltsin had understood that revealing the full truth about the criminal nature of the communist system was the only way to keep Russia moving forward and to forestall efforts by former communist leaders to pretend that the old system "wasn't really so bad." "Other Soviet leaders knew the truth but were afraid to reveal it," Walesa observed. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL Inc.) UPDATE ON RUSSIAN TROOP TRAIN. Radio Riga reported on 20 October that in response to Latvian inquires about the illegal entry of a Russian train transporting troops and missiles to Latvia from Estonia, the Russian embassy and the Northwestern Group of Forces leadership apologized, claiming that this was a "misunderstanding" and that the Estonian authorities regretted that they had not promptly informed Latvia of the Russian military's plans to send the train. Minister of State Janis Dinevics said that a protest note had been sent and that Latvia would seek a peaceful solution to the incident. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL Inc.) ESTONIAN OPPOSITION CALLS NEW GOVERNMENT NATIONALIST-SOCIALIST. Two opposition factions in the Estonian parliament are calling the proposed Pro-Patria-Moderates-ENIP government "national socialist," BNS reports. The Coalition Party Alliance and the Rural Union Alliance, which together formed the pre-election coalition Secure Home, circulated a statement criticizing the government program approved on 20 October by the Riigikogu. The Secure Home coalition is made up of former Savisaar government ministers and collective/state farm directors. (Riina Kionka, RFE/RL Inc.)
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RFE/RL Daily Report No. 204, October 22, 1992 SUCCESSOR STATES TO THE USSR YELTSIN UNDER ATTACK. Hardliners will seek to impeach President Boris Yeltsin and abolish the institution of the presidency at the next Congress, Komsomolskaya pravda reported on 20 October. The opposition is united in a newly created front of national salvation: an organization that has already started to establish its units on the local level. In Ekaterinburg, for example, the front conducted a congress of workers, peasants and "labor intelligentsia" of the Central Urals which called for Yeltsin's resignation. The Civic Union, which apparently helped set up the front, has now officially distanced itself from that organization. Yeltsin and Vice President Aleksandr Rutskoi have reportedly joined forces to fight the Front. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL Inc.) CONGRESS WILL TAKE PLACE IN DECEMBER. The Russian parliament has rejected the proposal made by President Yeltsin and the leaders of the republics of the Russian Federation to postpone the Seventh Congress of People's Deputies until spring 1993, ITAR-TASS reported on 21 October. Observers believe that the Congress, which is scheduled to start on 1 December, may seriously weaken the position of Yeltsin and the reformist government. At the suggestion of the Civic Union, parliament also summoned for testimony four senior members of the Russian leadership (Gennadii Burbulis, Andrei Kozyrev, Mikhail Poltoranin and Anatolii Chubais), who at a press conference on 16 October had warned of an impending coup attempt against the President by members of the legislature. Parliament will demand that the ministers to explain their reasons for issuing this warning. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL Inc.) ANOTHER WARNING OF HYPERINFLATION IN RUSSIA. Professor Jeffrey Sachs has warned of hyperinflation in Russia, The Times reported on 21 October. Speaking at a London conference on banking reform in Eastern Europe organized by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Sachs stated that the Russian money supply had ballooned by 150% since 1 July, from 1.5 trillion to 4 trillion rubles. This has caused prices to accelerate by perhaps 10% a week, that is, an annual rate of more than 14,000%. "There has been no help from outside and Russia's problems are about to explode." (Keith Bush, RFE/RL Inc.) RUSSIAN PARLIAMENT HIKES PENSIONS. On 21 October, the Russian parliament enacted a bill "On Raising State Pensions in the Russian Federation," Interfax reported. This stipulates an increase in the minimum state pension from 900 rubles to 2,250 rubles a month, effective 1 November. It also provides for indexing minimum pensions every three months, starting on 1 February 1993. (On 19 October, ITAR-TASS reported that the Russian government proposed to raise the minimum wage from 900 to 2,250 rubles starting in January 1993). No price tag was put on the pension increase, but the finance minister and the employment minister warned parliament of the inflationary impact. (Keith Bush, RFE/RL Inc.) ILO PREDICTS STEEP RISE IN RUSSIAN UNEMPLOYMENT. The ILO has carried out its second survey of industrial enterprises in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and is predicting that mass layoffs will begin early in 1993, according to western agencies on 21 October. The first survey covered 500 enterprises, and the second one, carried out in mid-1992, covered 191, 109 of which were also included in the earlier survey. After the first survey the ILO predicted that unemployment figures would reach ten to eleven million by the end of 1992. The numbers of unemployed registered with the state employment service in September was however still below 1 million. 40% of the enterprises covered by the second survey claim that they will cut employment by mid 1993. (Sheila Marnie, RFE/RL Inc.) KUCHMA ON ECONOMY, POLITICS. Newlyappointed Ukrainian Prime Minister Leonid Kuchma told Le Figaro that Ukraine has been preoccupied with politics rather than economics. Privatization, he asserted, should have begun a long time ago. His remarks appear in an interview published in the newspaper on 21 October. Kuchma argues that privatization should be initially focused on the trade and service sector and that farmers should be given the land to work. In the industrial sector, small and middle-sized enterprises should be privatized, but the nuclear, energy, and military industries must remain under state control. Kuchma also told the newspaper that he proposes the formation of a government of popular trust that will be committed to the reform process. (Roman Solchanyk, RFE/RL Inc.) UKRAINE CAUTIONED ON SEPARATE CURRENCY. Ukrainian Central Bank Chairman Vadim Hetman told a Kiev news conference on 21 October that it was technically possible to launch the hrivnya by the end of the year, but he advised against it, Reuters reported. "Nowhere has it proven possible to introduce a new currency amid catastrophic economic conditions." Hetman recommended that the country first work out a coherent reform program based on privatization. He repeated Ukraine's intention of paying its 16.37% share of the debt of the former Soviet Union, and ruled out Russia's proposals that Moscow assume full responsibility for the debt provided that it inherited all former Soviet assets. (Keith Bush, RFE/RL Inc.) FOREIGN POLICY "CONCEPT" TO APPEAR SOON. The Russian Foreign Ministry's long-awaited "concept" of Russian foreign policy--a statement which is intended to map out Russia's overall foreign policy goals and stances--is expected to appear soon. Nezavisimaya gazeta reported on 21 October that the 53-page document is all but complete and needs only President Yeltsin's stamp of approval. According to the paper, the Foreign Ministry's report continues to emphasize good relations with the "near abroad" (the former republics of the USSR), and rejects the use of strong-arm tactics in this region. The authors of the document emphasize the utility of bilateral agreements, thus continuing a trend of Russian policy toward the near abroad, which started in the spring of 1992, and which is designed to hedge against the collapse of the CIS. (Suzanne Crow, RFE/RL Inc.) YELTSIN TO SPEAK AT FOREIGN MINISTRY. Reports about the coming publication of the Foreign Ministry concept coincide with reports that President Yeltsin plans to address the Russian Foreign Ministry in late October. His talk will be designed to show support for the embattled policy line of Andrei Kozyrev, the Russian foreign minister, Interfax reported on 20 October. The fact that this speech will occur in the weeks preceding the Congress of the People's Deputies is intended to send a message to legislators: criticism of Kozyrev will not find sympathy with Yeltsin. It is likely that the Russian president's speech will also be used for christening the new Foreign Ministry concept for Russia's foreign policy. (Suzanne Crow, RFE/RL Inc.) FINANCIAL VIOLATIONS IN GORBACHEV FOUNDATION DISPUTED. An article in Moscow News (No. 43) asserts that President Yeltsin's closure of the Gorbachev Foundation was an act of political oppression. According to the article, in August 1992, Yeltsin sent to the foundation an audit commission from the Russian Ministry of Finance with instructions "to find illegal sources and uses of the income and property by the Gorbachev Foundation." In fact, the commission found no financial violations, only minor cases of confusion that resulted from unclear instructions from the newly established Russian fiscal agency. According to Moscow News, the Russian government is trying to convince the public that the foundation's employees have enriched themselves at the public's expense, but this accusation is totally unfounded, since the Russian government has not contributed a single ruble either to the foundation or to the upkeep of its premises. (Julia Wishnevsky, RFE/RL Inc.) BELARUS RATIFIES THE CFE TREATY. The Supreme Soviet of the Republic of Belarus ratified the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty at a closed session on 21 October, ITAR-TASS reported. The treaty, which sets limits on five categories of conventional weapons in Europe, came into force on 17 July this year. Armenia is now the only one of the 29 signatories not to have ratified the treaty. (Doug Clarke, RFE/RL Inc.) BLACK SEA FLEET APPOINTMENT. Interfax reported on 21 October that Russian Defense Minister Pavel Grachev has appointed Vice Admiral Petr Svyatashov Chief of Staff of the Black Sea Fleet. The report provided no details as to the exact role that the Admiral would play in the disputed fleet or whether his appointment needed also to be approved by the Ukrainian side. (Stephen Foye, RFE/RL Inc.) OUTLINES OF THE NEW UKRAINIAN GOVERNMENT. The new Ukrainian cabinet of ministers will retain Konstantin Morozov and Anatolii Zlenko, the ministers of defense and foreign affairs, respectively, according to remarks made by Prime Minister Leonid Kuchma to Interfax on 21 October. Kuchma also said that probably the ministers for industry, the military-industrial complex, conversion (Viktor Antonov), and health (Yurii Spizhenko) would also be included in the new government. (Roman Solchanyk, RFE/RL Inc.) UKRAINIAN STUDENTS CONTINUE STRIKE. As of 19 October, 22 students were continuing their hunger strike in Kiev as part of a campaign to force new parliamentary elections and Ukraine' withdrawal from the CIS. At the same time, more students have abandoned their classrooms in support of the campaign. All institutes of higher education in Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk have gone on strike, as well as the Luhanksk Pedagogical Institute, the Ukrainian National Humanitarian Lyceum, individual departments of Kiev State University, the Kiev Polytechnic, and the Kiev Agricultural Institute. (Roman Solchanyk, RFE/RL Inc.) RUSSIAN-ABKHAZ TALKS. Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev and Abkhaz parliament chairman Vladislav Ardzinba met in Moscow on 21 October. Ardzinba subsequently told journalists that the talks had yielded a better understanding of the issues at stake but no progress had been made on resolving the conflict. He affirmed that Abkhazia was complying with the terms of the 3 September ceasefire agreement and wanted a peaceful settlement, but insisted that Georgia withdraw its troops from Abkhazia. Ardzinba also accused Georgia of wishing to create "a new unitary state structure" that would entail the abolition of any autonomy for Abkhazia, ITAR-TASS reported. (Liz Fuller) RUSSIAN COMMANDER WARNS GEORGIANS. Interfax reported on 21 October that General Fedor Reut, commander of the Transcaucasus Military District, has sent a letter to Eduard Shevardnadze warning him that attacks on Russian military personnel in Georgia could lead to unpredictable consequences. The report suggested that the letter was not written in a hostile tone, and speculated that Reut is himself bound by instructions from Russian Deputy Defense Minister Georgii Kondratev and by a General Sigutkin, identified in the report as the Russian Defense Ministry's special representative in Abkhazia. (Stephen Foye, RFE/RL Inc.) ARMENIA, AZERBAIJAN SIGN PROTOCOL ON RAIL TRAFFIC. The ongoing talks between Armenian and Azerbaijani defense ministry officials on safeguarding rail traffic between the two states resulted on 21 October in the signing of a protocol establishing security zones along the frontiers between the two states from which all armed formations and military hardware are to be withdrawn on 24-25 October, Radio Erevan reported on 21 October. Implementation of the agreement will be monitored by Russian, Azerbaijani and Armenian observers. (Liz Fuller, RFE/RL Inc.) WORSENING SITUATION IN TAJIKISTAN. Deputy Prime Minister Asmiddin Sohibnazarov appealed to the world community for humanitarian aid, saying on 21 October that there are now more than 200,000 refugees who have fled their homes to escape fighting in the southern parts of Tajikistan. Most have gone to Dushanbe and the Kulyab and Leninabad Oblasts, and local resources are nearly exhausted. Sohibnazarov's appeal follows reports that the economic situation of the country is disastrous. Much of Tajikistan's cotton crop was not harvested, and several regions, including Kulyab Oblast, face severe shortages of food. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL Inc.) RUSSIAN DIVISION GIVEN PERMISSION TO SHOOT. On October 21, ITAR-TASS reported that the commander of the Russian motorized division stationed in Tajikistan has authorized his men to shoot without warning if their personal safety is threatened. An increase in the number of attacks on division soldiers has been reported recently. Tajik militiamen have also been authorized to fire on vehicles ignoring an order to stop. The same day, ITAR-TASS reported that acting President Akbarsho Iskandarov wants units of the Russian division to take part in peacekeeping operations and has submitted a plan to the representative of the Russian Defense Ministry in Dushanbe. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL Inc.) MOLDOVAN PRESIDENT ON LEFT BANK'S STATUS. President Mircea Snegur outlined Moldova's policy on the "Dniester" question to a visiting party of fifty-six Russian journalists in Chisinau on 16 October, as reported by Moldovapres and Interfax, and in an interview with Nezavisimaya gazeta of 21 October. Moldova will continue to resist its transformation into a "federation" of republics and the creation of a "Dniester republic" with an army, security services, border guards, and other attributes of statehood. Chisinau is, however, prepared to grant the left bank of the Dniester "self-government" with political, economic, and cultural autonomy, within an "integral and indivisible" Moldova. Chisinau is also ready to recognize the left bank's full right of self-determination in the event of "a change in Moldova's status as a state" (that is, unification with Romania, which the "Dniester" Russian leadership professes to fear and which Moldova itself opposes). (Vladimir Socor, RFE/RL Inc.) CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE UN STOPS RELIEF FLIGHTS TO SARAJEVO. The 22 October Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported that the UN had announced the previous day that fighting between Croats and Muslims near Novi Travnik had made it impossible to continue aid flights safely, and that the missions would be stopped. The previous weekend, similar fighting had prompted the UN to halt overland shipments from Split. Sarajevo's food reserves are reportedly exhausted, and tank shells recently put the city's vital flour mill out of action. Meanwhile, an RFE/RL correspondent at the UN said on 21 October that Milan Panic, prime minister of the rump Yugoslavia, had offered to provide a secure overland relief route from Belgrade to Sarajevo. Panic pledged 100 trucks with drivers and safe passage, but it was not clear whether he could actually bring Bosnian Serb leaders ground to agree. Finally, the 22 October Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung quoted UN human rights envoy Tadeusz Mazowiecki as reporting from Bosnia that it was not a question of refugees surviving the winter, but of their surviving the autumn. (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL Inc.) WHAT IS GOING ON IN BOSNIA? The 22 October Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said that Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic had told UN mediator Cyrus Vance in Geneva that he approved dividing his republic into 8 to 10 cantons set up on a geographic, not an ethnic, basis. Izetbegovic said he would not stand for reelection when his term runs out on 18 December, but he denied rumors in the Croatian media that he had already been toppled by Vice President Ejup Ganic in a coup allegedly aimed at uniting Bosnia with rump Yugoslavia. Bosnian officials mocked the Croatian reports, calling them "silly" and propagandistic. The 22 October New York Times reported that the current wave of fighting between Muslims and Croats might be the result of desperation by the Muslims, who might well fear that the Croats and possibly Izetbegovic have made a deal with Belgrade at their expense. Another theory suggested that Izetbegovic was trying to rally Muslim troops serving in Croatian units to turn on the Croats in a desperate life-or-death struggle. Finally, as if to add to the confusion, international media on 21 October reported renewed fighting between Serbs and Croats southeast of Dubrovnik. (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL Inc.) CONTROVERSY OVER INTERIOR MINISTRY CONTINUES IN BELGRADE. The independent Belgrade daily Borba warned on 20 October that the takeover by Serbian police of the Federal Interior Ministry in Belgrade has heightened tensions between Serbia's President Slobodan Milosevic and leaders of the federal rump Yugoslav government and raised fears of the army's intervention. A statement by Serbia's main opposition party, the Serbian Renewal Movement, described the move as "Milosevic's foolish resolve to provoke war in Serbia" adding that "to keep his own position, this man is prepared to turn Belgrade into Sarajevo." A Serbian Interior Ministry statement said that the federal administration had to move out because a Belgrade court ruled the building was the property of the Republic of Serbia. However, Bratimir Tocanac, head of that court said he knew nothing about such a ruling, according to Radio Serbia on 20 October. The Federal Interior Ministry relocated to the federal government's Palace of the Federation building and announced it would prosecute the Serbian police, who, according to Belgrade media, were backed by Serbian militia from Croatia and Bosnia. (Milan Andrejevich, RFE/RL Inc.) KOSOVO DEVELOPMENTS. Radio Serbia reported on 21 October that 19 ethnic Albanians had been convicted by a provincial court of planning to use violent means to seek Kosovo's independence from Serbia. The group, allegedly members of the National Front of Albanians, were given sentences totalling more than 70 years. International media reported that Bujar Bukoshi, Prime Minister of the selfproclaimed Republic of Kosovo, has urged the US to press Serbia to lift martial law and also asked the UN to impose a "no-fly" zone over Kosovo and take control of Serbian military hardware there. Bukoshi added that such actions were necessary in order to head off an imminent "massacre" of Albanians by heavily armed Serbs. He made the remarks at the end of his three day visit to the US on 21 October. Kosovo's Albanians, who make up more than 90% of the province's population, reject Serbian domination and seek independence. (Milan Andrejevich, RFE/RL Inc.) NEW ESTONIAN GOVERNMENT. President Lennart Meri named Prime Minister Mart Laar's choices for the new government on 21 October, local sources report. The new government, drawn from the strongly promarket ruling coalition of Pro Patria, the Moderates and Estonian National Independence Party, stands as follows: former deputy Foreign Minister Trivimi Velliste (Pro Patria) for Foreign Affairs; Kiel professor Hain Rebas (ENIP) for Defense; former dissident Lagle Parek (ENIP) for Interior Affairs; Stockholm economist Madis Uurike for Finance; former deputy speaker Marju Lauristin (Moderates) for Social Welfare; agronomist Ain Saarmann (Pro Patria) for the Economy; former Supreme Council deputy Kaido Kama (Pro Patria) for Justice; poet Paul-Eerik Rummo (Pro Patria) for Culture; agricultural engineer Jaan Leetsar (Moderates) for Agriculture; former Transportation Ministry functionary Andi Meister (ENIP) for Transportation; geographer and former Supreme Council deputy Andres Tarand (Moderates) for the Environment. The two ministers without portfolio include scientist and former Supreme Council deputy Liia Hanni (Moderates) for Minister of Reform; and Toronto energy executive Arvo Niitenberg for Energy, a post he held under the previous government. (Riina Kionka, RFE/RL Inc.) LATVIAN GOVERNMENT SURVIVES VOTE OF CONFIDENCE. With the exception of the Minister for Economic Reforms, the government of Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis survived the vote of no confidence in the Latvian Supreme Council, Baltic media reported on 21 October. Votes were also taken against Foreign Minister Janis Jurkans and Internal Affairs Minister Ziedonis Cever, but failed to force their resignation. After these votes it appears unlikely that the government will resign en masse. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL Inc.) ELECTION LAW ADOPTED IN LATVIA. On 20 October the Latvian Supreme Council adopted a new election law that stipulates that all citizens of Latvia can vote, provided they are at least 18 years old and have not been members of organizations opposing Latvia's independence, such as the KGB, Radio Riga reported. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL Inc.) BULGARIAN PREMIER ASKS FOR CONFIDENCE VOTE. On the evening of 21 October the Bulgarian government proposed that the National Assembly take, on the following day, a vote of confidence on the government's performance and policies, BTA reported. Prime Minister Filip Dimitrov, who had been rebuked by parliament earlier that day for his decision to send a political adviser to discuss an arms deal with Macedonian leaders, told reporters that a government could not continue to rule if it had been denigrated and its arms and legs were tied. In a statement the UDF's governing body accused President Zhelyu Zhelev of instigating recent attacks on the government. Emergency talks between UDF leaders and their MRF counterparts, who hold the balance of power in parliament, carried on through the night. (Kjell Engelbrekt, RFE/RL Inc.) NO COALITION GOVERNMENT IN SIGHT IN ROMANIA. On 21 October Romania's President Ion Iliescu ended two days of talks with political party leaders on forming a government. Interviewed by Radio Bucharest, Iliescu admitted that the talks had failed to produce a national unity government, or a broad-based coalition involving the main political parties. He added that the focus would now shift to the possibility of forming a narrower coalition led by his Democratic National Salvation Front (DNSF). Iliescu, who called for "a political pact" in the parliament, proposed a parliamentary "moratorium," a period of grace during which the parties that did not join the ruling coalition would not obstruct a DNSF-led government. (Dan Ionescu, RFE/RL Inc.) NEW DATE SET FOR DIVERSION OF DANUBE. Czechoslovak Foreign Minister Jozef Moravcik said on 21 October that the planned diversion of the Danube as part of the controversial Gabcikovo hydroelectric project will take place on 3 November, CSTK reported. Moravcik's announcement conflicts with earlier official Slovak statements which said that the diversion would begin on 7 November. The federal foreign minister also said that his government was ready to take into consideration any recommendations of the EC as long as they were presented by 2 November at the latest. He added that the diversion of the Danube was not irreversible and that even after the damming of the river the Danube can be diverted to its original river bed. Meanwhile, Hungarian, Czechoslovak, and EC officials are scheduled to discuss Gabcikovo in Brussels today. They will consider the setting up of a tripartite commission that would offer solutions for the current deadlock. (Jan Obrman, RFE/RL Inc.) SLOVAKIA COMMEMORATES DEPORTED JEWS. A memorial ceremony was held on 21 October in the Slovak town of Nitra in remembrance of Slovak Jews who were deported to death camps during the war. The ceremony marked the 50th anniversary of the first group of Slovak Jews to be sent to the camps. In the presence of Slovak Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar, Slovak parliament Chairman Ivan Gasparovic, and Israel's Ambassador to Czechoslovakia, Yoel Scher, a monument was unveiled to commemorate the estimated 70,000 people who were deported. Gasparovic told the 300 people who gathered for the ceremony that there will be no room for racism and anti-Semitism in the new Slovak state. (Jan Obrman, RFE/RL Inc.) CZECH PARLIAMENT APPROVES LAW ON CZECH PRESS AGENCY. The Czech National Council approved a law on the new Czech Press Agency (CTK) on 21 October. The law makes provision for the introduction of CTK as a legal public entity on 15 November and its full privatization within the next two years. It stipulates that no government official or Czech parliamentary deputy may become CTK's director or sit on the 7-member council that will oversee its activities. The council will be elected by the Czech National Council. Unlike its federal predecessor, CSTK, CTK will not be obliged to publish official government statements. (Jan Obrman, RFE/RL Inc.) LIMITED CONVERTIBILITY FOR HUNGARIAN CURRENCY. Radio Budapest reported on 21 October that the Hungarian government had accepted the basic outline of a new law on the convertibility of the forint. After the law is passed by parliament, Hungarian enterprises will be able to freely convert their forints into foreign currency for business purposes. This is an important step forward toward the liberalization of the forint's convertibility and an indication of Hungary's good foreign trade and balance of payment performance. (Judith Pataki, RFE/RL Inc.) IMF APPROVES CREDIT FOR LITHUANIA. On 21 October the executive board of directors of the IMF accepted the Lithuanian economic reform program and approved credits of $82 million in the next eleven months, Radio Lithuania reported. Part of the credits will be paid out immediately with additional credits at the end of February, May, and August. Lithuania will begin paying the annual interest of 4-6% in 1994 with the deadline for paying the balance of the loan in 1998. The board of the World Bank is expected to discuss granting a $60 million import loan to Lithuania on 22 October. (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL Inc.) BICKAUSKAS PERPLEXED OVER RUSSIAN ANNOUNCEMENT. Lithuania's charge d'affaires in Moscow Egidijus Bickauskas told Baltfax on 20 October that he was perplexed over a Russian announcement to suspend the troop withdrawals from the Baltic States. Recalling that Russian officials had already signed several documents stipulating 31 August 1993 as the completion date for the troop pullouts from Lithuania, Bickauskas expressed regret that "once again [Russia] has unilaterally announced plans to break its own commitments" and noted that such actions shed doubt on the sincerity of statements of Russian representatives who said they were striving to resolve these problems. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL Inc.) LANDSBERGIS DOUBTS RUSSIAN MILITARY WITHDRAWAL FROM LITHUANIA WILL BE SUSPENDED. On 21 October Lithuanian parliament chairman Vytautas Landsbergis told reporters that he thought that the statement of the Russian Defense Ministry on suspending the withdrawal of troops from the Baltic States was "meant for inner use and to calm down certain influential group assemblies of officers, by showing a general concern for their social needs," BNS reports. Noting that the texts of the agreements on the withdrawal made provision for postponing the removal of units if preparations for their settlement were not complete, he said that "as far as he knew units from Lithuania were not being withdrawn to empty fields," and had no reason "to believe that the army's withdrawal from Lithuania was to be suspended or slowed down." (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL Inc.) RUSSIAN TROOP TRAIN TO LEAVE LATVIA FOR KALININGRAD? Radio Riga reported on 21 October that preparations were being made to send to Kaliningrad the Russian train carrying troops and weapons that entered Latvia illegally on 19 October. The Latvian government also decided not to confiscate the train's cargo in order to show its good will to Russia and demonstrate its desire for a speedy resolution of the troop withdrawal issues. Radio Riga said that the next round of troop withdrawal talks was still expected to start on 23 October in Moscow. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL Inc.)
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FOREIGN PRESS BUREAU, October 22, 1992 DUBROVNIK, CROATIA - The European Community Monitoring Mission team in Cavtat reported that they were confined to their hotel by the Croatian Army yesterday morning. In a press release issued by the EC in Zagreb, they stated that on Wednesday, October 21, they were confined to their hotel at 8:30 am by the Croatian Army. The EC in Cavtat was able to confirm Croatian artillery in Cavtat was firing in the direction of Jasenica on positions of the Serbian Herzegovinian Corps within Croatian territory. By 9:15 the EC monitors confirmed small arms fire coming from the direction of Jasenica and assessed that Croatian infantry were moving foreward to Jasenica. At 11:30 they confirmed incoming fire from Serbian Herzegovina Corps positions. At 14:00, the area was reported to be quiet. The ECMM team in Cavtat withdrew from their hotel to Herzeg -Novi because the situation had become too dangerous. The ECMM reported the presence of Croatian Army Special Forces in Cavtat in white vehicles similar to those commonly used by ECMM teams. The EC protested this practice which could put the lives of the ECMM teams at risk. The EC also expressedits regret over the activity taking place in the area as it was against the spirit of the ceasefire established for the Dubrovnik area. The ceasefire was originally brokered by the EC and has held for three months until now. The renewed fighting threatens the stability of the region and the EC said it was dismayed at the presence of Serbian Herzegovinian Corps troops on Croatian territory and called upon them to withdraw immediately. The Croatian Ministry of Defense also issued a statement which refuted claims made by the EC. In their statement, the Ministry said the Croatian side, in accordance with an agreement reached in Geneva and Tuesday's meeting with General Kranston, head of the ECMM for the Dubrovnik region, Croatian forces began to transport some of their units by sea into the area because 40 meters of road between Plat and Uvala Ljuta had been destroyed. Repairs to the road had been prevented by the Serbian forces occupying the area. The Ministry of Defense denied any activity in the village of Jasenica as well as any kind of shooting in Cavtat. The statement added that Croatian units did not remain in Cavtat because Serbian irregular units were attacking the town and port with artillery. In addition, the statement said the Croa- tian Army did not use white vehicles; only medical vehicles and vehicles belonging to the Croatian Interior Ministry had arrived in Cavtat along with several civilian vehicles which brought food and medicine to the town, along with one press vehicle that was white in color. Serbian sources reported an upsurge of fighting in the hills behind Dubrovnik, in southern Bosnia- Herzegovina. The news agency Tanjug said fighting began when Croatian forces moved towards the road to the mainly Serb town of Trebinje...
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Los Angeles Times Editorial, October 22, 1992 "Call It Anything but Peace" Bosnia-Herzegovina has fallen. The attempt to create a secular, multiethnic, multi-religous state in one of the constituent republics of what was Yugoslavia has been crushed by the neo-fascist ambitions of Serbia and Croatia. On Tuesday Bosnia's President Alija Izetbegovic, under extreme duress, agreed to a division of his nation into autonomous zones. In essence, a secret partition agreement made in Graz, Austria, by representatives of Croatia and Serbia is about to be implemented. Bosnia's Muslims -- those who have not yet been expelled or slain in "ethnic cleansing" -- will inevitably be confined to ghettos within the Serbian and Croatian zones: Given their scattered distribution, they cannot form a viable, territorially contiguous state. In Geneva, amid the politesse of international diplomacy, the agreement may be hailed as an end to the fighting, but in the hills of Bosnia, over the coming winter, it will be butchery. The butchers could have been beaten back. Bosnia was prepared to fight on if the West, notably the United States, permitted it to buy weapons. Alas, the Bush Administration insisted on enforcing the U.N. arms embargo against the unarmed Bosnians as well as their heavily armed attackers. The failure of a last-ditch attempt by Bosnian Foreign Minister Haris Silajdzic to move acting Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger became the coup de grace. But nations can rise from the dead. Even at this late hour, the Bush Administration can state unequivocally that it will never grant diplomatic recognition to a Serbia enlarged by territorial conquest and will withdraw diplomatic recognition from Croatia if it annexes any portion of Bosnia- Herzegovina. And if Izetbegovic or other Bosnian leaders set up a government in exile, it should be recognized as the legitimate government. Yugoslav Prime Minister Milan Panic has now been undercut both by Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic's seizure of much of the governmental apparatus of federal Yugoslavia and by Yugoslav President Dobrica Cosic's role in the Geneva partition agreement. If Panic should choose to flee Belgrade and set up a government in exile, that government too could be recognized as legitimate, at least for a period of transition. In short, though the West, led by the United States, has failed to halt an international atrocity, it must not now compound the failure by calling the atrocity peace.
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An Open Letter to the President of the United States of America The Delegation of the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina October 15, 1992 The Honorable George Bush President The White House Washington Dear Mr. President, On behalf of the citizens of Bosnia-Herzegovina, we, the members of the delegation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, representatives of the Parliament, the Presidency and the Government, Croats, Serbs and Muslims, demand justice for our country. We bring you this message: We do not ask for American or any other ground troops to defend us. All we ask for is the recognition of our right to self-defense under the UN Charter. Negotiations alone will not bring peace. The aggressor has not fullfiled any of the obligations ensuing from the London Conference. Time is running out - - especially for those 400.000 people the ICRC estimates will lose their lives this winter. It is this horrible reality that the Government of Bosnia-Herzegovina must take into account when assessing its participation in the peace process. For a long six months Bosnia suffers under savage attacks by the Belgrade regime and its executioners in Bosnia. In the name of ethnic purity and undisguised territorial expansion, one hundred thousand people were killed, over a million expelled from their homes, and those who could not escape are waiting to die of hunger, cold and disease. They are incessantly shelled, bombed and slaughtered, and yet denied the right to defend themselves. They are not asking for anyone to die for them; they simply ask for their right to be recognized, the right to meet force with force when everything else has failed to stop the murder. Mr. President, we firmly believed that the London Conference sponsored by the democracies at the highest level would stop the aggression. We joined the peace efforts unconditionally and have complied with all requirements set forth by the London Conference. We place our full confidence in and greatly appreciate the noble efforts by Mr. Vance, Lord Owen, Mr. Ahtishaari, the United Nations High Commisioner for Refugees, and others who help us in this hour of need. Let us not forget those who lost their lives trying to bring in the relief. However, what followed after the London Conference proved that the aggressor does not intend to respect any agreement. Artillery attacks, air raids, mass killings and ethnic cleansing have reached catastrophic proportions. Some concentration camps were closed to deceive the world as new ones were immediately opened. About two hundred thousand people in the region of Banja Luka are threatened by expulsions or summary executions. A new offensive is underway in northern Bosnia with fresh troops coming from Serbia . The most recent casualty was Bosanski Brod. The capital, Sarajevo, is a gigantic death camp where four hundred thousand people live without food, running water, gas and eletricity. Day after day they are shelled and burned in their homes or sniped off while looking for food. Yet we are told to be patient and cooperative, but if the aggression continues, peace efforts will soon be rendered meaningless. We cannot cooperate in the destruction of our country. Mr. President, the evil forces of fascism have erupted once again in Bosnia and tremors are being felt around the world. A monstrous crime is being commited while the world tries to look the other way. Of the dead we shall not speak; silence and grief is left for those who have stayed behind. But there will be thousands of blind, limbless, parentless children to haunt us all for decades to come. Human tragedy has no borders. Mr. President, to treat the Bosnian tragedy as another humanitarian problem is not right. This is a man-made catastrophe. To focus simply on providing aid is to ignore the real problem. After all, people must be alive to be able to receive aid. The real issue is the slaughter of tens of thousands of civilians and the inability of the Government of Bosnia-Herzegovina to defend its citizens. Those who argue that more arms will bring more fighting fail to realize that now the arms are in the hands of murderers and that more innocent people will die if they cannot defend themselves. The concept of global peace rests on the principle of deterring aggression. Why should that principle be disregarded in Bosnia? Is Bosnia the place where all principles must be abandoned? On the contrary! Bosnia is the seam on the fabric of the humanity. It carried out the task of bringing civilizations together with an open heart and dignity. Throughout centuries Bosnia offered refuge to all who needed it. It guarded the heritage of us all with its own life. In Bosnia, the human rights of all were respected centuries before the Universal Declaration of Human Rights come into being. Now Bosnia is being punished for being open, universal and human - - for trying to restore human and democratic values after decades of communist rule. In Bosnia we want to live together, as we did for centuries, regardless of ethnic background, religion or political affiliations. Thus, to interpret the aggression as a civil war is an insult to those Serbs, Croats, Muslims and Jews hiding from terrorists' shells and defending Bosnia together. Americans should understand that, because they also regard their diversity as an advantage. American democracy cannot deny the right for self-defense to a new democracy. America inspired us. America cannot let us down. Mr. President, an arms embargo imposed on a country being annihilated by a military machine is absurd and unjust. Help justice by lifting the arms embargo against Bosnia. Let us stop the aggression against us. The world is waiting for the United States of America to take the lead. Sincerely, Haris Silajdzic, Foreign Minister; Muhamed Filipovic, Member of the Parliament; Mariofil Ljubic, President of the Parliament; Mirko Pejanovic, Member of the Presidency; Miro Lazovic, Member of the Parliament.
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These articles have been published in response to Allison Abbot article published in Nature 358, 360; 1992. ************************************************************************* NATURE VOL 359 15 OCTOBER 1992 PLIGHT OF BOSNIA AND CROATIA SIR These are great times for the revival and advancement of the theory of symmetry of culpability. I refer, of course, to the war in Croatia and Bosnia, and your leading article (Nature 358, 439; 1992), and the News story by Alison Abbott (358, 360; 1992). There are some facts which would greatly improve the foundations of this theory and accordingly, the chances for peace in Europe. Serbs, 12 per cent of the population of the Republic of Croatia, have occupied 25 per cent of its total territory, and effectively 'cleansed' it of Croatians, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks and Ukrainians. Serbs, 34 per cent of the population of Bosnia and Herzegovina have occupied 60 per cent of the total territory of that state, and are effectively cleansing it of Croatians and Muslims. The problem is not agricultural 'land grabbing' (agriculture has never been a favorite subject for communists), but the Serbian quest for control of communication lines and corridors. The loss of these would render both states, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, a joke in terms of contemporary non-agricultural economy. These remarkable Serbian achievements are a product of other initial and consequential symmetries: lighter bombers: Serbs 600, Croats none; Tanks: Serbs 1800, Croats none; heavy artillery: Serbs 2000, Croats none; Ordnance: Serbs huge stockpiles of the former Yugoslav Army and supplies through Rumania; Croats negligible initially, now carefully dosed life-line supplies breaking the UN embargo through Slovenia and Hungary; Major damaged cities: Serbia none; Croatia l0 (with a total population in excess of 400 000, Bosnia 8 (population in excess of 600 000; Ravaged cities: Serbia none; Croatia 2 (Vukovar and Petrinja). Casualties are mounting, but for each dead Serb there are 5 dead Croatians and 20 dead Muslims (most of them civilians, women and children). The symmetry in the domain of science should also be mentioned. Croatian scientists share the Serbian fear that "prolonged sanctions will destroy" science. Croatia, with 20 per cent of the total population of the former Yugoslavia contained some 18 per cent of registered scientists (Croatia did not need this war to apply evaluation by per review, as Glisin hopes for Serbia, 358, 31; 1992). Croatia was forced to contribute 28 per cent of the total Yugoslav federal budget and 40 per cent of foreign hard currency earnings (1986). Croatian scientists received about l0 per cent of federal funds (1987) for research and development, yet produced up to 40 per cent of papers from the former Yugoslavia cited in the Institute for Scientific Information Science Citation Index (SCI), and issued the only two Yugoslav scientific journals recognized by SCI (1985): Croatica Chemica Acta and Periodicum Biologorum. The cut-off of US sponsored cooperative projects and those with the European Communities (EC) is symmetrical again. Croatia has not been admitted to the EC's PHARE program. The theory of symmetry of culpability should also take into account the case of the Interuniversity Center for Postgraduate Studies in Dubrovnik, a cooperative venture of 250 universities worldwide and year-round courses. As its director, Professor Kathleen Wilkes of the University of Oxford, witnessed, its building took a few well-aimed Serbian shells and burned down along with its specialized library of 25,000 volumes. For those unfamiliar with the theory of symmetry of culpability, it was originated by Neville Chamberlain and published in Munich in 1938. Velimir Pravdic Ruder Boskovic Institute, PO Box 1016, Bijenicka 54, 41001 Zagreb, Croatia ****************************************************************************** SIR To write about difficulties of Serbian science and researchers and at the same time not even mention the situation of science in Bosnia, where dozens of university buildings, research institutions and libraries have been set ablaze or demolished by Serbian mortar fire, is, to say the least, hypocritical. How those burnt and demolished building compare with a $65,000 computer'? How do burnt libraries compare with the Institute of Physics receiving only 40 of its 180 subscriptions? Do you remember the scenes shown on television when a crowd of Sarajevans lining up for bread was hit by a Serbian shell? Do you remember the man lying in the puddle of blood, crying for help and stretching his hands toward the camera? That was Professor Mahmud Dikic with whom I worked at the Mechanical Engineering Department of the University of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. In that attack he lost his legs. How does that compare with BlTNET electronic mail lines being disconnected'? I assume that your aim was to inform us about the protests that the Serbian scientific community is trying to articulate against their government. The protest could be summarized by saying that, after the international community imposed sanctions, 70 000 students occupied the university's main building for 26 days and that all examinations were suspended until late August. What Abbott failed to say is that this is too little, too late. She also failed to say that the Serbian scientific community is not as innocent as she suggests. There was no mention at all of the role of the Serbian Academy of Science and Arts and of its Memorandum (1986) in laying the ideological framework for the formation of Greater Serbia and the atrocities that have followed. The international scientific community used to be very vocal against the Suppression of human rights in Eastern Europe, but now seems to be untouched by the plight of the Bosnian people, human rights abuses and genocide. How many other nations will be put into the Serbian cleansing machine before the world's scientific community react? Sead Doric Institut National d'Optique, 369 Rue Franquet, Sainte-Foy, Quebec, Canada GlP 4NB ***************************************************************************** SIR When black pictures of history are once again emerging in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where more than 100 detention or death camps for Croats and Muslims have been established by Serbians, I would have expected Serbian scientists to be concerned about their colleagues and collaborators in Bosnia and Herzegovina. But the major worry of Serbians seems to be about shortage of funding, chemicals and about a Computer that has been paid for and cannot be imported to Serbia. Which is the guilty party'? The United Nations (UN) for striking back with sanctions that will affect not only Serbian researchers but also the authoritarian communist government of Serbia, or the latter for eliciting such a response from the rest of the world? Every scientist in Serbia should understand that silence is sometimes the same as a lie or crime especially when it is expressed in such a selfish manner. "As scientists we can only protest we cannot take up guns and kill people" said Dragan Vuckovic, a Serbian scientist. What does he think about Bosnian scientist, Croats, Muslims and loyal Serbs? Are they running their experiments'? No, they are not, they are fighting for their own lives and the lives of their children or starving to death in the detention camps. No change is conceivable until human rights are acknowledged in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and until they are willing to help their colleagues to stop the bloodshed. The UN must exert a stronger embargo on Serbia, in the hope that in the near future science would he restarted in a fair and democratic environment. Ivan Dikic NYU Medical Center, 550 First Avenue, New York, New York 10016, USA
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NYT Oct.22,1992 ;excerpts: JOHN BURNS (from Sarajevo)- According to Bosnian officials, Croatia has agreed not to challenge Serbian control of the region around Trebinje in a southern triangle of Bosnia adjancent to Montenegro,Serbia's ally in the truncated federation of what was once Yugoslavia................ "If Izetbegovic or anybodyelse thinks that we fought as long as we have to capitulate now,they will not live five minutes," one militia commander said.He was speaking at a frontline Bosnian position in Stup, a western suburb of Sarajevo where Croatian troops pulled back in September and allowed Serbian units to tighten the Sarajevo siege..................... "We know only too well that fighting on involves enormous hardships and dangers ,but the alternative would be still worse ,"said Kemal Muftic, a senior adviser in Mr. Izetbegovic's office . What faces us is genocide, the extinction of the Muslim people of Bosnia, and the end of 500 years of history. So we must either confront our enemies now,with all that entails ,or accept still greater suffering and death".................... Just 200 days ago, B&H emerged from 1000 years of tumultuous history to a status many Bosnians had dreamed of since their childhood - that of an independent state, recognized by the mayor powers of Europe ,with many of its mixed population of Muslims, Serbs and Croats eager to put years of communist stagnation as a republic of Yugoslavia behind them.... According to documents possessed by the Bosnian Government ,Mr.Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic secretly agreed to annex what they reffered to in their own internal mesagges as a "frame" around the small heartland of Bosnia. The mood of desperation in Bosnia was captured two weeks ago,when the Government commander in Tuzla threatened to create an ecological disaster by dynamiting railroad cars and trucks full of chloride and chlorine.... In Jajce another commander threatened to pour cyanide into the Vrbas River The Tuzla commander ,Zeljko Knez ,said that use of chemicals was all that eas left to the Tuzla defenders after Croatian forces had intercepted and confiscated arms supplies.................................................. In his tour of Government-held areas ,Mr.Izetbegovic is said to have worked to undermine Mr.Tudjman's control of Croatian Defese Council forces by appealing to units with large numbers of Muslim fighters to support the Government in defiance of Mr.Tudjman's orders. In Mostar,the commander of the Croatian units ,Jasmin Jaganjac, is a Muslim, and in some areas Muslims are said to comprise nearly half of the Croatian forces' fighting strenght... Nor has here been any let-up in a practise sanctioned by Mr.Tudjman ,of imposing a "war tax" of 30 per cent on all supplies and arms funneled through Croatian - held areas to Sarajevo .Often ,the supplies ,costing millions of dollars in cash to black marketeers ,have been seized before reaching the city. PAUL LEWIS (Geneva) - The president of the Muslim-dominated Government of Bosnia and Herzegovina offered a concession in the serach for peace there today when he said he would send a senior military officer to take part in talks on ending the hostilities around his capital, Sarajevo, and opening up the beseiged city to the outside world...................... The aim is to agree on the demilitarization of Sarajevo and to open up the city so that those who want to leave can do so and relief workers can take in needed suplies without hindrance or danger. Up to now, President Izetbegovic has refused to be represented at the talks unless the Serbian forces ringing Sarajevo agree to fully restore supplies of water , power and fuel. United nations negotiators said they believed the real reason for his reluctance to join in is that he wants the 60,000 or so ethnic Serbs still living in the city to remain there as effective hostages and because he also fears that many young Muslims might leave, weakening his own forces and his political base. ...................................................... United nations peacekeeping forces in the region have been asked to investigate the fighting and advise whether it is safe for the flights to be resumed. ......................................................
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----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Bosnians, Serbs trade prisoners, bodies Subject: Serbia's Marxists to convene a ruling party congress Subject: Sarajevo airport suspension lifted Subject: Sarajevo teachers, students defy war ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Bosnians, Serbs trade prisoners, bodies Date: 21 Oct 92 23:15:33 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- After four days of talks, nearly 300 rounds of artillery shells and more than 100 new casualties, the Bosnian and Serbian armies finally completed an exchange of prisoners and bodies Wednesday. The beginning of the end came at about 2 p.m., when a red Bosnian bus with Sarajevo license plates pulled into the parking lot at the headquarters of the U.N. Protection Force with its cargo of 18 Serbs. A few minutes later, a white bus with the Serbian flag, cyrillic lettering and 18 mostly Muslim Bosnian civilians pulled up and faced straight at it. Next came a truck bearing the remains of eight Serbian soldiers. Then, after one hour-long wait that gave those on all sides a dose of pacing and fretting, the final piece of the puzzle, a truck bearing the remains of 18 Bosnian fighters, pulled through the gate. Many of those in attendance brought handkerchiefs to their faces, the heavy stench of death confirming beyond much doubt that all parties to the deal were now in place. ``I don't have to say anything,'' said Enes Milanovic, standing now inside the Bosnian bus after completing the swap, a smile showing through the hand covering his mouth and nose. ``Words are superfluous.'' Milanovic, a Muslim who lived in the Serbian-controlled Grbavica section of Sarajevo, was one of the living chips in the Bosnian-Serb deal approved after a final two days of U.N.-mediated talks. The exchange involved eight bodies of Serbian troops killed about two weeks ago when Bosnian forces blew up a restaurant along the front line between Grbavica and neighboring Hrasno, in return for those of 18 Bosnian fighters who died last month in the areas of Stup and Zuc. The 18 bus passengers brought by the Serbs were the families of seven Muslim who were sent across the line Sunday to retrieve the eight bodies, but whom the Bosnians, not accepting the deal, refused to send back. The 18 passengers brought by the Bosnians were prisoners held on a variety of war-related crimes. The first deal failed Sunday with a devastating bang. Serbian forces in the hills over the city, after setting a 10 a.m. deadline for the return of the eight bodies, unleashed an artillery barrage at 10:01. At least 10 people were killed and 130 injured in the ensuing four hours. UNPROFOR military observers the next day reported counting 291 artillery shells falling on Bosnian territory. Also among the casualties were the city's main grain mill, forcing U. N. relief officials to add another 50 tons of flour to their daily deliveries to the capital. UNPROFOR officials, who have tried with limited success to mediate such exchanges in the past, hosted another two days of meetings Monday and Tuesday before the two sides reported an apparent settlement Wednesday. But until all four vehicles finally arrived in the afternoon -- the final truck bearing the remains of Bosnian soldiers was delayed by muddy roads and a flat tire -- and both sides confirmed the cargo and quickly shook a few hands, nobody knew for sure. ``Without shouting at each other, they can talk for about four hours, '' said UNPROFOR spokesman Mik Magnusson. Milanovic's 52-year-old mother Hatidza, for one, appreciated the effort. ``I feel,'' she said, now homeless and carrying only two handbags of possesssions, ``like I'm back on my own land.'' ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Serbia's Marxists to convene a ruling party congress Date: 22 Oct 92 12:37:46 GMT BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (UPI) -- The ruling Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) meets meets Friday in a two-day congress to work out a plan to retain power. A total of 880 delegates are to represent the 450,000-strong membership at the party's second congress, which opens Friday morning at Belgrade's Sava Conference Center, a party spokesman said. After a plenary session that is to hear a leadership report on work accomplished over the past two years, the congress will go into session behind closed doors. New leadership is to be elected Saturday. The SPS was formed in July 1990 when the then ruling Serbian Communist party merged with the communist-led Socialist Alliance. Appearing confident that they will retain power, the ruling communist followers of Serbia's hard-line President Slobodan Milosevic reject any blame for a disastrous economic situation in the country. Mihajlo Markovic, 69-year-old vice president of the SPS, explained the plan to win parliamentary and presidential elections later this year. He said the plan is designed to exploit Milosevic's popularity, which is still strong in rural areas but declining in urban centers. With the support from the state-run television network and other government-controlled media, the communists, now called socialists, could win elections, as they did two years ago. The ruling party ``is very likely'' to elect Milosevic its president at the congress to strengthen the organization, Markovic told United Press International. ``Then, with Milosevic strengthening our party lists, the SPS has a much bigger chance to win the elections,'' said Markovic, a veteran Marxist philosopher and retired Belgrade University professor. He said Borisav Jovic, the current president of the ruling party, will step down to make a place for Milosevic, who would then formally take the helm of the SPS. Milosevic, a communist activist since the age of 17, resigned as the leader of the SPS after he was elected Serbian president in December 1990, when the SPS won the first multi-party elections in 50 years. Speaking of ordinary Serbs suffering under spiralling inflation of about 3 percent per day, Markovic blamed the United Nations for ``unjustly'' imposing on May 30 strict economic sanctions on Serbia for its involvement in the war in Bosnia-Hercegovina. ``We shall survive the U.N. sanctions with our own resources,'' he said. ``Socialists cannot close factories and throw workers out in the streets. We have decided that nobody will be laid off as long as the sanctions last,'' Markovic said. Out of Serbia's 3 million work force, about 800,000 are unemployed and another 500,000 are on ``forced leave'' as factories and offices have been forced to shut their doors. Those who were put on ``forced leave'' receive about 70 percent of their monthly wages, amounting to abnout $100. Markovic argued that without the ruling communist-turned-socialist party the situation would have be even worse. The Serbian regime claims that the right-wing opposition would have led the country into a full-fledged war among the six republics of the now defunct Yugoslav federation. ``Serbia has not been pulled into war, thanks to our party. In contrast to us, the opposition wanted Serbia to declare war to Croatia,'' he said. Markovic boasted that war was not waged on Serbia's territory, disregarding the fact that thousands of Serbs engaged in battles in the secessionist republics of Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina. Markovic claimed that ``the SPS advocates peace in Bosnia, the lifting of U.N. sanctions and political stability as a pre-condition for economic development.'' He acknowledged these were also goals pursued by President Dobrica Cosic and Prime Minister Milan Panic, the two liberal leaders of the rump Yugoslav union of Serbia and its tiny ally, Montenegro. The two have been criticized by Milosevic and his supporters as ``traitors'' to Serbian national interests. In the past three months, Cosic and Panic have engaged in peacemaking efforts at international conferences on the former Yugoslavia and have negotiated with the feuding leaders of the newly independent republics. ``We also want a dialogue (with leaders of other ethnic groups), but there is a limit beyond which we cannot go,'' Markovic said. ``We cannot let Serbs outside Serbia be persecuted by local authorities in the newly independent republics.'' He said Serbia has been giving considerable financial and moral suppoprt to more than 2 million Serbs who live in Bosnia-Hercegovina and Croatia. ``We cannot let them down. We support Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia- Hercegovina and consider they must be given the right for self- determination in all enclaves where they are in majority,'' Markovic said. Rebel Serb leaders, seeking autonomy for enclaves they control, have declared ``Serbian states'' in both Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina and want to merge them with the newly forged, Serbia-dominated Yugoslav union. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Sarajevo airport suspension lifted Date: 22 Oct 92 15:05:43 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- Croat-Bosnian fighting flared Thursday north of Sarajevo and threatened Mostar, Croat-Serb clashes erupted in southeastern Bosnia-Hercegovina and Serbian troops in the north shelled Bosnian holdout towns. Also Thursday, U.N. peacekeepers re-opened the Sarajevo airport to relief flights after a one-day suspension ordered by U.N. relief officials because of reported fighting around the approach route. A British plane arrived at 1 p.m. without incident, bringing its cargo of some 10 tons of U.N. High Commission for Refugees aid for Sarajevo's half- million trapped residents, U.N. officials said. The Croat-Bosnian fighting, which broke out in a series of towns north of Sarajevo, forcing the UNHCR to evacuate its main food supply warehouse feeding the capital, threatened Thursday to spread to the allies still defending Mostar against Serbian forces. Croat forces late Wednesday surrounded the Bosnian military headquarters in Mostar and occupied police and television facilities, Sarajevo radio reported Thursday. The Croats also set up street barricades and ordered a 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew, although no actual fighting between the two uneasy allies had been reported, it said. Muslim Slavs, who make up the majority of Bosnian forces, also were reported arrested while returning from Croatia, the Bosnian radio reported. The fighting persisted in the three affected towns north of the capital, Travnik, Novi Travnik and Vitez, with artillery fire reported throughout the night and morning. At least one civilian died Thursday morning in Novi Travnik and soldiers fired from a school building into Vitez, site of the abandoned U.N. humanitarian aid warehouse, the radio said. Muslim and Croat residents of Vitez pleaded publicly for a second day for an peaceful resolution to the Croat-Bosnian split, which has been attributed to growing signs of Croat dominance in their anti-Serb alliance with the muslim slav-majority Bosnian forces, including new reports of a Croat-Serb deal to carve up the republic. Bosnian citizens in the republic's north, where Serbian forces have been fighting to control a strip of land connecting Serbia with Serbian- held areas of the northeast, suffered through another day of devastation, Sarajevo radio said. At least two people were killed and one was injured Thursday in Gradacac, again the focus of some of the heaviest attacks of the war, the radio said, with Serbian artillery, tank and infantry attacks all along an expanding front line. Olovo, already with barely a house left undamaged, faced a four-hour artillery barrage, along with similar onslaughts against Maglaj, Doboj, Brcko, Bihac, Tuzla and Tesanj, where at least five people were injured Thursday, it said. An exception was Jajce, which was relatively peaceful as both sides observed an agreement to allow reconnections of electricity serving both Jajce and Banja Luka, the radio said. Also Thursday, Serbian forces command in Bileca in southeastern Bosnia-Hercegovina said units of the ``regular Croatian army'' launched for a second day in a row a ``fierce artillery attack'' on Serbian positions around the Serbian-held town of Trebinje, 20 miles northeast of the Croatian medieval city of Dubrovnik on the southern Adriatic coast. The Croatian army artillery fired from the strongholds of Brgat and Zarkovica, outside Dubrovnik, and Serbian forces in the Trebinje area ``energetically responded to prevent the enemy's penetration into the Serb-held territory,'' the Serbian command in Bileca said, according to the Serbia-run Tanjug news agency. Quoting Serbian sources, Tanjug reported from Bileca that Croat and Muslim Slav forces also opened artillery fire on Serbian positions in villages around the towns of Stolac and Capljina in southern Bosnia- Hercegovina, northwest of Dubrovnik. At least 40 people were killed and 111 injured across the republic in the 24-hour period that ended at 10 a.m. Thursday, including 21 killed and 38 injured in Sarajevo, Bosnian health officials said. A total of 15 rounds of large artillery were observed falling onto Serbian-controlled areas around Sarajevo and 33 rounds were seen reaching Bosnian-controlled territory during the 24-hour period that ended at 5 p.m. Wednesday, U.N. Protection Force officials said in their daily survey. At least one person was reported killed and two injured Thursday morning in sporadic grenade and sniper attacks in the capital. The UNHCR headquarters in Geneva ordered the suspension of its aid flights to the city Wednesday because of reported fighting around the landing strip, although UNPROFOR and UNHCR officials in Sarajevo questioned the decision. ``I see no reason for it,'' as fighting was no heavier Wednesday than at any other time during the months-long airlift of humanitarian aid to Sarajevo, said one top UNPROFOR official, who asked not to be identified. Indian Lt. Gen. Satish Nambiar, overall UNPROFOR commander, acknowledged Wednesday during a visit to Sarajevo growing signs of disrespect for U.N.forces in the republic but said he would continue to ask for the cooperation of the warring parties. Bosnian military leaders, after a visit by Nambiar, were reported ready to join U.N.-mediated talks with their Serbian and Croat counterparts to focus primarily on ways of avoiding civilian involvement in the conflict. The Bosnian side was boycotting the talks until water and electricity were restored in Sarajevo. About 70 percent of the city was being supplied with electricity Thursday, UNPROFOR said, although a bid to connect a second transmission line into the city was hampered by heavy fighting in the area. Bosnian and Serbian military leaders in Sarajevo also passed a more direct test of faith in each other, when under U.N. mediation they successfully completed an exhange of both prisoners and bodies of dead soldiers. The deal was approved after two days of talks that followed a round of heavy shelling of the city Sunday attributed to Bosnian failure to meet original Serbian demands for the body release. Several thousand more Sarajevo residents, having gained Serbian and Bosnians promises of free passage, were making final plans Thursday for a huge convoy of vehicles scheduled to leave the capital Friday for both Split and Belgrade. Also Wednesday, a French UNPROFOR member was shot and wounded by a sniper firing from Bosnian-controlled territory while the soldier was escorting humanitarian aid deliveries in a Serbian-controlled section of Sarajevo. UNPROFOR and Serbian troops trying to rescue the french soldier were attacked with machine-gun fire while pulling him to safety, UNPROFOR said. One Canadian and one British plane reached the Sarajevo airport on Wednesday before the UNHCR ordered the halt, UNHCR spokesman Michael Keats said. ``We are reviewing the security situation at the airport as the whole area is tense,'' he said in announcing the order. ``There is fighting on the flight approach.'' Keats said the UNHCR, without the Vitez warehouse to handle land convoys, was unloading aid supplies at Posusje, only about one-third of the distance to Sarajevo from the coast. ``As an interim measure, we are sending at least 20 aid trucks from Split via Zagreb to Belgrade and we will run a big convoy from Belgrade to Sarajevo on Saturday,'' he said. ``It'll take two days to arrive.'' UNPROFOR officials said Nambiar and Maj. Gen. Philippe Morillon, his deputy and recently appointed chief of UNPROFOR's new republic-wide operation, were in the capital Wednesday primarily to establish Morillon's new Sarajevo-area headquarters. Milan Panic, prime minister of the Serbian-dominated rump Yugoslavia, during a visit Wednesday to Austria, called for an economic summit of the former Yugoslav republics to be held in Vienna. ``Once the economic problems are dealt with, political problems will solve themselves,'' Panic said. Panic also confirmed that Bosnian president Alija Izetbegovic had approved the idea of dividing Bosnia-hercegovina into nine ``cantons,'' Austrian ORF radio reported. Izetbegovic planned to return Friday to Sarajevo, Sarajevo radio reported.
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----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Spassky's cold postpones the 24th game Subject: Chaos follows battle between former Croat, Muslim allies Subject: Fighting intensifies among Bosnia-Hercegovina ethnic groups Subject: U.S. gives U.N. war crimes report in former Yugoslavia ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Spassky's cold postpones the 24th game Date: 22 Oct 92 17:34:44 GMT BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (UPI) -- The 24th game of the controversial match between former world chess champion Bobby Fischer and his rival Boris Spassky was postponed Thursday because of Spassky's acute cold and will be played Saturday instead. This is the third time that Spassky has asked to postpone a game because of his health. The score is 8-4 to Fischer, with 11 draws. The first player to achieve 10 victories will be the winner of the $5 million match that started Sept. 3, in the posh Montenegrin resort of Sveti Stefan and was later moved to this Serbian capital. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Chaos follows battle between former Croat, Muslim allies Date: 22 Oct 92 19:48:33 GMT NOVI TRAVNIK, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- Soldiers along the 5-mile stretch of road between Bugojno and Novi Travnik were suspicious and edgy after a three-day battle this week, warily studying the first vehicles in two days to pass by their makeshift barricades of logs and rocks. ``Did you see them? How many have they got there?'' asked one soldier from the Bosnia-Hercegovina army, hoping to gain valuable intelligence about the strength of his former allies -- the Croats -- who were manning a checkpoint down the road. ``Do you have any Muslims in the car?'' asks a soldier at a Croat checkpoint. The alliance between the two sides, who joined to battle against Serbian forces, began to deteriorate when Croats followed the lead of the Serbs and declared their own independent nation -- Herzeg-Bosna -- on territory of theinternationally recognized republic of Bosnia- Hercegovina. Fierce fighting erupted between the two sides this week after Mate Boban, leader of the self-proclaimed Croat state, announced that his country would be expanded to include the city of Travnik, a mixed Croat and Muslim community 30 miles northwest of Sarajevo. Three days of intense fighting left the region around the city in chaos. Soldiers manned makeshift barricades of logs and rocks in a bid to maintain control over their small patches of territory. Little communication existed between neighboring towns and villages, fostering an atmosphere of uncertainty and suspicion. Soldiers carrying everything from AK-47 rifles to hunting guns emerged from bushes along the dirt track to watch warily as the first cars passed their checkpoints in two days. No one appeared to be in control of the forces along the hilly forested terrain between Bugojno and Novi Travnik. In a village two miles from Novi Travnik, a convoy carrying about 350 people had been trapped on the closed road as the battle raged nearby. Most of them were refugees from central Bosnia-Hercegovina trying to get to Novi Travnik. Safe passage to Novi Travnik had finally been negotiated Wednesday for the refugees by the local Muslim forces, but shelling began as the group set out. Residents of the area quickly ran into makeshift shelters to wait out the barrage. ``We didn't expect to run into this before we left. We knew there were problems with Serbs but not this,'' said a Croat Franciscan priest on leave from his mission in Uganda who joined the convoy to try and visit his three sisters and one brother near Travnik. He refused to give his name. ``I'm scared,'' said 13-year-old Ina Bosic, a refugee trying to go back to her home in the town of Zenica as she clutched a stuffed elephant doll. After five days of living in buses, the refugees were finally forced to turn back down the road to Bogonjo. Bosnia-Hercegovina soldiers said the immediate cause of the fighting was the seizure of 80 tons of Turkish petrol by Croat forces near Novi Travnik and the killing of a Muslim Slav soldier by Croat troops. Up to 50 people were killed during the three days of clashes that followed, said Perro Celina, a doctor at the hospital in Bugonjo south of Novi Travnik, where mostly Bosnia-Hercegovina soldiers were being treated. ``There have been clashes between Muslims and Croats before but these are defintely the worst,'' Celina said while working at the hospital, located in the basement of the town's hotel. ``I saw some bodies. I can't say how many. Some were in uniform and some were civilian,'' said Zalko Saralic, 26, a Muslim Slav soldier in the Bosnia-Hercegovina army. He had been shot in the shoulder during the battle. Reports from state-run Croatian radio blamed Muslim extremists for the fighting and reported five dead and 20 wounded. ``The...(Croat forces) will use all means necessary to defend the region of Herceg-Bosnia from both Serb agressors and Muslim extremists,'' the radio quoted Croatian Defense Council representatives as saying. The lull in fighting allowed Bosnia-Hercegovina soldiers to take stock of their grim situation, surrounded on one side by the Serbian republic and on the other by Croatian forces. Bosnia depends upon goods passing through Croatian-held territory for its survival. Now goods don't seem to be moving. At checkpoints along the road into central Bosnia, Croatian forces were prohibiting Muslim deliveries into the region. About 40 large flatbed trucks from numerous Muslim humanitarian aid organizations were stuck at various checkpoints along the route. No trucks with Croatian insignias were spotted. ``They say there is too much fighting down the road and they won't let us through but they are letting Croats in,'' said one Muslim Red Cross worker who had been stuck at the checkpoint for 36 hours. About 30 trucks with Croatian insignias and Croatian Defense Council emblems on them were spotted driving along the same road to central Bosnia. Sarajevo has rejected the creation of Herceg-Bosna, declaring it unconstitutional. The Croatian Defense Council has ignored the declaration and ordered all Bosnia-Hercegovina soldiers to surrender their weapons by Oct. 18, Bosnian soldiers say. The land-grab by their allies has left them disillusioned. ``Just like the Serbs want to create their own Bosnia-Hercegovina, the Croats want to create their own Herceg-Bosna,'' one Bosnian army soldier said. ``They took our fuel and food until our army had nothing left,'' said a wounded Muslim soldier in the hospital who refused to give his name. The Bosnian government has repeatedly asked for the international arms embargo to be lifted for the Muslim-led Bosnia-Hercegovina army but the United Nations says that would only further inflame the conflict. Soldiers say they need aid quickly. ``I know the West doesn't want to help the Muslims because they are afraid of an Islamic state, but that's ridiculous because we are Europeans,'' said one Muslim soldier, whose rifle was marked with the slogan: ``An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.'' ``It's from the Koran and the Bible,'' he said of the saying. ``And it's the way you have to fight here.'' ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Fighting intensifies among Bosnia-Hercegovina ethnic groups Date: 22 Oct 92 20:23:34 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- Intense fighting erupted Thursday among the warring ethnic groups in Bosnia-Hercegovina, with Croats and Muslims clashing in the north, Croats and Serbs battling in the southeast and Serbs using artillery on towns under control of the predominantly Muslim government. Despite the fighting, U.N. peacekeepers reopened the Sarajevo airport to relief flights after a one-day suspension prompted by reports of fighting, and military leaders of all three ethnic groups agreed to their first joint meeting. ``I hope that tomorrow can be an historic date in the history of this country,'' French Maj. Gen. Philippe Morillon, head of U.N. peacekeepers in the republic, said of the planned meeting. ``It can be if the representatives of the militaries can begin to hear each other and understand each other.'' The talks were planned as a way of getting the Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian leaders to develop and approve ways of avoiding civilian involvement in the conflict, and Morillon said he hoped they could succeed to the point of reaching a full cessation of fighting. Late Thursday, Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic, who has been out of the capital for more than three weeks, arrived back in Sarajevo amid a swirl of rumors over his political future. Various Bosnian reports have hinted of Izetbegovic's possible decision not to seek re-election in December and even darker hints that he might be forced out early in a power struggle. The fighting between Muslims and Croats, which broke out this week in a series of towns north of Sarajevo, forced the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees to evacuate its main food supply warehouse feeding the capital. Continued fighting threatened Thursday to spread to the Muslim and Croats working together to defend the town of Mostar against Serbian forces. Croat forces late Wednesday surrounded the Bosnian military headquarters in Mostar and occupied police and television facilities, Sarajevo radio reported Thursday. The Croats also set up street barricades and ordered a 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew, although no actual fighting between the two uneasy allies had been reported, it said. Muslim Slavs, who make up the majority of Bosnian forces, also were reported arrested while returning from Croatia, the Bosnian radio reported. The fighting also persisted Thursday in the three affected towns north of the capital, Travnik, Novi Travnik and Vitez, with artillery fire reported throughout the night and morning. At least one civilian died Thursday in Novi Travnik and soldiers fired from a school building into Vitez, site of the abandoned U.N. humanitarian aid warehouse, the radio said. Muslim and Croat residents of Vitez pleaded publicly for a second day for an peaceful resolution to the Croat-Bosnian split, which has been attributed to growing signs of Croat dominance in their anti-Serb alliance with the Muslim Slav-majority Bosnian forces, including new reports of a Croat-Serb deal to carve up the republic. Morillon said he believed, however, the situation in Vitez could soon calm down enough to allow the UNHCR to return to its warehouse. The head of the U.N. Protection Force's (UNPROFOR) Bosnian operations said the fighting there was due mostly to a clash of personalities, and he said late Thursday it was resolved by the removal of the Bosnian military chief in the town. Bosnian citizens in the republic's north, where Serbian forces have been fighting to control a strip of land connecting Serbia with Serbian- held areas of the northeast, suffered through another day of devastation, Sarajevo radio said. At least two people were killed and one was injured Thursday in Gradacac, again the focus of some of the heaviest attacks of the war, the radio said, with Serbian artillery, tank and infantry attacks all along an expanding front line. Olovo, already with barely a house left undamaged, faced a four-hour artillery barrage, along with similar onslaughts against Maglaj, Doboj, Brcko, Bihac, Tuzla and Tesanj, where at least five people were injured Thursday, it said. An exception was Jajce, which was relatively peaceful as both sides observed an agreement to allow reconnections of electricity serving both Jajce and Banja Luka, the radio said. Also Thursday, Serbian forces command in Bileca in southeastern Bosnia-Hercegovina said units of the ``regular Croatian army'' launched for a second day in a row a ``fierce artillery attack'' on Serbian positions around the Serbian-held town of Trebinje, 20 miles northeast of the Croatian medieval city of Dubrovnik on the southern Adriatic coast. The Croatian army artillery fired from the strongholds of Brgat and Zarkovica, outside Dubrovnik, and Serbian forces in the Trebinje area ``energetically responded to prevent the enemy's penetration into the Serb-held territory,'' the Serbian command in Bileca said, according to the Serbia-run Tanjug news agency. Quoting Serbian sources, Tanjug reported from Bileca that Croat and Muslim Slav forces also opened artillery fire on Serbian positions in villages around the towns of Stolac and Capljina in southern Bosnia- Hercegovina, northwest of Dubrovnik. At least 40 people were killed and 111 injured across the republic in the 24-hour period that ended at 10 a.m. Thursday, including 21 killed and 38 injured in Sarajevo, Bosnian health officials said. A total of 15 rounds of large artillery fire were observed falling onto Serbian-controlled areas around Sarajevo and 33 rounds were seen reaching Bosnian-controlled territory during the 24-hour period that ended at 5 p.m. Wednesday, UNPROFOR officials said in their daily survey. Morillon said the military leaders meeting Friday would be asked to work out details of a plan for jointly staffed checkpoints along the road to Sarajevo that would greatly reduce interference with deliveries of humanitarian aid. He said new teams of UNPROFOR troops now arriving at points throughout the republic would be asked to take similar steps in their areas, although he declined to give exact timetables on how long that would take. The UNHCR relief operation for Sarajevo itself remained seriously handicapped Thursday, with the road route cut off by the fighting in Vitez and around Mostar, and with 11 planes reaching the Sarajevo airport after a 24-hour suspension due to reports of fighting near the runway. UNHCR headquarters in Geneva ordered the temporary suspension of its aid flights to the city Wednesday because of the reported fighting, although UNPROFOR and UNHCR officials in Sarajevo questioned the decision. ``I see no reason for it,'' as fighting was no heavier Wednesday than at any other time during the month-long airlift of humanitarian aid to Sarajevo, said one top UNPROFOR official, who asked not to be identified. No trucks reached the city Thursday and none were expected Friday, as road convoys diverted from Vitez were unloading at Posusje, only about one-third of the distance to Sarajevo from the coast. ``As an interim measure, we are sending at least 20 aid trucks from Split via Zagreb to Belgrade and we will run a big convoy from Belgrade to Sarajevo on Saturday,'' UNHCR spokesman Michael Keats said. ``It'll take two days to arrive.'' Also Thursday, organizers of a huge road convoy of people hoping to flee Sarajevo, due to leave Friday for the Croatian port city of Split and the Serbian capital Belgrade, was canceled once again. Bosnian Red Cross officials organizing the convoy said they decided to postpone again for safety reasons, although both UNHCR and UNPROFOR said they were not asked for assurances of protection and said it would have been reckless to proceed without it. ``I'm very concerned with this idea,'' Morillon said. He said UNPROFOR would try to cooperate with such a convoy if the UNHCR gave its endorsement, but both he and UNHCR spokesman Larry Hollingsworth said they were reluctant to help large-scale evacuations of the city. ``My intention is not to help empty this city,'' Morillon said. ``On the contrary, I will try to help this city survive and rebuild.'' ``Our policy is to contain people and not add to the refugee problem, '' Hollingsworth said. ``Our policy is that people should not voluntarily become refugees.'' ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: U.S. gives U.N. war crimes report in former Yugoslavia Date: 22 Oct 92 19:41:44 GMT WASHINGTON (UPI) -- The United States submitted to the U.N. War Crimes Commission a compendium of human rights abuses in Bosnia-Hercegovina that includes such atrocities as mass castrations of young men and human organ pilfering by a Serbian physician, the State Department said Thursday. Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the submission, the administration's second since the commission was established by U.N. resolution last month, will be used to prosecute war crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia. He said the reports were extracted from interviews with refugees, witnesses to atrocities, intelligence sources and reports by journalists. The document describes ``numerous, very abhorent incidents, including willful killings, torture of prisoners, abuse of civilians in detention camps, wanton devastation and destruction of property and the mass forcible expulsion and deportation of civilians,'' Boucher said. ``A lot of the things in there make your blood boil and your stomach turn.'' Alija Lujinovic, a 53-year-old Muslim engineer from Brcko who was captured by Serbians May 3, told State Department investigators that he saw a stack of 15 dead and naked 18 to 30 year old men ``with their genitals torn out,'' the report says. Lujinovic is quoted as saying he witnessed a Serbian physician ``slit the throats of young, healthy people, cut out their organs, pack them into plastic bags and load the organs into a refrigerator truck.'' A 33-year-old Bosnian Muslim woman from Sarajevo told State Department investigators that she was raped in front of her 12-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son at the Manjaca detention camp by two Serbian interrogators named ``Todor and Srbo,'' the report said. Todor and Srbo then raped her daughter twice. Although the report contains hundreds of examples of atrocities committed against Bosnian Muslims by Serbians, who are attempting to annex the former Yugoslav republic and purge it of all non-Serbs, no side involved in the mayhem is free of blame, Boucher said. ``Various Serb groups and factions are responsible for the preponderance of the incidents, but they're not the only ones,'' he said. ``There have been these kind of abuses on all sides.'' All members of the United Nations have been asked under the resolution to submit to the War Crimes Commission reports of atrocities to be catalogued and used for prosecution by a tribunal, which has not been established. The United States, Boucher said, is the only nation that has so far complied with the request.
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The New York Times Thursday, October 22, 1992, page A10 Bosnian, in Shift, Says He'll Send an Officer to Talks on Sarajevo by PAUL LEWIS Special to The New York Times GENEVA, Oct. 21 --The President of the Muslim-dominated Government of Bosnia and Herzegovina offered a concession in the search for peace there today when he said he would send a senior military officer to take part in talks on ending the hostilities around his capital, Sarajevo, and opening up the besieged city to the outside world. The Bosnian President, Alija Izetbegovic, made the announcement before returning home after two and a half days of talks here with the Presidents of Croatia and Yugoslavia, which consists of Serbia and Montenegro, as well as with the two mediators in the Balkans crisis, Cyrus R. Vance of the United Nations and Lord Owen repre- senting the European Community. The two mediators are trying to set up a military working group that would be headed by Gen. Phillippe Morillon of France, the commander of the United Nations peacekeeping force in Sarajevo, and would include senior commanders from the rival Serbian, Croatian end Muslim forces fighting one another there. The aim is to agree on the demilitarization of Sarajevo and to open up the city so that those who want to leave can do so and relief workers can take in needed supplies without hindrance or danger. 'Corridors' Into the Capital Up to now, President Izetbegovic has refused to be represented at the talks unless the Serbian forces ringing Sarajevo agree to fully restore supplies of water, power and fuel. United Nations negotiators said they believed the real reason for his reluctance to join in is that he wants the 60,000 or so ethnic Serbs still living in the city to remain there as effective hostages and because he also fears that many young Muslims might leave, weakening his own forces and his political base. In his talks with Mr. Vance and Lord Owen this morning and earlier in the week, officials say, Mr. Izetbegovic did not clearly state whether he was now prepared to allow people of military age to leave the city. At present all those between 18 and 65 years of age are forbidden by the Bosnian Government to leave Sarajevo, even if they could find a way past the Serbian guns. The officials said Mr. Izetbegovic supported the "demilitarization" of Sarajevo and surrounding areas, and talked of negotiating "corridors" into the capital, though it was not clear whether these would be for bringing in relief supplies, letting people leave or for both purposes, as the mediators want. At present only a trickle of food, medicine and other relief supplies passes through the lines, and that came to a halt today when the United Nations military advisers suspended their airlift into Sarajevo because of intense fighting between Croats and Muslims to the west of the city where the planes begin their descent. United Nations peacekeeping forces in the region have been asked to investigate the fighting and advise whether it is safe for the flights to be resumed. " It's one more nail in the coffin of the people we're Trying to help," said Ron Redman, a spokesman for the United Nations refugee commission, which coordinates all relief work in the former Yugoslavian federation. ================================================================= The New York Times Thursday, October 22, 1992 page A1, cont. A10. Serbs and Croats Now Join In Devouring Bosnia's Land By JOHN F. BURNS Special to The New York Times SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Oct. 21--After months of merciless artillery bombardment, this mostly mountainous republic has been reduced to a handful of desperate cities and towns controlled by the Government, with its people increasingly ac- cepting that their struggle for survival is lost. Outside Sarajevo, Serbian forces have seized at least two-thirds of the country. Croatian troops control most of the rest. But what deepens the pessimism is the realization that the Croatian forces have turned their hacks on their one time Bosnian allies and are now joining with the Serbs to carve up Bosnian territory for themselves. Bosnia Being Partitioned Indeed these two sides are now mopping up and consolidating their gains in areas that nationalist leaders in their respective homelands have coveted for a century. Since April, the Serbian nationalists have unleashed murderous fusillades on Sarajevo that have made casualties of at least 10 percent of the 400,000 residents. The Serbian strategy has been to force the city to yield without a battle because of the pressure of hunger, shelling and winter cold. The Serbian forces have long enjoyed the logistical support of what remains of Yugoslavia, which is dominated by the republic of Serbia. But of equal significance, the Croatian Defense Council, which has been leading the Croatian drive, has received weapons, troops and leadership from Croatia's army, based in Zagreb. "The Croats have proclaimed a Croatian state within the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina," said Emir Fazilbegovic, a member of the Muslim Council in Mostar, 85 miles southwest of the Capital. "Muslims now see no difference between the policies of the Serbian and Croatian leadership." A significant sign of cooperation between Serbs and Croats in carving up Bosnia occurred earlier this month when Franjo Tudjman, the Croatian president, ordered Croatian forces under the control of the Bosnian wing of Croatia's governing party to pull out of Bosanski Brod, a refinery town along the Sava River border between Croatia and Bosnia. The pullout left Serbian forces with only two remaining hurdles to completing a corridor between Belgrade in the east and Serbian-controlled areas of Croatia in the west. Gains for Croatia And while international attention has been centered on the Serbian offensives, Croatian forces have seized control of a broad chunk of Bosnia west and south of Sarajevo. From the Croatian headquarters in Mostar, forces of the Croatian Defense Council, nominally allied to the Bosnian army but in practice following Mr.Tudjman's orders, have cemented control of western Herzegovina, where more than 90 per cent of the population are Croats. >From there, they have pushed north and east, capturing towns and villages where Croats and Muslims are about equally numerous. In areas of eastern Herzegovina, where Serbs are more numerous, more signs of a Serbian and Croatian accord to partition Bosnia are showing up. According to Bosnian officials, Croatia has agreed not to challenge Serbian control of the region around Trebinje, in a southern triangle of Bosnia adjacent to Montenegro, Serbia's ally in the truncated federation of what was once Yugoslavia. Croatian Dissident Assassinated In August, these accounts say, Croatia arranged for Croatian Defense Council troops to ambush and assassinate Blaz Kraljevic, commander of a fiercely anti-Serbian Croatian military faction known as the Croatian Armed Forces, when Mr. Kraljevic's units challenged Serbian units around Trebinje. For months, Mr. Tudjman, the Croatian leader, encouraged the Bosnian Government to hope that Croatia would join the battle against Serbian forces, particularly around Sarajevo. But pledges given to the President of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Alija Izetbegovic, in visits to Zagreb were not fulfilled, and Mr. Tudjman has recently dropped the pretense of being Mr. Izet- begovic's ally. A Shift in Alliances Instead the Croatian leader has been speaking as if his alliance is with Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian leader, and Government-controlled newspapers in Zagreb have been attacking the Izetbegovic Government as "a hotbed of Islamic fundamentalists." In Sarajevo, and in the handful of other towns under Government control, the collusion between Serbia and Croatia in partitioning Bosnia has fostered an increasing militancy among hard-line Muslims particularly in the private militia groups that form a large part of Bosnian fighting strength. Threat of Assassination Privately, some of these Muslim militia commanders have threatened to assassinate Mr. Izetbegovic or any other Bosnian official who accepts a peace settlement at the Geneva talks that stops short of rolling back the gains that Serbian and Croatian forces have made. "If Izetbegovic or anybody else thinks that we have fought as long as we have to capitulate now, they will not live five minutes," one militia commander said. He was speaking at a frontline Bosnian position in Stup, a western suburb of Sarajevo where Croatian troops pulled back in September and allowed Serbian units to tighten the Sarajevo siege. The Bosnian Government's hopes for survival had once rested on Western military intervention, the possibility of an effective military alliance with Croatian forces, or perhaps a coup in Bel- grade that might have toppled Mr. Milosevic's nationalist government. Mr Izetbegovic has turned recently to a clandestine tour of the few patches of territory his Government still controls, usually to proclaim that the battle for a sovereign, unified Bosnia will continue. And although those in power here accept that Serbia and Croatia have effectively annexed most of the country, and that the Muslim-led Bosnian forces can only hope to hang on to the little they still hold, still say they are a long way from giving up. "We know only too well that fighting on involves enormous hardships and dangers, but the alternative would be still worse," said Kemal Muftic, a senior adviser in Mr.Izetbegovic's office. "What faces us is genocide, the extinction of the Muslim people of Bosnia, and the end of 500 years of history. So we must either confront our enemies now, with all that entails, or accept still greater suffering and death." Appeal for Outside Aid For months, senior officials here have been speaking in apocalyptic terms, partly out of a desire to prick the conscience of the United States and its European allies, which have said that they have no intention of committing troops here in support of the Bosnian Government. But by almost every measure -casualty counts, refugees, cities and towns emptied of their populations or substantially destroyed, reports from the battlefronts of new setbacks and defeats--the situation facing the government and those who depend on it could scarcely be worse. All figures here tend to be sketchy, since the Government has no telephone connections outside Sarajevo, and the reports it does receive, by messenger traveling through the mountains and by short-wave radio links, are taken mostly from those areas it still controls. These are augmented by sketchy accounts from tens of thousands of Muslim refugees who survived Serbian "ethnic cleansing" offensives only to end up living with a few miserable bundles of belongings in tent camps and school gymnasiums. >From these sources, the Health Ministry in Sarajevo has estimated that 127,000 people are dead or missing, of whom 16,000 have been confirmed as having been killed. Hospitals and clinics are said to have treated 129,000 people who have been wounded: In Sarajevo alone, more than 3,700 people have been killed, 30,000 wounded, and 7,150 have been listed as missing. As for property damage, the Health Ministry has said that 80 per cent of all the hospitals and clinics in the country have been heavily damaged or destroyed, at a replacement cost of at least $2 billion. Recently, the worst news has come from the battlefront. In hospital wards in Sarajevo, men, women and children with debilitating wounds lie listening to radios that blare scratchy accounts recorded from short-wave radio links with towns like Gradacac and Jajce and Bihac, Government-held outposts that have been hanging on in the face of relentless Serbian offensives. For weeks, there have been nothing but reverses, each one lightening the pocket around the Government forces and the mostly Muslim populations of the besieged towns. A Dream Stillborn Just 200 days ago, on April 6, Bosnia and Herzegovina emerged from 1,000 years of tumultuous history to a status many Bosnians had dreamed of since childhood - that of an independent state, recognized by the major powers of Europe, with many of its mixed population of Muslims, Serbs and Croats eager to put years of Communist stagnation as a republic of Yugoslavia behind them. Now, the dream has been shattered by a war of a scale and malevolence not seen in Europe since 1945. According to documents possessed by the Bosnian Government, Mr. Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic, the 47 year-old psychiatrist who leads the Serbian nationalists in Bosnia, secretly agreed to annex what they referred to in their own internal messages as a "frame" around the small heartland of Bosnia. The mood of desperation in Bosnia was captured two weeks ago when the Government commander in Tuzla, center of Bosnia's chemical industry threatened to create an ecological disaster by dynamiting railroad cars and trucks full of chloride and chlorine. Threat to Poison River In Jajce, a besieged town 60 miles northwest of Sarajevo, another commander threatened to pour cyanide into the Vrbas River, sending it downstream to the junction with the Sava. The Tuzla commander, Zeljko Knez said that use of the chemicals was all that was left to the Tuzla defenders after Croatian forces had intercepted and confiscated arms supplies. "We have been reduced to the point where we can no longer mount an adequate defense," he said. In his tour of Government-held areas, Mr. Izetbegovic is said to have worked to undermine Mr. Tudjman's control of Croatian Defense Council forces by appealing to units with large numbers of Muslim fighters to support the Government in defiance of Mr Tudjman's orders. In Mostar, the commander of the Croatian units, Jasmin Jaganac, is a Muslim, and in some areas Muslims are said to comprise nearly half of the Croatian forces' fighting strength. Croatia Controls Supplies But the Croatian units' arms supplies and finance come through Cro- atia, and so far there has been no sign of Croatian units, some of them only 20 miles from Sarajevo, helping to break the Serbian siege. Nor has there been any let up in a practice sanctioned by Mr. Tudjman, of imposing a "war tax" of 30 per cent on all supplies and arms funneled through Croatian-held areas to Sarajevo. Often the supplies, costing millions of dollars in cash to black marketeers, have been seized before reaching the city. Before the latest round of the Geneva talks on the future of the Balkans, which began on Monday, Mr. Tudjman said that he expected an agreement establishing a formal cease-fire between Croatian and Serbian forces in Bosnia. In other interviews, he has suggested that the "Muslims", meaning the Bosnian Government, may have to accept that they have been reduced to a rump of central Bosnia, where they can establish what the Croatian leader has called "a small Muslim and Islamic state," separate from other Bosnian territories that could be annexed to Croatia and Serbia.
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Serbia, Croatia May Be Carving Up Bosnia, Diplomats Say (Zagreb) By Roy Gutman (c) 1992, Newsday ZAGREB, Croatia _ In a strategic shift that could have catastrophic consequences for civilians, ethnic Croat forces in Bosnia have cut food supplies to their ostensible Muslim allies as part of a broad military assault, senior diplomats and aid experts said. Diplomats closely involved in negotiations to settle the conflict and international aid officials with monitors on the ground said Serbia and Croatia appear to have reached an agreement to carve up Bosnia. ``It appears that the parties have agreed to carve out their territor ies. That will makes things a lot worse for the people who have lost,'' said the top representative of an international humanitarian aid organization in Zagreb. The experts said the Croat assault will force Muslims out of towns su ch as Jajce and Travnik where they have lived for centuries, and herd them into a small region in central Bosnia, centering on the cities of Sarajevo, Zenica and Tuzla. ``This is serious,'' a senior Western diplomat said Thursday night in Geneva, Switzerland. The Croats ``are trying to push the Muslims back into the Tuzla-Zenica-Sarajevo triangle. They have been thinking this for a long time, but now they are coming out more openly for it. It's the clearest-cut evidence. This is their `ethnic cleansing.' '' Tadeusz Mazowiecki, the former Polish prime minister acting as a huma n rights investigator for the United Nations, warned Thursday that ``international indifference'' to the plight of the Bosnians may soon lead to ``a great tragedy.'' ``Many people won't survive not only the winter, but also the fall,'' said Mazowiecki, who toured Sarajevo and a Muslim refugee camp in northern Bosnia looking into human rights violations. Mazowiecki also announced that his delegation had uncovered an unmark ed mass grave in the east Croatian town of Vukovar, which Serb forces conquered in November 1991. He said U.N. forces are now guarding the site along with five other suspected mass graves, and the United Nations will send special forensic teams to exhume and examine the remains to determine the origin of the victims and the manner in which they died. Officially, Serbia and Croatia deny any intention to carve up Bosnia. But a spokeswoman for Croatia's President Franjo Tudjman, in an interview with Newsday, endorsed the militant anti-Muslim stance of his ethnic allies in Bosnia including a demand to replace the leaders of the general staff. Diplomatic and other sources said the pattern of attacks this week in central Bosnia is a big step toward the final carving up of the republic and the eventual takeover of those territories by neighboring Serbia and Croatia. They noted that there was at least one exception, namely in the north-central region centering on the city of Tuzla, where Croats continued to fight alongside Muslims against the Serbs. The State Department, still studying the reports of the fighting, res tated its support for the territorial integrity of Bosnia. ``We've opposed its partition. We've made that very clear to all parties involved,'' spokesman Richard Boucher said in Washington. One State Department official said that ``there is evidence of collus ion between the Croats and the Serbians, but it's not yet conclusive.'' Another said, ``We've been hearing reports for some time that the Croatians may seek a partnership with the Serbs, and we've been trying to prevent it.'' At the United Nations in New York, Venezuela Ambassador Diego Arria, currently a member of the Security Council, called for the council to convene to discuss reports that Serbians and Croatians were dividing Bosnia according to a secret deal. ``They have carved up the territory in a very public way,'' Arria sai d of the Croatian and Serbian forces. ``The whole world has been able to watch, and there doesn't seem to be enough collective will to put a stop to this.'' The Bosnian Croats announced military gains across a broad front Thur sday. Their ``Croatian Defense Council,'' or HVO, claimed it had forced Muslim forces out of the city of Novi Travnik, and Zagreb radio reported that the HVO now controlled many of the principal towns on the roads used to move relief supplies to Sarajevo and other predominantly Muslim towns in Bosnia. Despite Holocaust Memory, World Slow to Respond to Serb Atrocities By Nina Bernstein (c) 1992, Newsday The outcry last August rang with memories of the Holocaust and drew o n the defining guilt of our time: The world's failure to stop the Nazi slaughter of 6 million Jews and others. But since public outrage erupted over news that a Serbian campaign of ``ethnic cleansing'' included thousands of killings in concentration camps, further U.S. protest has been stalled by divisions and political inhibitions that critics say are only too evocative of the 1930s and '40s. ``There's been a lull all around _ in our own government's response, in the international community and, unfortunately, in the Jewish community as well, and I think it's shameful,'' declared Henry Siegman, head of the American Jewish Congress and a leader among 19 Jewish organizations that protested the violence against Bosnian Muslims in August. ``What is the point of all of these (Holocaust) commemorations if, wh en we are stared in the face with a repetition, we haven't got the moral energy to fight it?'' said Siegman, 61, himself a Holocaust survivor. To some, like Siegman, the evocation of the Holocaust is an inescapab le and compelling goad to action against Serbian ``ethnic cleansing,'' a campaign of expulsion in which execution, torture, rape and terror have been used as tools to carve out an ``ethnically pure'' Serbian region in two-thirds of Bosnia. Others, while decrying the violence, strongly reject any such compari son as demeaning the memory of the Holocaust and distorting atrocities that fall short of Adolf Hitler's methodical campaign to annihilate all Europe's Jews. The debate itself has been a drain on efforts to sustain or step up protest, critics say. Siegman's frustration was echoed in a dozen interviews with leaders o f religious and humanitarian groups, congressional staff members and others concerned about violent ``ethnic cleansing'' in the former Yugoslavia. Several observed parallels between present obstacles to effective public protest and the factors that muted U.S. response to the unfolding Holocaust in the 1930s and '40s. They include wide public acceptance of the U.S. administration's argu ments against military intervention; State Department delays in disclosing or corroborating atrocities that could increase public pressure for intervention; distraction by other issues, including a dismal economy; and political reluctance to advocate an open door for a new group of refugees at a time when many Americans are jobless. Notwithstanding the response of the United Nations, which used charte r provisions inspired by the lessons of World War II to launch a war-crimes investigation, critics point to a climate of public passivity. The result can be seen in a series of abortive attempts to follow up the August outcry, despite the urgent plight of 500,000 non-Serbian Bosnians trapped and targeted by a wave of ``ethnic cleansing'' as winter falls. Elie Wiesel, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and literary voice of th e Nazi Holocaust, announced in August that he would accept an invitation to visit camps in the former Yugoslavia himself. The trip, which might have refocused media attention on thousands of endangered camp inmates that no country has offered to accept, has not taken place. Wiesel said last week that it had been prevented by ``technical and political difficulties.'' Pressed to explain, he said that he had been unable to put together a delegation of influential people in the absence of Western government support for the journey. ``I've rarely been as frustrated,'' Wiesel said. ``At the base, peopl e are getting more and more disinterested. It's too far, they're less and less concerned, and therefore those in power feel ... they can get away with inaction in impunity.'' Attempts last month to hold congressional hearings on whether ``ethni c cleansing'' fit the international definition of genocide were also unsuccessful. The Helsinki Commission twice tentatively scheduled a hearing on the issue, but finally abandoned the effort, sources said, because the availability of witnesses conflicted with election campaign schedules. ``The interest seems to have died down,'' a frustrated staffer on the House Foreign Affairs Committee said recently. ``Everyone said `never again' after the Holocaust, and now there's a situation that's very similar to it and ... everybody's treading water,'' he declared. One of the first institutions to speak out was the Roman Catholic Chu rch, in part because of its links with Croatian Catholics. ``The Serbians ... are conducting a campaign of nearly genocidal proportions against civilians,'' a fact-finding delegation to Bosnia headed by Newark, N.J., Archbishop Theodore McCarrick reported in July. But church leaders have not revised a consensus that the economic and political climate here make it unwise to lobby for opening U.S. immigration to Bosnian refugees, according to Brother Austin David, director of programs for the Catholic Near East Welfare Association, a papal agency covering the Balkans. ``Because of the economic situation, I don't think there's a lot of s ympathy in this country,'' David said. Jewish organizations have been gripped by events in Bosnia, but deep disagreements over what policies to advocate have hampered lobbying efforts, according to Phil Baum, who led two delegations to the State Department for the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council, an umbrella group. ``The problem is, you're expressing your impatience without saying ex actly what you're recommending,'' Baum said of the meeting last Friday with Thomas Niles, assistant secretary of state for European affairs. ``It's a very serious disability.'' Baum said that no real consensus had been reached in a lengthy confer ence call to prepare for the meeting. Niles reiterated the administration's position that the United States is doing all it prudently can and that some progress has been made in opening camps to international inspection and delivering food relief, said Baum, who is director of international affairs for the American Jewish Congress. The Congress has called for limited air strikes and arms for the Bosnians, among other measures, but because Baum represented the umbrella organization at the meeting, he couldn't advocate that view. Widespread caution about what kind of action to take has persisted in the face of the belated State Department confirmation given by spokesman Richard Boucher Sept. 28 that 3,000 Muslim men, women and children detained in a camp in the Bosnian town of Brcko were slaughtered by the Serbian militia last spring and many of the bodies cremated in an animal-fat rendering plant. It has withstood a growing body of evidence gathered by journalists and international officials that systematic killings, rapes, torture and deportation are being used to eliminate non-Serbian Bosnians from most of Bosnia. Despite Boucher's confirmation, George Bogdanich, director of the Serbian-American Media Center and a spokesman for the Serbian side, said Wednesday his organization's contention that the State Department has never confirmed the killings at Brcko. He argued that protest had died down because ``we have yet to see any credible evidence of systematic killings, and abuses are widespread on all sides.'' a Caution also has been fostered by a visceral rejection by many Jews o f terms like ``concentration camp'' and ``death camp'' that drew what they considered unacceptable comparisons to the Holocaust. ``In describing them as death camps and describing it as a holocaust it demeans the memory of the Holocaust and trivializes the very real atrocities going on today, because you lose credibility,'' said Elan Steinberg, executive director of the World Jewish Congress. Like others, he stressed the difference between Hitler's ``Final Solution'' and what he called ``the horrors of warfare in a very complex political situation.'' The debate over Holocaust terminology exasperates George Kenney, who resigned his post as head of the State Department's Yugoslav desk to protest U.S. government inaction. Kenney detailed how the administration ignored or minimized dozens of reports of systematic atrocities against non-Serb Bosnians in order to avoid public pressure for intervention. ``I've heard people argue about whether the term genocide should be applied,'' Kenney said. ``People can call it whatever the hell they want as long as they recognize what's going on. You're having the whole Bosnian culture wiped out, multicultural democratic government wiped out, the killing of tens of thousands and the displacing of a million.''
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U.N. Announces Week-Long Truce; More Croat-Muslim Fighting Eds: New throughout to UPDATE with U.N. announcing week-long truce to allow relief shipments, Sarajevo peace talks open, U.N. envoy says abuse worsened in recent months as ethnic cleansing completed. ADDS photo numbers. No pickup. AP Photos SAR1, GNV1, BEL3 By JOHN DANISZEWSKI Associated Press Writer SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) - U.N. officials said today that warring factions have agreed to a one-week truce next month to allow food, medicine and clothing to reach 1 million children facing a winter of deprivation. Representatives of Bosnia's Muslim, Serb and Croat factions met today in Sarajevo for the first time since June to discuss ending the 6-month siege of Bosnia's capital. But Croat and Muslim militiamen were reported fighting for a fourth straight day in central Bosnia, further straining their shaky alliance against the Serbs. U.N. officials said leaders of the two factions were trying to keep the feud from spreading. Sarajevo radio said Serb fighters again violated a U.N. ban on military flights by using helicopters in northern Bosnia to attack troops loyal to the Muslim-led government. The leader of Bosnia's Serbs had promised to abide by the order. Local commanders, apparently ignoring the orders of their leaders, have thwarted previous truce accords and agreements on getting essential supplies to people victimized by the war over Bosnia's secession from Yugoslavia. The U.N. Children's Fund said all ethnic factions agreed to a cease-fire throughout the former Yugoslav federation during the first week of November. The truce would allow relief workers to reach beseiged areas in Bosnia and elsewhere by land. ``We want to reach up to 1 million children with the basic necessities to face the harsh winter,'' said Edith Simmons, UNICEF spokeswoman in Sarajevo. The group plans to bring in 300 tons of blankets, clothes for 200,000 children, up to 800 tons of high-protein biscuits, medicine, vitamins, vaccines, and school books, UNICEF officials said. Most relief supplies for Bosnia now come sporadically through an international airlift into Sarajevo, but other besieged cities are almost impossible to reach because of fighting. The U.N. peacekeepers plan to fan out to some of those areas. Indian Gen. Satish Nambiar, commander of U.N. troops in former Yugoslav states, said in Zagreb, Croatia, that 1,600 more soldiers should arrive by mid-November. That would give him 8,000 troops. In other developments: -A U.N. envoy said human rights abuses in Bosnia worsened the last two months as ``ethnic cleansing'' of regions by rival factions was completed. Tadeusz Mazowiecki said in Geneva that most of the abuses were committed against Muslims. He also called for an investigation of suspected mass graves in Croatia, where Croats and Serbs fought over Croatia's secession from Yugoslavia last year. He declined to release details. -Serbia's governing party of former Communists began a closed-door congress at which opponents of President Slobodan Milosevic's hard-line policies were expected to be purged. His support for Serb insurgents in Bosnia led the U.N. Security Council to impose trade and diplomatic sanctions on Yugoslavia, which now includes only Serbia and Montenegro. The war in Bosnia broke out after ethnic Serbs rebelled against the Feb. 29 vote by the republic's majority Muslims and Croats to secede. More than 14,000 people have died. About 10,000 people died in Croatia last year after that republic broke away, but both sides have generally observed a cease-fire since early January. The U.N.-mediated talks on ending the Serbs' siege of Sarajevo had been stalled by a Muslim boycott over attacks on utility crews trying to restore water and electricity to the city of 400,000. Services were restored to about 70 percent of the city Thursday after a month of outages. ``The fact alone that everyone is here and talking is a major success,'' said French Gen. Phillipe Morillon, commander of U.N. peacekeepers in Bosnia. Sarajevo enjoyed a rare day of relative peace today. Pedestrians clogged streets deemed safe from sniper fire on a lovely fall day. But the fighting between Muslims and Croats north of the city caused the Red Cross to cancel plans to evacuate 6,000 women, children, elderly and handicapped people from Sarajevo. Sarajevo radio and the Yugoslav news agency Tanjug reported battles today around Novi Travnik, about 35 miles north of the capital. Sarajevo radio said dozens of people were wounded. Muslim and Croat fighters have clashed in several towns of central Bosnia since Tuesday. Croat troops also fought Muslims in Mostar, capital of the republic's Herzegovina region in the west. The nominal alliance between Muslims and Croats has frayed as Croat militiamen have taken control of much of Bosnian territory not held by the Serbs. The Serbs control about 70 percent of Bosnia. Many Muslims fear the Croats and Serbs are planning to partition Bosnia into ethnic enclaves, particularly after Croats gave up the northern government stronghold of Bosanski Brod to the Serbs earlier this month.
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Reports Describe Atrocities In Former Yugoslavia By JIM ABRAMS Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - The ethnic hatreds of disintegrated Yugoslavia are producing levels of savagery uncommon even in war, with aggressors decapitating and dismembering prisoners, shooting women in the back, raping children and torturing clerics. Thousands more are being expelled from their homes, confined to camps with little heat or food, and terrorized by fears of systematic execution. Such were the conclusions of two reports, one by the State Department and the other by the London-based human rights group Amnesty International, issued Thursday on atrocities in the former Yugoslav republic of Bosnia. The State Department list, citing ``credible reports'' from U.S. Foreign Service personnel, journalists and relief workers, was the second it has turned over to the United Nations, which is setting up a commission to investigate war crimes in Yugoslavia. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the ``abhorrent incidents'' include ``willful killings, torture of prisoners, abuse of civilians in detention camps, wanton devastation and destruction of property, and the mass forcible expulsion and deportation of civilians. ``I was reading it this morning, and, frankly, a lot of the things in there make your blood boil and your stomach turn,'' he said. Among the incidents with the most victims: Serb irregulars near the Bosnian town of Brcko were said to have executed 2,000 to 3,000 Muslims last spring at a brick factory and a pig farm. An additional 200 men and boys were massacred by Bosnian Serb police on Aug. 21 on a mountain road north of Travnik. On July 20, about 100 Muslim women in the town of Biscani were shot in the back. Their bodies lay in the road for four days until Serb trucks collected them. The Amnesty International report detailed an alleged massacre of Muslim villagers in Zaklopaca, 45 miles northwest of Sarajevo, on May 16, when as many as 105 people were killed. Witnesses said Serbs wearing uniforms of the Yugoslav People's Army carried out the executions. ``Probably no one will ever know the full extent of the human rights violations which have taken place, but it is clear that they have been horrific,'' Amnesty International said. The State Department report detailed more than 30 incidents, almost all perpetrated by Serbs against Muslims in Bosnia. One exception was evidence that Croats attacked a bus convoy on Aug. 27, killing 53 Serbian women and children and leaving about 50 wounded. In another, a Serbian man seized by Muslims was made to crawl on the asphalt and bark like a dog before being executed. Among the other incidents: -A Muslim locksmith reported that on July 24, Serb guards with automatic weapons systematically killed as many as 160 men at the Keraterm camp in northwestern Bosnia. -A Muslim refugee woman said that last June she saw a Serbian soldier use an ax to hack off the arms and legs of two prisoners. -Another refugee told of seeing a soldier drag a man out of the Luka camp outside Brcko and return with a blood-soaked knife in one hand and the man's head in the other. -A 52-year-old Bosnian Muslim cleric said he witnessed torture in the Omarska camp, including the cutting off of prisoners' hands and genitals as punishments. -Serb guards slit the throat of a Muslim cleric who refused to cross himself. -Guards raped a seven-year-old girl in front of her mother and other women at the Manjaca camp. The girl died soon after. -A refugee woman in another camp claimed she was burned with a cattle prod and raped in front of her children, and her 12-year-old daughter was raped. Many of the abuses, Boucher said, were related to the ``ethnic cleansing'' drive of Serbs intent on expelling Muslims from areas of Bosnia that come under Serbian domination. Thousands have been forced into detention camps, where many of the atrocities are alleged to have occurred.
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Sarajevo Sets Journalistic Trend: Reporters in Hard Shell Eds: Also moved for PMs With AM-Yugoslavia, Bjt By JOHN DANISZEWSKI Associated Press Writer SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) - BBC journalist Malcolm Brabant found himself stuck behind a stalled bus when he suddenly heard a loud explosion and saw a blinding flash. He lurched forward. The rifle round intended for him was stopped cold by multiple layers of hardened glass in his customized Land Rover's side window. ``Thank God it works, that's all I can say,'' Brabant said. Television networks and news services are equipping their staff with bulletproof jackets and armored cars for the war in former Yugoslavia, a battlefield on which at least 28 journalists have been killed. Some reporters fear they are deliberately targeted in the bitter civil war in Bosnia, where more than 14,000 people have died since fighting broke out in February. Since August, at least eight television networks and news services, including The Associated Press, have equipped employees with cars or small trucks designed to withstand bullets, shrapnel and even land mines. Journalists have long worn flak jackets, bulletproof vests and combat helmets when covering particularly perilous stories. In time of war, they also sometimes traveled with the military in protected vehicles. But the acquisition of armored cars by major news organizations themselves is something new, veteran reporters say. ``In Beirut, it never crossed my mind as far as I can recall,'' said the BBC's Bob Simpson. ``I think I was just stupid.'' The trend reflects the unique, largely unavoidable risks of Sarajevo - where the population is subject to mortars, artillery shelling and sniper fire in almost any street in the city. The armored cars are especially needed because of the frequent gunfire on the road between Sarajevo's center and the airport, a route that cannot be avoided by journalists entering or leaving the city. A CNN staffer was seriously wounded on the way to the airport in July. On Aug. 13, just-arrived ABC producer David Kaplan, 45, was killed by a bullet that penetrated the unarmored car he was riding in from the airport. ``Attacks can come from anywhere,'' said Christian Millet of Agence France-Presse. ``Elsewhere, when a journalist was shot at, it was - broadly speaking - an accident,'' he said. ``Here everybody is a target. ... If they see you are a journalist they shoot. They either don't care or they actually want to shoot journalists.'' Foreign journalists in Sarajevo routinely wear flak jackets or bulletproof vests - often inscribed with the wearer's name, news organization and blood type. Photographers and camera operators whose work takes them into the most dangerous areas usually put on battle helmets made of Kevlar, the lightweight, bulletproof plastic used by many NATO armies. Flak vests have been stolen from journalists by armed gunmen. ``It saved my life,'' said Morten Hvaal, an AP photographer, who displays a flak jacket with eight tear marks from bullets that struck him June 24 when he was riding in an ambulance riddled by bullets in the Dobrinja district. He suffered for four cracked ribs. The steel-plating around the passenger compartments and gas tanks make the armored cars heavy and hard to navigate, and they still are not foolproof against every threat. But the armor adds enormously to peace of mind, journalists say. ``It does help you face things,'' said Brabant. ``I used to feel almost physically sick in a soft car when the sniper is shooting fairly close. ... Now I feel a lot more relaxed.''
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The New York Times Friday, October 23 JOHN F. BURNS, from Sarajevo - In a step hailed by the UN military commander here as "the first signal of hope" for the relief of 400 000 civilians trapped since April, repair crews drawn from both sides in the Sarajevo siege have worked together to restore electrical power to 70 percent of the city and running water to a still wider area. The repairs, begun three weeks ago, started to bring electricity and water back to the city sporadically and in widely scattered areas last week. But in the last 48 hours, as major transmission lines damaged in the fighting have been repaired, utilities denied to hospitals, private homes and many other places for weeks, and in some cases months, have been restored. ................................................................ General Morillon said he would meet on Friday with officers from all three fighting forces engaged in the Bosnian war - Serbs, Croats, and the Muslim-led Bosnian Government - to push for a cease-fire. UN commanders took particular encouragement from the fact that the repairs to power lines were carried out by crews drawn equally from Serbian engineers and workers living outside the siege lines and Muslim counterparts living in Sarajevo. ............................................................... PAUL LEWIS, from Belgrade - The Yugoslav Prime Minister reiterated his call for an and to the UN trade embargo against his country today, saying it weakened him in his political struglle against the forces of reactionary Serbian nationalism. ................................................................. But MR. Panic's appeal, made in an interview aboard his plane while flying back from talks in Geneva, came a day after the UN and 12 EuropeanCommunity countries said sanctions must remain so long as Milosevic, the President of the Serbian Republic and Mr.Panic's archrival, refused to denounce violence by Serbs in B&H. The statement said the trade embargo would remain until all human rights abuses in B&H ceased, naming the Bosnian Serbs as "the principal offenders. FRANK J. PRIAL, from UN, Oct.22. - The US turned over to the UN today a compilation of data it has gathered from a variety of sources recounting the killing and torture of thousands of men, women, and children, most of them Muslims, by Serbian irregular forces in B&H. It is the seckond such report submitted to the UN by the US since August, when the Security Council called on all UN members to present evidence of breaches of the Geneva Convention to new war-crime commission. The first American report was submitted in September. The new document draws together what it calls "credible reports" from American Embassies and Consulates and interviews with refugees and journalists. Those reports, it says, document "numerous abhhorent incidents, including wilfull killings, torture of prisoners, abuse of civilians in detention camps, wanton devastation and destruction of property and mass forcible expulsion and deportation of civilians." Among the incidents reported are the killing of more than 100 men and boys by Serbian soldiers in the village of Bjelaj in late September; the massacre of 200 men and boys by Bosnian Serbs near Varjanta on Aug.21, and the killing of 100 Muslim women in Biscani on July 20. The report further recounts dozens of rapes and cases of abuse of civilians in detention centers. While nothing yhe vaule of the information it has compiled, the State Department said: "The international community needs to conduct investigations within yhe territory of the former Yugoslavia to assemble a more complete picture. Further, there is need for forensic evidence regarding the various allegations of mass atrocities." In another report released today, a joint team of UN inspectors and representatives of Physicians for Human Rights, a private group, said that they had discovered evidence of what might be the mass grave of 174 Croatian hospital patients apparently killed by Serbs in November. According to Dr. H. Jack Geiger, president of the physician's group and a professor at the City University of New York Medical School, a survivor's story led them to a site near the town of Vukovar where they found the remains of four skeletons "amid many indications that other bodies may be buried there." Dr. Geiger, who returned from Yugoslavia today, said his team immediately called on the UN Protection Forces in the area to secure the site until a full-scale forensic team could be assembled and a thorough search made.
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RFE/RL Daily Report No. 205, October 23, 1992 SUCCESSOR STATES TO THE USSR YELTSIN ATTACKS PARLIAMENT FOR REFUSING TO POSTPONE CONGRESS. On 22 October, Russian President Boris Yeltsin criticized parliament's refusal to postpone December's session of the Congress of People's Deputies, Interfax reported. Yeltsin said he would not "dramatize" the Supreme Soviet's decision, but he added that he was "displeased" with it. On 21 October, the parliament decided that the congress would open on 1 December, as scheduled, rather than postponing it until March. Yeltsin had requested the delay, saying that more time was needed to complete work on a new constitution, which would be discussed at the congress. The draft constitution stipulates that the congress must be abolished. (Vera Tolz, RFE/RL Inc.) RUTSKOI CALLS FOR COALITION GOVERNMENT. Speaking at a meeting of the People's Party of Free Russia on 22 October, Russian Vice President Aleksandr Rutskoi called on the government to share power in a coalition with the Civic Union, which is supported by heavy industry and favors a slower pace of reform. (Rutskoi is a founding member of the Civic Union.) In his speech, Rutskoi called for the ouster of six unnamed, high-level government officials, according to Rossiiskaya gazeta and Moskovsky komsomolets. Rutskoi was quoted as saying that under the current government's leadership, Russia had become "a political and economic trash can." The same day, AFP quoted Yeltsin's press secretary, Vyacheslav Kostikov, as saying Yeltsin was unlikely "to offer any sacrifices" to the Civic Union. Yeltsin has already made several governmental appointments due to pressure from the "industrial lobby." (Vera Tolz & Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL Inc.) KOZYREV WARNS PARLIAMENT. "There is the danger that our debate on foreign policy, which we welcome in every possible way, sometimes goes beyond the framework of searching for the best ways to [guarantee] the interests of the country," Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev said in his address before the Russian parliament on 22 October. He took aim at those who operate "under the guise of slogans" such as "a third way," "Eurasianism," or "great power patriotism." In his remarks, which were aired on Russian TV, Kozyrev also warned that such behavior was not consistent with Russia's choice for democracy. (Suzanne Crow, RFE/RL Inc.) KOZYREV ON GREAT POWER STATUS, CIS. In the same address, Kozyrev rejected the "panicky" and "defeatist mood" circulating in the Russian parliament, which concluded that Russia had become "a banana republic." He assured members of parliament that his meetings at the United Nations had confirmed that Russia is still regarded as a great power. Kozyrev offered assurances that the member-states of the CIS were a priority of Russian foreign policy and highlighted the trend toward integration for which some CIS members have lent support. (Suzanne Crow, RFE/RL Inc.) ECONOMIC AGREEMENTS SIGNED BETWEEN RUSSIA AND UKRAINE. Acting Russian Prime Minister Egor Gaidar and the newly appointed Ukrainian Prime Minister Leonid Kuchma signed three agreements on economic cooperation on 22 October, ITAR-TASS reported. The agreements stipulated that the signatories will exchange trade missions, introduce most favored treatment in mutual trading, and cooperate in construction projects in third countries. Gaidar told the agency that the talks also touched on the problems of payments and credits arising from Ukraine's plans to introduce its own currency and other issues. (Keith Bush, RFE/RL Inc.) AGREEMENT ON GAS DELIVERIES TO EUROPE. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Chernmyrdin told Interfax on 22 October that an agreement was also reached between the Russian and Ukrainian prime ministers on gas supplies to Europe. It was agreed that, "regardless of the internal political situation," the obligations of energy suppliers to Western Europe must be met. Chernomyrdin said that Ukraine owed Russia some twenty-five to thirty billion rubles for gas deliveries. (Keith Bush, RFE/RL Inc.) INTERENTERPRISE DEBTS DOWN. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Georgii Khizha told parliament on 22 October that the total volume of interenterprise debts in the former Soviet Union had declined from 3.4 trillion rubles to 648 billion rubles by the end of September, Interfax reported. He said that the netting-out of debts had been virtually completed. Enterprises had requested 760 billion rubles in new credits, but had been given 300 billion rubles. Acting Russian Central Bank Chairman Viktor Gerashchenko was cited as saying that the netting-out had not resolved the financial problems of enterprises because wholesale prices had risen by a factor of 16 since 1 January, while their "turnover resources" had risen by a mere 150%. (Keith Bush, RFE/RL Inc.) EBRD REPORT ON RUSSIAN ECONOMY. In its latest quarterly review, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) says that a rise in popular discontent is likely in Russia during the coming months, Reuters reported on 22 October. The Bank also states that without a clear return to monetary and fiscal discipline, inflation in Russia could turn into hyperinflation during the final months of 1992. It notes further that the Russian budget deficit is heading towards the equivalent of 17% of GNP, that is, more than three times the 5% level agreed with the IMF in early July. (Keith Bush, RFE/RL Inc.) PRESIDENT OF EBRD FORECASTS MASS UNEMPLOYMENT IN CIS. In an apocalyptic speech on the problems of the CIS, Jacques Attali, President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, warned of mass dismissals and plant closures in 1993, western press agencies reported on 22 October. His predictions are based on an International Labor Organization (ILO) study presented in Moscow this week. This study contests the idea held by many Western economists that enterprises are still hanging onto employees, and it claims that many unemployed are not receiving unemployment benefits or employment services. The ILO has expressed concern at the lack of preparation for mass unemployment, and is planning to advise Russia on ways of creating new industrial jobs. The ILO forecasts are based on the assumption that economic reform will impose hard budget constraints on enterprises, which is not yet the case. (Sheila Marnie, RFE/RL Inc.) RUBLE EXCHANGE RATE UNCHANGED IN MOSCOW. The ruble exchange rate at the Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange on 22 October remained unchanged at 368 rubles to the US dollar, Interfax reported. The volume traded was $39.3 million. At the St. Petersburg currency auction on 21 October, the ruble had dropped to 375 rubles to the dollar. (Keith Bush, RFE/RL Inc.) SETTLING TROOPS IN THE MOSCOW REGION. Problems in redeploying troops from Eastern Europe, the Baltic States, and other regions were discussed on 22 October at a meeting of the Moscow oblast government, ITAR-TASS reported. Plans call for 26 formations, units, and military institutions to be relocated in the oblast, primarily in the Naro-Fominsk, Odintsovsk, and Solnechnogorsk regions, and in the city of Dubna. Newly arriving officers will occupy temporary housing, with several thousand apartments scheduled to be constructed in 1993. Colonel General Leontii Kuznetsov, commander of the Moscow Military District, told ITAR-TASS that regional administrators have been cooperative in all regions, with the exception of Dubna, where deputies are protesting the deployment of troops and weaponry. Kuznetsov also said there were few problems housing conscripts because most units were only 50% manned. (Stephen Foye, RFE/RL Inc.) KRAVCHUK ON CRIMEAN TATARS. Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk has suggested forming a trilateral commission to deal with the practical problems of resettling the Crimean Tatars in the Crimea, Interfax reported on 22 October. The members of the commission would include representatives of Ukraine, the Crimea, and the Crimean Tatar Mejlis. The Mejlis was recently ruled to be unconstitutional by the Crimean parliament. (Roman Solchanyk, RFE/RL Inc.) US TO HELP BELARUS GET RID OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS. Belarus Deputy Minister of Defense Aleksandr Tushinskiy and US Under Secretary of Defense Frank Wisner initialed a series of nuclear agreements in Washington on 22 October. According to Pentagon spokesman Bob Hall, these included an umbrella agreement providing the legal framework for US assistance and two implementing agreements. One calls for up to $5 million in US aid to equip and train Belarus personnel to deal with any emergency that might arise during the removal of ex-Soviet nuclear weapons from the Republic. The second is designed to help Belarus establish export control systems to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Hall said that up to $1 million is available for this purpose. The money will be drawn from the $400 million which the US Congress has authorized to aid the former Soviet Union. (Doug Clarke, RFE/RL Inc.) BELARUS FORCE LEVELS; COLLECTIVE SECURITY. Belarus Defense Minister Pavel Kozlovsky told reporters in Minsk on 21 October that the CFE agreement permitted Belarus to retain 1,800 tanks, 2,000 armored vehicles, and 130 combat aircraft, Interfax reported the next day. Over the next 40 months, he said, the manpower of the armed forces could not exceed 100,000. His remarks followed a closed session of the parliament at which the CFE treaty was ratified. According to Belinform-TASS on 21 October, Deputies also discussed participation by Belarus in the CIS Collective Security Treaty signed in Tashkent, but were unable to reach a consensus. They decided to return to the issue at a later date. (Stephen Foye, RFE/RL Inc.) BUFFER ZONE IN TAJIKISTAN? ITAR-TASS reported on 22 October that its Dushanbe correspondent has learned of plans to establish a buffer zone between the Tajik capital and Kulyab Oblast, the main center of support for deposed President Rakhmon Nabiev in the southern part of the country. The buffer zone, proposed by acting President Akbarsho Iskandarov to keep pro- and anti-government fighters apart, is to be occupied by Russian soldiers. The Russian division stationed in Tajikistan is already guarding the Nurek power plant, which supplies electricity to Dushanbe and was seized by fighters from Kulyab during the summer. The correspondent noted that fighting continues between pro-government forces in Kurgan-Tyube Oblast and anti-government forces from Kulyab; despite high losses both sides are determined to continue. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL Inc.) HELICOPTER HIJACKERS TRADED CARPETS FOR ARMS. The commander of a unit of Russian border guards in Tajikistan told ITAR-TASS on 21 October that a helicopter hijacked from Tajikistan to Afghanistan on 19 October had returned the following day with a load of weapons and had landed undisturbed, unloading the weapons obtained in Afghanistan. According to an Interfax report, the hijackers traded Tajik carpets for the weapons. The border guards were prevented from approaching the helicopter when it returned; apparently local representatives of the Tajik National Security Committee took charge of the weapons. A protest by Russian border troops to local authorities was ignored. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL Inc.) MILITARY TEST SITES CLOSED IN KAZAKHSTAN. KazTAG reported on 21 October that Sagat Tugelbaev, head of the Atyrau Oblast administration, has ordered that nuclear missile test sites in the oblast be closed down. The report indicated that officials from the Russian Federation, who had come to Atyrau (formerly Gurev) to meet with oblast officials and a special commission headed by Kazakhstan's defense minister, had argued hotly against the closure. Troop commanders at the sites have been ordered to clean them up. There have been press reports and inquiries about the military test sites in western Kazakhstan for more than a year. It appears that in the Atyrau case, Alma-Ata is permitting local interest to take precedence over CIS agreements. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL Inc.) RUSSIAN GROUP'S APARTMENT CONFISCATED IN ALMA-ATA. The largely-Russian independent trade-union organization Birlesu has had an apartment confiscated for use by Kazakhs, Birlesu's information agency complained on 20 October. The apartment, according to the report, is owned by the group, which wanted to use it as a center representing the AFL-CIO in Kazakhstan. The Union of Homeless has told Kazakhs that they may occupy the apartments of Russians who have left the country; although the apartment in question did not fall into this category, it was apparently seen by the Kazakh organization as Russian housing that was not currently in use. Birlesu complained that neither the mayor's office nor the state prosecutor was willing to do anything about the forcible takeover. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL Inc.) TURKMENISTAN TO REMAIN IN RUBLE ZONE. Nazar Suyunov, Turkmenistan's deputy prime minister responsible for economic issues, signed an agreement on a unified CIS currency system, ITAR-TASS reported on 22 October. Turkmenistan had not subscribed to the agreement during the Bishkek summit "for technical reasons," according to the report. Suyunov's signature demonstrates that Turkmenistan intends to remain within the "ruble zone," although the same day Turkmen President Saparmurad Niyazov said on Russian TV that Turkmenistan intends to introduce its own currency, in consultation with Russia and other states, because a national currency is a necessary attribute of national independence. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL Inc.) MOSCOW BOMBER A "DNIESTER" SUPPORTER. The main perpetrator of the incident involving the throwing of an army hand grenade on 20 October near a MacDonald's restaurant in Moscow, which injured eight people, is Valerii Zakharenkov, a former leader of Moscow youth gangs, who has been convicted twice of rape and robbery. Disclosing these details upon apprehending him, the police added that Zakharenkov had recently moved to the "Dniester republic" and received a residence permit from the latter's authorities, and that he accused the Russian authorities of not doing enough to help Russians in that part of Moldova, Reuters and TASS reported on 20 October. (Vladimir Socor, RFE/RL Inc.) CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE MASS GRAVE FOUND AT VUKOVAR? The BBC and AFP on 22 October reported that UN human rights inspectors said they believed they had found at least one mass grave near Vukovar. The team was headed by special envoy and former Polish Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki and included a forensic pathologist. Mazowiecki asked Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali to send UN troops to protect the site until more forensic experts could arrive. The eastern Slavonian city was a symbol of Croatian resistance to virtually constant Serbian shelling until it fell in November 1991. AFP quoted Croatian officials as saying that 3,000 Vukovar residents are listed as missing, including 300 hospital patients. The BBC also noted that the US had sent the UN its second report since September on probable human rights violations in Bosnia-Herzegovina, chiefly involving attacks by Serbs against Muslims. (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL Inc.) BOSNIAN UPDATE. International media on 22 October said that the UN had decided to resume relief flights to Sarajevo after a 24-hour hiatus. Responsible authorities had meanwhile concluded that fighting between Muslims and Croats in central Bosnia did not pose a danger to the flights. Reuters added that the Croats appeared to be consolidating their hold on a string of towns northwest of Sarajevo on the overland route used by UN convoys from Zagreb. Fighting continued between Serbs and Croats at Trebinje in Herzegovina near Dubrovnik, a scene of massacres of Serbs by Croats during World War II. Ethnic strife returned there with a vengeance in the current conflict, which some observers have called a resumption of the World War II violence after a 46-year break. (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL Inc.) SERB-ALBANIAN TALKS YIELD NO PROGRESS. No progress was reported in talks between education ministry officials of Serbia, the federal rump Yugoslavia, and the self-proclaimed Kosovo government, which resumed in Belgrade on 22 October. The talks center on reopening Albanian-language schools in Kosovo province, where Albanians make up more than 90% of the population. Serbia closed the schools in 1990. The talks opened on 14 October in Pristina. The Albanians want the restoration of Albanian-language curriculum to be based on a broad policy that applies to all educational levels, from primary to university. The Serbs want a step-by-step review dealing with each level separately. In another development, Borba reports on 20 October that Milan Panic, Prime Minister of rump Yugoslavia, asked Kosovo leader Ibrahim Rugova to select three capable Albanians to serve in Panic's federal cabinet. (Milan Andrejevich, RFE/RL Inc.) PANIC-MILOSEVIC SHOWDOWN IMMINENT. Serbian and international media report on 22 October that a showdown between Milan Panic and Serbia's President Slobodan Milosevic is imminent in the wake of the 19 October takeover of the federal interior ministry building by Serbian republican police. But both sides are dismissing the possibility of a coup as "absurd" and "self-defeating." Coup rumors spread after Belgrade TV on 21 October reported in a lead story on Milosevic's visit to the federal military's Technical Institute. Belgrade's independent radio B-92 suggested the TV report was a signal to Panic that Milosevic has the army's backing. Meanwhile Serbia's ruling Socialist Party announced that Milosevic will seek reelection as Serbia's President despite the fact that he is doing poorly in recent opinion polls. (Milan Andrejevich, RFE/RL Inc.) RUSSIAN PARLIAMENT WANTS OMON LEADER RETURNED TO RUSSIA. Baltfax reported on 22 October that the Russian Supreme Soviet has asked Latvia "to return [to Russia] its citizen Sergei Parfenov in view of the clear lack of evidence of his guilt," although Parfenov's trial has not yet ended. Parfenov is being tried in Riga on charges of abuse of power while a leader of OMON forces in Latvia in 1991. He was extradited to Latvia by the Russian State Prosecutor's Office. In 1991 and 1992 members of OMON attacked Latvia's Ministry of Internal Affairs as well as the civilian population; scores of individuals were injured and several persons were killed. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL Inc.) TALKS ON DANUBE DIVERSION BREAK DOWN. According to several news agency reports, talks to resolve the long-standing conflict between Czechoslovakia and Hungary over the proposed diversion of the Danube river broke down in Brussels on 22 October. The Hungarian negotiator said the talks, which are mediated by the European Community, broke down because the Czechoslovak side did not accept the conditions that had been clearly specified by the EC commission earlier. Czechoslovakia plans to divert the river on 3 November. Despite the breakdown in Brussels, environmental committees of the two countries' parliaments held their first talks in Budapest yesterday. (Judith Pataki, RFE/RL Inc.) CZECH PARLIAMENT APPROVES LAW ON INTELLIGENCE SERVICE. The Czech National Council passed a law on the creation of the Czech Security and Information Service (BIS) on 22 October. The BIS will succeed the Federal Security and Information Service (FBIS) after the disintegration of Czechoslovakia. The activities of the new intelligence service will be monitored by a special commission elected by the parliament. The law also stipulates that BIS employees may not be members of a political party. Opposition deputies walked out in protest before the vote on the law. They charged that the draft provided insufficient control over the use of "intelligence devices." (Jan Obrman, RFE/RL Inc.) CZECH AND SLOVAK MINISTERS GUARANTEE PROPERTY RIGHTS. The privatization ministers of the Czech and Slovak republics, Jiri Skalicky and Lubomir Dolgos assured shareholders in privatized companies on 22 October that their shares will be safe after the breakup of Czechoslovakia, CSTK reported. Skalicky told journalists in Prague that property rights will not be infringed upon. Dolgos said the rights of Czechs who invested in Slovak companies will be guaranteed, although they will effectively own shares in a foreign company after 1 January 1993. The two ministers also announced that the republics will pursue separate privatization programs after the disintegration of Czechoslovakia. (Jan Obrman, RFE/RL Inc.) HUNGARIAN CHIEF PROSECUTOR ORDERS INVESTIGATION. MTI reported on 22 October that the Chief Prosecutor has ordered an investigation into alleged war crimes committed in connection with the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. The investigation was requested by three Hungarian Democratic Forum deputies. By the deputies' definition, war crimes committed during or after the 1956 revolution include: initiating Soviet aggression against the legitimate Hungarian government in October 1956, inspiring the Soviet occupation of the country, participating in acts of revenge against freedom fighters, and hindering the restoration of peace in Eastern Europe. (Judith Pataki, RFE/RL Inc.) ROMAN REFUSES TO JOIN COALITION GOVERNMENT. National Salvation Front (NSF) leader and former prime minister Petre Roman has ruled out joining a coalition government led by the rival Democratic National Salvation Front, the party behind President Ion Iliescu. In an interview with Reuters, Roman said on 22 October that the solution would likely be a minority government with an acceptable program supported by both his party and the Democratic Convention, an alliance of the main opposition forces. In a separate statement broadcast by Radio Bucharest, the NSF insisted that a "social pact" cabinet could not be formed without broad political negotiations. (Dan Ionescu, RFE/RL Inc.) FORMER DISSIDENT TO BE ROMANIA'S PRIME MINISTER? Former Romanian dissident Mihai Botez returned to Bucharest from the United States on 22 October. The 51-year-old Botez left Romania in 1987 after a decade of dissent against late dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. Quoting unnamed sources in Bucharest, Reuter said that Romania's President Ion Iliescu had asked Botez, a mathematician and futurologist, to become the non-partisan prime minister of a coalition government. Inconclusive elections on 27 September produced a hung parliament in Romania. In what Romanian media describe as a "Panic complex," (a reference to Milan Panic, prime minister of rump Yugoslavia), some observers believe that Botez might be the person to lead the country out of the current crisis. (Dan Ionescu, RFE/RL Inc.) MACDEONIAN PRESIDENT, DEFENSE MINISTER, VISIT BULGARIA. On 22 October the President of the Republic of Macedonia, Kiro Gligorov, paid a brief surprise visit to Sofia. Gligorov said he had come mainly to see the staging of a play written by a Macedonian playwright, but that it was also a "good occasion to exchange opinions" with Bulgarian President Zhelyu Zhelev. According to BTA, the two discussed regional and bilateral problems. At the same time a Macedonian military delegation, led by Defense Minister Vlado Popovski, visited Sofia. The Bulgarian Defense Ministry released a statement saying that the Macedonians, in the process of creating their own army, were interested in military expert assistance. The talks were also reported to have covered trade in military equipment, although both sides committed themselves to respect international treaties and domestic legislation. (Kjell Engelbrekt, RFE/RL Inc.) BULGARIAN MINISTERS DEFEND GOVERNMENT PERFORMANCE. At a plenary session of the National Assembly on 22 October, leading members of the present Bulgarian cabinet came forward to defend their policies and, on some occasions, to regret their mistakes. Whereas Prime Minister Filip Dimitrov and Finance Minister Ivan Kostov mainly blamed the opposition for the recent political turmoil, Deputy Premier and Minister of Education and Science Nikolay Vasilev said the government had not sought wide public support for its actions. The confidence vote requested by the government was postponed until next week. (Kjell Engelbrekt, RFE/RL Inc.) SUCHOCKA PRESSES FOR DEBT CONCESSIONS. Polish Prime Minister Hanna Suchocka urged Western creditors and the International Monetary Fund to exercise greater leniency in setting targets for the Polish economy. In an interview with Reuter on 22 October, Suchocka said that foreign debt payments will soon consume one-third of export income if no compromise is reached. The IMF should agree to an increase in the budget deficit to exceed the original 5%-of-GDP ceiling, she added. Suchocka travels to Rome for a two-day private visit on 23 October. She is to be received twice by the Pope and meet with the Italian prime minister and foreign minister. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL Inc.) LATVIAN COURT SUSPENSION OF NEWSPAPER. On 19 October a Riga court ordered the suspension of the registration certificate of the Latvian citizen's movement's newspaper Pilsonis. The order means that the newspaper can no longer be published. Charges against Pilsonis were brought by the Latvian State Prosecutor Janis Skrastins and supported by Minister of Justice Viktors Skudra, BNS reported on 20 October. The newspaper was known to have published controversial reports and critical assessments of the policies and actions of the government. It is not clear if the publishers will appeal decision. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL Inc.) LATVIAN-RUSSIAN TALKS RESUME. LatvianRussian troop withdrawal talks resumed on 23 October in Moscow. The Latvian side wants to discuss the detailed proposal on ways to remove all troops by 1993 that it presented at the last round of talks in September. The Russian side appears determined to keep 1994 as the deadline for the pullout, Baltic media report. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL Inc.) LITHUANIAN INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION DROPS. Industrial production in Lithuania in the last nine months has dropped 47.5% compared to the same period last year, BNS reported on 20 October. Oil refining production decreased 66%, batteries - 72%, paper - 61%, sugar - 56%, bicycles - 53%, laundry detergents - 51%, and canned fish - 50%. Exports for hard currency in the nine months, however, rose from 2.9% to 9.4% of total production. Compared to August, September production of grain rose 87%, chemical fibers and yarn - 67%, woolen fabrics - 56%, knitwear 42%, refrigerators and stockings - 26%. Production costs in September were 18 times greater than in September 1991 and 1.8 times greater than in August 1992. Consumer prices in the same periods increased 6 and 1.3 times. (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL Inc.) WORLD BANK LOANS TO LITHUANIA AND LATVIA. On 22 October the World Bank approved loans of $60 million to Lithuania and $45 million to Latvia, a RFE/RL correspondent in Washington reports. The loans will be used to buy medicines, feed grain, and energy. Japan's import-export bank has also promised to provide additional co-financing of $100 million to the three Baltic republics. In an unrelated measure, Reuters reported that Sweden was donating one coastguard vessel each to Latvia and Lithuania to monitor fishing, for customs and border control, and for environmental protection. (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL Inc.) LITHUANIA, CZECHOSLOVAKIA TO END VISA REQUIREMENT. On 21 October Lithuanian deputy foreign minister Valdemaras Katkus and his Czechoslovak counterpart Jaroslav Suchanek exchanged official notes on establishing visa-free travel between the two countries beginning on 19 November, Radio Lithuania reports. During his visit to Czechoslovakia Katkus also held meetings with Czech deputy foreign minister Sasa Vondra and Slovak foreign minister Vladimir Kniazko. (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL Inc.)
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A Hospital Crib Is His Home, the Staff His Only Family By JOHN DANISZEWSKI Associated Press Writer SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) _ From a dingy crib in the pediatrics ward of Kosevo Hospital, 20-month-old Darko Plecic casts brown eyes on a stranger and whimpers a wordless plea to be picked up. Once in the visitor's arms, the tot with a wire-brush tuft of chestnut hair snuggles and clings like a frightened monkey. So rarely does anyone come to see him that a young girl looks up curiously: ``Darko, who's visiting you?'' Although Darko is basically healthy, his entire world for seven months has been the inside of this frequently shelled hospital, filled with the maimed and dying, often lit only by candlelight because electricity shortages. Darko is among at least 10 children here whose parents have been separated from them in the fighting and who have nowhere to go because of the war tearing apart Bosnia- Herzegovina. ``We're his unofficial parents. The staff here is the only family he has,'' said Dr. Adnan Hadzimuratovic. Darko's parents sent him to the capital last March 17 from Visegrad, 50 miles east of Sarajevo, for treatment of an intestinal disorder. Then war came. Now no one at the hospital knows whether Darko's parents are alive. ``Can anyone in America understand that in Bosnia- Herzegovina, there are dozens of `concentration camps' cut off from one another?'' said Dr. Lutvo Hodzic, the pediatrics director. ``One of these camps is called Sarajevo, and another is Visegrad,'' he said. ``So we have no idea what is going on with his parents because we are surrounded by a fascist army, and so are they.'' Sarajevo and other Muslim-dominated Bosnian cities have been besieged by Serbian rebels in a six-month war that has killed over 14,000 people. Darko spends most of his time on a cot with sheets that are washed infrequently because of a lack of running water. He wears borrowed clothes. Rags substitute for diapers. The harried staff spares him as much time as possible, but fears his emotional growth will suffer as he spends month after month a prisoner of his crib. ``He was everyone's favorite. When Darko started to cry, we all raced to pick him up,'' said Hadzimuratovic. ``But he started not to grow as quickly as he should. We moved him to pediatrics because we thought the food there might be better.'' ``He was our mascot,'' said head nurse Fatima Zaimovic. ``The other children come and go, and he stayed with us.'' Most of the other children are victims of shelling and sniping. Some have lost legs and must learn to walk with crutches. Others grimace in pain as nurses clean their deep shrapnel wounds. Despite their own suffering, many spend time with Darko. ``He learned to walk here, with the other children helping,'' said physical therapist Sabina Raic. ``I played dolls with him. We didn't have cars,'' said 11-year-old Mustafa Osmanovic, another child cut off from his parents. Darko might be better off in a foster home, Raic said, but ``nobody asked to take him.'' The city orphanage, which lacks heat, has been turned over to refugees. Parents often beg the hospital to keep their children as long as possible. ``Here they have three meals a day and it's probably less dangerous,'' Raic said. But Hodzic, the pediatrics chief, said shortages are starting to affect the hospital. ``It's not only that Darko is hungry and thirsty to be touched,'' he said. ``You should see him when I offer him a piece of bread. He is jumping in his bed for joy. He can't wait to get it in his mouth.'' Hodzic said hundreds of children like Darko could die if the international community doesn't start sending more food instead of ``empty declarations.'' ``Yesterday the main judge of the main court in Bosnia- Herzegovina came to me and cried like a baby, begging for one liter of milk for his three grandchildren,'' he said. ``Can you imagine something like that in your country?''
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Czechs Mourn Short-Lived Dream of Fairy Tale Revolution (Prague) By Tyler Marshall and Iva Drapalova Special to the Los Angeles Times PRAGUE, Czechoslovakia _ Amid the grass and autumn leaves of the capi tal's Vysehrad Cemetery, a part of Europe came full circle Saturday. It was here nearly three years ago, with communism teetering on the b rink of collapse throughout Eastern Europe, that thousands of young Czechoslovaks gathered before marching to the center of Prague to demand their nation's freedom. That night was in many ways the apex of an extraordinary European autumn _ the start of a fairy tale revolution where no one died, the good guys won, and an enlightened philosopher-poet named Vaclav Havel emerged to lead his people to democracy. As events Saturday underscored, the Czechoslovaks did not live happil y ever after. On a remarkably similar chilly autumn day, several thousand people gathered near the gates of the same cemetery Saturday to mark a very different event: the dissolution of their country. The mood was melancholy. More in sadness than in anger, Czechoslovakia has effectively come apart. ``The framework of our nation has disintegrated,'' Czech Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus told the somber crowd. ``It is now up to us to build an independent Czech state on its ruins.'' Although events here contain none of the horror of the civil war ripping apart the nearby republics of the old Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia's demise carries equally disturbing implications for those who dream of a unified, peaceful Europe. If this state can fall apart despite its rich cultural heritage, a proven industrial potential and long democratic traditions, Europeans ask themselves, then what hope is there for the less stable, struggling nations of southeastern Europe and what used to be the Soviet Union? ``Czechoslovakia could have been an example for Europe and the whole world that different peoples can live together,'' said Karel Schwarzenberk, who ran Havel's presidential office until Havel resigned last summer. ``That we can't (live together) is a sad fact.'' Czechoslovakia's fate as an independent federal state was all but sealed by the Czech decision not to challenge a Slovak declaration of independence last July. Officially, Saturday's rally was called to celebrate the ``restoration'' of the Czech state _ a logical consequence of the breakup. With the date of the federation's formal breakup set for Jan. 1, therally was an attempt to instill a degree of Czech identity and affirm Czech independence. In fact, it seemed more a public mourning of the death of Czechoslovakia. The re-emergence of Slovakian nationalism came as part of a broader political assertiveness by ethnic and national groups throughout the former Soviet Bloc after the collapse of communism. Emotions were fueled further as Slovaks watched the overwhelming majority of foreign investment during the past two years flow into the Czech lands. Tough post-revolution economic policies designed by Klaus also hit Slovakia's obsolete, Soviet-designed heavy industry disproportionately hard. After an initial attempt last summer to meet Slovak demands for independence within a loose confederation with the Czech lands, Klaus has since insisted on a clean break. ``On both sides, people aren't sure this is the right way,'' said Martin Palous, a leader of the 1989 revolution who later became deputy foreign minister. ``The biggest problem for professional politicians is to convince people there are no alternatives.'' Saturday's rally showed that for many, the split has already occurred. Before leaving, those present held candles high and sang Czechoslovakia's national anthem _ a slow, soulful Czech melody that is followed by strains of brisk Slovak music. The Slovak portion was missing. Anti-Yeltsin Hard-Liners Stage Huge Show of Strength (Moscow) By Carey Goldberg (c) 1992, Los Angeles Times MOSCOW _ With President Boris N. Yeltsin already on the defensive, Russia's hard-line opposition staged its most coordinated show of strength yet Saturday, holding protest rallies in 60 cities across the country and gathering its disparate leaders into a new National Salvation Front. Yeltsin summoned his Cabinet for urgent talks on ``the state of the country,'' official Russian news agencies reported, sparking widespread speculation that he was deciding which ministers would have to be sacrificed to public discontent. There was no word from the Cabinet meeting Saturday night, but some national media even predicted that the Russian president could soon jettison the entire Cabinet, a group of bright young economists whom he has accused of caring too much about theory and not enough about people. Tens of thousands of protesters, organized mainly by labor unions, demonstrated in cities from Vladivostok to St. Petersburg Saturday to demand the Cabinet's resignation and an end to its attempts to push Russia toward a market-driven economy. ``We absolutely must get rid of this illegitimate government that came to power without people's support,'' unemployed architect Nadezhda Yuyukina said as she stood among about 5,000 other largely elderly demonstrators in the freezing cold of Moscow's October Square. ``They must go away in disgrace. What we have now is chaos.'' About 2,000 delegates, gathered at the founding congress of the National Salvation Front, applauded as organizer Ilya Konstantinov told them that the new group must ``struggle for power, and struggle for power in the nearest future.'' The new front ``must be capable of changing the course of history in our country,'' Konstantinov, a member of Parliament, said. The upsurge in opposition activity came just days after Yeltsin lost his bid to postpone a session of the Congress of People's Deputies, the country's highest legislative body, that is expected to take him to task for failures in his reform program. He rebuked lawmakers afterward for ``sliding too far to the right'' and said that he would not forget their disrespect. But he was nonetheless clearly on the defensive, and the prestigious Nezavisimaya Gazeta, or Independent Newspaper, headlined its Saturday edition: ``Yeltsin will have to change his team very soon _ fully or partially, that is the question.'' Critical remarks that Yeltsin made in a recent speech to Parliament have focused attention on Foreign Trade Minister Pyotr Aven and Economics Minister Andrei Nechayev, both of whom were singled out for censure. Most scenarios hold that Yeltsin will replace them with choices that will please conservatives in a preemptive move before the Dec. 1 congress. That would not be enough to satisfy leaders of the National Salvation Front. In speech after speech, they condemned the poverty and injustice that they said Yeltsin's reforms have brought Russia and demanded that the entire Cabinet resign. The Front must not resort to violence, they said, but if Yeltsin refuses to change his policies, it must bring about his resignation and a premature round of new elections to the presidency and Parliament. ``We must act within the law, but act more decisively than ever,'' Konstantinov said, ``because full collapse ... is only a few months away.'' Alexander Prokhanov, editor of the nationalist newspaper Den, or Day, said that life in Russia was now good ``only for rats and lies.'' ``The Democrats in the city governments do nothing but drink and steal,'' he said. ``Our writers die of hunger. Our icons are stolen from our museums. Our girls are taught to be prostitutes and our boys taught to be speculators.'' Yeltsin's nationalist opposition has tried repeatedly to organize itself into a coordinated bloc and failed, and although front leaders have gathered together an impressive array of politicians and ideologues, it was not clear that they would do any better. Already, cracks could be seen between the ``right-wing'' or nationalist opposition and the ``left-wing'' or old-style Communist opposition, with left-wing leaders pointedly staying away from the Front's congress and running their own rallies instead. And despite the opposition's growing strength, Russian commentators continued to put their money on Yeltsin, having seen him pull through many a bad situation using pure political skill. ``In ancient Sparta, there were two kinds of czars _ one for peace and one for war,'' analyst Nikolai Svanidze said on Russian Television's nightly news. ``Boris Yeltsin would have been a warring czar. In situations of sharp conflict, he demonstrates his best qualities, making quick and definite decisions.'' ``Right now, that's the kind of situation we're in,'' Svanidze said. Pentagon Warned Bush Not to Send Weak Message to Hussein (Washn) By Douglas Frantz (c) 1992, Los Angeles Times WASHINGTON _ Senior Pentagon officials tried unsuccessfully to prevent President Bush from sending a message to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein a few days before the invasion of Kuwait because they feared it was too weak to halt Iraqi aggression, former administration officials said Sunday. The attempt to block the president's message came as the Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency were increasingly convinced that Iraqi troops were preparing an invasion of Kuwait, according to former officials and sources. However, the State Department and White House blocked the Pentagon attempt and Bush sent a cautious communique to Hussein on July 28, 1990, just five days before the invasion. Bush asked Hussein to avoid military action but he did not name Kuwait and couched the request in terms of a continued desire for friendship. ``By the 24th (of July), when the Iraqi troops were moving, there was no question about how serious this was,'' Henry S. Rowen, then the assistant secretary of defense for international affairs, said in an interview. ``The particular instruction was unnecessarily weak in our view.'' The disclosure of the Pentagon objection to Bush's message, first reported in the New York Times, fuels the debate over whether the Bush administration was stern enough in dealing with Hussein in the days leading up to the invasion. White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater attributed the flap over the message to Hussein to a heated presidential campaign in which Bush appears to be narrowing the gap that Democratic nominee Bill Clinton enjoys. He said that a lot of people are trying ``to embarrass the president by saying: `I told him to do this and he didn't want to do it. I advised him to be tough and be weak or be strong.' It's crazy.'' Bush was first urged to send a strong warning to Hussein in an administration options paper in May 1990. The Iraqi leader was threatening to use his army to settle a dispute with Kuwait over oil prices and the border between the two countries. The White House rejected the proposal, preferring the assurances of its Arab allies that Hussein would not resort to force and that he should be dealt with diplomatically. By late July, the Department of Defense was concerned as 35,000 Iraqi troops moved to the border with Kuwait. Sources said that reconnaissance satellites spotted the Iraqis laying secure communications lines near the border, evidence that they were serious about an invasion. ``Those of us at Defense were deeply concerned about the Iraqi troop buildup and we thought they were going to go,'' said Marvin C. Feuerwerger, a Middle East strategist at the Department of Defense at the time and now an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. On July 25, Hussein had met with U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie and discussed his dispute with Kuwait and U.S.-Iraq relations. A personal response to Hussein from Bush was drafted at the White House and State Department. The draft was shown to Pentagon officials on July 27 and Rowen said that they feared its cautious tone did not indicate a U.S. willingness to defend Kuwait with military forces. ``We voiced objections to the State Department and thought we had a hold on it,'' said Rowen, now a professor at Stanford University and senior fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution. ``It needed to be much tougher.'' By late July, CIA officials were alarmed by Iraq's buildup on the Kuwaiti border. Infrared photography from a spy satellite showed Iraqi troops hauling ammunition, fuel and water to forces along the northern border with Kuwait, according to ``Eclipse,'' a new book on the CIA by Mark Perry. On the morning of July 28, according to the book, CIA Director William H. Webster led a contingent of agency officials to the White House to brief Bush. The satellite photographs were presented to Bush, along with the CIA's assessment that Hussein might attack Kuwait. But later that day, the three-paragraph message was sent to Hussein. Five days later, on Aug. 2, Iraq invaded Kuwait. A senior Bush administration official involved in drafting the message to Hussein said that Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Kuwait were urging Bush not to respond harshly. He pointed out that Hussein had told Glaspie that he intended to negotiate a resolution to his differences with Kuwait. ``The sense at that point was not to roil the waters just when they w ere getting calm,'' said the official. Congressional Democrats have accused Bush of being too soft on Iraq in a number of areas, including continuing U.S. credits for loans in the face of strong evidence of Iraqi abuse. The administration has defended extending the aid in part by citing a May 21, 1990, report by the Department of Agriculture which found little evidence of serious Iraqi abuses in the program. An internal Department of Justice document obtained by the Los Angeles Times provides the harshest criticism yet of the report. The May 21, 1990, memo by a federal prosecutor in Atlanta warned that the report was inaccurate and could constitute misleading Congress if it were released. Prosecutor Gale McKenzie, who was leading the investigation into the abuses in connection with a massive bank fraud, urged the department to try to block the report's release. But it was released anyway. Baker Intervened for Iraq, Documents Show (Washn) By R. Jeffrey Smith (c) 1992, The Washington Post WASHINGTON _ Then-Secretary of State James A. Baker III personally intervened to extend U.S. loan guarantees to Iraq three years ago, contravening explicit, detailed warnings from a federal prosecutor that Iraqi officials were implicated in criminal wrongdoing on past loan guarantees, according to government documents. Baker, who now is White House chief of staff, took the action at a time the State Department was anxious to obtain Iraqi support for a U.S. plan, worked out with Egypt, for a new dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians on peace in the Middle East, the documents indicate. The prosecutor's warnings included details of ``criminal complicity'' in the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL) scandal by Iraqi officials who participated in negotiations with the Bush administration for $1 billion in loan guarantees, which were granted in November 1989. The prosecutor, however, did not secure indictment of the Iraqis until the end of the Persian Gulf War in February 1991. By then, the United States had released $500 million of the loan guarantees, which Iraq is now considered unlikely to repay. The documents, released Saturday by the Senate Agriculture Committee, shed new light on events surrounding the 1989 loan guarantee decision, the most generous of the Bush administration's myriad efforts to curry favor with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein before the gulf war. They raise new questions whether Baker's insistence on the loan guarantee program prompted other goverment officials, including senior officials at the Agriculture Department, to ignore or deliberately misrepresent the prosecutor's warnings of Iraqi wrongdoing. ``This is just another example of how the Bush administration ignored the warning signs in its blind pursuit of closer ties with Saddam Hussein,'' Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., said. The documents reveal that Baker responded angrily when the Agriculture Department cited the reports of Iraqi wrongdoing in briefly suspending negotiations on new loan guarantees in October 1989. At an Oct. 13 meeting, Baker told staff members that was ``a step in the wrong direction'' and ordered them to ``get it back onto the table,'' according to notes taken at the meeting. State Department legal adviser Abraham D. Sofaer subsequently dispatched one of his deputies, Michael K. Young, to lobby the Agriculture Department for a reversal of its decision, while then-Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger lobbied senior Treasury Department officials who also opposed granting new guarantees. Undersecretary of State Robert M. Kimmitt also lobbied various officials at Baker's request, according to the documents. On Nov. 9, after an interagency decision to approve the $1 billion in loan guarantees, Kimmitt told Baker he could ``break the good news to Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz, since he raised the issue with you, and you promised to take a personal interest in it.'' ``This decision by the administration reflects the importance we attach to our relationship with Iraq,'' Baker told Aziz in a confidential telex the same day. Baker added that ``it would be useful if you could weigh in with (the Palestinians) and ... urge them to give a positive response to Egypt's suggestions'' about Middle East peace. The memos make clear how unsettling the revelations from the BNL probe were to the officials charged with keeping the loan guarantee program on track. The investigation of the Italian-owned bank began in late July 1989, when two employees from BNL's Atlanta branch told authorities of a massive, unreported effort to help Iraq finance billions of dollars' worth of food and arms purchases. Within two weeks, federal agents raided the Atlanta branch and learned that more than $1 billion of BNL's illegal loans to Iraq had been guaranteed by the Agriculture Department's Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC). They also discovered that senior Iraqi officials were deeply involved in kickbacks, bribes and other illicit BNL loans that did not involve the CCC.
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The New York Times Sunday, October 25 CONVERSATIONS / Emir Kusturica A Bosnian Movie Maker Laments The Death of the Yugoslav Nation He is a desplaced person; a Bosnian who cannot return to Bosnia, a Slav of Muslim origin who never practiced Islam, a Yugoslav patriot whose Yugoslav culture has been demolished. Emir Kusturica, the director from Sarajevo whose films have won major international awards, is living the title of his last movie, "Time of the Gypsies." as he alternates residences between a room in Morningside Heights in Manhattan and an apartmant in Paris, he wonderes whether anything remains of his family memorabilia in his place of birth the shattered capital of B&H. Talk pours out of him like the water of the swift-flowing rivers of his homeland; he spoke recently for a stretchof three hours in an Upper West Side cafe near Columbia University , where, with breaks for filming he teaches film studies. He said that for several years after Tito died in 1980, Yugoslavia was a kind of superpower. Great movies. Beautiful novels. Great rock-and-roll. We became a superpower in basketball. "I never wanted an independant Bosnia," he said of his homeland, the breakaway Yugoslav republic now engulfed by war."I wanted Yugoslavia. That is my country." "The problem is that people needed to identify more strongly with it after Tito and his awful, tricky way of leading the country,"Mr.Kus- turica said. "Instead, religion got in the way through nationalism -the same as 500 years ago - as the main generator of emotions .At a certain moment, Yugoslavia stopped being rational, and then you end up going to war". At the beginning of October, Mr. Kusturica ,37 years old, returned briefly to a fragment of the former Yugoslavia, the Montenegrin coastal town of Herceg Novi. He went there to bury his father, who had died of a heart attack at age 70 in an apartment the son had leased after getting him out of the war zone. "This war killed him too," he said."My father got hit by invisible lightning. I compare the death of my father and the death of the country." While on the Adriatic coast, the director encountered Bosnian Serbs on furlough from the front lines of fighting in the republic. one of them related an experience that to Mr. Kusturica epitomized the absurdity of the Balkan war. "I spoke to a Serbian warrior who told me of coming home to his belongings and money," Mr.Kusturica said. "They actually scraped the wallpaper off his walls." He said the pillagers apparently presumed that the dwelling belonged not to a Serb but to a Muslim. "Scratching off wallpaper, that is the symbol of this war,"Mr.Kus- turica said. "The essence of this war is plunder on all sides. In May, Muslim militiamen looted my father's apartment in Sarajevo. They even took my film prizes." Mr. Kusturica said his personal heritage reflects the essential Bosnian experience of domination by the Ottoman Turks from the 15th century until early this century. "I am a living illustration of Bosnian mixing and converting," he said. "My greandparents lived in eastern Hercegovina. Very poor. The Turks came and brought Islam. There were three brothers in the family. One was Ortodox Christian. The other two took Islam to survive. Bosnians, in Mr. Kusturica's view , are not very religious, and though he read the Bible and the Koran "for personal educati on," he described himself as having "a nice pagan, tolerant point of view." This, he said, corresponds to the "certain paganism which appears in paintings, in movies, in books" that is characteristic of Bosnian culture, although Bosnia was also a nexus of Catolic, Ortodox andIslamic faiths and a center of Jewish culture as well. Mr.Kusturica's films have almost by definition been transcultural-the oddball Sarajevo love story ,"Do you remember Dolly Bell?" (Gold lion 1981) ;the growing up in Sarajevo story,"When Father Was Away on Business" (Golden Palm 1985); and "Time of Gypsies" (Rosellini award for directing 1989) His Sarajevo films got him into a lot of trouble with Bosnian Muslims "because I showed that Muslims could be silly , too." He has just completed his first English-speaking film, a view of American society called "Arizona Dream", which is scheduled for release early next year, and he soon will start work on a version of "Crime and Punishment" set in Brighton Beach. A conversation with Emir Kusturica comes back again and again to Ivo Andric , the Bosnian writer who won the Nobel prise for Literature in 1961 for his epic "Bridge on the Drina".The late author's 100th birthday on Oct.10 went unmarked in the lands of the former Yugoslavia. Since Mr.Andric's death in 1975, Mr. Kusturica has wanted to make a film based on the novel, which chronicles Bosnian history using the Turkish bridge of stone at Visegrad and the role it plays in the lives of people living along the river."I should make this film", he said. "But they would kill me." "It is like the Bible," he said. "Andric was a Serb with a Croat name, Ivo. He was one of the very few people who understood Bosnian Muslims. He tells what it means when people's minds are poisoned. But I know people in Sarajevo who think Andric was a criminal. "One of those ,he said, is Alija Izetbegovic, the President of B&H, who is a Muslimfundamentalist. He said that when a Muslim blew up the Andric statue at the Visegrad bridge, the Izetbegovic Government hailed the bomber as a hero. "You can't lead the country thinking Andric was an awful writer and a bed person," he said. At 6 feet 3 inches and 185 pounds , Mr.Kusturica has tha look of an athlete. He was once offered a contract by a soccer team, he said "I was a big fighter when I was younger ,"he recalled ."In bars I was ready to explode and fight. "The last fight I had was in Sarajevo,"he said."May 1990,a literary club was to be opened ,with a chair dedicated to Andric.I was invited to speak. I was going to read an Andric story on hatred in Bosnia. Before I came to it, a drunk poet, not a good poet ,started screaming, 'You traitors ,Serbs, go to Belgrade!' A second, a third time. He was destroying the evening. I just lost it. I pulled him out. I hit him. I came back breathing hard while I was reciting Andric, that Andric warning against hatred. Next day those small Titoists who became democrats all of sudden started attacking me as a Serb. "That was the time I said ,'So long' " Was the creation of Yugoslavia - mixing nations ,religions and languages under one Government - a mistake? "I don't think so. No Yugoslavia means no Andric." Could he return to Sarajevo? "I don't think so. They told me they're going to kill me if I came." By David Binder
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RFE/RL Daily Report No. 206, 26 October 1992 SUCCESSOR STATES TO THE USSR ANTI-GOVERNMENT FORCES REACH DUSHANBE. In the morning of 24 October, forces from Kulyab Oblast who support deposed Tajik President Rakhmon Nabiev entered Dushanbe and seized the presidential palace, the Supreme Soviet building and the radio and TV centers, Interfax and other news agencies reported. The former speaker of the Tajik parliament, Safarali Kenzhaev, broadcast a statement accusing the anti-Communist coalition of democratic, nationalist and Islamic groups of seeking to force Muslim fundamentalism on Tajikistan and of having started the civil war that has raged in the country since June. Kenzhaev, who was forced out of office in May in a compromise between Nabiev and the opposition coalition, announced that the Kulyab "National Front" intended to restore the government that had been in office before opposition figures were added in May. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL, Inc.) FIGHTING IN DUSHANBE. Fighting continued in Dushanbe on 24 and 25 October, according to Interfax and other agencies in the Tajik capital. Hundreds of people were reported to have been killed. According to some reports, government supporters, hastily reinforced by pro-government fighters from outside Dushanbe, succeeded in recapturing some of the buildings occupied by the forces from Kulyab. On 25 October a ceasefire was agreed to. Russian forces stationed in Tajikistan were ordered to remain neutral; their commander persuaded Kenzhaev and acting President Akbarsho Iskandarov to meet. The two agreed on convening an emergency session of the Tajik legislature to discuss the forced resignation of Nabiev and to try to end the civil war. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIAN FOREIGN MINISTRY ON TAJIKISTAN. On 24 October, the Russian Foreign Ministry issued an official statement on developments in Tajikistan. "A real threat of a further escalation of the conflict and of expansion of the civil war persists. This is fraught with disastrous consequences for the territorial integrity of Tajikistan and the security of the entire Central Asian region. The destiny of Russian citizens and the Russian-speaking population in that country is a matter of particular concern for the leadership of the Russian Federation." The statement also explained that Russian troops, while neutral, had been instructed to guarantee the security of certain installations, ITAR-TASS reported on 25 October. (Suzanne Crow, RFE/RL, Inc.) KOZYREV THREATENS "IRRESPONSIBLE ELEMENTS." Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev said in an interview with ITAR-TASS published on 25 October that the Russian Federation's Security Council and the Russian parliament should hold special sessions to discuss the security of Russians and Russian-speakers in Tajikistan. The point of such meetings would be a "coordinated strategy of legislative and executive power which would leave irresponsible elements, wherever they may be, in no doubt that the entire might of the Russian state is poised to defend human rights, including the rights of Russians and of the Russian-speaking population." (Suzanne Crow, RFE/RL, Inc.) REPORTS OF CHANGES IN RUSSIAN CABINET. Amid a flurry of reports that cabinet changes were imminent, a cabinet meeting, and a one-on-one meeting between Yeltsin and Gaidar took place on 24 October, according to Russian and Western agencies. No official announcement of changes has been reported. During a visit to Tolyatti on 25 October, Gaidar denied that a government shakeup was imminent. He did not completely exclude changes, but said that radical changes would not be made before the session of the Congress of People's Deputies, scheduled for 1 December. (Keith Bush, RFE/RL, Inc.) ANTI-GOVERNMENT DEMONSTRATIONS. Weekend anti-government demonstrations took place in various Russian cities on 24 and 25 October, Western news agencies reported on 26 October. Approximately 10,000 demonstrators gathered in the center of Moscow to demand the resignation of President Yeltsin. Similar demonstrations were reported in St. Petersburg, the Far East, and Siberia. In Moscow, leading hardliners, such as General Albert Makashov, Colonel Viktor Alksnis, the Communist deputy leader Sergei Baburin, and the writer Aleksandr Prokhanov, founded a "National Salvation Front," which declared as its goal the removal of the president and his cabinet by "constitutional means." The front advocated new elections for all constitutional bodies in early 1993. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL, Inc.) YELTSIN'S AIDES SAID TO ADVOCATE DISSOLUTION OF PARLIAMENT. On 23 and 24 October, "Vesti" cited unidentified "circles close to Russian President [Yeltsin]" as advocating the introduction of what was termed "direct presidential rule" in Russia. One result of this move would be the "dissolution of parliament," according to "Vesti." On 24 October, Russian TV broadcast a special meeting of the leaders of the Russian Democratic Reform Movement, whose chairman, the former mayor of Moscow, Gavrill Popov, asserted that the introduction of direct presidential rule would be only "a temporary retreat from democracy." The idea to disband parliament arose in response to the refusal of Russian legislators to postpone the next Congress of People's Deputies, whose membership includes many ex-communists who are critical of Yeltsin's reform program. (Julia Wishnevsky, RFE/RL, Inc.) KHASBULATOV'S HEALTH SUFFERS; HIS GUARD AT ODDS WITH POLICE. Parliamentary speaker Ruslan Khasbulatov has been hospitalized suffering after suffering a sudden increase in blood pressure at a parliamentary session on 22 October, Rossiiskaya gazeta reported on 23 October. Before the session, Khasbulatov had told journalists that he did not expect to die a natural death, and complained that the former KGB was keeping him under constant surveillance. Some officials have accused Khasbulatov of planning a coup. More information is coming to light about the speaker's 5,000-strong parliamentary guard, three members of which exchanged shots last week with Moscow police, who were intervening in defense of a taxi driver who was being threatened by a relative of Khasbulatov. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL, Inc.) GRACHEV: MILITARY SUPPORTS PRESIDENT. Russian Defense Minister Pavel Grachev released a statement on 23 October in which he reaffirmed that the military supported the lawfully elected Russian President, according to ITAR-TASS. Grachev rather ambiguously warned politicians who criticized the government and President that they were not aware of the consequences, both political and potentially violent, of their actions. The statement came after a 22 October Defense Ministry Collegium meeting, in which the members unanimously disagreed with the sentiments of the open letter published in Pravda on 21 October by conservative deputies. According to an Izvestiya account of 24 October, the officers were upset over the increasingly confrontational approach taken by the Russian Supreme Soviet and conservative groups. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL, Inc.) ADVISERS TO RUSSIAN DEFENSE MINISTER RESIGN. Three advisers to the Russian Defense Minister have resigned, according to an Interfax report of 24 October. The advisers, A. Yevstigneev, G. Melkov, and V.Sadovnik, reportedly were protesting Grachev's statement of support for Yeltsin. According to the "Shield" union, the advisers felt it inappropriate to support the person of the President, rather than the Constitution, and were concerned that Grachev was interfering in a political matter. They called for the armed forces to remain neutral. The Russian Defense Ministry claimed, however, that the advisers had been dismissed on 21 October for failing to fulfill their duties. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL, Inc.) NATIONAL SALVATION FRONT ORGANIZER CLAIMS OFFICERS' BACKING. The Chairman of the Russian Officers' Union, Stanislav Terekhov, claimed that 99% of Russian officers support the goals of the new National Salvation Front, and dismissed Grachev's declaration of support for Yeltsin. While admitting that the officers may support Yeltsin more than the Gaidar government, he brushed off Grachev's comments as coming from a "well-fed corrupted military" in contrast to the hardships faced by regular officers. Terekhov's union claims only 10,000 members, and no evidence was provided to support his statements. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL, Inc.) RYZHOV TO SECURITY COUNCIL? On 24 October, Interfax reported that Yuri Ryzhov, the Russian Ambassador to France, had been summoned to Moscow to attend a conference on 27 October. According to Interfax, reform-oriented groups are urging that Ryzhov be placed on the Russian Security Council in order to counterbalance the conservative Council Secretary, Yurii Skokov. Before becoming Ambassador, Ryzhov was director of the Moscow Aviation Institute. He was also a member of the Soviet Congress of People's Deputies where he advocated radical military reform. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIA CAN REPORTEDLY KEEP MISSILE RADAR IN LATVIA. Sergei Zotov, the leader of the Russian delegation to the talks with Latvia on the withdrawal of Russian military forces, said that Latvia has agreed to allow Russia to continue using the missile-warning radars at Skrunda (120 kilometers west of Riga) after the departure of Russian troops from Latvia. Zotov's remarks were reported by the Baltic News Service. The Skrunda complex formed a vital link in the Soviet Union's anti-ballistic missile defenses. A "Hen House" radar used for missile warning and space tracking is located there, and a new, large phased-array radar similar to the one built near Krasnoyarsk has been under construction there for years. (Doug Clarke, RFE/RL, Inc.) BULK OF RUSSIAN BALTIC FLEET TO KALININGRAD. Admiral Feliks Gromov, the commander in chief of the Russian Navy, was quoted by Mayak Radio on 23 October as saying that the bulk of the former Soviet Baltic Fleet would be transferred from the Baltic states to the naval base at Baltiisk, in Kaliningrad Oblast--the 15,000 square kilometer Russian enclave cut off from the rest of Russia by Lithuania and Belarus. A small part of the forces would be transferred to locations in northwestern Russia and to the Kronstadt naval base near St. Petersburg. Baltiisk has long been the headquarters for the Baltic Fleet and the homeport for some of the largest ships of the fleet. However, most of the warships have been based in Estonia and Latvia, particularly at Liepaja. (Doug Clarke, RFE/RL, Inc.) UKRAINIAN OPPOSITION FORCES TO UNITE? Representatives of several opposition groups held a news conference on 23 October in Kiev at which they announced their intention to form a united bloc, DR-Press reported. The press conference was attended by representatives from New Ukraine, the Congress of National Democratic Forces, the Union of Ukrainian Students, and the All-Ukrainian Association of Solidarity with Toilers. "Rukh" was reportedly not represented because of Vyacheslav Chornovil's participation at a local conference in Lviv. The participants called attention to the danger of a "red putsch" in Ukraine. (Roman Solchanyk, RFE/RL, Inc.) INTRODUCTION OF NEW UKRAINIAN CURRENCY. On 25 October, Andrei Nechayev, citing Ukrainian Prime Minister Leonid Kuchma, said that Ukraine will delay the introduction of the accounting unit, the karbovanets, until next year, while the introduction of the Ukrainian national currency, the grivna, will be delayed "indefinitely," Interfax reported. The deputy head of the Ukrainian National Bank told Reuters on 25 October that Ukraine will introduce the karbovanets by the end of 1992. He confirmed that Ukraine must delay the introduction of a convertible national currency until it has built up foreign currency reserves, and suggested that "it would be good if our Western partners could support us with a stabilization fund worth $1-1.5 billion." (Keith Bush, RFE/RL, Inc.) UKRAINE PROTESTS BLACK SEA FLEET APPOINTMENT. Ukrainian Defense Minister Constantin Morozov on 24 October described the recent appointment of Vice Admiral Petr Svyatashov to be chief of staff of the Black Sea Fleet as a "one-sided action" breaching the Yalta agreements on the future of the fleet. According to Interfax, Ukraine has barred the admiral from assuming his new duties. Svyatashov was appointed by Russian Defense Minister Pavel Grachev. In August, Yeltsin and Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk agreed to place the disputed Black Sea Fleet under joint control for a three-year interim period. The leaders of Russia and Ukraine were to share authority over the fleet and jointly appoint its commanders. (Doug Clarke, RFE/RL, Inc.) NAKHICHEVAN "COUP ATTEMPT" FAILS. A group of some 200 armed supporters of the ruling Azerbaijan Popular Front (AzPF) occupied the Interior Ministry and TV center in Nakhichevan for five hours on 24 October before being dislodged by police, ITAR-TASS and Interfax reported. Some 35,000 people assembled in front of the occupied buildings to protest what Nakhichevan Parliament Chairman Geidar Aliev, in an interview given to Radio Liberty, termed a coup attempt by the Baku government. An Azerbaijan Popular Front spokesman in Baku denied Aliev's claims. Relations between Aliev and the AzPF deteriorated when the Nakhichevan parliament rejected Baku's proposed candidate for the post of Nakhichevan Interior Minister. (Liz Fuller, RFE/RL, Inc.) MOLDOVA APPEALS TO U.N. The office of the U.N. Secretary General Boutros Ghali on 25 October distributed as a U.N. document a message addressed to Ghali by Moldovan Foreign Minister Nicolae Tiu, protesting Russia's "interference in the internal affairs" of Moldova and other independent states "on the pretext of defending the rights of ethnic Russians." Russia's policy, Tiu wrote, poses "the threat of destabilization" to Moldova and other states. The message renewed Moldova's appeal to the U.N. to send military observers to monitor the implementation of the Moldovan-Russian convention on settling the conflict in eastern Moldova and also to attend as observers the Moldovan-Russian negotiations on the withdrawal of Russia's 14th Army from Moldova, the Moldovan media reported. (Vladimir Socor, RFE/RL, Inc.) CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE POSTCOMMUNIST PARTY TOPS VOTE IN LITHUANIAN ELECTIONS. In the elections to the Lithuanian Seimas held on 25 October, the successor to the Lithuanian Communist Party appears to have captured the largest share of the vote, Radio Lithuania reports. According to initial reports by the German-French polling firm INFAS, the postcommunist Lithuanian Democratic Labor Party (LDLP) captured about 40% of the vote and is likely win 35 of the 70 seats awarded in the proportional system. The Sajudis coalition is set to win 18 seats, the Christian-Democratic Party (in coalition with the Democratic Party and Union of Political Prisoners) - 10 seats, the Social-Democratic Party - 5, and the Union of Poles - 2 seats. The numbers may change as the "Young Lithuania" coalition, now with 3.9% of the vote, may pass the 4% barrier when all the votes are counted. At a press conference on 26 October, election commission chairman Vaclovas Litvinas said that preliminary results from the 71 single-mandate districts so far show 14 winners, 10 of whom are members of the LDLP. (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL, Inc.). CONSTITUTION APPROVED IN LITHUANIAN REFERENDUM. Election commission chairman Litvinas added that preliminary results indicated that the referendum on the new Lithuanian Constitution had been approved by about 53% of eligible voters and had thus passed. Radio Lithuania reports that about 85% of those taking part in the elections supported the referendum. Voter turnout was over 70%. (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL, Inc.) CZECHOSLOVAKIA BEGINS DAMMING THE DANUBE. On 24 October Czechoslovak authorities started damming the Danube riverbed at Cunovo with the aim of diverting some of the river's water to the canal leading to the hydroelectric power plant at Gabcikovo, CSTK reported. The work started despite protests by the Hungarian government that the diversion of the Danube unilaterally changes the Slovak-Hungarian border and will cause widespread ecological damage. On 23 October Hungary officially invoked the CSCE emergency procedure designed to resolve international conflicts. Hungary also turned to the International Court of Justice in the Hague. The European Community's executive arm reported on 23 October that it had failed to resolve the conflict in talks with Hungarian and Czechoslovak officials. Also on 23 October, Slovak Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar accused Hungary of using the issue for political purposes. Michal Kovac, chairman of the Federal Assembly, said that Hungary is using the issue "to stop the march of Slovakia toward sovereignty." On 24 October, Hungary asked United Nations Secretary-General Boutrous Boutrous-Ghali to "help find means for a peaceful settlement of the debate," MTI reported. The Slovak Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement on 24 October in which it said that the dam dispute is "being needlessly dramatized." (Jiri Pehe, RFE/RL, Inc.) HUNGARIAN PRESIDENT JEERED AT 1956 COMMEMORATION. A hostile crowd consisting mostly of skinheads prevented President Arpad Goncz from delivering an address commemorating the 36th anniversary of the 1956 revolution, MTI reported on October 23. Before Goncz could start speaking, the crowd began to boo and shouted "Down with Goncz," and "Resign." The crowd also called out its support for the government and for Istvan Csurka, the controversial Hungarian Democratic Forum deputy chairman, Western news agencies report. The Prime Minister's Office and the Ministry of the Interior expressed regret over the incident and denied opposition charges that the government and the coalition parties bore responsibility for it. The Ministry of the Interior categorically rejected charges that it had supported or organized the incident. Budapest deputy police chief Janos Lazar argued that the police could not have intervened because under Hungarian law it is not a crime to shout Nazi slogans or wear Nazi symbols. (Edith Oltay, RFE/RL, Inc.) END-GAME APPROACHING FOR BOSNIAN MUSLIMS? International media on 24-25 October reported that Serbian forces in northern Bosnia were moving in on Gradacac, a largely Muslim town defended by Croats and Muslims. Meanwhile in central Bosnia, fighting between Croats and Muslims spread from the Travnik-Vitez area northwest of Sarajevo to Prozor, which is almost due west of the capital. The 25 October Washington Post quoted a local Croatian commander as saying that "this was a war, not a misunderstanding," and the Post charged that Croatian troops "were hunting Muslims" as the anti-Serb marriage of convenience between the two nationalities increasingly seemed to have broken down. Reuters on 25 October reported a rise on Croat-Muslim tensions in Mostar. Muslims fear that the Croats and Serbs have already agreed on a plan to partition Bosnia-Herzegovina between them, leaving the Muslims with a tiny, landlocked state at best. According to this theory, the current Croat attacks on Muslims are an effort to consolidate their positions. (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL, Inc.) MILOSEVIC AGAIN ELECTED AS SOCIALIST PARTY PRESIDENT. Radio Serbia reported on 24 October that Serbia's President Slobodan Milosevic was elected as president of the ruling Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS, formerly the communist party) during the party's two-day congress. Of the 934 delegates, 915 voted for Milosevic, who was the only candidate. Milosevic was SPS president when the party was founded over two years ago, but resigned soon after being elected president of the republic in December 1990. Serbia's constitution does not permit the President of the republic to hold the chairmanship of any political party. Before the party congress, Milosevic said that if re-elected he would not resign as Serbia's president, but would turn his party duties over to general secretary Milomir Minic. He told the congress that the crisis in the country was not the result of developments in Serbia alone, but was largely due to international factors. (Milan Andrejevich, RFE/RL, Inc.) PANIC'S 100 DAYS. On 25 October, Prime Minister of the federal rump Yugoslav government Milan Panic said Milosevic's re-election reminded him of "the best communist traditions." Panic added that if the people still vote for Milosevic and the SPS in December "they deserve what they get." On 24 October Panic held a news conference to distribute a list of 46 achievements from his first 100 days in office. These included his own election, his meetings in Kosovo with ethnic Albanian leaders, and the arrest of paramilitary leaders accused of atrocities in Bosnia and Herzegovina. His major aims--peace in Bosnia and the lifting of UN sanctions--remain unfulfilled. He announced that elections to the federal Chamber of Citizens will be held on 20 December, with elections to the Chamber of Republics to follow within 30 days. Both houses will then elect a President and Prime Minister. Panic is not a candidate for either house, but expressed confidence that the federal assembly would reelect him as prime minister, Radio Serbia reported. (Milan Andrejevich, RFE/RL, Inc.) SUCHOCKA RETURNS FROM ROME. Speaking to journalists in Warsaw after returning from a two-day private visit to Rome, Polish Prime Minister Hanna Suchocka said that Pope John Paul II had expressed confidence that Poland will be a stabilizing factor in Eastern Europe. Suchocka had a 40-minute private audience with the Pope on 23 October. She also met with Italian prime minister Giuliano Amato. Suchocka told reporters that her talks with Amato had helped to ease Italy's qualms about allowing Poland to use the $10 billion stabilization fund provided by Western countries for banking reform. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL, Inc.) POLISH ECONOMY SHOWS IMPROVEMENT. At a joint press conference in Warsaw on 23 October, Poland's Main Statistical Office and Central Planning Board presented a cautiously optimistic economic prognosis. Industrial production has risen steadily since April. Production for the first three quarters of 1992 was 1.2% higher than at the same point in 1991; by the end of 1992, it could exceed the 1991 tallies by 2%. This growth was attributed to the creeping devaluation of the zloty, which promotes exports; increased demand for better quality domestic products; and a 10.5% leap in labor productivity. Exports are so far 11.8% higher than in the comparable period of 1991, and Poland posted a third-quarter trade surplus of over $1 billion. Despite these positive trends, national income is still expected to be 2% below 1991 figures, and investment, 3%. The budget deficit is expected to amount to 8.1% of GDP by year's end; unemployment is to rise to 14.7%; and real wages are to drop by 5%. Yearly inflation is forecast at 47% for 1992. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL, Inc.) POLISH DEFENSE REFORM MOVES FORWARD. Defense Minister Janusz Onyszkiewicz signed an order on 22 October that restricts the ministry to the civilian role of political oversight over the armed forces and puts the general staff in charge of strictly military matters. This measure, eliminating the dual function performed by the ministry under communism, is designed to make the armed forces immune to political interference. The defense ministry now has three departments: training; strategy; and military infrastructure. Military intelligence and military courts answer directly to the defense minister. President Lech Walesa and Prime Minister Hanna Suchocka addressed a meeting of the officer corps on 22 October. Walesa restated his opposition to legislated lustration of the army and criticized draft evasion. While pledging to increase defense spending as soon as possible, Suchocka expressed doubt that new funds would be available in 1993. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL, Inc.) ILIESCU AIDE SUGGESTS OPPOSITION MAY BE INVITED TO FORM CABINET. Romania's Foreign Minister Adrian Nastase, a top aide to President Ion Iliescu, suggested on 24 October that the opposition Democratic Convention might be asked to form the next government if the Democratic National Salvation Front (DNSF) declined to do it. Nastase told Rompres that the DNSF, the party that backed Iliescu's re-election, did not want to rule "at any price" without support from reformist parties. The DNSF emerged from the 27 September elections as the strongest party but failed to win a majority. (Dan Ionescu, RFE/RL, Inc.) ROMANIAN OPPOSITION PLEDGES TO SUPPORT DNSF MINORITY GOVERNMENT. On 25 October four groups belonging to the centrist Democratic Convention (DC) issued jointly with the National Salvation Front (NSF) a statement pledging support for a minority government led by their rival, the Democratic National Salvation Front (DNSF), on the condition that that party continues political and economic reforms. The four DC members are the National Peasant Party--Christian Democratic, the Liberal Alliance, the Party of Civic Alliance, and the Romanian Social-Democratic Party. The statement says that the move is designed to obviate the need for the DNSF to court extremist political groups, which could "push the country to the brink of disaster." (Dan Ionescu, RFE/RL, Inc.) LATVIAN-RUSSIAN TALKS INCONCLUSIVE. A two-day round of Latvian-Russian talks on the withdrawal of Russian troops from Latvia ended inconclusively on 24 October. Russian delegation leader Sergei Zotov told Interfax on 24 October that a wide range of problems had been resolved, suggesting that the Latvian side had acquiesced to most of the Russian demands, including Russian oversight of the Skrunda radar station even after the troops depart. Although a report by the Latvian side is not yet available, the protocol signed by both sides indicates that no breakthrough was achieved on any of the major issues; for example, no accord was reached on the Skrunda radar. Moreover, the Latvian side wants the troops out by 1993, while the Russian side "does not rule out the possibility of pulling out its troops in 1994" if other conditions are met. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL, Inc.) PEOPLE'S FRONT OF LATVIA HOLDS FIFTH CONGRESS. At its fifth congress on 24-25 October in Riga, the People's Front of Latvia adopted new statutes that define the front as a political organization that will field candidates for national and local offices. The People's Front faction in the Supreme Council was criticized for not upholding the PFL program; delegates demanded that the faction no longer use the PFL name. Uldis Augskalns was elected as the new PFL chairman on the second ballot; he defeated Andrejs Rucs. Previous chairman Romualdas Razukas did not run, Radio Riga reported on 25 October. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL, Inc.) BULGARIAN AGRARIAN PARTIES FINALLY TO UNITE? At a meeting of the ruling bodies of BANU-United and BANU-Nikola Petkov on 25 October, both parties approved a protocol confirming that they are to merge, BTA reports. Formal unification will take place at a joint congress, scheduled for 7 and 8 November, which is also to adopt a new party platform and statutes. At the meeting agrarian leaders claimed 95% of the local chapters are already in the process of merging and that this time there is "no going back." During the past three years there have been repeated efforts to reconcile the vehemently anticommunist BANU--Nikola Petkov with its sister party BANU--United, the successor of a communist satellite organization. (Kjell Engelbrekt, RFE/RL, Inc.)
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SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- A coalition of Bosnian and Croat defenders Monday claimed to have beaten back a Serbian offensive against the central Bosnian town of Jajce, forcing the Serbs to flee so fast they left their weapons. Also Monday, military leaders of the republic's three main warring factions were gathering again in Sarajevo amid a rash of local conflicts to open talks on ways of easing the Bosnian war and preparing for a cease-fire. Serbian forces reportedly entered Jajce during a heavy artillery assault Sunday. Sarajevo radio said the allied Croat and Muslim Slav- majority Bosnian forces fully repulsed the invasion by Monday morning. ``The aggressor fled in panic, leaving behind weapons and armored vehicles,'' said the radio, which relays official Bosnian reports. Bosnian-Croat skirmishes also were slowing Monday in towns around Sarajevo, and leaders of the two ethnic factions in Konjic formally agreed not to fight each other and to keep the Serbs as their common enemy, Sarajevo radio reported. The hotly-contested northern town of Gradacac came under another night and morning of heavy Serbian artillery fire, it said, but otherwise towns were relatively quiet along the contested line between Serbia and the large region of Serbian-controlled northwest Bosnia- Hercegovina. Monday's meeting of the republic's Bosnian, Croat and Serb military chiefs followed their unprecedented gathering Friday at Sarajevo airport, where they planned to continue a regular series of U.N.- mediated talks on ways of implementing political agreements on ending the six-month-old Bosnian conflict. Sarajevo and much of the rest of the republic was relatively quiet overnight and into Monday, although Serbian forces in hills overlooking the capital unleashed a loud artillery barrage in the morning on the Dobrinja apartment complex near the airport. U.N. Protection Force military observers counted 148 rounds of large artillery falling onto Bosnian-controlled areas around Sarajevo during the 24- hour period that ended at 5 p.m. Sunday and 41 rounds reaching Serbian- controlled territory. At least seven people were killed and 83 injured across the republic in the 24-hour period that ended at 10 a.m. Sunday, including two killed and 27 injured in Sarajevo, Bosnian health officials said. Also in Sarajevo, Stjepan Kljujic, one of two Croat members of the multi-ethnic Bosnian presidency, said Sunday he had not been informed of and would not recognize his reported removal by the Croatian democratic community, HDZ. Leaders of HDZ, the main party of Croats in Bosnia-Hercegovina, voted Saturday to replace Kljujic with party activist Miro Lasic in protest with Kljujic's refusal to support a peace settlement in which the republic would be divided along ethnic lines. Bosnian Foreign Minister Haris Silajdzic, back in the capital for his first time since war broke out more than six months ago, criticized western governments for not providing more support to the Bosnian people and said he was appealing next to Gulf Arab states. French Maj. Gen. Philippe Morillon, head of UNPROFOR's Bosnian operations, planned to chair Monday's meeting of the rival military leaders in Sarajevo before visiting Serb leaders in the suburb of Ilidza and then returning downtown to officially open his new headquarters. A total of 19 relief flights carrying some 200 tons of aid reached the city Sunday, but for the third straight day no supplies were brought in by truck. The U.N. relief effort by road into Sarajevo remained hampered both by the loss of the Vitez warehouse and the shutdown due to fighting of the main highway through Mostar. Also Sunday, Serbian militiamen used heavy farm equipment to block the Belgrade-Zagreb highway, barring U.N.-organized convoys of journalists from meeting halfway and dealing a setback to efforts to reopen the main land link between Europe and the Middle East. The Belgrade journalists convoy was seen off by Yugoslav Prime Minister Milan Panic, who has been seeking the reopening of the 200-mile highway as part of efforts to normalize relations with Croatia broken by the Serb-Croat war. Dobrica Cosic, president of the rump Yugoslav federation of Serbia and Montenegro, was in Italy on Monday for talks with Italian president Oscar Luigi Scalfaro and other officials. Although informal, the meeting with Scalfaro was to be the first a western head of state has held with Cosic since the communist-turned- nationalist and popular author was chosen as president of the truncated Yugoslav union formed in April. Cosic's trip was apparently aimed at promoting efforts by him and his chief ally, Panic, to end the rump federation's international isolation, which was deepened by the imposition in may of U.N. economic sanctions.
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SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) -- Bosnia's war flared on three fronts Sunday as Serbs, Croats and Muslims fought for pieces of the disintegrating republic before peace efforts intensify this week. Bosnia's Muslim-led government, abandoned by its former Croat allies as Serb rebels made more military gains, sent 700 reinforcements to central Bosnia, where Croat-Muslim clashes have raged for days, Bosnian radio reported. Croat militia leader Mate Boban moved to cripple government forces further by calling on Croatian President Franjo Tudjman to block any arms deliveries to Bosnian troops through Croatia, Croatian television reported. "Weapons coming from foreign countries for the Muslims are presumed to be coming through Croatia," Boban said. Fights between Serbs and Croats continued near Bosnia's southern border with Croatia. Serb rebel leader Radovan Karadzic threatened to relaunch warplanes, grounded by a U.N. flight ban, to repel Croatian attacks, the Bosnian Serbs' news agency, SRNA, reported. Bosnia's war began after Serbs rebelled against majority Muslims and Croats who voted for secession from Yugoslavia in February. More than 14,000 people have died in the fighting. When the fighting started, the Croats and Muslims formed an alliance. But as it has collapsed, Serbs and Croats increasingly have aligned their positions on partitioning Bosnia along ethnic lines. This development isolates Bosnia's government as international mediators prepare to present a draft constitution this week in Geneva as a basis for a peace deal. Serbs and Croats, whose militias have seized virtually all of Bosnia, want the document to enshrine the republic's partition along ethnic lines. Muslims oppose that idea, fearing Serbs and Croats will annex large regions to Serbia and Croatia, disenfranchising Muslims, Bosnia's most populous group. Although Serbs and Croats seem to agree on splitting Bosnia, they are still fighting over who gets what. Fierce Serb-Croat clashes entered their fifth day Sunday on a 42-mile front around Trebinje, a Serb stronghold in eastern Herzegovina bordering Croatia. The Belgrade-based Tanjug news agency said the Croats, backed by a "hurricane" of artillery, tanks and rockets, were advancing "regardless of human cost." It gave no casualty figures. In response, SRNA said Karadzic was seeking permission from Geneva mediators to deploy his air force's 50 warplanes there "because Serbian land ... is attacked by a foreign country -- the republic of Croatia." Croatian troops reportedly launched a major offensive on Trebinje after the Yugoslav army withdrew earlier this month from the nearby Prevlaka peninsula. Yugoslav President Dobrica Cosic, who negotiated the Yugoslav pullout, protested the attack in a letter to mediators at the Geneva conference. Meanwhile, the Bosnian government sent 700 extra troops to halt Croat-Muslim fighting around Prozor, 30 miles west of Sarajevo, radio reported. SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) -- Bosnia's Muslim led-government was further isolated Saturday as its former Croat allies chose a radical separatist leader and Serb rebels reported military gains. Ejup Ganic, a senior Bosnian government official, said his republic was being "attacked from both sides" and indicated the Croat-Muslim clashes were being steered by the Croatian government of President Franjo Tudjman. The Bosnian arm of Tudjman's Croatian Democratic Union chose radical Croat leader Mate Boban as its new leader in a meeting at Posusje, near the Croatian border, according to Croatian TV reporter Marinko Cavar. Boban's militia, once allied with the Muslims, has taken most of the one-third of Bosnia not already held by Serb rebels, and has clashed with Bosnian government troops in recent days, opening a second front in the war. Earlier this year, Boban's forces declared the semi-state of Herceg-Bosna in western Herzegovina bordering Croatia, where Croatian flags now fly and the Croatian dinar is accepted as legal tender. The Serbs also have announced their own state. The Democratic Union, while nominally declaring support for a sovereign Bosnia, also announced that Croat communities in the former Yugoslav republic would now "associate with Herceg-Bosna," Cavar said. In Belgrade meanwhile, Yugoslavia's President Dobrica Cosic announced that early federal elections would be held Dec. 20 in the country now comprising only Serbia and tiny Montenegro. The election could weaken hardline Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. Early elections are among the conditions set by the United Nations for lifting tough economic sanctions against Yugoslavia, imposed May 30 to punish it for provoking war in Croatia and Bosnia. But in a show of support for Milosevic, his Socialist Party, formerly the Communists, elected him party president by a 915-2 vote, the Belgrade-based Tanjug news agency reported. According to Tanjug, Bosnian Serb forces were closing in on Gradacac, a government-held town in northern Bosnia. After several days of fighting, Serbs had reached a hospital and industrial zone on the town's edges, Tanjug reported. If Gradacac falls, the rebel Serbs could move on Tuzla, the government's last major northern stronghold after Bosanski Brod fell earlier this month. On the second front emerging in Bosnia's brutal civil war, which has already claimed more than 14,000 lives, Croat-Muslim fighting spread despite orders for calm on both sides. Croatian radio reported that Sefer Halilovic, Bosnia's army chief, and leaders of the Croatian Defense Council, the main Bosnian Croat militia, issued orders to cease hostilities. The main Serbian opposition parties, which say federal election rules favor the Socialists, plan to meet Monday to consider whether to participate in the election, the Belgrade daily Borba reported. They boycotted elections in May, the first since the six-republic federation disintegrated in 1991. SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (OCT. 25) UPI - Serbian forces Sunday stormed the central Bosnian town of Jajce, while formerly allied Croat and Bosnian forces appeared headed for a clash in the western Sarajevo suburb of Prozor, officials and news reports said. Also Sunday, in a new political skirmish, a Croat member of the republic's multi-ethnic ruling presidency said he would defy Croat nationalists who ordered his dismissal. And Serbian militiamen used heavy farm equipment to block the Belgrade-Zagreb highway, barring U.N.-organized convoys of journalists from meeting halfway and dealing a setback to efforts to reopen the main land link between Europe and the Middle East. The SRNA news agency of Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic quoted radio in the Serb-held northwest city of Banja Luka as saying Serbian forces entered Jajce amid heavy street fighting. SRNA said Serbian military sources had no comment on the Banja Luka report, while Sarajevo radio, which relays official Bosnian information, reported more intense fighting and shelling around Jajce but said it could not confirm the report. The Croatian Defense Council has been the main defender through months of heavy Serbian tacks on Jajce, the town where Marshal Tito and his communist partisans declared the founding of the former Yugoslavia in 1941. New Croat-Bosnian fighting died down Sunday in towns surrounding Sarajevo but worsened in the western suburb of Prozor, where hundreds of both Croat and Bosnian reinforcements were headed amid reports of heavy shelling, Sarajevo radio said. Serbian forces also made new threats in the republic's far south, with Karadzic complaining of Croat attacks on Trebinje and warning he would again use warplanes in spite of a U.N.-ordered ban if they continued, Belgrade radio reported. The Serbs also complained that Croats were violating terms of a cease-fire on the Prevlaka peninsula near Dubrovnik by flying their flag there, it said. And the northwest Bosnian town of Gradacac, the focus of heavy Serbian attacks since Croatian defenders withdrew from nearby Bosanski Brod two weeks ago, suffered another day of heavy artillery attacks, the radio said. Sarajevo and much of the rest of the republic was relatively quiet, although at least two people were killed and four injured in artillery attacks on the capital, it said. Also in Sarajevo, Stjepan Kljujic, one of two Croat members of the multi-ethnic Bosnian presidency, said had not been informed of and would not recognize his reported removal by the Croatian Democratic Community, HDZ. Leaders of HDZ, the main party of Croats in Bosnia-Hercegovina, voted Saturday to replace Kljujic with party activist Miro Lasic in a show of displeasure with Kljujic's refusal to support a peace settlement in which the republic would be divided along ethnic lines. Kljujic, in an interview Sunday with United Press International, rejected as "catastrophic" plans for ethnically based separation advanced both by nationalist Serbs and Croats and said he would not leave office. Bosnian Foreign Minister Haris Silajdzic, back in the capital for his first time since war broke out more than six months ago, criticized western governments for not providing more support to the Bosnian people and said he would appeal next to Gulf Arab states. Silajdzic, speaking to reporters while wrapped in an overcoat inside an office of the artillery-shattered presidency complex, said the fate of thousands of people now facing sub-zero temperatures without heat or even homes depended on the republic's ability to defend itself militarily. "If they do not do anything, and I mean especially the Western governments, to alleviate this situation, there will be enough limbless, blind, parentless children to haunt their civilizations for years to come," Silajdzic said. Silajdzic said he was headed next to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to ask for financial aid from them and possibly their neighbors. He said his government would use any money it receives to buy food, medicines, home building materials and "arms, wherever we can buy it." At least seven people were killed and 83 injured across the republic in the 24-hour period that ended at 10 a.m. Sunday, including two killed and 27 injured in Sarajevo, Bosnian health officials said. UNPROFOR military observers counted 53 rounds of large artillery falling onto Bosnian-controlled areas around Sarajevo during the 24-hour period that ended at 5 p.m. Saturday and no rounds reaching Serbian- controlled territory. But some 10 rounds of artillery fell around 11:45 a.m. Sunday near the U.N. checkpoint on the main access road to the Sarajevo airport, prompting UNPROFOR troops to retreat from the area for about 15 minutes. A total of 19 relief flights carrying some 200 tons of aid reached the city Sunday, but for the third straight day no supplies were brought in by truck. The U.N. relief effort by road into Sarajevo remained hampered both by the loss of the Vitez warehouse and the shutdown due to fighting of the main highway through Mostar. The Belgrade journalists' convoy was seen off by Yugoslav Prime Minister Milan Panic, who has been seeking the reopening of the 200-mile highway as part of efforts to normalize relations with Croatia broken by the Serb-Croat war. But Serbian militiamen under the command of Dusko Vitez, the self- proclaimed mayor of the Serb-controlled eastern Croatian town of Okucani, where the journalists were to meet, set up barricades of combine harvesters and tractors on the roadway, 5 miles from each side of the town. "There will be no reopening until we get our own customs officers collecting taxes on our stretch of the highway and our own police controlling the traffic, " Vitez told the 50 reporters who travelled from Belgrade. "Of course, we can easily break through their (Serbian) barricades," said Gen. Carlos Maria Zabala, commander of U.N. Sector West, in which Okucani is located. "But, I do not think it would help improve the situation." Also Sunday, Dobrica Cosic, president of the rump Yugoslav federation of Serbia and Montenegro, departed Sunday on an unofficial two-day visit to Italy for talks with Italian President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro and other officials. Although informal, the meeting with Scalfaro was to be the first a Western head of state has held with Cosic since the communist-turned- nationalist and popular author was chosen as president of the truncated Yugoslav union forged on April 27. SARAJEVO, BOSNIA-HERCEGOVINA (OCT. 25) UPI - Serbian forces struck hard Saturday against the northern Bosnian town of Gradacac, raining artillery on civilian areas, while U.N. peace-keepers in the capital were both thanked and shot at. Bosnian troops in Gradacac, along the fiercely contested northern line connecting Serbia with Serb-held territories of northwest Bosnia-Hercegovina, pushed back Serbian tank and infantry offensives amid heavy artillery attacks on civilian areas, Sarajevo radio reported. Defense forces in Gradacac also said they found the mutilated bodies of seven civilians attacked in apparent retaliation after Bosnian forces destroyed an armored Serbian supply train and confiscated large supplies of arms and ammunition, Bosnian radio said. In Sarajevo, which like much of the rest of the republic enjoyed another relatively quiet day, the Bosnian presidency met for the first time since last week's high-level peace talks in Geneva. A spokesman for the multi-ethnic presidency said afterward, however, there was relatively little discussion of the main settlements proposed in Geneva, all of which involve some degree of disintegration of the republic. And the city's U.N. peace-keeping force, on the the 47th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations, was both feted and fired upon. Several of Sarajevo's leading artists ventured inside a bomb-scarred U.N. Protection Force cafeteria to treat scores of gun-toting UNPROFOR troops to hand-clapping birthday celebration and modern and folk music. The party, decorated by Christmas garland and evergreen boughs tucked into sandbags lining the taped-over windows, was punctuated by a brief dance between the city's UNPROFOR chief, Egyptian Brig. Gen. Hussein Abdul Razek, and renowned Yugoslav opera star Gertruda Munitic. "Thank you for everything, thank you for everything you have done," Sarajevo choreographer and ballet dancer Gordana Magaj told the U.N. staff and soldiers. But at virtually the same time, less than a mile away, a French UNPROFOR soldier was shot while guarding a delivery of humanitarian aid. The soldier, who suffered only a minor leg wound, was hit by a sniper only three days after a similar attack on a French soldier also escorting aid deliveries. "There's no doubt that this was a deliberate attack by a sniper," UNPROFOR spokesman Mik Magnusson said of the midday attack on the soldier standing next to a clearly marked U.N. vehicle at the Vojnicko Polje housing complex. The area is controlled mostly by Bosnian forces, although Magnusson said he could not place blame on one side. "We know where it came from, but not who did it," he said. The shot Wednesday at a French soldier came from Bosnian territory. The Bosnian military claimed a small military victory east of the capital, saying its forces captured the village of Praca and were headed toward Podgrab, only 10 miles east of the main Bonian Serb headquarters at Pale, Sarajevo radio said Saturday. In Belgrade, President Dobrica Cosic of the rump Yugoslav union of Serbia and Montenegro called early federal parliamentary elections for Dec. 20, setting the stage for a political showdown that could determine the course of efforts to restore stability to the strife-torn Balkans.
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Bosnia's Muslims Finding No Country Wants to Rescue Them (Trnopolje) By Roy Gutman (c) 1992, Newsday TRNOPOLJE, Bosnia-Herzegovina _ The outdoor privies overflow with human waste, and inside the cold and dirty elementary school building across the muddy schoolyard there is no running water. The refugees have only straw, cardboard and thin blankets to sleep on. ``Perfect conditions for an epidemic,'' commented Dr. Jack Geiger, a professor of community medicine at the City University of New York, on a visit last week. But for 3,500 Muslims who pack the squalid former concentration camp, Trnopolje is the last hope of escaping from the bloodletting in northern Bosnia. That civilians would seek refuge at the place where witnesses say hundreds were murdered and raped by Serbs last summer testifies to their desperation. They flocked here in hopes they might follow the 1,571 survivors of two death camps who were transported from Trnopolje to Croatia at the beginning of October. But coming here was a miscalculation. For today, there is no exit from Bosnia. ``The world really doesn't care. Nobody wants the Muslims,'' said an official of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, who spoke on condition of anonymity. ``It is very reminiscent of World War II. Nobody wanted the Jews or even to make a fuss about `the Final Solution' because then they would have to take them in as refugees.'' The Trnopolje refugees share the plight of the Bosnian nation, which, having been recognized by the United States and European nations last spring, now appears to have been abandoned to its fate. After raising an outcry in August over atrocities in Serbian camps, Western nations will not open their doors even to survivors of the camps. As a result, the Swiss-based International Red Cross suspended plans to liberate Monday as many as 10,000 still being held. ``We are bitterly disappointed that the failure of the international community to open its doors is preventing the victims of the horrific events in former Yugoslavia from finding a temporary new home,'' Jose Maria Mendeluce, of the U.N. refugee commission said Sunday. ``This is a shame for the international community,'' Roland Siedler,a Red Cross spokesman, said. With no certainty about rescuing the former detainees, aid officials have all but abandoned hope of doing anything soon for the expellees who crowd Trnopolje even though the officials agree they are refugees by any definition of the word. Instead, in a remarkable departure from their usual reserve, they say the humanitarian crisis in Bosnia is at the point where it can be solved only through the use of outside force. ``They have never seen suffering on this scale when no one seemed to care,'' said Geiger, who visited northern Bosnia with Tadeusz Mazowiecki, the U.N. special investigator on human rights. Meanwhile, the Serbs, blamed by the international community for initiating the violence, exude confidence even as they step up the terror tactics that comprise ``ethnic cleansing'' against the 150,000 non-Serbs still living in northern Bosnia. Radomir Kosic, a Banja Luka official who hosted Mazowiecki on his tour, caustically remarked to reporters accompanying Mazowiecki to Trnopolje last week that Muslim civilians came here ``thinking they would have a free ticket to paradise.'' Actually, the reasons were mundane. ``Our houses have been destroyedand pillaged. My friends have been killed. We had to get out,'' Erna Muric, a 21-year-old woman from Prijedor, said. Others said that non-Serbs were no longer allowed to use public transportation for the seven-mile trip into Prijedor, although women are allowed to walk the distance in order to forage for food. Others came because they were ``cleansed'' from homes they had built after years of working abroad. ``I was an honest worker. I fed my family until I was forced out of my house,'' Hasan Dzonlagic, 29, said. ``Now they (the Serbs) live in my house. They drive my car. All I have left is the head on my shoulders. But what use is that because I have nothing else?'' The camp director, Pero Curguz, confirmed that Serbs from the town of Bugojno in Croatian-controlled Bosnia had moved into Dzonlagic's house and those of other refugees here, including some from Trnopolje itself. The school is too small to house all who seek refuge, and one group of about 180 are living in a barnlike building of about 18 by 25 feet. About 100 of them huddle in small family groups on the concrete ground floor and about 80 are in a loft. They have one primitive heater downstairs, and only blankets and cardboard on the ground floor and the upstairs floorboards to stop the draft. Rain drips through gaps in the tile roof, and there is no place for all to stretch out at night. Many have passports with valid visas for West European countries, while others have invitations complete with written guarantees of support. But they have no way to leave Bosnia. One man said he was from Macedonia. ``I have a house here, but also a house in Macedonia. I don't need to go to Western Europe. I just want to go home to Macedonia. Can you tell me how I can get home?'' Travel by refugees in convoys into central Bosnia, which had been treacherous, now has become too dangerous even for those desperate to get out. This is the outcome of a strategic realignment in which the relatively well-armed Bosnian Croats, who had been allied with the predominantly Muslim government, now have begun attacking government forces across a broad front. ``The bottleneck has been effectively stoppered,'' commented a U.N. refugee official in Banja Luka. If the refugees were able to reach Travnik in central Bosnia, they might be forced at gunpoint by Serbs or Croats to flee still further into a small predominantly Muslim area, only to arrive in a safe haven where there is little or no food. The reason: Croats are blocking all food shipments. The problem for the international agencies is that they lack any means to stop the process of ``ethnic cleansing,'' have no mandate to remove the victims from the area, and have nowhere to take them. ``In my notebook, I have page after page of atrocities,'' the head of one humanitarian aid office in Banja Luka said. ``There are house-to-house searches, bombings, murders. All we can say is `we hear your pain. There is nothing we can do to help you.' '' Pierre Gassmann, head of the Zagreb office of the Red Cross, attacked the ``hypocritical stance of the international community'' for assuming that the dispatch of food aid and winter insulation will enable people to remain in their homes and that ``the mere presence'' of the international agencies ``will protect them against the criminal intents of the people who want to ethnically cleanse.'' Too many Western countries act like France, he said, whose media-conscious health minister, Bernard Kouchner, makes it a point ``to be there (on the spot), to be seen to be there, to be aggressive, then to go back home and do zilch about the problem.'' He said the U.N. refugee agency and the Red Cross are incapable of protecting civilian targets. ``We have come to the conclusion we cannot help people where they are. We have to deal with a context in which there is zero respect for the (humanitarian) values we carry. We have no means to coerce. The only people capable of bringing any change in behavior is the international community.'' In the absence of that coercion, no one sees a bright future for the Muslims of Bosnia, or even survival. ``This is anarchic genocide,'' Geiger said. ``It lacks German efficiency, but the result is the same.'' U.S. Agrees to Allow 1,000 Bosnia Refugees Into Country (Washn) By Norman Kempster (c) 1992, Los Angeles Times WASHINGTON _ The Bush administration yielded to appeals from international relief organizations Monday and agreed to permit the immigration of up to 1,000 Bosnian refugees, all former internment camp prisoners and their immediate families. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, who announced the new policy, said that the refugees would be admitted under a program that would allow them to apply eventually for U.S. citizenship. The number is less than 10 percent of the internment camp prisoners that the International Committee of the Red Cross expects to be released soon. And the policy will do nothing for about 2 million persons displaced by the fighting who were not interned. Meanwhile, the administration held a special State Department press conference in which Clyde Snow, an American forensic anthropologist working as a consultant to the U.N. Human Rights Commission, described the discovery of a mass grave said to be holding the remains of patients from a Croatian hospital who were murdered by a unit of the Serb-led Yugoslav National Army. Although Snow said that as much as three months of additional investigation would be required to identify the victims and determine how they died, he said the physical evidence seemed to corroborate the accounts of witnesses who said that 179 hospital patients, mostly wounded Croatian soldiers, were beaten and killed by Yugoslav Army units and Serb militia forces. The decision regarding Bosnian refugees reversed an administration policy of refusing to accept most refugees because moving them out of the region would make it much more difficult for them to return to their homes and would, indirectly, enhance the policy of ``ethnic cleansing'' _ a term used to describe the warfare being waged by the Serbs against other groups in the former Yugoslavia. Previously, the United States agreed to take 100 Bosnians needing urgent medical care but refused to take others, despite requests from the Red Cross, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and other relief organizations. Boucher said that the administration continued to reject any sort of general resettlement of refugees from the bitter ethnic warfare to avoid playing into the hands of the ``ethnic cleansers.'' ``The goal is to see that people can return to their homes,'' he said. ``For the crisis as a whole, there are more than 2 million refugees and displaced persons, and our priority has been the material assistance to get people through the winter.'' However, he said, the administration decided to make an exception for former prisoners because ``humanitarian concerns have to weigh heavily ... these former detainees have already suffered very much.'' He said that Washington had contributed $6 million to pay for food and other relief supplies for refugees who remain in the area. He said the relief organizations estimated that the money would support up to 10,000 persons this winter. The Red Cross, which is trying to negotiate the release of internment camp prisoners, has agreed to the demands of the Bosnian Serb militias that released prisoners be sent out of the region to prevent them from rejoining the war. About 1,600 released prisoners are being held in camps in Croatia awaiting resettlement, Boucher said. Boucher said that the Red Cross and the U.N. refugee organization had estimated that ``as many as 10,000 or maybe more than 10,000'' persons are still in detention.
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----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: President of rump Yugoslavia calls early federal elections Subject: Gradacac hit; U.N. feted and fired upon Subject: Twenty-fourth Fischer-Spassky game a draw Subject: Bosnian negotiators back divisions Subject: Serbs block U.N. journalists convoy ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: President of rump Yugoslavia calls early federal elections Date: 24 Oct 92 22:01:36 GMT BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (UPI) -- President Dobrica Cosic of the rump Yugoslav union of Serbia and Montenegro Saturday called early federal parliamentary elections for Dec. 20, setting the stage for a political showdown that could affect efforts to restore stability to the strife- torn Balkans. ``The future of Serbia and Montenegro is being decided,'' declared Cosic at a Federation Palace ceremony at which he signed the order for the polls. Cosic's long-expected move came only hours before his main adversary, communist President Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia, effectively opened his Socialist Party of Serbia's (SPS) campaign by presiding over a leadership shakeup on the final day of a two-day party congress. Milosevic assumed the SPS presidency in an apparent bid to use his prestige to ensure the party retains its lock on Parliament amid rising popular dissatisfaction over economic and social chaos unleashed by the collapse of former Yugoslavia and the wars in Croatia and Bosnia- Hercegovina. ``Even though the crisis we are faced with is not only a result of events in Serbia but also a result of international interests and politics, we are obliged to do everythig we can to solve the (economic) crisis,'' said Milosevic in his speech before congress. Cosic and his main ally, Yugoslav Prime Minister Milan Panic, as well as the opposition, all are critical of Milosevic. They largely blame the upheaval in the federation on Milosevic's revival of Serbian nationalism and his support for Serbian territorial conquests in Croatia and Bosnia- Hercegovina. They see an SPS electoral defeat in parliament as the only way to end devastating U.N. economic sanctions imposed on Serbia in May for its role in the conflict in Bosnia-Hercegovina. Cosic, using his powers under the constitution of the rump Yugoslav successor stage forged by Serbia and Montenegro after the collapse of its defunct namesake, set Dec. 20 for direct elections for the federal Parliament's 138-member Chamber of Deputies. Thirty days later, he said, the Serbian and Montenegrin assemblies would each select 20 members for the federal Chamber of Republics. The present legislature, controlled by Milosevic through SPS majorities, was chosen for a four-year term in May. Political analysts viewed the Dec. 20 polls as crucial to ongoing international efforts to prevent new conflicts in former Yugoslavia and restore stability to the historic Balkan ``powderkeg.'' The efforts, spearheaded by the ongoing U.N.- and European Community- mediated peace conference in Geneva, are aimed at normalizing ties between rump Yugoslavia and Croatia, ending the Bosnia-Hercegovina war and preventing explosions of grave ethnic tensions in Serbia's minority- packed provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina that many fear could drag in neighboring states. Panic and Cosic cooperation in those efforts have prompted fierce attacks on them by Milosevic, his party and their proxies in Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina. The two camps are locked in a fierce power struggle. Milosevic and his loyalists have accused Cosic and Panic -- a Belgrade-born naturalized U.S. citizen -- of being foreign agents and betraying Serbian national interests by seeking normal relations with arch-rival Croatia. In a show of strength this week by Milosevic, Serbian police seized the federal Interior Ministry building in downtown Belgrade. Before signing the election order, Cosic indirectly blamed the SPS and its leader for the ``grave and lengthy economic, political, spiritual and moral crisis (and) a stoppage and decay of human and natural forces of our country.'' ``Free democratic elections are the way out from the present, unbearable political conflicts, squabbling and tensions,'' Cosic said. At an earlier news conference marking his 100th day in office, Panic -- tapped as a ``non-political'' prime minister by Cosic -- appeared to rule out the possibility of heading an opposition slate, saying: ``As of today, I will not be a candidate.'' ``But ... I will be supporting people,'' Panic added, indicating he would campaign for the opposition. He said he would take steps to ensure fair polling, including international monitoring. He said former U.S. president Jimmy Carter had tentatively agreed to be an observer. A Western diplomat warned, ``If the Socialists and Milosevic come out on top by hook or by crook, what is this is going to mean for establishing peace in the Balkans? The answer will be a resounding 'Not now.''' It was also not known if Serbia's main opposition groups -- the Democratic Movement of Serbia, the Democratic Party and the Civic Alliance -- would participate in the polls because of dissatisfaction with a new proportional electoral system and Milosevic's iron grip on state-run Belgrade Television, the greatest influence of public opinion in Serbia. Panic said he planned to convene Monday a ``roundtable'' of federal government, SPS, and opposition representatives to establish guidelines ensuring equal access to television and objective and fair reporting. Ratomir Tonic, the president of the Republican Club, a Civic Alliance member, said the opposition groups would also meet on Monday to decide whether they would participate in the elections as a unified coalition. Tonic said he believed the opposition should take part.`` ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Gradacac hit; U.N. feted and fired upon Date: 25 Oct 92 00:44:57 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- Serbian forces struck hard Saturday against the northern Bosnian town of Gradacac, raining artillery on civilian areas, while U.N. peace-keepers in the capital were both thanked and shot at. Bosnian troops in Gradacac, along the fiercely contested northern line connecting Serbia with Serb-held territories of northwest Bosnia- Hercegovina, pushed back Serbian tank and infantry offensives amid heavy artillery attacks on civilian areas, Sarajevo radio reported. Defense forces in Gradacac also said they found the mutilated bodies of seven civilians attacked in apparent retaliation after Bosnian forces destroyed an armored Serbian supply train and confiscated large supplies of arms and ammunition, Bosnian radio said. In Sarajevo, which like much of the rest of the republic enjoyed another relatively quiet day, the Bosnian presidency met for the first time since last week's high-level peace talks in Geneva. A spokesman for the multi-ethnic presidency said afterward, however, there was relatively little discussion of the main settlements proposed in Geneva, all of which involve some degree of disintegration of the republic. And the city's U.N. peace-keeping force, on the the 47th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations, was both feted and fired upon. Several of Sarajevo's leading artists ventured inside a bomb-scarred U.N. Protection Force cafeteria to treat scores of gun-toting UNPROFOR troops to hand-clapping birthday celebration and modern and folk music. The party, decorated by Christmas garland and evergreen boughs tucked into sandbags lining the taped-over windows, was punctuated by a brief dance between the city's UNPROFOR chief, Egyptian Brig. Gen. Hussein Abdul Razek, and renowned Yugoslav opera star Gertruda Munitic. ``Thank you for everything, thank you for everything you have done,'' Sarajevo choreographer and ballet dancer Gordana Magaj told the U.N. staff and soldiers. But at virtually the same time, less than a mile away, a French UNPROFOR soldier was shot while guarding a delivery of humanitarian aid. The soldier, who suffered only a minor leg wound, was hit by a sniper only three days after a similar attack on a French soldier also escorting aid deliveries. ``There's no doubt that this was a deliberate attack by a sniper,'' UNPROFOR spokesman Mik Magnusson said of the midday attack on the soldier standing next to a clearly marked U.N. vehicle at the Vojnicko Polje housing complex. The area is controlled mostly by Bosnian forces, although Magnusson said he could not place blame on one side. ``We know where it came from, but not who did it,'' he said. The shot Wednesday at a French soldier came from Bosnian territory. The Bosnian military claimed a small military victory east of the capital, saying its forces captured the village of Praca and were headed toward Podgrab, only 10 miles east of the main Bonian Serb headquarters at Pale, Sarajevo radio said Saturday. In Belgrade, President Dobrica Cosic of the rump Yugoslav union of Serbia and Montenegro called early federal parliamentary elections for Dec. 20, setting the stage for a political showdown that could determine the course of efforts to restore stability to the strife-torn Balkans. ``The future of Serbia and Montenegro is being decided,'' Cosic said Saturday at a federation palace ceremony at which he signed the order for the polls. Also Saturday, some 370 refugees who said they were evicted by Serbian forces from Banja Luka and Prijedor in the northwest part of the republic arrived in the Croatian border town of Noska, claiming they were forced to pay Serbs more than $1,000 apiece to leave, Bosnian radio said. And the German government agreed to provide several million dollars to house some 2,500 Bosnian refugees in the Croatian city of Karlovac after they spent three weeks waiting for Western nations to accept them, it said. At least 14 people were killed and 107 injured across the republic in the 24-hour period that ended at 10 a.m. Saturday, including six killed and 42 wounded in Sarajevo, Bosnian health officials said. The capital remained relatively quiet Saturday. UNPROFOR, in its daily survey for the 24-hour period that ended at 5 p.m. Friday, said its military observers counted 68 rounds of large artillery falling onto Bosnian-controlled areas around Sarajevo and no rounds reaching Serbian- controlled territory. Fighting between formerly allied Croat and Bosnian forces in Vitez appeared to have ended, raising hopes the U.N. High Commission for Refugees could resume using its main supply warehouse for aid convoys supplying Sarajevo. But the UNHCR'S highway supply line to Sarajevo remained totally shut from the fighting around both Vitez and Mostar and the only supplies reaching Sarajevo either Thursday or Friday were a schedule of UNHCR planes already reduced by a 24-hour suspension attributed to reports of fighting near the airport runway. The UNHCR planned as part of its interim measures to run a large road convoy Saturday on a scheduled two-day trip from Belgrade to Sarajevo. A total of 16 U.N. relief flights reached the capital Saturday. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Twenty-fourth Fischer-Spassky game a draw Date: 25 Oct 92 01:19:18 GMT BELGRADE, Yugosalvia (UPI) -- The 24th game of the controversial rematch between former world chess champion Bobby Fischer and former Soviet grandmaster Boris Spassky ended in a draw Saturday on the 39th move. Fischer played black and employed what is known as a Sicilian defense. Chess experts said his moves represented a ``theoretical novelty,'' but added they did not change the outcome. It was the 12th draw in the series that began Sept. 3 in the posh Adriatic resort hotel of Sveti Stefan in Montenegro. The competition was transferred to the Sava Congress Center in Belgrade after three weeks. Fischer retains his 8-4 lead in games. The first player to win 10 matches will receive $3.35 million from Jezdimir Vasiljevic, a Serbian bank owner. Whatever the case, Fischer still faces a $250,000 fine and a maximum 10-year jail sentence for playing in the rump Yugoslav union of Serbia and Montenegro. Fischer defied a U.S. Treasury Department warning him not to engage in financial transactions with Yugoslavia because of its involvement in the war in neighboring Bosnia-Hercegovina. Although the next game is scheduled for Sunday, organizers said the match may be postponed because Spassky has a cold and complained of feeling ill. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Bosnian negotiators back divisions Date: 25 Oct 92 02:34:11 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- Fresh from Yugoslav peace talks in Geneva, Bosnian negotiators said Saturday they endorsed plans to partly dissolve the republic as part of a negotiated peace settlement as long as such a plan not ethnically based. Muhamed Filipovic, vice president of the Muslim Bosnian organization, and Mirko Pejanovic, the only Serbian member of the multi-ethnic Bosnian presidency, told a news conference they were optimistic an acceptable settlement that could permit a cease-fire might be very near. Filipovic and Pejanovic returned to the capital after a week of high- level meetings at the ongoing U.N- and European Community-sponsored talks in Geneva, where general agreement was reached on a plan for breaking Bosnia-Hercegovina into between eight and 13 largely autonomous districts. Both negotiators endorsed such plans, but said they would oppose Serbian efforts to base the districts along already-developing ethnic lines and would insist the divisions are not designed in ways that would further fracture the republic. ``The autonomous divisions cannont be bearers of sovereignty,'' Filipovic said. ``Each administrative division should be the limit of dissoulution (of the republic), not the stimulus for further dissolution.'' Geneva conference spokesman Fred Eckhard said the current plans would let the central Bosnian government oversee defense, foreign affairs, finance and internal security, while providing Serbs, Croats and Muslim Slavs with a large measure of responsibility for their other affairs. U.N. mediator Cyrus Vance and European Community representative Lord David Owen said after the talks that an agreement would involve condemnation by all sides of the ``ethnic cleansing,'' the installation of a cease-fire in Sarajevo before winter sets in, and a new constitution, probably along the lines of that of multi-ethnic Switzerland. Pejanovic suggested another model, that of geographically small Washington, D.C., as a possibility for Sarajevo. ``We proposed Sarajevo as one specialized administrative unit, the capital of the republic, where foreign police, defense, (currency), media, transportation, mail, telephones and other utilities would be under the authority of the capital, while the police would be under the authority of the regions,'' he said. Owen said work on a new Bosnian constitution was well advanced and should be completed and made public in the coming week. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Serbs block U.N. journalists convoy Date: 25 Oct 92 22:00:37 GMT DRAGALIC, Croatia (UPI) -- Serbian militiamen used combine harvesters and tractors to block the Belgrade-Zagreb highway Sunday, barring U.N.- organized convoys of journalists from meeting halfway and dealing a setback to efforts to reopen the main land link between Europe and the Middle East. ``There will be no reopening of the highway before our demands are met,'' declared Dusko Vitez, the self-proclaimed mayor of the Serb- controlled eastern Croatian town of Okucani, where the journalists were to have met. One convoy departed from Belgrade, the capital of the rump Yugoslav union of Serbia and Montenegro, and a second left from Zagreb, the capital of Croatia. Both were escorted by U.N. military vehicles and were to have met in downtown Okucani, some 80 miles from Zagreb. But local Serbian militiamen under Vitez' command set up barricades of combine harvesters and tractors on the roadway, 5 miles from each side of the town, and refused to allow the convoys to precede to a U.N.- planned rendezvous. ``There will be no reopening until we get our own customs officers collecting taxes on our stretch of the highway and our own police controlling the traffic,'' Vitez told the 50 reporters who travelled from Belgrade. The Belgrade convoy was seen off by Yugoslav Prime Minister Milan Panic. He has seeking the reopening of the 200-mile highway as part of his efforts to normalize relations with Croatia broken by the Serb-Croat war that erupted after Zagreb declared independence from former Yugoslavia in June 1991. Rebels of Croatia's Serbian minority proclaimed their own state. With the backing of the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army, they captured 35 percent of Croatia before a Jan. 3 truce went into effect as part of a U.N.-brokered peace plan. Under the plan, more than 14,000 troops and police of the U.N. Protection Force (UNPROFOR) were deployed in Serb-held areas of Croatia. Only U.N. vehicles have been able to travel on the highway, portions of which run through one of the three areas where peace-keeping units are stationed. ``Of course, we can easily break through their (Serbian) barricades,'' said Gen. Carlos Maria Zabala, commander of U.N. Sector West, in which Okucani is located. ``But, I do not think it would help improve the situation.'' Zabala described relations between UNPROFOR and the local Serbs as ``more than good, until today.'' ``I just don't understand these people. Two days ago, we had everything arranged. They even promised to let us use their municipality building for the celebration,'' he said. But Vitez was adamant in his refusal to let the journalists meet. ``It is true we had an agreement, but we have to obey our government's decision,'' he said, referring to the leadership of the self-proclaimed Serbian state based in the town of Knin, 140 miles southeast from Zagreb. ``I know that Panic said that the highway will be reopened, but he should have asked us first,'' said one local Serbian militiamen. ``He doesn't own this road. We do,'' he said. UNPROFOR went ahead with the convoys despite warnings Saturday that Serbian forces would block the roadway. The Serbs control several stretches of the highway totalling about 25 miles, and their leaders have said they would not relinquish control of their sections until Croatia recognized their self-declared state. Before the Belgrade convoy set out from the center of the city, Panic was joined at an outdoor news conference by Jeannie Peterson, a representative of UNPROFOR. Both expressed optimism that the highway would be reopened. ``I am happy that this is taking place because it is a part of my plan for establishing peace in the Balkans,'' said Panic, a Belgrade- born naturalized U.S. citizen. Peterson said the UNPROFOR-organized media trip to Okucani was a ``symbolic preview to the reopening of the highway.'' Panic said he hoped the highway would be reopened for commercial use and added ``tolerance on both sides'' was needed to normalize relations. He said the name of the roadway would be changed from the communist- era ``Brotherhood and Unity Highway'' to the ``Highway of Peace.'' The Belgrade-Zagreb roadway is just one link in the main land route connecting Western Europe and the Middle East. Its closure has forced economically important commercial traffic to take costly, time-consuming diversions through neighboring states, depriving both rump Yugoslavia and Croatia of badly needed revenues. The highway's reopening was a key issue in talks last week at the U. N.- and European Community-mediated Geneva peace conference on former Yugoslavia between Yugoslav federation President Dobrica Cosic and Croatian President Franjo Tudjman. Both agreed the move was a pre-condition to normalizing relations.
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----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Fischer-Spassky 25th game postponed Subject: Bosnian-Croat allies defend central Bosnian town Subject: U.N. aid flights often targeted by anti-aircraft weapons Subject: President of two-republic Yugoslavia meets with Italian leaders Subject: U.S. to resettle 1,000 Bosnians ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Fischer-Spassky 25th game postponed Date: 26 Oct 92 00:10:50 GMT BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (UPI) -- Former Soviet grandmaster Boris Spassky postponed the 25th game of his controversial rematch with former world chess champion Bobby Fischer Sunday because he had a cold. It was the third and last time Spassky will be able to put off playing Fischer. Fischer has not yet used the privilege. Fischer leads the series 8-4. The first player to win 10 matches will receive $3.35 million and the loser $1.65 million from Jezdimir Vasiljevic, a Serbian bank owner who organized the rematch. Whatever the outcome, Fischer faces a $250,000 fine and a maximum 10- year jail sentence for playing in the rump Yugoslav union of Serbia and Montenegro. Fischer defied a U.S. Treasury Department order warning him not to engage in financial transactions with Yugoslavia because of its involvement in the war in neighboring Bosnia-Hercegovina. The next game is scheduled for Wednesday at Belgrade's Sava Congress Center. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Bosnian-Croat allies defend central Bosnian town Date: 26 Oct 92 12:20:17 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- A coalition of Bosnian and Croat defenders Monday claimed to have beaten back a Serbian offensive against the central Bosnian town of Jajce, forcing the Serbs to flee so fast they left their weapons. Also Monday, military leaders of the republic's three main warring factions were gathering again in Sarajevo amid a rash of local conflicts to open talks on ways of easing the Bosnian war and preparing for a cease-fire. Serbian forces reportedly entered Jajce during a heavy artillery assault Sunday. Sarajevo radio said the allied Croat and Muslim Slav- majority Bosnian forces fully repulsed the invasion by Monday morning. ``The aggressor fled in panic, leaving behind weapons and armored vehicles,'' said the radio, which relays official Bosnian reports. Bosnian-Croat skirmishes also were slowing Monday in towns around Sarajevo, and leaders of the two ethnic factions in Konjic formally agreed not to fight each other and to keep the Serbs as their common enemy, Sarajevo radio reported. The hotly-contested northern town of Gradacac came under another night and morning of heavy Serbian artillery fire, it said, but otherwise towns were relatively quiet along the contested line between Serbia and the large region of Serbian-controlled northwest Bosnia- Hercegovina. Monday's meeting of the republic's Bosnian, Croat and Serb military chiefs followed their unprecedented gathering Friday at Sarajevo airport, where they planned to continue a regular series of U.N.- mediated talks on ways of implementing political agreements on ending the six-month-old Bosnian conflict. Sarajevo and much of the rest of the republic was relatively quiet overnight and into Monday, although Serbian forces in hills overlooking the capital unleashed a loud artillery barrage in the morning on the Dobrinja apartment complex near the airport. U.N. Protection Force military observers counted 148 rounds of large artillery falling onto Bosnian-controlled areas around Sarajevo during the 24- hour period that ended at 5 p.m. Sunday and 41 rounds reaching Serbian- controlled territory. At least seven people were killed and 83 injured across the republic in the 24-hour period that ended at 10 a.m. Sunday, including two killed and 27 injured in Sarajevo, Bosnian health officials said. Also in Sarajevo, Stjepan Kljujic, one of two Croat members of the multi-ethnic Bosnian presidency, said Sunday he had not been informed of and would not recognize his reported removal by the Croatian democratic community, HDZ. Leaders of HDZ, the main party of Croats in Bosnia-Hercegovina, voted Saturday to replace Kljujic with party activist Miro Lasic in protest with Kljujic's refusal to support a peace settlement in which the republic would be divided along ethnic lines. Bosnian Foreign Minister Haris Silajdzic, back in the capital for his first time since war broke out more than six months ago, criticized western governments for not providing more support to the Bosnian people and said he was appealing next to Gulf Arab states. French Maj. Gen. Philippe Morillon, head of UNPROFOR's Bosnian operations, planned to chair Monday's meeting of the rival military leaders in Sarajevo before visiting Serb leaders in the suburb of Ilidza and then returning downtown to officially open his new headquarters. A total of 19 relief flights carrying some 200 tons of aid reached the city Sunday, but for the third straight day no supplies were brought in by truck. The U.N. relief effort by road into Sarajevo remained hampered both by the loss of the Vitez warehouse and the shutdown due to fighting of the main highway through Mostar. Also Sunday, Serbian militiamen used heavy farm equipment to block the Belgrade-Zagreb highway, barring U.N.-organized convoys of journalists from meeting halfway and dealing a setback to efforts to reopen the main land link between Europe and the Middle East. The Belgrade journalists convoy was seen off by Yugoslav Prime Minister Milan Panic, who has been seeking the reopening of the 200-mile highway as part of efforts to normalize relations with Croatia broken by the Serb-Croat war. Dobrica Cosic, president of the rump Yugoslav federation of Serbia and Montenegro, was in Italy on Monday for talks with Italian president Oscar Luigi Scalfaro and other officials. Although informal, the meeting with Scalfaro was to be the first a western head of state has held with Cosic since the communist-turned- nationalist and popular author was chosen as president of the truncated Yugoslav union formed in April. Cosic's trip was apparently aimed at promoting efforts by him and his chief ally, Panic, to end the rump federation's international isolation, which was deepened by the imposition in may of U.N. economic sanctions. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: U.N. aid flights often targeted by anti-aircraft weapons Date: 26 Oct 92 17:58:31 GMT ZAGREB, Croatia (UPI) -- U.N. relief airplanes flying into Sarajevo have been frequently targeted by anti-aircraft weapons since the aid airlift resumed this month, often forcing pilots to release flares as a precaution against ground fire, a U.N. official said Monday. Although no U.N. airplane has been fired upon by anti-aircraft missiles or guns, the almost daily targeting of the planes has increased concerns about the possibility of another shootdown like the one Sept. 3, which brought down an Italian cargo plane on a U.N. mission and killed all four crew members. ``The airlift operation is in a fragile state at the moment,'' warned the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The official said relief planes have been locked on by radar systems and also have been targeted by heat-seeking missiles. He would not elaborate on exactly how many times pilots had reported the problem, saying only that it happens frequently and nearly daily, forcing pilots to discharge flares as a protection against the ground fire. ``You can see the flares dropping from Sarajevo if you watch,'' said the U.N. official. The Sarajevo airlift operation was canceled for one month on Sept. 3 after the Italian cargo plane was shot down over Croatian territory while en route to Sarajevo, the beseiged capital of Bosnia-Hercegovina. The shooting incident killed all four crew members aboard. Since the airlift resumed, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees has been flying an average of 9 to 10 aid flights per day into the Bosnian capital, about half of the number of flights prior to the Sept. 3 shootdown. The drop is due to a combination of heightened levels of danger as well as increasing weather problems as the harsh Balkan winter approaches. In addition to problems with the airlift, the relief effort also has been hampered by new fighting between Croat and Muslim forces in Bosnia- Hercegovina. The fighting between the nominal allies has prevented any land convoys of relief supplies from traveling to Sarajevo, said Peter Kessler, the UNHCR spokesman in Zareb. ``Not one land convoy has been able to get into Sarajevo since the fighting began,'' Kessler said. The UNHCR had organized 42 land convoys to Sarajevo in the two months before the outbreak of fighting. ``We are very concerned about the Croat and Muslim clashes and that it is worsening,'' Kessler said. ``It has hurt aid operations not just to Sarajevo but everywhere else as well.'' ``Every day there is a delay, it is a life or death situation for many individuals,'' Kessler said. The U.N. refugee agency has a supply wharehouse in Vitez, about 30 miles northwest of Sarajevo, that it has not been able to reach since the Croat-Muslim fighting began last week. U.N. aid workers had to be evacuated by a special U.N. Protection Force last week becuase of heavy fighting between Muslims and Croats outside UNHCR headquarters on Oct 20. In Vitez 10,000 shelter kits, including 3 million square yards of plastic sheeting to temproarily repair the damage done by the fighting and prepare residents for the up-comming winter are waiting to be delivered, Kessler said. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: President of two-republic Yugoslavia meets with Italian leaders Date: 26 Oct 92 18:40:21 GMT ROME (UPI) -- Dobrica Cosic, president of the rump Yugoslav federation of Serbia and Montenegro, met with Italian leaders Monday to seek their support in bringing the federation out of isolation and easing economic sanctions imposed by the U.N. Security Council, Italian officials said. Cosic, accompanied by Foreign Minister Ilija Djukic and other aides, started a two-day private visit to Rome by meeting for more than three hours with Italian Foreign Minister Emilio Colombo at the 16th century Villa Madama government guest house. The talks, described by Italian officials as ``in-depth and fruitful'', continued over lunch, at which the ministers were joined by ``experts'' on both sides. Later, at 6 p.m., Cosic was received by Italian President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro at the presidential Quirinale Palace. He was expected to have further talks with Socialist Prime Minister Giuliano Amato Tuesday morning, the officials said. Italy, along with most other western countries, does not officially recognize Cosic's rump republic and Scalfaro was the first Western head of state to receive the former communist-turned-nationalist, who presides over the truncated Yugoslav union forged on April 27. Serbia's communist regime, which engineered the alliance, is regarded by the international community as being mainly responsible for the violent collapse of the former Yugoslav federation. The international isolation of Cosic's rump Yugoslavia was deepened by the imposition in May of U.N. economic sanctions because of the support Serbia and Montenegro have given to the Serbian territorial offensive in Bosnia-Hercegovina. But Italian officials said Italy was anxious to encourage Cosic and Prime Minister Milan Panic in moves they have made toward a negotiated settlement of the situation in the former Yugoslav Republics. Foreign Minister Colombo insisted on the need for Cosic's republic to carry out in full all the agreements which all parties signed in conferences on Yugoslavia in London and Geneva. Colombo told Cosic it was obvious that such action would greatly help him to achieve his main aim of obtaining an easing of the U.N. sanctions. The officials said the Yugoslav president told Colombo that the sanctions had transformed his country into ``a real and proper concentration camp.'' ``We have 500,000 unemployed and as many refugees,'' Cosic told the Italian foreign minister. ``Without oil, we cannot sow crops, for lack of heating we must close hospitals and schools. ``How can we, in these conditions, normalize our relations with the other republics of the ex-Yugoslavia?'' he asked. The officials said Cosic asked Colombo ``to take action within the United Nations and the European Community to obtain an easing of the sanctions.'' Colombo said Italy, which as a country neighboring the former Yugoslav Republic has a major interest in a peaceful settlment, told the president Italy would do what it could to help. But he stressed that Cosic and his government must first put into effect the London and Geneva agreements. He said Italy was particularly interested in seeing the outcome of municipal, republican and federal elections to be held in the rump Yugoslav republic in December, in which Cosic's conciliatory line will be opposed by the hard line of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: U.S. to resettle 1,000 Bosnians Date: 26 Oct 92 19:35:54 GMT WASHINGTON (UPI) -- Up to 1,000 Bosnians scheduled to be released from Serbian detention camps will be resettled in the United States, the administration said Monday. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, who said numerous times during the growing crisis in Bosnia-Hercegovina that the United States was not prepared to resettle a large group of refugees, denied that the latest announcement represented a change in policy. He said the administration, which has already offered to bring 100 severly injured Bosnians to the United States for medical care, and its allies still feel that ``the most appropriate policy is to assist the people as close to home as possible and not to commence a resettlement program.'' But, Boucher said, ``the detainees are a discrete population'' who are ``of special concern because of what they had to go through.'' The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said last week that there was a special need to remove released detention camp prisoners from a situation in which they may very well be recaptured. That assessment prompted the administration to alter its stance on the resettlement of Bosnian refugees, Boucher said.
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RFE/RL Daily Report No. 207, 27 October 1992 SUCCESSOR STATES TO THE USSR YELTSIN VERSUS CONGRESS. The last weekend meeting of Russian President Boris Yeltsin with senior ministers at the government datcha in Staro-Ogarevo was not a meeting of the Security Council to select a new prime minister as reported by Russian media but a routine government meeting, Vice Prime Minister Aleksandr Shokhin was quoted by Radio Rossii on 25 October as saying. Shokhin denied that any talks on government personnel changes had been discussed. He stated that the meeting focused on the government's tactics at the forthcoming Congress. He hinted that Yeltsin may organize a referendum concerning the abolition of the Congress--an idea which is being supported by democratic leaders such as Gavriil Popov, Anatolii Sobchak and others. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIAN TRADE UNION CHALLENGES GOVERNMENT. The chairman of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia, Igor Klochkov, told journalists that 1.5 million people have participated in anti-government demonstrations throughout the country on 24 October. ITAR-TASS quoted him as saying on 26 October that these have been the largest trade union demonstrations in Russia in recent memory. He stressed that the trade unions demand a correction of the government's economic reform policy away from shock therapy. He warned that if the government rejects the demands, the trade unions will press for the creation of a government of national trust. According to Klochkov, the Russian trade unions are being supported by trade unions in other CIS states. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIAN TROOPS ORDERED TO RETURN FIRE IN ABKHAZIA. Russian troops have been ordered to return fire if they come under attack in Abkhazia, AFP reported on 26 October, quoting a Russian defense ministry spokesman. To date, the Russian defense ministry has insisted that its troops are remaining neutral in the Abkhaz-Georgian conflict. In an interview given to Ostankino TV on 26 October and summarized by ITAR-TASS, Georgian parliament Chairman-elect Eduard Shevardnadze argued in favour of a "civilized solution" to the continued stationing of Russian troops in Georgia. In a Tbilisi Radio address Shevardnadze argued that Georgia still needs Russian troops to guard its borders and to provide anti-aircraft missile defenses. (Liz Fuller, RFE/RL, Inc.) YELTSIN ON REFORMS; BONNER WARNS OF FASCISM. Russian President Boris Yeltsin told a delegation of US financiers that although he may replace some of the present ministers, his strategy of reform remains unchanged and that the main obstacles to reform have been overcome, ITAR-TASS reported on 26 October. The same day, some former Russian human rights activists, including Elena Bonner, criticized the National Salvation Front's struggle for power in an open letter in Izvestiya, warning of the danger of fascism. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL, Inc.) BLACK SEA FLEET VESSELS BLOCKADED IN POTI. ITAR-TASS reported on 26 October that ships and sailors of the Black Sea Fleet were being blockaded in the Georgian port of Poti. Tanks have been positioned on the approach to the naval base, while barges have been positioned in the harbor to prevent the departure of naval vessels. Weapons are reportedly being demanded from the sailors. The Black Sea Fleet has been conducting refugee evacuation operations from Abkhazia, moving over 20,000 refugees from the region. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL, Inc.) TAJIK GOVERNMENT AGAIN CONTROLS DUSHANBE. On 26 October the government of Tajikistan regained control of the capital, according to domestic and Russian news agencies, and armed forces from Kulyab Oblast had left Dushanbe, escorted out of the city by Russian armored vehicles. The fighters from Kulyab had tried to overthrow the government during two days of fighting in Dushanbe that caused considerable damage to the city and paralyzed public services and retail trade. The number of casualties is unknown, but Western correspondents in Dushanbe report a number of bodies lying in the streets. Occasional gunfire could still be heard in the city, according to various reports. Acting President Akbarsho Iskandarov, encountered by a Reuters correspondent as he surveyed the wreckage of the Supreme Soviet chamber, said that the Kulyab forces were regrouping in Tursunzade near the Uzbek border. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL, Inc.) DISPUTE OVER BLACK SEA FLEET APPOINTMENTS. The command of the Black Sea Fleet has rejected Ukrainian Defense Minister Morozov's complaint that its chief of staff, Vice Admiral Petr Svyatashov, had been improperly appointed. According to an ITAR-TASS report of 26 October, the Black Sea Fleet claims it is under the joint command of the Russian and Ukrainian presidents, and therefore the Ukrainian minister of defense should not interfere in the direction of the fleet. The statement did not indicate whether the decision to appoint Svyatashov was coordinated between the presidents. ITAR-TASS reported on 27 October that Admiral Kasatonov in an interview with Krasnaya zvezda had called for maintaining a strong Russian Navy and stated that Russian and Ukrainian interests in the Black Sea coincided rather than conflicted. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL, Inc.) KHASBULATOV BACK AT WORK. Parliamentary speaker Ruslan Khasbulatov recovered from his collapse last week and chaired a meeting of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, ITAR-TASS reported on 26 October. He rejected congressional plans to oust the government, noting that, according to the Constitution, parliament can pass a vote of no confidence against the government without convening a Congress. He also stated that the Congress should adopt a basic law on land ownership which would end accusations that the parliament was against private land ownership. He emphasized that he personally was in favor of convening the Congress next year, but since parliament had decided differently, everyone must obey. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIAN PARLIAMENT REJECTS PROPOSAL TO ACCELERATE WORK ON NEW CONSTITUTION. On 23 October the Russian parliament rejected a proposal to speed up work on the draft of the new Russian constitution to have it ready by the opening of the 7th Congress of People's Deputies on 1 December, ITAR-TASS reported. Nikolai Ryabov, the chairman of the Council of the Republic, who put forward the proposal, argued that, if the draft was not ready, the integrity of the Russian Federation would be threatened inasmuch as the majority of the republics of the Russian Federation are likely to adopt new constitutions before the end of the year and they will not be based on the new Russian constitution, which will create a very complicated legal situation. (Ann Sheehy, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIAN PARLIAMENT RATIFIES AGREEMENT ON STATUS OF CIS ECONOMIC COURT. On 23 October the Russian parliament ratified the agreement on the status of the CIS Economic Court, signed in Moscow in June by the heads of state of Armenia, Belorussia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, ITAR-TASS reported. Each signatory state is to appoint or elect two judges for ten years. The chairman of the court and his deputy will be elected by the court's judges and approved by the Council of the CIS Heads of State. The economic court, which will adjudicate disputes between enterprises in different CIS states, is one of the five coordinating bodies called for by Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbaev. (Ann Sheehy, RFE/RL, Inc.) DELAY SOUGHT IN REPAYMENT OF RUSSIAN FOREIGN DEBT. The Russian Foreign Economic Relations Minister Petr Aven told Interfax on 26 October that Russia will seek a two month delay in this year's payments on its foreign debt. The proposal will be made at the 28 October meeting of the Paris Club of Western creditor-nations. Aven said that Russia will seek the short-term postponement because creditor-nations "are not ready" to make "a final decision with respect to a ten or fifteen year delay of the Russian debt" in the near future. Aven thought that Russia will be able to repay $2.5-3 billion in 1993. (Roughly the same amount will be repaid this year, against a non-deferred due amount of about $10 billion). (Keith Bush, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIA AND KAZAKHSTAN SIGN ECONOMIC PROTOCOL. The Prime Ministers of Russia and Kazakhstan, Egor Gaidar and Sergei Tereshchenko, on 22 October signed economic agreements concerning debt settlement and coordination of economic policies, Interfax reported. The central bank chairmen of the two countries were also present at the signing in Moscow. The protocol included measures for rapidly reducing mutual enterprise debts (Kazakh enterprises owe Russian enterprises about 75 billion rubles, Russian enterprises owe Kazakhstan about 150 billion rubles) as well as creating a special bilateral committee to help coordinate interest rate, credit emission, trade, taxation and state spending policies. (Erik Whitlock, RFE/RL, Inc.) ELECTIONS FAIL TO TAKE PLACE IN KARACHAEVO-CHERKESIA. The elections that were to have been held in Karachaevo-Cherkesia on 25 October did not take place, ITAR-TASS reported. Voters were supposed to elect deputies to the new republican bodies to be set up as a result of the transformation of the territory from an oblast into a republic, but the various nationalities inhabiting the republic have been unable to agree on what the structure of the new institutions should be. It has been suggested that the oblast soviet of deputies, elected at the last election, be allowed to function until 1995 as the republic's supreme soviet. (Ann Sheehy, RFE/RL, Inc.) PRESENTATION OF NEW UKRAINIAN GOVERNMENT. The newly-chosen Ukrainian prime minister, Leonid Kuchma, is scheduled to present his choices to the Ukrainian parliament for consideration on 27 October. During the past week Kuchma has been holding talks with various political parties concerning the composition of the new government. Thus far, only two former cabinet ministers, Minister of Defense Konstantin Morozov and Minister of Foreign Affairs Anatolii Zlenko, can rest assured that they will retain their jobs. The formation of the new Ukrainian government is taking place against a backdrop of disarray within the camp of the reformist opposition and growing popular dissatisfaction with the economic situation, particularly price increases. (Roman Solchanyk, RFE/RL, Inc.) SCHEDULE FOR PULLOUT OF RUSSIAN MISSILES FROM BELARUS. Interfax reported on 26 October that a schedule had been drawn up and approved for the withdrawal of nuclear-armed strategic missiles from Belarus to Russia. It calls for the pullout of eight missile brigades in 1993 and the remaining eight in 1994. By the end of that year, Belarus will be free of nuclear weapons. The last command and support sub-unit will leave for Russia in June 1995. (As of 1 September 1990 there were 54 mobile SS-25 missiles based at Mozyr and Lida in Belarus. Subsequently, additional missiles were deployed, bringing the total to 81.) (Doug Clarke, RFE/RL, Inc.) BELARUS TO RECALL TROOPS. The Belarusian government has called for all citizens of Belarus serving in the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Baltic states to return to Belarus by 1 January 1993, according to an ITAR-TASS report of 26 October. Apparently, troops located in Russia and Ukraine will remain with their units. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIAN SPACE ROCKET BUILDER SIGNS US DEAL. NPO Energomash, the builder of rocket engines that have placed all Soviet space vehicles and payloads in orbit since the 1957 Sputnik launch, signed an agreement on 26 October with the American firm Pratt & Whitney Space Propulsion. According to a U.S. Information Agency report, the deal provides Pratt & Whitney with exclusive U.S. rights to market the Russian firm's rocket engines and other technology. The American company is particularly interested in the giant RD-170 rocket engine, capable of delivering over 734,000 kilograms of thrust and considered to be the most powerful liquid-fueling rocket engine in the world. An official of Pratt & Whitney said that the company might eventually manufacture the RD-170 in the United States under license. (Doug Clarke, RFE/RL, Inc.) AKAEV FEARS TENSIONS IN SOUTHERN KYRGYZSTAN. Kyrgyzstan's President Askar Akaev met with demonstrators in Dzhalal-Abad in southern Tajikistan on 26 October, Interfax reported, to try to defuse tensions that he said could lead to a Tajikistan-style civil war in the region. The demonstrators, supporters of Dzhalal-Abad oblast administration chief Bekmamet Osmanov, were protesting the Kyrgyz government's decision to monitor the activities of the Dzhalal-Abad oblast administration in Osmanov's absence. Akaev intended to discuss the situation in Dzhalal-Abad Oblast with both supporters and opponents of Osmanov. The report gives no indication whether interethnic tensions are involved, but Dzhalal-Abad is located in the Fergana Valley, the site of bloody fighting between local Uzbeks and Kyrgyz in 1990. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL, Inc.) MOLDOVAN-UKRAINIAN TREATY. The Presidents of Moldova and Ukraine, Mircea Snegur and Leonid Kravchuk, met in Chisinau on 23 October to sign a "treaty of good neighborliness, friendship and cooperation." It provides for the observance of the rights of Moldovans in Ukraine and of Ukrainians in Moldova in accordance with internationally recognized standards; expanded cooperation in the fields of education and culture; bilateral coordination of customs procedures; transit facilities across Moldova for Ukraine's western trade and across Ukraine for Moldova's eastern trade; and the prohibition of the formation and transit of armed groups hostile to one of the sides on the territory of the other. The latter two provisions clearly benefit Moldova, 80% of whose foreign trade moves across Ukraine, and which contends with irregular Russian armed groups crossing Ukraine from Russia to fight on the Dniester. (Vladimir Socor, RFE/RL, Inc.) CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE MORE LITHUANIAN ELECTION RESULTS. Preliminary results of the Seimas elections on 25 October indicate that five groups captured the 70 seats allocated proportionally, Radio Lithuania reports. The Lithuanian Democratic Labor Party (LDLP), the successor to the Lithuanian Communist Party, won 44.7% of the vote; Sajudis - 19.8%; the three-party Christian Democratic coalition - 11.6%; the Social-Democratic Party (LSDP) - 5.9%; and the Union of Poles (UP)-2.3%. Only 14 of the 71 contests for seats in single-mandate districts were decided on 25 October; 11 of these went to the LDLP. The fate of the rest of the single-mandate districts will be determined in the second round of the elections, to be held on 8 November. (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL, Inc.) BRAZAUSKAS CALLS FOR BROAD COALITION IN LITHUANIA. At a press conference on 25 October, chairman of the Lithuanian Democratic Labor Party Algirdas Brazauskas urged all political forces in the future Seimas to form "a broad coalition in the name of civil concord and prosperity in Lithuania," Radio Lithuania reports. He said that relations with Russia should be normalized, with adjustments on economic matters and trade, but added that he will continue to demand both the complete withdrawal of Russian troops from Lithuania and compensation for the damages they inflicted. (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL, Inc.) CZECHS AND SLOVAKS AGREE ON CUSTOMS UNION, COMMON CURRENCY. On 26 October Czech and Slovak leaders, meeting in Javorina, Slovakia, agreed on a customs union between the Czech and Slovak republics after Czechoslovakia splits on 1 January 1993. Under the terms of the agreement, there will be duty-free exchange of goods and services between the Czech Republic and Slovakia and the two states will have common trade and customs policies toward third countries. A joint council and a permanent secretariat will coordinate these policies. The two sides also reached agreement on retaining a common currency. CSTK reports Slovak Premier Vladimir Meciar as saying that the Czechoslovak koruna will remain the common currency indefinitely, but that either side could pull out of the arrangement at any time. Meciar also said that he and Czech Premier Vaclav Klaus had decided against a "common citizenship." The status of Czechs in Slovakia and Slovaks in the Czech Republic will be decided by the two republics' parliaments. Czech and Slovak leaders also approved draft laws on the abolition of federal laws and federal institutions. The federal government approved these drafts the same day and submitted them to the Federal Assembly. (Jiri Pehe, RFE/RL, Inc.) MORE ON MASS GRAVE NEAR VUKOVAR. The 27 October Los Angeles Times says that a mass grave found near Vukovar appears to contain the remains of over 170 Croatian soldiers. The paper quotes Clyde Snow, a US forensic anthropologist working with the UN human rights investigation team headed by former Polish Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki, as saying that three more months of investigations will be needed. The wounded men were reportedly taken by Yugoslav army soldiers and Serbian irregulars from the Vukovar hospital following that strategic town's fall last November. Witnesses claim that the men were beaten and killed by their abductors. (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL, Inc.) US TO TAKE 1,000 BOSNIANS. Major US dailies report on 27 October that the State Department announced the previous day that Washington has agreed to allow 1,000 Bosnian camp inmates to immigrate. The US had sought to keep the refugees as close to Bosnia as possible to permit their eventual easy return home, but international aid agencies have been urging Washington to take some former camp inmates to help speed up emptying the camps. Over 10,000 inmates are awaiting resettlement. Some two million people have been displaced in the Yugoslav conflict, and the lives of up to 400,000 people may be at stake in the upcoming harsh Bosnian winter. (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL, Inc.) BOSNIAN TOWN REPORTED WIPED OFF THE MAP. Radios Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia reported on 26 October that the predominantly Muslim town of Prozor was wiped off the map by forces of the Croatian Defense Council (HVO) during an attack on 24 October. A statement released by the Bosnian Army command in Sarajevo said "Prozor no longer exists." There has been no independent confirmation of the report, however. The Bosnian presidency has refused comment, fearing a chain reaction in other villages where tension between Croats and Muslims is running high. Radio Croatia reports on 26 October that key Muslim leaders and the army are on the verge of breaking with Bosnia's President Alija Izetbegovic, on the grounds that his policy of maintaining a close alliance with Croatia has failed to benefit Muslim interests. (Milan Andrejevich, RFE/RL, Inc.) TENSIONS RUNNING HIGH IN THE SANDZAK. Tensions are also rising in the Sandzak in southwest Serbia after the abduction on 22 October of some 20 Muslims traveling from Bosnia to their jobs in the town of Priboj. Unconfirmed reports say the Muslims were executed near Priboj. Rump Yugoslavia's Prime Minister Milan Panic ordered an investigation on 26 October and said that every effort will be made to reduce tension. Panic and cabinet members also met with military officials and ordered increased border patrols in the Priboj region along the border with Bosnia-Herzegovina. Sandzak Muslim leaders urged local residents to remain calm. Radio Serbia carried the reports. Muslims have been complaining of provocations and other incidents since the summer, and about 60,000 of them have moved from mixed areas to largely Muslim areas as a result. (Milan Andrejevich, RFE/RL, Inc.) CZECHOSLOVAK GOVERNMENT UNABLE TO AGREE ON GABCIKOVO. Meeting in the early hours of 27 October, the Czechoslovak federal government failed to reach agreement on stopping work on the controversial Gabcikovo hydroelectrical dam project. Speaking to reporters in Prague, Federal Premier Jan Strasky said that "the Slovak ministers were against stopping work at Gabcikovo." Deputy Prime Minister Miroslav Macek said that the Czech ministers had demanded that "the damming of the Danube be stopped immediately," which would create conditions for a special EC commission to evaluate the project and for further negotiations. According to Macek, the Slovak ministers insisted that the damming of the Danube, which began on 24 October, must continue so that shipping on the river can be renewed on 3 November. (Jiri Pehe, RFE/RL, Inc.) HUNGARIAN PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE ON GONCZ INCIDENT. Hungarian deputies debated at the 26 October parliamentary session the demonstration that prevented President Arpad Goncz from delivering his address at the commemoration of the 1956 revolution on 23 October, MTI reports. Opposition parties called for an ad hoc committee to investigate the incident. Sandor Olah, a member of the Smallholder deputies in the governing coalition, said that Nazi symbols had surfaced for the first time at an official celebration organized by the interior ministry and urged the interior minister to draw the consequences and resign. Prime Minister Jozsef Antall rejected charges that his government was in any way responsible for the incident and said no investigation was necessary. Several Hungarian Democratic Forum deputies, including parliamentary caucus leader Imre Konya, said that the major reason for the incident was that Goncz opened himself to criticism by getting involved in everyday politics. (Edith Oltay, RFE/RL, Inc.) DEADLOCK REPORTED IN ROMANIAN GOVERNMENT TALKS. Petre Roman, National Salvation Front (NSF) leader and Romania's former prime minister, suggested on 26 October that political leaders had reached an impasse in efforts to form a government. He accused President Ion Iliescu and his Democratic National Salvation Front (DNSF) of continuing a campaign of calumnies against his party. The DNSF, which broke away from the NSF in March-April, is generally seen as opposing radical reforms. In a statement broadcast by Radio Bucharest, DNSF deputy leader Adrian Nastase said that his party might withdraw from the race to form a new cabinet and join the opposition instead. Neither the DNSF, which failed to win a majority in recent elections, nor the opposition seems eager to govern during what is likely to be a difficult winter. (Dan Ionescu, RFE/RL, Inc.) TENSION OVER ETHNIC AUTONOMY IN ROMANIA. Radio Bucharest broadcast on 26 October excerpts from a statement adopted the previous day by the Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania (HDUR) at a conference in Cluj-Napoca. The statement, which insisted that ethnic Hungarians "neither want to emigrate nor be assimilated into the Romanian nation," demanded "self-administration" for Hungarian communities. It also said that "autonomy for ethnic and religious communities" is part of Transylvania's political tradition. The extreme nationalist Greater Romania Party warned in a communique of possible ethnic strife following the HDUR declaration, which it described as "an irresponsible attack on the country's Constitution." (Dan Ionescu, RFE/RL, Inc.) LATVIAN FOREIGN MINISTER RESIGNS. Latvia's Minister of Foreign Affairs Janis Jurkans has resigned, according to an RFE/RL correspondent's report on 27 October. Jurkans had been widely criticized by members of the Latvian Supreme Council. He survived a parliamentary vote of confidence last week after legislators evaluated the performance of the government of Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL, Inc.) DANISH LEADER OFFERS ASSISTANCE FOR TROOP WITHDRAWAL. While discussing the Russian troop withdrawal from the Baltic States, Danish Foreign Minister Uffe Ellemann-Jensen told his Russian counterpart Andrei Kozyrev that Denmark had worked vigorously to establish an international fund to finance the construction of military housing in Russia, Interfax reported on 26 October. Ellemann-Jensen said that the efforts had led nowhere so far and his country had thus decided on a unilateral initiative to expand housing in Russia using Danish funds. Kozyrev endorsed this idea. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL, Inc.) KOZYREV LINKS HUMAN RIGHTS WITH TROOP WITHDRAWAL. Kozyrev also told the Danish Foreign Minister that the issues of Russian troop withdrawal from the Baltic States and the rights of Russian speakers in the Baltics are interrelated. When asked how far Moscow would go to protect Russian speakers in the former USSR republics, Kozyrev said: "We are prepared to resort to the most far-reaching, tough, radical measures, but within the framework of international law." He did not rule out the possibility of using force "for the purpose of ceasefire and other peacekeeping functions in the areas of armed conflicts," but not for the purpose of "ethnic cleansing." Kozyrev stressed that Russia "is categorically against the Yugoslav version," Interfax reported on 26 October. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL, Inc.) SALVATION FRONT PLANS ACTIONS IN THE BALTIC STATES. The program of the newly formed National Salvation Front in Russia includes actions in the Baltic States, according to BNS and Interfax reports of 24 and 26 October. The organization has announced plans to visit Russian army garrisons in the Baltic States in the period 20-30 November for the purpose of securing the rights of the troops and their families. Among the leaders of the Salvation Front are Col. Viktor Alksnis and Russian TV journalist Aleksandr Nevzorov. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL, Inc.) BULGARIA TO LAUNCH LARGE-SCALE PRIVATIZATION. According to a detailed plan distributed to the media on 26 October, the Bulgarian government aims to begin the privatization of at least 92 companies before the end of the year. The Agency on Privatization, which prepared the plan, is to deal with eleven companies worth more than 10 million leva. While the agency has attributed first priority to companies involved in industry and agriculture, it is advising municipalities to concentrate on sectors such as building, trade, services, transport, and communications. Although political differences have delayed large-scale privatization, the government has in the meantime managed to spread ownership through its policy of restoring property rights to precommunist owners. (Kjell Engelbrekt, RFE/RL, Inc.) POLAND COURTS WESTERN INVESTMENT. A three-day forum designed to promote Western investment in Poland, sponsored by the Polish government and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, opened in Warsaw on 26 October. President Lech Walesa, the forum's honorary chairman, said that without foreign capital Poland's economic transformation would take a hundred years. Deputy Prime Minister Henryk Goryszewski pledged that Poland will remain friendly to investors, despite public fears of foreign domination. An opinion poll published in Rzeczpospolita on 26 October showed that 44% of respondents feel there is too little foreign investment in Poland; 25% think the level is just right; and only 20% believe that there is too much. However, 51% of respondents said they would oppose the sale of their own work place to a foreign investor. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL, Inc.) WORLD BANK OPENS BUDAPEST OFFICE. The World Bank opened a new office for the East Central European region in Budapest on 26 October, MTI reports. Finance Minister Mihaly Kupa said at the inauguration ceremony that the presence of the office will facilitate the Hungarian government's goal of turning Budapest into the region's financial center. Kemal Dervis, the director of the World Bank's East Central European department, told Radio Budapest that the World Bank is concerned about Hungary's large budget deficit and hopes that the government will take resolute measures to reduce it. (Edith Oltay, RFE/RL, Inc.)
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----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: U.S. forensics expert uncovers mass grave in former Yugoslavia Subject: Legal experts named to Balkans war-crimes panel Subject: Heavy fighting rocks Bosnian north Subject: Mediators unveil proposed constitution to rival Bosnian factions Subject: Serbia's assembly approves early elections amendment ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: U.S. forensics expert uncovers mass grave in former Yugoslavia Date: 26 Oct 92 23:10:15 GMT WASHINGTON (UPI) -- A U.S. forensics consultant to the United Nations said Monday he uncovered overwhelming evidence in Croatia that 174 wounded men were removed from a hospital by senior officers of the Yugoslav National Army in late 1991 and executed then buried in a mass grave. Dr. Clyde Snow, a forensic anthropoligist who travelled to the region this month with the U.N. Human Rights Commission to gather evidence of Serbian atrocities for a potential war-crimes tribunal, told reporters at the State Department that he believes there are ``dozens or hundreds'' of mass graves spread across what was once Yugoslavia. Although the United Nations has not yet decided on its next step, Assistant Secretary of State John Bolton said, the administration is ``determined to get these facts out.'' Bolton sent a stern warning to those who may have been involved in abuses that any attempts to hide or alter such evidence as mass graves would be considered a war crime. ``We want to warn all the parties that may have been involved in these atrocities that any attempt to cover up the evidence or destroy it would of course be what in our system is called obstruction of justice and in turn a war crime,'' Bolton told reporters. The U.N. War Crimes Commission, which was created by a Security Council resolution earlier this month, is charged with investigating and prosecuting human rights abuses in the former Yugoslavia. The panel is currently in the process of gathering information, Bolton said, and will determine in the future how to use it as evidence in a war-crimes tribunal. ``The most important thing now is to make sure that all the evidence that can be preserved will be preserved,'' he said. Dr. Snow gave a chilling account of the evidence he gathered at a mass grave near the Croatian town of Vukovar and during interviews with witnesses to events leading up to the mass execution. In November, 1991, after Croatia declared independence from Yugoslavia, Belgrade began its brutal offensive to reclaim the territory. Slovenia and Bosnia-Hercegovina in the following months also declared independence and have suffered similar if not worse abuse at the hands of Belgrade's troops. Snow said Yugoslav Army troops, seeking a medical facility to treat its soldiers, went to a hospital in Vukovar and removed 400 Croatian patients. He said 174 wounded Croats were singled out ``by a (Yugoslav Army) Colonel'' and taken on three buses to a farming community named Ovcara.`` ``These 174 men were never seen again,'' Snow said. Later that evening, Snow said he was told by witnesses, the men were taken to a field by Yugoslav Army soldiers as well as Serbian irregulars and executed then buried in shallow graves. Snow travelled to the field Oct. 18 and ``immediatelly encountered a human skeleton, then another.'' Although Snow left the ``crime scene'' undisturbed, he discovered two more bodies and one skull with a bullet hole in the temple. ``We have strong reason to believe this grave probably contains the bodies of the men who...were kidnapped from the hospital Nov. 20.'' He said the United Nations was treating the field ``as a homicide scene,'' and Russian troops were currently guarding it.`` ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Legal experts named to Balkans war-crimes panel Date: 26 Oct 92 20:03:41 GMT UNITED NATIONS (UPI) -- Secretary-General Boutros Ghali appointed five legal experts Monday to the U.N. war crimes commission that will ``examine and analyze'' reports of atrocities by warring ethnic groups in the former republics of Yugoslavia. The work of the commission could lead to an international trial of those charged with allegedly torturing and killing thousands of civilians, mostly in Bosnia-Hercegovina, where six months of fighting between Serbs, Croats and Muslims has brought widespread reports of racially motivated killings. The U.N. war-crimes commission was set up by the Security Council on Oct. 6 after Serbian irregulars were accused of executing Muslim Slavs in detention camps. The council also asked governments to provide to the commission information related to severe violations of human rights. Ghali said the five experts will ``examine and analyze information concerning possible breaches of international humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions in the territory of the former Yugoslavia.'' The secretary-general named Frits Kalshoven, a professor from the Netherlands, to head the commission. He currently is a legal adviser for international affairs of the Netherlands Red Cross Society. Other members are Cherif Bassiouni, an Egyptian professor teaching at De Paul University in Chicago who is president of the university's International Human Rights Institute; William Fenrick, Director of Canada's Law Operations and Training at the National Defense Headquarters; Judge Keba Mbaye of Senegal, a former judge of the U.N. International Court of Justice; and, Professor Torkel Opsahl, president of the Norwegian Institute of Human Rights. When it constituted the war-crimes commission, the Security Council called on the experts to contact governments and international organizations or conduct their own investigations to gather evidence on war crimes committed during the conflict in the former Yugoslav republics. Government representatives on the Security Council said that they would seek to prosecute those responsible of human rights violations, particularly the ``ethnic cleansing'' campaign against the Muslim population in Bosnia-Hercegovina. The governments of Bosnia-Hercegovina and the United States have been the only two to have provided written records of allegations of war crimes. The U.S. State Department last week submitted its second series of reports dealing with the issues, drawing heavily from interviews done by U.S. embassies in the Eastern and Central Europe. The State Department said the documents showed ``numerous abhorrent incidents, including willful killings, torture of prisoners, abuse of civilians in detention camps, wanton devastation and destruction of property and mass forcible expulsion and deportation of civilians.'' The documents cited several cases of mass killings. The report said in one instance near Brcko, Serbian irregulars allegedly killed between 2,000 and 3,000 Muslim men, women and children. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees appealed Monday to governments to admit thousands of detainees from camps in the former Yugoslavia. It said many of the refugees have been ``subjected to horrendous abuses and torture.'' It said the United States on Monday offered to take 1,000 refugees, the largest number by any governments. Finland, Italy, Norway, New Zealand and Switzerland have offered to admit some refugees. The refugee agency's deputy commissioner Douglas Stafford said in the appeal that the refugees have suffered the worst atrocities. ``These people have been beaten, tortured and have experienced atrocities of the worst kinds,'' Stafford said. ``They are in need of immediate protection.'' The United Nations has reported a slow response from governments to assist the refugees. UNHCR and the International Committee of the Red Cross have been interviewing refugees in camps in Bosnia-Hercegovina, but they said plans to evacuate them were postponed because not enough countries have come forward to admit the refugees. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Heavy fighting rocks Bosnian north Date: 27 Oct 92 15:27:23 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- Serbian forces Tuesday reportedly shelled towns across northern and central Bosnia-Hercegovina and launched a new ``ethnic cleansing'' operation. Meantime, in Geneva, international peace mediators presented the warring factions with a plan for a political settlement of the war. Commanders of the former Yugoslav republic's Serbian, Croatian and Muslim Slav-dominated Bosnian forces held the first of a series of U.N.- mediated working-level talks in Sarajevo aimed at demilitarizing the capital and guaranteeing humanitarian aid deliveries. On the war front, Yugoslav army-equipped Serbian forces launched artillery barrages into and around the northern and central towns of Jajce, Gradacac, Brcko, Maglaj, Tuzla and Bihac, Sarajevo radio reported. In Brcko, the radio said, Serbian soldiers embarked on a new round of ``ethnic cleansing,'' destroying mosques, cemeteries and a Catholic church, while forcing non-Serbs into signing documents at a local Red Cross office saying that they were voluntarily abandoning their homes and leaving the town. There was no independent confirmation of the report, although U.N. officials have accused Serbian forces in the past of coercing non-Serbs into signing such documents in other areas of the war-torn state. The United States has said it has presented information to U.N. war crimes investigators on previous Serbian ethnic cleansing measures in Brcko, including the alleged massacre of some 3,000 non-Serbs. Brcko, which has a pre-war ethnic mix of 44 percent Muslim Slav, 25 percent Croatian and 21 percent Serbian, was one of the first towns conquered in a Serbian drive launched in late March to rip a self- declared state out of 70 percent of Europe's newest state. The Serbs are confronted by Croatian nationalist forces and the Bosnian army, which mostly comprises Muslim Slavs, but also includes moderate Serbs and Croats opposed to the partition of the republic, which won international recognition of its independence in early April. Western governments and U.N. officials and international human rights groups say Serbian soldiers have systematically expelled tens of thousands of non-Serbs from areas claimed for the Serbian ``state'' in operations involving forced evictions, house-burnings and killings. Croatian and Muslim forces have been accused of pursuing similar tactics, but not on the same massive scale as allegedly employed by the Serbs. In Geneva, U.N. special envoy Cyrus Vance and European Community mediator David Owen presented representatives of the three sides with their proposal for a new republic constitution that sources said would create a federal structure similar to the Swiss-style system of cantonal districts. The local divisions would not be ethnically based and the federal government would oversee foreign affairs, finance and security. Serbian and nationalist Croatian leaders have been insisting on a division of Bosnia-Hercegovina into autonomous ethnic regions with little or no central linkage. Vance and Owen planned to begin a three-day visit to former Yugoslavia on Wednesday as part of an apparent bid to elicit support for their plan. Sarajevo radio quoted Bosnian officials in the eastern town of Srebrenica as reporting the deaths over the past seven months of at least 173 children among a total of some 80,000 refugees who fled Serbian ``ethnic cleansing'' and are now living homeless, hungry and cold in surrounding forests. The officials said 342 children among the refugees were injured, 1, 837 lost one parent, 563 lost both parents, and more than 10,000 children have been stricken by various illnesses, the radio said. Sarajevo saw another day of sporadic artillery and sniper fire. The working-level U.N.-mediated talks between Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian military commanders were called to discuss a proposal for a 12- mile-wide demilitarized zone around the capital and its airport to facilitate deliveries of humanitarian aid. U.N. Protection Force (UNPROFOR) negotiators said they were not greatly optimistic that the plan could be quickly approved and implemented. ``A start has been made,'' said UNPROFOR spokesman Mik Magnusson. ``All we can say is the machinery is now in motion. It may not even be going very fast, but it is in motion.'' UNPROFOR, in its daily survey, said its military observers detected a total of 43 Serbian heavy artillery rounds hitting Bosnian-controlled territory in the Sarajevo area during the 24-hour period that ended at 5 p.m. Monday. By contrast, only seven Bosnian-fired shells hit Serb- controlled areas, it said. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Mediators unveil proposed constitution to rival Bosnian factions Date: 27 Oct 92 17:38:29 GMT GENEVA (UPI) -- Cyrus Vance and David Owen, the co-chairmen of the U. N.-European Community peace conference on the former Yugoslavia, Tuesday unveiled to the rival factions of Bosnia-Hercegovina a proposed constitution that would be the basis for a political settlement of their almost seven-month-old war. Public disclosure of the plan was delayed until Wednesday due to difficulties in translating the English-language draft into French as required by U.N. regulations, said Fred Eckhard, a spokesman for the co- chairmen. But, according to earlier extensive leaks of its details, the plan calls for the establishment of a federal system in Bosnia-Hercegovina similar to the cantonal structure of Switzerland, with a central government retaining control of foreign relations, economic affairs and internal security. Most other political responsibilities would be transferred to the administrations of an unspecified number of regions that would be established without regard to the local ethnic mixes in the newly independent republic. There have been no official responses from leaders of the republic's Muslim Slav, Croatian and Serbian communities, whose negotiators met behind closed doors with Owen and Vance to review the proposed constitution. Bosnia-Hercegovina's Muslim Slavs, who comprise 44 percent of the 4.4 million-strong population, and the small number of moderate Serbs and Croats advocate maintaining the republic as a unified, federal state. But most of 1.4 million Christian Orthodox Serbs, and 750,000 Roman Catholic Croats, backed respectively by the regimes in neighboring Serbia and Croatia, want to divide Bosnia-Hercegovina in autonomous ethnic regions. Serbian forces, backed by the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army, ignited the conflict in late March when they launched an offensive aimed at pre- empting international recognition of the republic's independence and capturing a self-declared state proclaimed on 70 percent of Bosnia- Hercegovina. Nationalist Croatian forces this summer proclaimed an ``Autonomous Croatian Community of Herceg-Bosna'' in Croat-dominated Western Hercegovina and other Croatian pockets. ``This is a unique constitution for a unique situation,'' Eckhard said of the Vance-Owen proposal. ``The co-chairmen have ignored the question of ethnic purity in trying to set up the embryo regions, but of course most of them will have a dominant ethnic group.'' He said the proposed central government would comprise members of all three ethnic groups, as does the current one, in addition ``other persons.'' Asked who these persons would be, he pointed out that two out of every five marriages in Bosnia-Hercegovina are mixed. Vance and Owen were to depart Wednesday for Belgrade, where Eckhard said they would hold talks with Dobrica Cosic, the president of the rump Yugoslav union of Serbia and Montenegro, its prime minister, Milan Panic. They also hoped to meet President Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia, widely regarded as the prime architect of the Serbian land-grab offensive, although the talks had not yet been confirmed. Eckhard said Vance and Owen were seeking ``as much of a one-on-one meeting as possible'' with Milosevic. On Thursday, the pair was to swing through Macedonia, Kosovo and Albania, where they were to overnight after a meeting with government officials. They planned to return to Geneva Friday, Eckhard said, via Montenegro and Croatia, where they would meet Croatian President Franjo Tudjman, Gen. Satish Nambiar, the commander of U.N. forces in ex-Yugoslavia, and Cedric Thornberry the senior U.N. political officer. In a related development, the U.N. Childrens Fund said it had received assurances from all parties that a week-long truce would be observed beginning Nov. 1 to enable humanitarian aid to be distributed to children and other refugees, mostly in Bosnia-Hercegovina, but also in Montenegro. The International Organization for Migration (IOM), a non- governmental organization affiliated with the United Nations, announced it was moving 208 former prisoners from Serbian detention camps, plus their families, to Switzerland within the next few days. The refugees were among 1,500 former inmates brought out of camps in Serb-held areas of Bosnia-Hercegovina by the International Red Cross and the U.H. High Commission for Refugees. They were given temporary refuge in the Croatian town of Karlovac. The IOM said it hopes to move another 70 former prisoners to Finland shortly. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Serbia's assembly approves early elections amendment Date: 27 Oct 92 17:52:30 GMT BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (UPI) -- The communist-controlled Serbian Assembly Tuesday passed a constitutional amendment authorizing early parliamentary and presidential polls, but allowing President Slobodan Milosevic to maintain his grip on the state media, election machinery and police forces during the campaign. In a bid to loosen Milosevic's control of the media and ensure opposition participation in the polls, the Yugoslav federal government demanded the resignation of the top official of state-run Belgrade radio and television. The Serbian legislature approved a constitutional amendment that permitted early elections by the end of the year and ``foresees the continuity of the current government until new elections are held, when the mandate of the president and parliamentary deputies will end.'' The provision allowed Milosevic to retain control of the opinion- shaping state-run media, Serbia's pervasive security network and the communist-run election bureaucracy. Normally, early elections in parliamentary democracies are triggered when a government chief dismisses a legislature and submits his own resignation. Political analysts believe that Milosevic sought to avoid such steps not just to maintain a pre-poll lock on power, but to avoid giving an impression that he and his Socialist Party of Serbia are responsible for dire economic, social and political chaos stemming from their roles in the wars in Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina. Early federal and republic elections have been pushed by President Dobrica Cosic of the rump Yugoslav federation of Serbia and Montenegro, and his prime minister, Milan Panic, a Belgrade-born naturalized U.S. citizen, as part of a peace-seeking initiative. Both regard Milosevic's ouster as the main requisite for the lifting of severe economic sanctions imposed on Serbia and Montenegro by the United Nations on May 30 for underwriting the Serbian territorial conquests in neighboring Bosnia-Hercegovina. Their efforts have ignited a major power struggle with Milosevic. Cosic on Saturday set Dec. 20 for early multi-party elections for the federal Parliament, control of which Milosevic's party captured in May. Milosevic and his supporters have accused Cosic and Panic of betraying Serbian national interests through their efforts to end the war in Bosnia-Hercegovina and normalize relations Croatia severed by last year's Serb-Croat war. Serbian Justice Minister Zoran Cetkovic, defending the constitutional amendment for early elections, said it only ``enables the constitutional and legal continuity of the authorities until new ones are elected.'' Serbian Assembly Chairman Aleksandar Bakocevic urged Serbian Prime Minister Radoman Bozovic to prepare by Thursday decrees so that Serbian elections could be held simultaneously with the Dec. 20 federal polls and Montenegrin assembly contests. A federal commission appointed by Panic to monitor the federal elections announced that it demanded the resignation of Milorad Vucelic, the general manager of Serbian radio and television, because he was named to the leadership of Milosevic's party over the weekend. Panic presided over the commission, which said that Vucelic's two posts were ``incompatible.'' ``Having in mind that the television is the most powerful medium..., its influence on votes is a decisive one,'' the commission said in a statement. The federal government wants ``all political parties to be given an equal chance'' to publicize their platforms, the commission said. The commission said the federal government believed that Vecelic's departure would mark the beginning of ``freeing the media from (ruling party) control.'' In December 1990, Milosevic and his communists won a massive five- year mandate in Serbia's first multi-party elections following a campaign strongly supported by the state-run media.
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UNITED NATIONS (UPI) -- Secretary-General Boutros Ghali appointed five legal experts Monday to the U.N. war crimes commission that will ``examine and analyze'' reports of atrocities by warring ethnic groups in the former republics of Yugoslavia. The work of the commission could lead to an international trial of those charged with allegedly torturing and killing thousands of civilians, mostly in Bosnia-Hercegovina, where six months of fighting between Serbs, Croats and Muslims has brought widespread reports of racially motivated killings. The U.N. war-crimes commission was set up by the Security Council on Oct. 6 after Serbian irregulars were accused of executing Muslim Slavs in detention camps. The council also asked governments to provide to the commission information related to severe violations of human rights. Ghali said the five experts will ``examine and analyze information concerning possible breaches of international humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions in the territory of the former Yugoslavia.'' The secretary-general named Frits Kalshoven, a professor from the Netherlands, to head the commission. He currently is a legal adviser for international affairs of the Netherlands Red Cross Society. Other members are Cherif Bassiouni, an Egyptian professor teaching at De Paul University in Chicago who is president of the university's International Human Rights Institute; William Fenrick, Director of Canada's Law Operations and Training at the National Defense Headquarters; Judge Keba Mbaye of Senegal, a former judge of the U.N. International Court of Justice; and, Professor Torkel Opsahl, president of the Norwegian Institute of Human Rights. When it constituted the war-crimes commission, the Security Council called on the experts to contact governments and international organizations or conduct their own investigations to gather evidence on war crimes committed during the conflict in the former Yugoslav republics. Government representatives on the Security Council said that they would seek to prosecute those responsible of human rights violations, particularly the ``ethnic cleansing'' campaign against the Muslim population in Bosnia-Hercegovina. The governments of Bosnia-Hercegovina and the United States have been the only two to have provided written records of allegations of war crimes. The U.S. State Department last week submitted its second series of reports dealing with the issues, drawing heavily from interviews done by U.S. embassies in the Eastern and Central Europe. The State Department said the documents showed ``numerous abhorrent incidents, including willful killings, torture of prisoners, abuse of civilians in detention camps, wanton devastation and destruction of property and mass forcible expulsion and deportation of civilians.'' The documents cited several cases of mass killings. The report said in one instance near Brcko, Serbian irregulars allegedly killed between 2,000 and 3,000 Muslim men, women and children. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees appealed Monday to governments to admit thousands of detainees from camps in the former Yugoslavia. It said many of the refugees have been ``subjected to horrendous abuses and torture.'' It said the United States on Monday offered to take 1,000 refugees, the largest number by any governments. Finland, Italy, Norway, New Zealand and Switzerland have offered to admit some refugees. The refugee agency's deputy commissioner Douglas Stafford said in the appeal that the refugees have suffered the worst atrocities. ``These people have been beaten, tortured and have experienced atrocities of the worst kinds,'' Stafford said. ``They are in need of immediate protection.'' The United Nations has reported a slow response from governments to assist the refugees. UNHCR and the International Committee of the Red Cross have been interviewing refugees in camps in Bosnia-Hercegovina, but they said plans to evacuate them were postponed because not enough countries have come forward to admit the refugees.
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U.N. Says Muslims Face Extermination, Reports On Mass Graves GENEVA (AP) - A U.N. investigator said Wednesday that Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina ``are virtually threatened with extermination'' because of ethnic cleansing by Serbs. Tadeusz Mazowiecki's report reiterated what has long been charged - that ethnic cleansing does not appear to be a consequence of the war, but its goal. ``This goal, to a large extent, has already been achieved through killings, beatings, rape, destruction of houses and threats,'' the former Polish premier said. Mazowiecki, who had announced his main findings Monday ahead of the report's publication, said Bosnian Serb leaders have pursued their plan while negotiating peace in Geneva. Muslims are the ``principal victims and are virtually threatened with extermination,'' he said. The report, given to the U.N. Human Rights Commission, also detailed evidence of mass graves near the town of Vukovar in the neighboring republic of Croatia, ``some of which contain victims of atrocities.'' Vukovar fell to Serb forces in a fierce battle in last year's war in Croatia. Clyde Snow, an American forensic expert, said in the report he found remains of young men buried over an area of 10 by 30 yards at the head of a ravine about a mile southeast of the village of Ovcara. The discovery appeared to confirm witness accounts that about 175 patients from Vukovar hospital disappeared after its evacuation last Nov. 20, Snow said. Witnesses said lightly wounded civilian men and soldiers were separated from women, children and the elderly and taken away on buses of the Yugoslav National Army, which backed Croatia's ethnic Serbs. The captives were taken to a garage in Ovcara, where two were beaten to death by Yugoslav soldiers and Serb paramilitary fighters, the witnesses said. By the evening, they said, the prisonsers were divided into groups of 20 and driven by truck to the ravine. Snow did not say how many bodies might be in the mass grave or indicate where or how the victims might have been killed. Mazowiecki visited former Yugoslavia this month and said the human rights situation had worsened since his last trip in August. He urged other countries to admit more victims of ethnic cleansing, especially people detained in camps, because they otherwise face death.
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WASHINGTON (UPI) -- U.N. sanctions against Serbia are not working as goods get through on the Danube River and by trucks that are supposedly only crossing through, not unloading, in that nation, a Senate report said Monday. A Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff report, released by Sen. Claiborne Pell, D-R.I., the chairman, said panel investigators found ``major holes'' in the U.N. sanctions. ``Allowing Serbia to evade sanctions permits it to continue a ruthless war in Bosnia-Hercegovina and deprives the world community of the one non-military tool to check Serbian aggression,'' Pell said. ``Failing to enforce sanctions makes the military option inevitable.'' The report said ``a large volume of of goods reaches Serbia'' on the Danube, providing Serbia with most of its oil. The document said that fewer that 5 percent of the barges are inspected by Romanian and Bulgarian customs. The staff report added that the U.S. Customs Service and other observers ``believe the overwhelming majaority of barges violating the sanctions regime are Ukranian flag vessels.'' False invoicing for truck cargo and phony ship manifests allow the traffic to evade the sanctions. International monitors on the Danube River and at land crossings to Serbia cannot do their job because they do not have essential communications systems, the staff investigators said. The report said that to make the sanctions more effective, transit traffic to Bosnia-Hercegovina and Croatia should be banned and an inspection system set up to inspect and verify all transit cargoes as they enter and leave Serbia.
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RFE/RL Daily Report No. 208, 28 October 1992 SUCCESSOR STATES TO THE USSR YELTSIN BANS NATIONAL SALVATION FRONT. Russian President Boris Yeltsin has called for the banning of the National Salvation Front, which was founded last weekend by an assortment of communist, nationalist, and other political groups. Yeltsin said that he decided to ban the Front because it had called for the overthrow of the lawful authorities, including the president, ITAR-TASS reported on 27 October. Leaders of the Front asserted that Yeltsin was panicking. Izvestiya reported on the same day that Yeltsin had created a "working group" of senior ministers who will plan to hold a referendum on the constitution while also temporarily suspending parliament. Ex-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev stated that during its last meeting, the Security Council had discussed the introduction of emergency rule, but that no consensus had been reached. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL, Inc.) PARLIAMENTARY GUARDS SURROUND IZVESTIYA. The parliamentary guards, under the command of parliamentary speaker Ruslan Khasbulatov, have surrounded the publication house and the editorial offices of the newsapaper Izvestiya in order to enforce a parliamentary decision to return the newspaper to the legislature's control, ITAR-TASS reported on 27 October. Izvestiya first became independent after the failed August 1991 putsch, but parliament subsequently voted to subordinate the newspaper once again to parliament. President Yeltsin had previously promised that he would defend Izvestiya against seizure by parliamentary hardliners. (Alexander Rahr, RFE/RL, Inc.) YELTSIN CRITICIZES FOREIGN MINISTRY. In a highly critical speech at the Russian Foreign Ministry on 27 October, President Yeltsin noted that there had been "improvisations, inconsistencies and contradictions" in the work of the Foreign Ministry, whereas its personnel reform was progressing "very, very slowly." Yeltsin claimed that Russia must advocate its foreign policy interests more directly, and not be overly concerned with charges of Russian imperialism. Rather, Russian foreign policy should focus on protecting Russia's interests and security, and Russia should not allow itself to be insulted in a manner which the USSR would not have tolerated. Overall, the speech was a clear call to greater action, and tougher stands, by the Foreign Ministry. The speech was reported by Interfax. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL, Inc.) YELTSIN VOICES SUPPORT FOR GAIDAR, KOZYREV. In his 27 October speech at the Russian Foreign Ministry, President Yeltsin voiced his support for Prime Minister Gaidar and Foreign Minister Kozyrev. Yeltsin noted that he had no intention of "sacrificing" either Gaidar or Kozyrev, but his support for Kozyrev seemed more qualified. Yeltsin described Gaidar's retention as "essential" but did not say the same for Kozyrev. While Yeltsin did dismiss rumors of Kozyrev's resignation as speculation, the harshness of Yeltsin's criticism of the Foreign Ministry would seem to imply that Kozyrev's days as Foreign Minister are numbered. Yeltsin also praised the work of the Russian embassy in Washington which is headed by Vladimir Lukin, a critic of, and potential successor to, Kozyrev. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL, Inc.) YELTSIN CALLS FOR TOUGHER POLICY TOWARD BALTIC STATES. President Yeltsin accused the West of double standards concerning the "persecution" of the Russian-speaking population in the Baltic States in his 27 October speech at the Russian Foreign Ministry. According to Interfax, he urged the Foreign Ministry to make greater efforts to raise the issue, and complained that in this area, as in others, the Foreign Ministry was only reacting to events rather than anticipating them. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIAN SHOW OF FORCE STOPS GEORGIAN SHELLING IN ABKHAZIA. According to an ITAR-TASS report of 27 October, two Russian Su-25 attack aircraft flew over Georgian artillery emplacements shelling a Russian military garrison in Eshery. While the aircraft did not open fire, the shelling stopped under the threat of attack. In a separate incident reported by AFP on 28 October, a Russian Su-25 fired an air-to-air missile at a Georgian aircraft that had opened fire on it. Neither aircraft was hit. Both incidents appear to reflect the first implementation of a new policy that allows Russian forces to return fire without warning. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL, Inc.) GERASHCHENKO DETAILS POSITION ON ECONOMIC ISSUES. Russian Central Bank Chairman Viktor Gerashchenko gave what may be the most informative presentation to date of his positions on economic reform policy in an interview with Trud on 27 October. His major point was that an excessively tight credit policy had largely caused the drastic fall in Russian economic production, and urged that "we should not repeat the mistakes of the USA in 1929, when [such a policy contributed to] the country collapsing into a deep economic crisis." Although appreciative of the need to continue anti-inflation measures and clearly against such policies as indexation of wages, he argued for a reorientation of economic policy towards ending the plunge in economic activity in the country. Gerashchenko also touched on weaknesses of current pricing, interest rate and privatization policies. (Erik Whitlock, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIA'S RECESSION DEEPENS. During the interview with Gerashchenko, the interviewer cited some statistical data that was presumably taken from the Goskomstat report for the first nine months of 1992. Industrial output in August was said to be 27% lower than in August 1991, while industrial output in September was down by 28-29%. He also mentioned a monthly inflation rate of 25%. Reuters of the same date cited Izvestiya to the effect that inflation in October could rise to 25%. The original source could not be obtained. (Keith Bush, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUBLE FALLS FURTHER. At the Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange session on 27 October, the ruble fell further, Bizness-TASS reported. It closed the day at 393 rubles to the US dollar, against 368 rubles to the dollar on 22 October. Volume traded was $45 million, up from $39 million on 22 October. (Keith Bush, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIAN COUNCIL OF ENTREPRENEURS. During his visit to Tolyatti on 25 October, Gaidar addressed an assembly of some 60 industrial executives, Interfax and Western agencies reported. In return for their support, he promised greater consultation with them and their peers, and announced a number of concessions to industry. Gaidar said that a government resolution would be adopted on 26 October to set up a Council of Entrepreneurs under the Russian government. It was not immediately clear how this body would differ from, or interact with the Council on Entrepreneurship, which was set up on 2 March,and the Trilateral Commission, of which little has been heard of late. (Keith Bush, RFE/RL, Inc.) PERSONNEL CHANGES IN RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT. On 23 October, ITAR-TASS reported that Russian Health Minister Andrei Vorobiev had been replaced. He had suffered a heart attack on 22 October while presenting his plans to reform the health care system to the cabinet. His replacement was not named, nor was a reason for his retirement given. Russia's chief representative to the International Monetary Fund, Konstantin Kagalovsky, was replaced on the same day. ITAR-TASS reported that he would become an adviser to Gaidar. No replacement for Kagalovsky was named, but it is thought that Aleksei Mozhin is in line for the post. (Keith Bush, RFE/RL, Inc.) CHEMICAL WEAPONS ELIMINATION SITES NAMED. The presidium of the Russian parliament discussed a draft program for the elimination of Russian chemical weapons on 26 October. ITAR-TASS reported the names of the four sites where elimination facilities will be built. They are Novocheboksarsk (in the Chuvash autonomous republic, some 650 kilometers east of Moscow), Kambarka (in the Udmurt autonomous republic), and two locations in Saratov oblast: Volsk-17 and Gornyi. Russia has said it has 40,000 tons of chemical weapons. A destruction facility had been built in Chapayevsk in 1989, but local protests forced the government to limit its use to research. The new sites mentioned in the draft program appear to be declared chemical weapons storage facilities. Kambarka, for example, is a depot for nearly 7,000 tons of lewisite, a poisonous blister gas used in World War I. (Doug Clarke, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIAN DELEGATION TO IRAN DISCUSSES NUCLEAR TECHNOLOGY SALES. According to a report published in Kommersant on 27 October, a delegation that included representatives of the Russian Atomic Energy Ministry and Russian nuclear technology exporting organizations, met with Iranian officials from 15 through 24 October. The group discussed the timetable for the construction in Iran of a VVER nuclear reactor, the sale of which was agreed in August 1992 despite US objections. Other discussions concerned possible joint uranium prospecting projects, and a chemical process for extracting uranium from low-grade ores. (John Lepingwell, RFE/RL, Inc.) NEW UKRAINIAN CABINET OF MINISTERS. The Ukrainian parliament on 27 October approved the new cabinet of ministers presented by Prime Minister Leonid Kuchma, Ukrinform-TASS reported. Ihor Yukhnovsky, the former head of the opposition People's Council in the parliament, was named first deputy prime minister. He will be assisted by five deputy prime ministers. A total of 21 ministers were named; three ministerial posts remain vacant. Kuchma, in his address to parliament, said that the composition of the new government is not final and may be changed if the need arises. (Roman Solchanyk, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIAN-TAJIK FORCES COOPERATE FOR STABILITY IN DUSHANBE. Tajikistan's acting President Akbarsho Iskandarov told a press conference on 27 October that the Tajik government has adequate forces at its disposal to prevent a repetition of the attempt by fighters from Kulyab Oblast to overthrow it, Interfax reported. He admitted that authorities in Dushanbe had been warned that the Kulyab forces would attack the capital on 24 October, but had not believed the warning. The Russian division stationed in Tajikistan will continue to guard important sites, including government buildings, the Nurek power station and industrial installations. Iskandarov said that an assembly of representatives of all political parties and movements, public organizations and ethnic groups is to be convened to find a solution to the country's crisis. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL, Inc.) KYRGYZ VICE-PRESIDENT HAS DOUBTS. Kyrgyzstan's Vice-President Feliks Kulov told Interfax on 27 October that Iskandarov had asked him to resume his peace mission but he has been unable to reach the Tajik leader. Kulov said that he had been told by Tajikistan's National Security Committee that the situation in Dushanbe was completely out of control and that Pamiris from Gorno-Badakhshan were seizing motor vehicles and taking hostages. Kulov's information appears to confirm a Tajik diplomat's statement to an RFE/RL correspondent in Moscow that forces from Badakhshan and supporters of the Islamic Renaissance Party (IRP) have been robbing the populace and commandeering vehicles. According to the diplomat, the Pamiris and IRP supporters had started fighting each other. The IRP and Badakhshan's nationalist movement are both members of the anti-Communist coalition. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL, Inc.) DZHALAL-ABAD CRISIS APPARENTLY DEFUSED. Kyrgyzstan's President Askar Akaev has apparently defused a crisis that, according to Akaev, threatened to create a Tajik-type situation in Dzhalal-Abad Oblast in the southern part of the country, Interfax reported on 27 October. During a lightening visit to Dzhalal-Abad, Akaev managed to persuade supporters of the chief of the oblast administration (akim), Bekmamat Osmonov, to give up their demonstrations demanding the resignations of Vice-President Feliks Kulov and Prime Minister Tursunbek Chyngyshev for having demanded an investigation of Osmonov's rule. Osmonov himself offered his resignation, admitting that a sharp division between supporters and adversaries of his policies endangered stability in the oblast, where the presence of a large Uzbek minority creates the potential for interethnic violence. (Bess Brown, RFE/RL, Inc.) MOLDOVAN HUMAN RIGHTS BODY APPEALS TO INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS. The Moldovan Parliament's Commission for Human Rights and Interethnic Relations on 21 October appealed to international organizations to defend the rights of Moldovans in areas on both banks of the Dniester controlled by "Dniester" insurgents and by Russia's 14th Army. The appeal, carried by Moldovapres, noted the ongoing "liquidation of constitutional bodies," the imposition of the Russian script in place of the Latin for the "Moldovan" language, the closure of many "Moldovan"-language kindergartens, the eviction from jobs and/or homes of thousands of Moldovans who disagree with the "Dniester republic"'s policies, and the illegal detention of several local Moldovan activists on unsubstantiated charges. The appeal also noted that "in its difficult situation, Moldova is not in a position to defend its citizens in its eastern area." (Vladimir Socor, RFE/RL, Inc.) MORE ON UKRAINIAN-MOLDOVAN SUMMIT. The presidents of Moldova and Ukraine, Mircea Snegur and Leonid Kravchuk, declared at the signing ceremony of the Ukrainian-Moldovan treaty on 23 October, as cited by TASS, that the sides agree on respecting each other's territorial integrity and not raising territorial issues stemming from the second world war; but that they do not rule out a future examination of the issue of northern Bukovina and southern Bessarabia (former parts of Moldova and, later, of Romania, which were transferred to Ukraine following the Soviet annexation of these areas). Kravchuk told a news conference in Chisinau, as reported by the Moldovan media, that Ukraine regards the "Dniester region" as an inseparable part of Moldova; and that Moldova's independence and territorial integrity is important to Ukraine. He said that any legal-political status of that region is for the Moldovan parliament to determine. (Vladimir Socor, RFE/RL, Inc.) CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE "VISEGRAD TRIANGLE" MEETS EC REPRESENTATIVES AT LONDON SUMMIT. The prime ministers of Poland and Hungary, Hanna Suchocka and Jozsef Antall, and Deputy Prime Minister Antonin Baudys of Czechoslovakia, are scheduled to meet with the current EC President, British Prime Minister John Major, and European Commission President Jacques Delors in London on 28 October. The Czech and Slovak prime ministers Vaclav Klaus and Vladimir Meciar will also be present at the meeting. According to Western media reports, the chances for any concrete results are small. Major has already indicated that the three countries will not be offered a timetable for membership as the EC gives priority to the applications of European Free Trade Association (EFTA) member countries. Although the dispute over the Gabcikovo dam project is not on the official agenda, the issue is likely to overshadow the meeting. (Jan Obrman, RFE/RL, Inc.) CZECHOSLOVAK PREMIER SAYS GOVERNMENT MAY RESIGN. Speaking at a press conference in Prague on 27 October, Czechoslovak Premier Jan Strasky said that his government may resign because of Czech-Slovak disagreements within the government over the Gabcikovo hydroelectric dam project. CSTK quotes Strasky as saying that in the 10-member cabinet, all five Czech members want to suspend work on the dam project and seek mediation, while all five Slovak members want the work to continue. Strasky said that the resignation would be "a logical step" considering the fact that the federal government is unable to take any decision when interests of Czechs and Slovaks are not the same. Also on 27 October, Czech Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus told CSTK that his government will play a minimum role in the dispute between Hungary and Slovakia over the Gabcikovo dam. According to Klaus, the dispute can only be solved by a compromise between the Slovak and Hungarian governments. (Jiri Pehe, RFE/RL, Inc.) BOSNIAN FIGHTING UPDATE. Western news agencies on 27 October reported continued heavy fighting in and around the western Bosnian town of Jajce. Serbian forces have been shelling the Muslim-held settlement for several days, and Serbian media said that Jajce had fallen. There has been no independent confirmation of the Serbian reports, nor of those in the Croatian media, as quoted in the 28 October Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, that Serbian planes flew nine missions against Jajce in defiance of the UN's ban on flights. Meanwhile, Reuters on 28 October said that media reports that the central Bosnian town of Prozor had been leveled were wrong. The news agency added, however, that the Croats appear to have driven out the town's civilian Muslims after several days of fighting between Croats and Muslims. Reuters quoted a Bosnian military officer as saying that the Croats no longer appeared to be simply consolidating their positions, but rather practicing their own form of "ethnic cleansing." (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL, Inc.) UN NEGOTIATORS URGE HELP FOR FREED CAMP INMATES. Cyrus Vance and Lord Owen urged the countries involved in the Yugoslav peace process to "save the lives" of the thousands of people being released from detention camps, AFP said on 27 October. The refugees are mainly Muslims who are victims of Serbian "ethnic cleansing" and cannot return to their homes in Serb-held territory. Elsewhere, Reuters quoted UN human rights envoy and former Polish Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki as saying that all nationalities in the conflict had committed atrocities but that the Muslims had suffered the most. He added that "those responsible for this conflict are those carrying out a policy of ethnic purification,' that is the Serbs." Mazowiecki said "words fail me" when he tried to describe the conditions at the Serb-run Trnopolje camp he had visited. (Patrick Moore, RFE/RL, Inc.) ROMANIAN POLITICIANS DENOUNCE HUNGARIANS' AUTONOMY QUEST. Romanian politicians of various persuasions attacked the Hungarian Democratic Federation of Romania (HDFR) for calling for "self-administration on the basis of community autonomy." Romanian National Unity Party leader Gheorghe Funar called the statement a "provocative action against the Romanian people" and appealed to parliament to outlaw ethnic parties, Rompres said on 27 October. Former prime minister Petre Roman said the HDFR statement challenges state unity and may lead to tensions and "dangerous situations." In statements carried by the daily Evenimentul zilei the same day, Ion Ratiu of the National Peasant Party Christian Democratic ruled out autonomy based on geographic criteria; and Emil Constantinescu, the Democratic Convention of Romania's candidate in the last elections, said that national integrity and the state's national character are issues that cannot be questioned. Civic Alliance Party leader Nicolae Manolescu, on the other hand, called the HDFR statement "perfectly acceptable." (Michael Shafir, RFE/RL, Inc.). PROGRESS IN ROMANIAN GOVERNMENT TALKS. A new round of negotiations on the future government was held on 27 October in Bucharest. The Democratic National Salvation Front (DNSF), on one hand, and the Democratic Convention of Romania and the National Salvation Front, on the other, made some progress towards reaching an agreement on a political pact and a "parliamentary moratorium," Radio Bucharest reported. This solution, proposed by president Ion Iliescu on 21 October, involves a grace period during which the opposition would refrain from obstructing a narrow coalition or minority government led by the DNSF. Radio Bucharest said agreement had been reached on the preamble to a joint declaration, the general aims of the future government, and the immediate goals to be pursued in the approaching winter. (Michael Shafir, RFE/RL, Inc.). YELTSIN AGAIN CHARGES RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN BALTIC STATES. Russian President Boris Yeltsin has reiterated his appeal to the Russian Foreign Ministry to become more active in drawing the West's attention to alleged "human rights violations in the Baltic states." Yeltsin told the Foreign Ministry Council session on 27 October that the West is maintaining "double standards" in the matter of human rights. "We are afraid of speaking of our own interests, fearing charges of imperialism, even when our interests are ignored, " Yeltsin said. BNS, quoting Interfax, covered Yeltsin's remarks. (Riina Kionka, RFE/RL, Inc.) DISCORD PROMPTED LATVIAN FOREIGN MINISTER'S RESIGNATION. Janis Jurkans told the press on 27 October that his resignation from the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs was prompted by discord between himself and the parliament and members of the government on issues directly or indirectly related to Latvia's relations with other countries, especially Russia. He spoke of these differences in a Latvian TV interview aired on 26 October; the following morning Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis asked for his resignation, Radio Riga reported on 27 October. In recent months Jurkans openly criticized the work of the legislature and expressed views contradicting the decisions of the legislators and members of the government, thus gradually losing his support base in Latvia. (Dzintra Bungs, RFE/RL, Inc.) DELAYS IN TROOP WITHDRAWAL FROM LITHUANIA? Stasys Knesys, the Lithuanian government commissioner for the Russian troop withdrawal, noted that although the withdrawal is proceeding on schedule, some army units have not submitted the applications necessary to remove weapons and equipment, BNS reported on 27 October. Only two months remain before the deadline for the withdrawal of all aviation units, yet no units have completed withdrawal applications. Moreover, the commanders of the Panevezys transport aviation division mentioned 30 May 1993 as the final date for their withdrawal. Although Lithuania has given some Russian navy ships permission to enter Klaipeda, none has yet arrived. The 3rd coast guard division based there has not submitted a withdrawal application. (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL, Inc.) RUSSIAN OFFICERS UNWILLING TO LEAVE KLAIPEDA. Officers from the 3rd Klaipeda division of the Russian coast guard said on the "Aty-Baty" program of Russian television on 25 October that they have no intention of leaving Lithuania because conditions at their new bases are unsatisfactory. Baltic Fleet commander Vladimir Egorov admitted during the program that there were difficulties in providing decent living conditions for the withdrawing troops, adding: "Of course, to live in Klaipeda is better and more simple than in Russia." (Saulius Girnius, RFE/RL, Inc.) WALESA PROPOSES "NATO II." President Lech Walesa's chief security adviser, Jerzy Milewski, told a press conference on 27 October that the final version of Poland's defense doctrine will be ready within two weeks. Milewski also described Walesa's idea of NATO-II, a transitional defense alliance meant to include Eastern European countries and former Soviet republics. In Walesa's view, NATO-II could help defuse conflicts in the region until formal membership in NATO is possible, thereby preventing "Yugoslavianization." Milewski stressed that NATO-II was an idea for discussion, not a policy proposal. (Louisa Vinton, RFE/RL, Inc.) SERBIA-MONTENEGRO ARMY REORGANIZATION ANNOUNCED. According to the Belgrade daily Politika on 24 October, the federal army of rump Yugoslavia plans to dismiss 17,000 civilian employees and 3,500 officers and non-commissioned officers under a reorganization scheme. The dismissals will mainly involve personnel in the Serbian-dominated "Army of Yugoslavia" not directly involved in the fighting in Slovenia, Croatia, or Bosnia and Herzegovina. Politika said that the peacetime armed forces of the rump Yugoslavia would be reduced to 120,000 troops, about half of whom would be professional soldiers. The armed forces of Yugoslavia at the beginning of 1991 were made up of 70,000 career soldiers and 120,000 conscripts. The reorganization plan also calls for the abolition of the Territorial Defense system, which military officials say has served the interests of individual political parties and their paramilitary units. Last month a proposal called for mandatory military service of twelve months, with a two-year term for those granted alternate service. (Milan Andrejevich, RFE/RL, Inc.) SERBIA'S ASSEMBLY DECIDES ON EARLY ELECTIONS. Radio Serbia reported on 27 October that the National Assembly unanimously adopted an addendum to a constitutional law that makes possible early republican elections before year's end. Assembly president Aleksandar Bakocevic said he will soon call the elections, which would be held within 45 to 90 days. In mid-October the Assembly agreed to hold republic-wide elections on the same day as the federal elections scheduled for 20 December. Meanwhile, a federal commission headed by rump Yugoslav Prime Minister Milan Panic demanded the resignation of Belgrade TV director Milorad Vucelic, who is a staunch supporter of Serbia's President Slobodan Milosevic. Opposition parties threaten to boycott the December elections if Vucelic and the ruling Socialists continue to dominate Belgrade TV. (Milan Andrejevich, RFE/RL, Inc.) HUNGARIAN BUDGET DEBATED IN PARLIAMENT. The introduction of a double-level value added tax was the focus of controversy in parliament on 27 October, as debate on the 1993 budget began. Finance Minister Mihaly Kupa called the introduction of the new tax system "essential," but even the coalition parties are divided over the issue. The Smallholders charge the new system would place too heavy a financial burden on large segments of the population. Deputies from the Christian Democratic party and the Hungarian Democratic Forum announced they would submit amendments aimed at easing the burden on low-income families. The opposition rejects the entire draft budget, claiming that it is not based on sound economic calculations. (Edith Oltay, RFE/RL, Inc.) BULGARIAN GOVERNMENT TO TAKE OVER OLD DEBTS. The Bulgarian government plans to use 5 billion leva ($215 million) of state funds to resolve part of the problem of overdue debts between state firms and banks. In a Bulgarian radio interview on 26 October, deputy prime minister and economic policy coordinator Ilko Eskenazi revealed that the government intends in a one-off action to assume responsibility for nearly all investment credits granted before 1991. Eskenazi said experts were preparing an "ambitious program" for selecting companies that would have their debts reduced. Total inter-enterprise debt in Bulgaria is estimated at above 60 billion leva ($2.55 billion). (Kjell Engelbrekt, RFE/RL, Inc.) HUNGARIAN TALKS ON MEDIA LAWS BREAK DOWN. Despite hours of talks on 27 October, coalition and opposition parties failed to reach agreement on draft media laws. The most controversial issues are: the parliamentary majority needed to pass the laws, the appointment of new radio and television chiefs, and the new satellite station Hungaria TV. State Secretary in the Prime Minister's Office Tamas Katona told MTI and Radio Budapest that the government will soon submit some draft media laws to parliament, and will seek the approval of parliament's cultural committee for its candidates to head radio and television. Coalition and opposition parties traded blame for the breakdown of the talks. The Constitutional Court had set 30 November as the deadline for the adoption of media laws. (Edith Oltay, RFE/RL, Inc.) 300 ABKHAZIA ESTONIANS AWAIT EVACUATION. Some 300 ethnic Estonians trapped by the fighting in Georgia's Abkhazia area are still waiting to be evacuated to Estonia. According to BNS of 27 October, Estonian authorities have promised the residents of two ethnic Estonian villages in Abkhazia--Salme and Sulev--that they will be airlifted out within days. On Sunday, 59 Abkhazia Estonians were brought to Tallinn on an emergency aid flight. (Riina Kionka, RFE/RL, Inc.)
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Subject: Heavy fighting rocks Bosnian north as crucial Geneva session begins Date: Tue, 27 Oct 92 13:56:56 PST SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- Serbian forces shelled towns across north and central Bosnia-Hercegovina and launched a new ``ethnic cleansing'' operation Tuesday as the Geneva-based international peace mediators presented the warring factions with a plan for a political settlement of the conflict. Commanders of the former Yugoslav republic's Serbian, Croatian and Muslim Slav-dominated Bosnian forces held the first of a series of U.N.- mediated working-level talks in Sarajevo aimed at demilitarizing the capital and providing better security for humanitarian aid deliveries. At about the same time, local Croatian and Muslim Slav forces resolved the last in a recent series of battles that jolted their already shaky alliance against the Serbs, reaching a cease-fire in Prozor, a town just west of Sarajevo, Sarajevo radio said. The Croat-Muslim Slav clashes, which erupted last week north of Sarajevo and forced the closure of a U.N. aid warehouse in the town of Vitez, were reportedly the fiercest in Prozor. Prozor was left virtually deserted of civilians and some homes still smoldered as the cease-fire went into effect. A strong contingent of Croatian infantry and weaponry remained in town, Sarajevo radio said. Elsewhere on the war front, Yugoslav army-equipped Serbian forces launched artillery barrages into and around the northern and central towns of Jajce, Gradacac, Brcko, Maglaj, Tuzla and Bihac, Sarajevo radio reported. In Brcko, the radio said, Serbian soldiers embarked on a new round of ``ethnic cleansing,'' destroying mosques, cemeteries and a Catholic church while forcing non-Serbs into signing documents at a local Red Cross office saying that they were voluntarily abandoning their homes and leaving the town. There was no independent confirmation of the report, although U.N. officials have accused Serbian forces in the past of coercing non-Serbs into signing such documents in other areas of the war-torn state. The United States has said it has presented information to U.N. war crimes investigators on previous Serbian ethnic cleansing measures in Brcko, including the alleged massacre of some 3,000 non-Serbs. Brcko, which has a pre-war ethnic mix of 44 percent Muslim Slav, 25 percent Croatian and 21 percent Serbian, was one of the first towns conquered in a Serbian drive launched in late March to rip a self- declared state out of 70 percent of Europe's newest republic. The Serbs are confronted by Croatian nationalist forces and the Bosnian army, which mostly comprises Muslim Slavs, but also includes moderate Serbs and Croats opposed to the partition of the republic, which won international recognition of its independence in early April. Western governments and U.N. officials and international human rights groups say Serbian soldiers have systematically expelled tens of thousands of non-Serbs from areas claimed for the Serbian ``state'' in operations involving forced evictions, house-burnings and killings. Croatian and Muslim forces have been accused of pursuing similar tactics, but not on the same massive scale as that allegedly employed by the Serbs. In Geneva, U.N. special envoy Cyrus Vance and European Community mediator David Owen presented representatives of the three sides with their proposal for a new republic constitution that sources said would create a federal structure similar to the Swiss-style system of cantonal districts. The local divisions would not be ethnically based and the federal government would oversee foreign affairs, finance and security. Serbian and nationalist Croatian leaders have been insisting on a division of Bosnia-Hercegovina into autonomous ethnic regions with little or no central linkage. Vance and Owen planned to begin a three-day visit to former Yugoslavia on Wednesday as part of an apparent bid to elicit support for their plan. Sarajevo radio quoted Bosnian officials in the eastern town of Srebrenica as reporting the deaths over the past seven months of at least 173 children among a total of some 80,000 refugees who fled Serbian ``ethnic cleansing'' and are now living homeless, hungry and cold in surrounding forests. The officials said 342 children among the refugees were injured, 1, 837 lost one parent, 563 lost both parents and more than 10,000 children have been stricken by various illnesses, the radio said. The day again began relatively quiet in Sarajevo, but was broken around 2:30 p.m. by a heavy barrage of artillery fire in various locations around the city. At least six people were killed and 25 wounded Tuesday throughout the capital, as Serbian forces unloaded with their large 155mm shells, Bosnian television reported. At least one person was killed and three were injured by sniper fire in the frontline Pero Kosoric Square, Sarajevo radio said. Subject: Slow U.N. troop deployment forces relief convoys to travel Date: Tue, 27 Oct 92 13:21:40 PST ZAGREB, Croatia (UPI) -- Only a handful of soldiers for the expanded U.N. military force has arrived in the Balkans, forcing U.N. relief convoys to attempt to resume trips into Bosnia-Hercegovina without a military escort and despite heavy fighting, a U.N. official said Tuesday. Michael Keats, a spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Zagreb, said relief convoys would try to travel to Sarajevo and Vitez in central Bosnia-Hercegovina Wednesday despite the heavy fighting reported along the roads in the region. Keats said the relief agency asked the U.N. Protection Force for an escort but its request was denied because only about 150 soldiers have arrived in the Balkans as part of the buildup to a 6,000-strong multi- national U.N. force. Spanish troops are supposed to be deployed along the route but only 15 of the 700 soldiers have arrived so far, said Sergio Apollonio, a UNPROFOR spokesman. A relief convoy traveling into central Bosnia-Hercegovina came under shell fire last week. The drivers of the trucks said the U.N. vehicles were deliberately attacked despite assurances from local authorities that they would be granted safe passage. ``We will probably run into the same bunch of villains at the same road blocks as we did last week,'' Keats said. No land convoys have reached Sarajevo since fierce fighting between the nominally allied Croat and Muslim forces erupted on Oct. 19, he said. The convoy scheduled to leave Wednesday will take five truckloads of supplies to Sarajevo and 10 truckloads to Vitez. Humanitarian aid organizations have been asking since August for the United Nations to quickly deploy the 6,000 troops which are supposed to escort the unarmed relief convoys through dangerous routes in Bosnia-Hercegovina. About 150 have arrived and full deployment will not take place until mid-November, Apollonio said. But UNHCR representatives said with the harsh Bosnian winter almost upon them, the troops are desperately needed now. ``If they arrived last month, they would be too late,'' said Peter Kessler, a spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency in Zagreb. ``The UNHCR estimates that up to 400,000 people could die from lack of water, shelter, food and electricity if supplies do not begin arriving soon.'' Of the 6,000 troops, approximately 1,100 will be Canadians, 1,400 French, 700 Spanish, 2,300 British and 500 Dutch and Belgian, Apollonio said. The Candadians will be deployed in Banja Luka to secure routes in the northern region of the republic, the French in Bihac for the northwestern region, the Spanish near Mostar for the south central region and the British will be in Vitez for the eastern region, Apollonio said. A central command station is scheduled to be set up in Kiseljak about 15 miles northeast of Sarajevo. Apollonio said the deployment was being delayed in central Bosnia because of clashes between Muslims and Croats. He said deployment was being delayed in Serb-controlled areas because of Serb unwillingness to accept the soldiers. ``The Serbs in Banja Luka simply say that don't have the approval to let the U.N. in,'' Apollonio said.
novine.152 .bale.,
----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Slow U.N. troop deployment forces relief convoys to travel unescorted Subject: Islamic group to seek lifting of U.N. arms embargo against Bosnia Subject: Mediators propose a constitutional structure for Bosnia-Hercegovina Subject: Montenegro signals break in alliance with Serbian regime Subject: International mediators bring Bosnian peace plan to former Yugoslavia Subject: Fighting persists in Bosnia as peace mediators begin Balkans tour ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Slow U.N. troop deployment forces relief convoys to travel unescorted Date: 27 Oct 92 21:21:40 GMT ZAGREB, Croatia (UPI) -- Only a handful of soldiers for the expanded U.N. military force has arrived in the Balkans, forcing U.N. relief convoys to attempt to resume trips into Bosnia-Hercegovina without a military escort and despite heavy fighting, a U.N. official said Tuesday. Michael Keats, a spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Zagreb, said relief convoys would try to travel to Sarajevo and Vitez in central Bosnia-Hercegovina Wednesday despite the heavy fighting reported along the roads in the region. Keats said the relief agency asked the U.N. Protection Force for an escort but its request was denied because only about 150 soldiers have arrived in the Balkans as part of the buildup to a 6,000-strong multi- national U.N. force. Spanish troops are supposed to be deployed along the route but only 15 of the 700 soldiers have arrived so far, said Sergio Apollonio, a UNPROFOR spokesman. A relief convoy traveling into central Bosnia-Hercegovina came under shell fire last week. The drivers of the trucks said the U.N. vehicles were deliberately attacked despite assurances from local authorities that they would be granted safe passage. ``We will probably run into the same bunch of villains at the same road blocks as we did last week,'' Keats said. No land convoys have reached Sarajevo since fierce fighting between the nominally allied Croat and Muslim forces erupted on Oct. 19, he said. The convoy scheduled to leave Wednesday will take five truckloads of supplies to Sarajevo and 10 truckloads to Vitez. Humanitarian aid organizations have been asking since August for the United Nations to quickly deploy the 6,000 troops which are supposed to escort the unarmed relief convoys through dangerous routes in Bosnia-Hercegovina. About 150 have arrived and full deployment will not take place until mid-November, Apollonio said. But UNHCR representatives said with the harsh Bosnian winter almost upon them, the troops are desperately needed now. ``If they arrived last month, they would be too late,'' said Peter Kessler, a spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency in Zagreb. ``The UNHCR estimates that up to 400,000 people could die from lack of water, shelter, food and electricity if supplies do not begin arriving soon.'' Of the 6,000 troops, approximately 1,100 will be Canadians, 1,400 French, 700 Spanish, 2,300 British and 500 Dutch and Belgian, Apollonio said. The Candadians will be deployed in Banja Luka to secure routes in the northern region of the republic, the French in Bihac for the northwestern region, the Spanish near Mostar for the south central region and the British will be in Vitez for the eastern region, Apollonio said. A central command station is scheduled to be set up in Kiseljak about 15 miles northeast of Sarajevo. Apollonio said the deployment was being delayed in central Bosnia because of clashes between Muslims and Croats. He said deployment was being delayed in Serb-controlled areas because of Serb unwillingness to accept the soldiers. ``The Serbs in Banja Luka simply say that don't have the approval to let the U.N. in,'' Apollonio said. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Islamic group to seek lifting of U.N. arms embargo against Bosnia Date: 28 Oct 92 14:24:00 GMT ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN (UPI) -- Pakistan, elected Tuesday to the U.N. Security Council, is expected to ask the United Nations to lift its arms embargo against Bosnia, said a spokesman for the Foreign Office. Foreign Affairs Secretary Shaharyar Khan said Pakistan and other members of the Islamic contact group would raise the Bosnian issue at the world body. The group, which includes Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Senegal, plans to present a four-point action program before the Security Council. The plan demands an end to arms embargo against Bosnia. The group will also seek effective measures to strengthen Bosnia's defense and the continued delivery of humanitarian relief to that country. Meanwhile, Khan told a news conference in Islamabad Wednesday the Islamic group played an effective role in getting Pakistan elected to the Security Council. He said Pakistan received 161 out of 172 votes but this, he said, was only possible after two Muslim countries, Iran and Indonesia, withdrew their candidacy, in its favor. He said India, otherwise a traditional rival, also favored Pakistan's quest for the Asian seat in the Security Council. Pakistan has been a member of the Security Council four times before. Other non-permanent members of the Security Council are Djibouti, Brazil, Spain and New Zealand. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Mediators propose a constitutional structure for Bosnia-Hercegovina Date: 28 Oct 92 16:00:54 GMT GENEVA (UPI) -- U.N. and European Community mediators on ex-Yugoslavia proposed Wednesday a new constiotutional structure for war-torn Bosnia- Hercegovina based on seven to 10 autonomous regions but rejecting any ethnic or religious divisions. The proposal had been rejected even before being made, however, by Radovan Karadzic, leader of the Bosnian Serbs. Mediators Cyrus Vance for the U.N. and Lord David Owen for the E.C. said the population of Bosnia-Hercegovina ``is inextricably intermingled.'' ``Thus there appears to be no viable way to create three territorially-distinct states based on ethnic or confessional principles,'' they said in an introduction to their proposed structure. ``Any plan to do so would involve incorporating a very large number of members of the other ethnic/confessional groups, or consist of a number of separate enclaves of each ethnic/confessional group. ``Such a plan could achieve homogeneity and coherent boundaries only by a process of enforced population transfer which has already been condemned by the International Conference (on former Yugoslavia),'' the two men said. Vance and Owen, who are based in geneva, were in Belgrade Wednesday and had aides release their proposal. They had wanted to do it on Tuesday but the French language translation was not ready in time. Bosnian Serbs leader Karadzic said in Bosnia on Tuesday that the state should be divided on ethnic lines, which would mean the Serbs having by far the largest amount of territory. ``His position is hardly surprising seeing that the Bosnian Serbs now have 70 percent of which much was taken at the point of a gun,'' one U. N. official close to the peace talks told United Press International. Vance and Owen argued that a division of Bosnia-Hercegovina on ethnic and/or confessional lines -- Serbs, Croats and Muslims -- would service little purpose and only lead to continued fighting. GENEVA (UPI) -- U.N. and European Community mediators on ex-Yugoslavia proposed Wednesday a new constiotutional structure for war-torn Bosnia- Hercegovina based on seven to 10 autonomous regions but rejecting any ethnic or religious divisions. The proposal had been rejected even before being made, however, by Radovan Karadzic, leader of the Bosnian Serbs. Mediators Cyrus Vance for the U.N. and Lord David Owen for the E.C. said the population of Bosnia-Hercegovina ``is inextricably intermingled.'' ``Thus there appears to be no viable way to create three territorially-distinct states based on ethnic or confessional principles,'' they said in an introduction to their proposed structure. ``Any plan to do so would involve incorporating a very large number of members of the other ethnic/confessional groups, or consist of a number of separate enclaves of each ethnic/confessional group. ``Such a plan could achieve homogeneity and coherent boundaries only by a process of enforced population transfer which has already been condemned by the International Conference (on former Yugoslavia),'' the two men said. Vance and Owen, who are based in geneva, were in Belgrade Wednesday and had aides release their proposal. They had wanted to do it on Tuesday but the French language translation was not ready in time. Bosnian Serbs leader Karadzic said in Bosnia on Tuesday that the state should be divided on ethnic lines, which would mean the Serbs having by far the largest amount of territory. ``His position is hardly surprising seeing that the Bosnian Serbs now have 70 percent of which much was taken at the point of a gun,'' one U. N. official close to the peace talks told United Press International. Vance and Owen argued that a division of Bosnia-Hercegovina on ethnic and/or confessional lines -- Serbs, Croats and Muslims -- would service little purpose and only lead to continued fighting. ``A confederation formed of three such states would be inherently unstable,'' they argued. ``At least two would surely forge immediate and stronger connections with neighboring sdtates of the former Yugoslavia than they would with the two other units of Bosn ia and Hercegovina,'' they said. Officials said this meant a Serbs would move toward a Serbian state and Croats toward Croatia, leaving the Muslim community isolated. Vance and Owen said they also realized that a centralized state was unacceptable to at least two of the ethnic communities -- officials said Croats and Muslims were meant -- as their interests would not be protected. ``Consequently, the only viable and stable solution that does not acquiesce in already-accomplished ethnic cleansing, and in further internationally unacceptable practices, appears to be the establishment of a decentralized state,'' they said. ``This would mean a state in which many of its principal functions, especially those directly affecting persons, would be carried out by a number of autonomous provinces. ``The central government, in turn, would have only those minimal responsibilities that are necessary for a state to function as such, and to carry out its responsibil+ities as a member of the international community,'' the two mediators said. Vance and Owen argued that their proposed provinces should be neither too small oir too big to ensure they were administratively and economically viable. ``To meet these criteria, the number of provinces might range from seven to ten, with the precise number to be established by negotiations among the parties in the light of the proposed boundaries of the provinces,'' they said. The boundaries, they said, would take ethnic factors into account but also geographical features like rivers, historical factors, existing road and railroad networks and economic viability. Both central and provincial governments would be structured on classical lines with legislative upper and lower houses, a presidency consisting of all the provincial governors, and central government president elected by that joint presidency, a prime minister, a cabinet, and a national civil service which would be small because of its limited functions. The judiciary would be ``a shared responsibility of the central and provincial governments,'' Vance and Owen proposed, with courts dealing respectively with provincial or with central state matters. ``As the central government is to be solely responsible for national defense, the military forces are to be entirely under its control,'' the proposed constitutional structure stated. U.N. and other officials close to the Vance-Owen mediation effort ackowledged privately that it would take monthsd and months and possibly be impossible for all sides in Bosnia-Hercegovina to agree on provincial boundaries. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Montenegro signals break in alliance with Serbian regime Date: 28 Oct 92 17:33:01 GMT BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (UPI) -- The tiny Republic of Montenegro Wednesday expressed strong support for the Yugoslav federal government's efforts to bring peace to the region and end punishing U.N. economic sanctions. The development signaled a break in Montenegro's political alliance with communist President Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia. It also represented a potentially important boost to Yugoslav Prime Minister Milan Panic in his ongoing power struggle with Milosevic. ``The fact is that the Montenegrin government supports the politics of Mr. Panic,'' Montenegrin Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic declared at a news conference in Belgrade. ``The best thing for Yugoslavia right now, especially under the current political circumstances, is to continue the politics of Mr. Panic,'' he asserted. Djukanovic's comments signaled an end to what had been Montenegro's unstinting support for Milosevic's policies, including backing for rebel Serbs who seized 35 percent of Croatia in last year's Serb-Croat war and the ongoing Serbian territorial conquests in Bosnia-Hercegovina. ``At this moment we should realize that we only have federal Yugoslavia...and that everyone has to take care of their own problems,'' said Djukanovic, implying that Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina may have to go it alone. Montenegro and Serbia were the only two of the six republics of former Yugoslavia that did not secede, and they forged a rump federation in an unsuccessful bid to inherit the international status of its defunct namesake. A tiny mountainous land with few resources, Montenegro has suffered graver consequences than Serbia from U.N. economic sanctions imposed on the two for backing the Serbian land-grab in Bosnia-Hercegovina. Panic, a Belgrade-born naturalized U.S. citizen and self-made millionaire, has made lifting the sanctions his main priority, and believes that the ouster of Milosevic through Dec. 20 elections is the prime condition for achieving that goal. Milosevic, his party and its Serbian proxies in Croatia and Bosnia- Hercegovina have attacked Panic as a traitor to Serbian national interests and a foreign spy for his efforts to normalize relations with Zagreb and opposition to the division of Bosnia-Hercegovina. Djukanovic, whose communist government was widely regarded as a puppet of Serbia's regime, appeared to have determined that trying to salvage Montenegro's economic well-being was of greater importance than continued support for Milosevic's nationalist agenda. He indicated such a decision in saying that his Democratic Party of Socialists would not forge any alliances in the December polls. But he denied there were growing demands in Montenegro for an outright break with Serbia and leaving rump Yugoslavia. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: International mediators bring Bosnian peace plan to former Yugoslavia Date: 28 Oct 92 18:50:52 GMT BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (UPI) -- International mediators Cyrus Vance and Lord David Owen began a three-day swing Wednesday through former Yugoslavia to win support for a proposed new constitution for Bosnia- Hercegovina intended as the cornerstone of a settlement of the seven- month-old war. Vance and Owen, co-chairmen of the Geneva-based U.N.-European Community peace conference on the defunct six-republic Balkan federation, first met briefly with Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic at the Intercontinental Hotel. They then drove to the federal government headquarters for talks with President Dobrica Cosic of the rump Yugoslav union of Serbia and Montenegro and his prime minister, Milan Panic, who have been cooperating closely in peace-seeking efforts in a bid to end harsh U.N. economic sanctions. Vance and Owen then crossed to the other side of Belgrade for two hours of talks with Panic's main rival, communist President Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia, widely regarded as the main political and financial patron of Serbian forces fighting to carve a self-declared state out of Bosnia-Hercegovina. Vance later called the meeting with Milosevic ``satisfactory.'' The pair capped the day by bringing Panic and Karadzic together in the unusual setting of the Yugoslav Defense Ministry, where they were joined by Yugoslav Army chief of staff Col. Gen. Zivota Panic. He is no relation of the federal prime minister. The meetings all focused on a proposed new constitution for Bosnia- Hercegovina that Vance, a U.N. special envoy and former U.S. secretary of state, and EC representative Owen, a onetime British foreign secretary, unveiled Tuesday in Geneva to negotiators of the newly independent republic's Serbs, Croats and Muslim Slav communities. Cosic indicated strong support for the Vance-Owen plan, saying they showed ``exceptional understanding for our situation.'' ``Our talks were very substantial,'' he told reporters after meeting the mediators. ``Between us there were no vital differences.'' The draft, made public Wednesday in Geneva before its presentation to the U.N. Security Council in New York, is intended as the basis for a settlement of the war that erupted when Karadzic's forces in late March launched their drive to capture 70 percent of Bosnia-Hercegovina. According to the documents released in Geneva, Vance and Owen rejected Karadzic's demand for the division of the republic into autonomous ethnic districts, raising a serious question as to how he could be made to accept the plan. The draft would create seven to 10 semi-autonomous Swiss-style cantonal divisions with large degrees of local autonomy. A federal government would oversee foreign policy, internal security and finances. In a statement issued in Geneva, Vance and Owen said Bosnia- Hercegovina's ethnic groups are ``inextricably intermingled. Thus, there appears to be no viable way to create three territorially-distinct states based on ethnic or confessional principles.'' ``Such a plan could achieve homogeneity and coherent boundaries only by a process of enforced population transfer which has already been condemned by the International Conference (on former Yugoslavia),'' they said. Nationalist Croatian militias backed by the rightwing regime of the former Yugoslav republic of Croatia are also bent on severing their enclaves. Many observers believe there is an agreement between Croatian President Franjo Tudjman and Milosevic to divide Bosnia-Hercegovina at the expense of its Muslim Slavs. Partition is opposed by forces loyal to the Bosnian government, which is dominated by Muslim Slavs, but also includes moderate Serbs and Croats who reject a division of Europe's newest state. There are 1.9 million Slavic Muslims, 1.4 million Christian Orthodox Serbs and 750,000 Roman Catholic Croats in Bosnia-Hercegovina. After overnighting in Belgrade, the capital of both Serbia and the rump Yugoslav federation, Vance and Owen were to travel Thursday to Pristina, the capital of Serbia's restive province of Kosovo, for talks with leaders of the independence-seeking ethnic Albanian majority. They were then to go to Skopje, the capital of the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, which has yet to win international recognition of its independence, and then make a side trip to Albania. On Friday, they were to return to Geneva via the Croatian capital of Zagreb, where they were to meet Tudjman. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Fighting persists in Bosnia as peace mediators begin Balkans tour Date: 28 Oct 92 19:58:55 GMT SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- Fresh clashes flared Wednesday across Bosnia-Hercegovina as international mediators Cyrus Vance and Lord David Owen began a three-day swing through former Yugoslavia to build support for a proposal to end the bloody 7-month-old Balkan conflict. The first U.N. humanitarian aid convoy to reach Sarajevo in 10 days arrived from Croatia's port city of Split, completing the two-day trip via the war-torn towns of Mostar and Vitez without military escorts, although one truck was lost when it toppled into a shallow river. ``The bank of the road fell away and the vehicle went tumbling down into the river,'' said Larry Hollingsworth, the U.N. refugee agency's logistics coordinator, adding the driver was not hurt. ``The Mostar road, as far as I'm concerned, is open,'' Hollingsworth said. ``All we have to do is use it, as much as I did today.'' Hollingsworth dropped 10 truckloads of aid off in Vitez and took six others into Sarajevo, where some 500,000 residents and refugees have been trapped and bombarded by surrounding Serbian forces since early April. It was the first convoy to reach Sarajevo since Oct. 19, when the Split-Sarajevo road was shut by fighting in Mostar and Vitez. Combat has since subsided around both towns. Michael Keats, a spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said the agency asked for escorts from the U.N. Protection Force (UNPROFOR), but was refused because only about 150 troops have arrived as part of a 6,000-solder expansion of the 1,500-member contingent authorized almost two months ago by the U.N. Security Council. The expansion is intended to provide greater security to humanitarian aid distribution operations across the war-ravaged former Yugoslav republic of Muslim Slavs, Serbs and Croats. U.N. aid officials have expressed increasing anger with the NATO countries contributing troops to the UNPROFOR buildup for taking so long to deploy their forces amid the approach of the fierce Balkan winter. U.N.-organized aid flights have continued to reach the capital, this week reaching their largest daily totals since a month-long suspension ended Oct. 3. But, without truck supplies, deliveries have remained well below the city's estimated 225-ton-per-day minimum needs. In a related development, a 19-truck UNHCR relief convoy bearing 207 tons of food departed Belgrade on a two-day trip to Sarajevo. About 40 tons of cargo were to be left in Pale, the main Serbian headquarters, just to the east of Sarajevo. The convoy was to have set out Tuesday, but was delayed by security concerns for a day. It was the first time that a UNHCR convoy has been dispatched from Belgrade to Sarajevo in a move that U.N. officials said was aimed at establishing another regular supply route to the stricken city. In Belgrade, Vance and Owen, the co-chairmen of the Geneva-based U.N. -European Community-sponsored peace conference on former Yugoslavia, held the first meetings of a three-day trip mainly aimed at gaining support for a proposed new Bosnian constitution intended as the cornerstone of a political settlement. After a brief talk with Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, Vance, a U.N. special envoy and former U.S. secretary of state, and Owen, an EC representative and onetime British foreign minister, met with President Dobrica Cosic of the rump Yugoslav union of Serbia and Montenegro, and his prime minister, Milan Panic. Afterwards, Cosic appeared to signal strong support for the draft constitution, praising Vance and Owen for their ``exceptional understanding of our situation.'' ``Between us there were no vital differences,'' he said. The proposal, presented Tuesday in Geneva to representatives of the warring factions, rejects Serbian and Croatian extremist demands for a partition of the newly independent former Yugoslav republic into autonomous ethnic districts. Instead, it would create an undisclosed number of Swiss-style cantonal districts that would have a high degree of local autonomy. A federal government would oversee internal security, finances and foreign affairs. Partition of the republic is opposed by forces loyal to the Bosnian government, which is dominated by Muslim Slavs, but also includes moderate Serbs and Croats. Official reaction to the plan, which was due to be presented later in the day to the U.N. Security Council, was still not forthcoming from the warring factions. The conflict erupted after Yugoslav army-armed Serbian forces launched an offensive in late March to pre-empt international recognition of the republic's independence and seize a self-declared state. Serbian leaders ultimately seek to merge their territories with communist-ruled Serbia, their chief economic and political patron. In the latest frontline developments, Serbian forces launched artillery and infantry attacks in areas around the northern and central towns of Gradacac, Jajce, Brcko, Tesanj and Teslic, Sarajevo radio reported. The estimated 50,000 residents of Jajce were sheltering in basements amid a heavy Serbian barrage, the radio said. Serbian forces rushed new reinforcements to Gradacac, which suffered through a night of artillery attacks that continued Wednesday, the radio said. Sarajevo was relatively calm after moderately heavy Serbian artillery and infantry attacks Tuesday. Military commanders of the warring factions met at Sarajevo airport for another day of talks on improving the flow of humanitarian aid into therepublic, with discussions focusing on the possible demilitarization of thecapital, U.N. mediators said. At least 11 people were killed and 113 injured republic-wide in the 24-hour period that ended at 10 a.m., including seven dead and 60 wounded in Sarajevo, Bosnian health officials said.
novine.153 dejanr,
Dogovorili smo se sa Baletom da od sada ove zanimljive priloge šalje u konferenciju NOVOSTI, tema world.news. Pratićemo ih, dakle, tamo.
novine.154 banusko,
Danas 22.11.92. u 22.15 TV Beograd je objavio da Mađar SO, jedini list na Mađarskom jeziku sutra neće izaći zbog nedostatka rotopapira i ostalih repro-materijala. Slučajno mi kuma radi u redakciji Mađar So-a i ona mi se poslepodne javila i pohvalila da Mađar So ŠTRAJKUJE. Štrajkuju zbog malih plata, zbog nesposobnog direktora koga je postavio Kepec i sličnih stvari. Politika nije razlog. Eto toliko što se tiče TV i istinitog obaveštavanja.A vi glasajte za koga hoćete......
novine.155 dejanr,
>> Eto toliko što se tiče TV i istinitog obaveštavanja. Još bolje je kad objavljuju Ćosićev intervju na II dnevniku, pa prenesu ceo onaj "dosadni" deo a ono gde napada Miloševića samo "preskoče" :(
novine.156 balinda,
[POLITIKA - 22. novembar 1990.] Veliki narodni miting u Nišu: za Srbiju, za slogu, za jedinstvo N A J V A č N I J I J E M I R Slobodan Milošević: "Srbija se nalazi pred izborima da li ćemo se opredeliti za mir i ekonomski i kulturni prosperitet ili za sukobe i mržnje koji će blokirati sve dosadašnje napore da izađemo iz krize i živimo bolje." ....... ....... "Put u moderno, razvijeno i pravedno društvo, nespojiv je sa bilo kakvim mističkim porukama koje kao aveti prošlosti kruže u nekim delovima Srbije i koje razni lažni proroci i ludaci nude srpskom narodu kao zalog budućnosti. Ovo se pogotovo odnosi na one koji u ime te prošlosti nude nacionalističke obračune, revanšizam i opšti haos." ....... .......
novine.157 djovicevic,
1818r tm--a u i bc-bosnia 12-27 0978 bc-bosnia< (wap) (ATTN: Foreign editors)< No Panic in Britain's Thin Red Bosnian Line (Vitez)< By Peter Maass= Special to The Washington Post= VITEZ, Bosnia _ It was, as a British officer might say, a cracking good show. During a recent patrol near the northeast Bosnian city of Tuzla, a convoy of British žžWarrior'' armored fighting vehicles was ambushed by Serb militia forces. The Serbs opened fire with everything they had _ mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and other heavy weapons. The Serbs never made a dent. The 45 tracked British Warriors in Bosnia weigh 30 tons each, have reinforced armor plating, are armed with 30mm rapid-fire cannon and can race across the countryside at more than 50 miles an hour. The next best thing to being in a bunker on a Balkan battlefield is to be in a Warrior. The Serb grenades ricocheted off the British armor, making žžpoing'' sounds and leaving, at worst, small burn marks on the white paint identifying the Warriors as being under United Nations command. Instead of firing back, the British plowed ahead and did not stop until they reached the local Serb militia headquarters. žžWe got out and shook their hands,'' said a British military spokesman. žžThe Serbs couldn't believe it; they were amazed.'' There was no immediate explanation of why the Serbs opened fire on the clearly marked U.N. vehicles, but Serb commanders have explained such incidents in the past as regretable accidents, or as the understandable reaction of Serb militiamen believing they were under attack. Nevertheless, that engagement _ in which Serb pride was the only casualty _ may have been the best demonstration yet that the U.N. troops most at risk in Bosnia's bloody factional war may not be as vulnerable as some Western leaders contend. žžWe must be very careful we don't needlessly put young men and women who are there in harm's way more than they are,'' said President Bush last week after discussing possible Western military intervention in Bosnia with British Prime Minister John Major. Major reluctantly joined Bush in supporting Western enforcement of a U.N. žžno-fly zone'' over Bosnia that could lead to the downing of Serb aircraft there, but he has argued vigorously for a long grace period before the flight ban would take effect and for other Western constraints as well. Major's contention _ as well as, to lesser extent, that of the French _ has been that the destruction of Bosnian Serb aircraft, or their bases, could provoke Serb militia forces to launch revenge attacks against British and French ground troops helping deliver U.N. humanitarian aid to suffering Bosnian civilians. But British troops operating near the frontline here seem more than a bit bemused by such hand-wringing. Veterans of the Persian Gulf War and sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland, they don't quite understand what the fuss is about, and they especially don't like politicians portraying them as frightened, defenseless Boy Scouts. žžWe don't feel so vulnerable,'' said the spokesman, who asked that his name not be used. žžWe could give (the Serbs) a nasty headache if we wanted.'' Indeed, officials of Bosnia's embattled Slavic Muslim-led government and some Western diplomats in the region argue that the continued focus on the vulnerability of U.N. relief troops is merely an excuse to put off intervention. žžThere's this myth that the day you shoot down a Serb jet these 10-foot-tall, man-eating Serbs will slaughter all the innocents,'' said one Western diplomat in neighboring Croatia. He noted that the Serb nationalist forces that now control about 70 percent of Bosnia seized much of that territory in a well-camouflaged spring blitz against poorly armed Muslims and Croats, and that since then they have shown litte discipline or cohesion. žžThe West is looking for excuses to not intervene,'' said Besim Spahic, the Muslim mayor of Zenica, a city 15 miles northwest of this British staging base and about 40 miles north of Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital. Muslim advocates of intervention propose Western air strikes against Serb air bases, artillery batteries and other military targets in Serb-held Bosnia, and perhaps on their support bases in neighboring Serbia as well. This, the argument goes, would allow the Muslim-led government's lightly armed ground forces to engage the Serbs on more even terms; all the U.N. relief troops would have to do is hunker down and curtail their civilian aid operations. Bosnian government leaders have said repeatedly that they would gladly swap the relief operation for Western military intervention against the Serbs. The main threat to British and other U.N. ground forces would come from heavy artillery fire, according to the military spokesman. The front line is about nine miles from the base here at Vitez, well within range of the Serbs' 155mm howitzers, and an accurate salvo could cause heavy casualties. But British officers here say that in a hostile situation, the Serbs would have to be precisely on target with their first shot, because their batteries would likely be silenced before a second or third round could be fired. The British army, like the U.S. Army, has advanced radar and thermal-sensing equipment that can quickly locate smoking artillery pieces and target them for retaliation. Serb artillery could be taken out in several ways, military officers say. The easiest method would be with air strikes, and although the British now have no long-range guns in place with which to return Serb artillery fire, such weapons could speedily be shipped here. žžThe Serbs would be pretty stupid to take us on,'' boasted one British soldier as he relaxed here at an off-hours cafe.
novine.158 djovicevic,
1944r tm--a u i bc-yugo-snow 12-28 1025 bc-yugo-snow< (wap) (ATTN: Foreign editors)< Freezing People of Sarajevo Scavenge for Fuel (Sarajevo)< By Peter Maass= Special to The Washington Post= SARAJEVO _ Desperate to stay alive, the freezing people of Sarajevo have begun to devour what's left of their shattered city. Trees in parks and along once stately boulevards are being cut down at a hurricane pace as men, women and children scavenge for firewood. Buildings shelled by Serb forces besieging the city are being stripped of anything that burns-beams, flooring, roofing, wallpaper, foam insulation. Usually, it is government militiamen with chainsaws who fell the decades-old trees and appropriate the biggest chunks. Civilian men with axes cut up the branches, then grandmothers and children move in, scurrying around to pick up the twigs. žžIt's cold, and we have to stay alive, so we cut the trees,'' said Sarija Misut, 19, as he sawed through one of the last pine trees in Sarajevo's main cemetery. Nodding toward the frozen mounds marking new graves around him, the young man added: žžIt's better than ending up like the ones here.'' Many people, unable to find a tree to cut down, are reduced to hacking away at tree stumps, and a recent lull in the fighting has seen the boom-boom-boom of mortars replaced with the chip-chip-chip of axes attacking wood. Sidewalks are crowded with people carrying, pushing or dragging loads of firewood. Some bear sacks of wood on their backs, sherpa-like. Some transport sticks and logs and broken boards in wheelbarrows or baby carriages. Some tote huge beams on their shoulders, like workers at a construction site. But Sarajevo, if anything, is a deconstruction site. There are those like Himzo Babic, 42, who roamed through a shell-blasted store Monday looking for cardboard to burn in his 12th-floor apartment so that his 18-month-old infant would not freeze to death. Babic, a Slavic Muslim who sought refuge in Sarajevo to escape the advancing Serbs, has neither saw nor axe with which to forage for fuel, and the hammer and screwdriver he does have don't work very well. So it's easier to collect cardboard _ and to burn everything loose around him. žžI have burned most of my furniture,'' he said. žžI burned the wood parquet from the floor. I've also burned books.'' There has been no electricity in Sarajevo for three weeks. That means no lights, no running water and, most importantly as sub-freezing weather sets in, no central heating. Mild fall weather has turned nasty all of a sudden, with a light snowfall dusting the city Sunday night and temperatures hovering around 10 degrees. Without central heating, most of the 350,000 people trapped in Sarajevo have rigged up makeshift stoves, and entire families eat and sleep together in one room because it's impossible to find enough wood to heat two. For the people of Sarajevo, it's the same battle against death they've waged for eight months now, except that the cold could kill more of them than Serb bullets and bombs. žžThere is no wood left in my neighborhood,'' said an off-duty policeman named Zoran who walked two miles before finding a thick tree stump to hack at. žžEverything has been wiped out, even the stumps.'' There were open blisters on Zoran's hands as he flailed away at the stump, his labored breathing forming a cloud of steam in front of his haggard face. He has two children at home, aged four and eight, and no powdered milk or fresh food to feed them. žžPlease tell the outside world to stop this siege,'' he pleaded. žžAny way it can. This is insanity.'' But bad as things are now, some officials of Bosnia's Muslim-led government fear they will soon get worse. Fuad Babic, who is in charge of civil defense in Sarajevo, estimates that with winter only barely begun, nearly half the city's trees are already gone. žžI have tried to physically stop people from cutting the trees, but I lost the will to do it after a woman came to me crying and said she needed the wood to keep her two babies warm,'' Babic said. It is the weakest who give out first. At a nursing home in Nedarici, a frontline suburb between Sarajevo and its airport, eight elderly people have died of the cold in the past four days, staff members say. The remaining 114 patients live in filthy, unheated rooms and, for the bedridden ones, fouled sheets. žžThe meals they are getting are adequate,'' said a spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency. žžIt's the cold they are succumbing to. ... This is just a microcosm of what we're going to see across Sarajevo.'' At the State Hospital, nurse Stanislava Pasagic, 24, has been unable to work for five days because her hands are frostbitten _ covered with blisters and cold as a corpse. žžFive other nurses have the same problem,'' she said. The hospital's emergency heating system is powered by generators that have enough fuel to operate for just three hours during the day and three at night, and patients shiver under layers of blankets. But staying alive in Sarajevo is not just a matter of staying warm. It also means finding water to drink and wash with. Because there is no electricity, water pumps are idle except in the rare buildings that have their own generators and fuel to run them. And so the streets are filled with people lining up to fill containers at wells and water storage tanks. Walking anywhere in Sarajevo can be deadly because most streets are within range of Serb snipers and mortar batteries, and malnourished people do not walk very briskly. Weighed down with buckets of water, they walk even slower, and when they stand in line for hours at an open well, they become stationary targets. According to doctors here, several people are being shot every day as they stand in water lines. On Sunday, one middle-aged man was rushed to a hospital after a sniper's bullet tore through his chest. Doctors took one look at him and wrote down a Latin phrase that is becoming more and more common in their log book: Mortus ad latus. Dead on arrival. LA TIMES-WASHINGTON POST--12-28-92 2000EST< READY GO-AHEAD: 1954r tm--a u i bc-yugo-post 12-28 0386 bc-yugo-post< (wap) (ATTN: Foreign editors)< U.N. Chief Confirms Bosnia Trip (Geneva)< By John Parry= Special to The Washington Post= GENEVA _ U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali confirmed Monday that he will visit war-ravaged Bosnia this week, even as talks here among the U.N. chief and the presidents of Bosnia, Croatia and the new two-republic Yugoslav state apparently produced little hope of a breakthrough toward peace in the region. U.N. officials said all three presidents reiterated long-standing positions on the eight-month-old fratricidal conflict, while Boutros-Ghali repeated his calls for a concerted effort toward a peaceful solution of the Bosnian war. Each of the presidents _ Franjo Tudjman of Croatia, Alija Izetbegovic of Bosnia and Dobrica Cosic of the new Serb-controlled Yugoslavia _ spent little more than an hour with Boutros-Ghali, and none made a statement afterward. At separate press conferences, however, Tudjman repeated accusations that Russian mercenaries are aiding the Serb nationalist cause in Bosnia, while Cosic reiterated charges that Muslim mercenaries are helping the Slavic Muslim-led Bosnian government. Meanwhile, Therese Gastaut, Boutros-Ghali's spokeswoman, confirmed a statement by the secretary general on Sunday that he will travel to Sarajevo, Bosnia's besieged capital, žžwithin the next few days'' to visit U.N. military forces providing humanitarian aid to civilians there. Details of the trip will not be made public ahead of time for security reasons, Gastaut said. A new round of negotiations among Bosnia's warring factions is scheduled for Geneva on Jan. 2, when representatives of the former Yugoslav republic's Serbs, Croats and Muslims will try to formulate the terms of a lasting military cease-fire, establish permanent safe corridors for delivery of humanitarian aid and lay the groundwork for a comprehensive peace throughout the region. Cyrus Vance and David Owen, cochairmen of the permanent Balkan peace conference here, have called the Jan. 2 talks especially significant because they will involve both civilian and military leaders of the warring Bosnians, plus representatives of neighboring Croatia and Yugoslavia, which have supported rival factions.
novine.159 djovicevic,
1020tm--a w i bc-yugo-kosovo 12-29 0720 bc-yugo-kosovo< (wap) (ATTN: Foreign editors)< Kosovo's Albanians Assert Nationalism (Pristina, Serbia)< By Christine Spolar= Special to The Washington Post= PRISTINA, Serbia _ In two small rooms of a home here in the capital of Serbia's Kosovo province, the future of an ethnic Albanian independence movement is being prepared. In one room, 28 students sit shoulder to shoulder on cloth-covered mats and listen to a lecture on statistics. In another, two dozen teenagers jam together on a chilly day to take careful notes on Albanian grammar. There are no desks or chairs, few books and little chalk for the one small blackboard. žžWe want to learn. It is our only weapon to resist our enemy,'' said Arben Kuqi, 16, an ethnic Albanian and one of a thousand youngsters who walk miles every day for lessons that allow them to avoid contact with the žženemy'' _ their Serbian neighbors and their schools. The intensity of that attitude in largely Albanian Kosovo worries those who fear a spread of ethnic purges in the Balkans. To many, Kosovo _ a Connecticut-sized region of southern Serbia where Albanians outnumber Serbs by nine to one _ seems the obvious next venue for Serb žžethnic cleansing.'' If guns are drawn, neighboring Albania as well as large Albanian communities in two other Balkan republics _ Montenegro, now a satellite of Serbia in the new Yugoslav state, and newly independent Macedonia _ are considered likely to come to the aid of the 1.8 million Albanians here. Serbian leaders have said they will do whatever is necessary to defend their land, in Kosovo or wherever else foreign powers might intervene. The underground school here, and dozens like it set up in homes throughout Kosovo, has been one way the Albanians have shown their antipathy toward the repressive Serb-controlled provincial government that was installed here three years ago. Thousands of Albanian children have used such schools since last January as their only source of education. Their existence _ and the creation of a whole system of other community services _ underscores the extent to which the Albanians passively resist Serbian control and the ultranationalist policies of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, who rose to power by whipping up xenophobic fears. Two weeks ago, the Albanians of Kosovo exercised that resistance, with considerable political consequences. In Serbian and Yugoslav elections, they saw no candidate willing to focus on their plight, so they refused to vote. That aided the reelection of Milosevic and cleared the way for election of dozens of militant Serbian nationalists to parliament, a move that Western observers said diminishes hopes for ending the war in Bosnia and defusing tensions in Kosovo. Three years ago, as the old Yugoslav federation began to break up and Kosovo's Albanian leaders talked of independence, Serbia moved to quash the threat, ordering ethnic Albanian teachers, doctors, judges and high government workers to sign loyalty oaths to keep their jobs. By some estimates, as many as 70,000 people were dismissed or left their jobs as a result. Others reportedly were imprisoned without charge. In the ensuing months, Albanians accused Serbian security forces of harassment, beatings and killings, and they say these increased in the months leading to the recent elections. žžIt is tense and confrontational'' in Kosovo now, one observer said, žžand things could go wrong.'' One Serbian politician who has promised to make trouble is Zelko Raznjatovic, leader of a Belgrade-based paramilitary unit who is accused by the United States of responsibility for mass killings of Slavic Muslim civilians in Bosnia. Raznjatovic won a seat in parliament and vowed the next day to push the new assembly to declare žžopen war'' on the Albanian separatist movement in Kosovo. The Albanian political hierarchy, exiled from local government, elected its own žžgovernment'' this spring and has worked to set up its own services. Boycotting Serb-controlled services, it has developed a system of welfare from donations and encouraged establishment of roadside health clinics, schools in homes and university classes taught by unemployed Albanians. LA TIMES-WASHINGTON POST--12-29-92 1419EST< READY GO-AHEAD: 1021tm--a w i bc-yugo-kosovo-history 12-29 0282 bc-yugo-kosovo-history< (wap) (ATTN: Foreign editors)< The History of Kosovo (Pristina, Serbia)< By Christine Spolar= Special to The Washington Post= PRISTINA, Serbia _ The history of Kosovo is often detailed painstakingly by Serbs and Albanians alike in even casual conversations and cannot be overrestimated in the current confrontation. Serbs view it as the birthplace of Serbian nationhood, and Albanians see it as theirs by right of possession and the dictates of more recent history. Six hundred years ago, the Serbs fought against the invading Turks and lost decisively at the Battle of Kosovo _ a battle that welded Serbs together as a people and one that is still discussed here as if it happened yesterday. So too, is the decision by Yugoslav communist ruler Marshal Tito two decades ago to grant virtual home rule to Kosovo, which by then was heavily populated with Albanians left out of neighboring Albania when its borders were redrawn earlier this century. Three years ago, as the old Yugoslav federation began to break up and Kosovo's Albanian leaders talked of independence, Serbia moved to quash the threat, ordering ethnic Albanian professionals to sign loyalty oaths to keep their jobs. In the ensuing months, Albanians accused Serbian security forces of harassment, beatings and killings. Human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and the Helsinki Commission, have decried the repression. But Serbian leaders here and in Belgrade deny there is any orchestrated oppression of the Albanians and say they have caused most of their own problems by not working with the Serb-controlled government. LA TIMES-WASHINGTON POST--12-29-92 1420EST< READY GO-AHEAD: 1050 tm--a r i bc-yugo-a1557 12-29 0650 bc-yugo - a1557< (ATTN: Foreign editors) (Includes optional trims)< Serbian Radicals Vote to Oust Prime Minister Panic (Belgrade)< By Laura Silber and Carol J. Williams= (c) 1992, Los Angeles Times= BELGRADE, Yugoslavia _ Encouraged by their recent electoral triumph, ultranationalist Serbian radicals voted Tuesday to oust Milan Panic, the California millionaire, from the office of federal prime minister. The no-confidence motion against the moderate Panic easily passed both houses of the federal Parliament, spurred on by the wave of extremism that has washed over the remains of Yugoslavia since a Dec. 20 election defeated proponents of peace and reform. Panic was closeted with advisers late Tuesday and made no immediate comment on the move to depose him. An aide, reached at the prime minister's Belgrade residence, said Panic would make an announcement Wednesday morning. The vote aimed at forcing Panic's resignation was the third called by Serb nationalists in the past four months, the two previous moves having failed because deputies from the republic of Montenegro came to the prime minister's rescue. But in the wake of elections that strengthened the hand of the hard-line nationalists rule in what is left of Yugoslavia, the Montenegrins closed ranks with their longtime Serbian allies to deal Panic a crushing, if mostly symbolic defeat. Thunderous applause broke out in the upper parliamentary chamber when the Montenegrins withdrew their backing of Panic and voted overwhelmingly to unseat him. Panic had already hinted he would resign as head of the virtually powerless federal government following his loss to Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic after a hard-fought campaign for the republic presidency. Western diplomats described the vote of no-confidence _ proposed by a militant deputy accused of war crimes _ as an attempt to complete the humiliation of Panic and the conciliatory course he proposed to spare the rump Yugoslavia a future of isolation and despair. The political swing toward nationalist extremism that gave Milosevic a wide margin of victory 10 days ago was reflected in the no-confidence vote. The lower house, dominated by Milosevic's Serbian Socialist Party and their Serbian Radical allies, voted 95-2 against Panic, with 12 deputies abstaining. The upper house, evenly split between the two remaining Yugoslav republics, Serbia and Montenegro, voted 30-5 with one abstention to remove the prime minister. Despite the vote, Panic and his federal Cabinet were expected to remain in power in a caretaker status until a new slate of ministers is appointed by the Parliament that will take office some time next month. Western diplomats also speculated that Serbian Radical Party leader Vojislav Seselj called for the vote against Panic as a means of forcing the fence-sitting Montenegrins to choose sides. (Begin optional trim) Montenegrin President Momir Bulatovic and his Democratic Socialist Party supported Panic's unsuccessful bid to replace Milosevic. Parliamentary sources said a Montenegrin official, Svetozar Marovic, was likely to be named prime minister by the new regime in an effort to appease Montenegro, the republic that makes up only 5 percent of the population of the rump Yugoslavia. But other deputies indicated Panic would be replaced by Deputy Prime Minister Radoje Kontic, also from Montenegro. Seselj, who was singled out by U.S. Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger last week as likely to be brought before a war crimes tribunal, had warned a day earlier that Panic might be arrested if he remained in Belgrade. (End optional trim) Panic, 63, had returned to his native Yugoslavia in July in a much-publicized quest to bring peace to Bosnia-Herzegovina and turn the attention of his fellow Serbs to repairing their shattered economy. LA TIMES-WASHINGTON POST--12-29-92 1857EST< READY GO-AHEAD: 1083r tm--a u i bc-yugo-sarajevo 12-29 0764 bc-yugo-sarajevo< (wap) (ATTN: Foreign editors)< Caged in Sarajevo _ By the United Nations (Sarajevo)< By Peter Maass= Special to The Washington Post= SARAJEVO, Bosnia _ Every night, hundreds of exhausted men, women and children try to flee this besieged, freezing city on a dangerous escape route that crosses the airport tarmac. Most are stopped by well-armed troops who force them back to the ruins of Sarajevo, for here the keepers of the siege are U.N. soldiers. žžIt breaks our hearts,'' said a French soldier who has turned back old women and mothers with babies. žžThey cry, they plead with us for help to cross. They even offer money. But we're under orders to stop them.'' The airport forms a crucial part of a tight siege line thrown around Sarajevo by powerful Serb nationalist forces who have been bombarding the city for months. Under heavy international pressure, the Serbs agreed to allow U.N. control of the airport so that relief flights for Sarajevo's trapped civilians could land. But, apparently in exchange, U.N. commanders have adopted a strict policy of stopping any residents of the largely Slavic Muslim city from crossing the tarmac to escape the siege. U.N. officials here have never hidden the fact that they turn back people at the airport, but until icy winter temperatures took hold here in the past week, the numbers were small. Now the number of intercepted civilians is soaring _ there were more than 500 Monday night _ and U.N. officials here acknowledge that the no-passage policy represents a troubling moral trade-off. žžIt's a tremendous compromise,'' said one. When the civilians are stopped, the U.N. troops search them for weapons; everyone is frisked, including children. They are then taken in U.N. patrol vehicles to the starting point of their sprint to freedom _ back where they started, in Sarajevo. Scenes of wrenching pathos take place every night, according to four French soldiers who spoke on condition that they be identified only by their first names. They expressed misgivings about the no-passage policy but said they were soldiers first and that means following orders. žžWe are not here to think,'' said Paul. žžWe are here to follow orders. There are others, higher up, who do the thinking.'' Women drop to their knees begging to cross the tarmac, the soldiers said. Men who are caught heading into the city with sacks of potatoes or dried meat take family pictures from their wallets and plead that they are carrying food to their trapped wives and children. Some people who hobble onto the tarmac have shrapnel wounds or other injuries and say they are trying to get medical attention on the other side. Mothers carry newborn babies wrapped in blankets; old people move as quickly as they can, which is rarely quick enough. All are turned back. The U.N. policy is also burdened by the fact that troops here, on at least one occasion, have stood by without taking any action as fleeing civilians came under Serb machine-gun fire on the exposed tarmac. U.N. troops at the airport are allowed to fire their weapons only in self-defense, which precludes intervention to save people who are being shot down before their eyes. According to U.N. spokesman Mik Magnusson, if civilians fleeing Sarajevo were allowed to cross the tarmac, the besieging Serbs would attack the airport, shutting it down. The choice, he indicated, is to help enforce the Serb siege or give up any hope of continuing humanitarian aid flights that are keeping thousands of people alive. The airport dilemma demonstrates the cloudy moral ground that the U.N. Protection Force sometimes occupies in Bosnia. Its compromises with the Bosnian Serbs _ who have been condemned the world over for waging aggressive war in Bosnia _ havee infuriated the Slavic Muslim-led Bosnian government, which has charged that the United Nations is knuckling under to international pariahs and war criminals. U.N. officials say they must consider the situation pragmatically. At a recent news conference, the top U.N. generals in Bosnia were asked if they minded dealing with alleged war criminals _ which the United States has branded a number of top Serb leaders _ and they responded by saying they have no choice. žžThe international community is dealing with them,'' said Indian Lt. Gen. Satish Nambiar, commander of U.N. forces in the Balkans. žžThey are leaders of one of the parties of the conflict, like it or not.''
novine.160 milan,
Sve ove vesti (prema zaglavlju mi se čini da je to servis Los Angeles Times-a i Washington Post-a) baca .bale. na world.news. Tako, da ovo ispada dupliranje posla. Pl poz M