=================================================== THE ECONOMIST FEBRUARY 11 1995 INTERNATIONAL -- Can peacekeeping survive? -- NEW YORK The world will not allow the horrors of Rwanda to be repeated in Burundi, suggests Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the United Nations' secretary-general. Really? Such a development would be precisely the sort of thing that the UN Security Council is not, in these chastened times, prepared to do much about. if the political mission dispatched to Burundi this week fails to avert a tragedy, the UN is unlikely to be able to raise the men or the money or the political will to take on ethnic fighting, let alone genocide, in a small remote country of no strategic or economic importance to the larger powers. The UN can still send its men, under America's urging and wing, to Haiti. It has also agreed to send them to Angola, a country the superpowers long fought over -- but will bring them back if war breaks out again. The blown-up vision of the UN'S interventionist powers, born as the cold war died, has long since been punctured. Current operations, the vast, tottering mission to ex-Yugoslavia apart, reflect these deflated ambitions. Most of them are small- scale, and some are gestures only. To try to hold Sierra Leone together, Mr Boutros-Ghaii can send no more than an envoy. When 60 governments were asked for troops to police Rwandan refugee camps, the response was so pitiful that the job had to be left to luck and the Zairean army. Trouble, the UN hopes, will be dealt with by the neighbours -- the Russians in Georgia, the West Africans in Liberia -- with the UN saving its money if not its reputation by restricting itself to casual supervision. The UN'S peacekeeping chiefs have written a sober follow-up to the "Agenda for Peace", the document produced in 1992 on the crest of the interventionist wave. Peacekeeping and peace-enforcement are not, they now argue, "adjacent points on a continuum, permitting easy transition from one to the other." This is their polite way of pinpointing the Security Council's hypocrisy in ordering, and equipping, missions to keep a peace, or provide humanitarian relief, while blurrily hoping that a politically correct solution will somehow be enforced. The council's dodge of calling for "robust" rules of engagement is no substitute for giving UN soldiers the tools, and instructions, to do what needs to be done. Retrenchment is plainly in demand. But talk of the UN returning to its "traditional" role -- which was largely the monitoring of ceasefires between ex-combatant states -- is meaningless: the world seldom fights in that way nowadays (with Ecuador and Peru providing an old-fashioned exception). Of the 11 UN operations started since January 1992, all but two related to domestic conflicts, drawing the peacekeepers into the unmapped labyrinth of guerrilla warfare, collapsed state institutions and belligerents who do not want their quarrel resolved. The UN is learning to do some untraditional, but also unwarlike, things rather well: organising elections and training policemen, for instance. it also tries, though so far without much success, to persuade ex-soldiers to give up their arms. But where, in all this neat line-drawing between peacekeeping and peace-enforcement, does the big grey area of humanitarian intervention, or the guarding of relief convoys, fit in? This is the rub in planning to give an exhausted UN time off. The world's villains, planning mass murder or land grabs, will not oblige. They may even seize the opportunity. And if or when atrocities are brought into the open by CNN, outsiders will become uncomfortable, demanding once again that something be done. Governments, passing the national-interest buck one to another, too often try to do the minimum. But moral imperatives pull the other way, and may sometimes pull decisively. Expecting this, the UN peacekeepers in New York are struggling to make their hit-and-miss operation less fallible. They have come a long way since the early days: a headquarters military staff of 116 (though all but 16 of them are on short-term secondment from national armies); a 24-hour situation room; even a research cell (the UN's blushing euphemism for intelligence gathering). But all this newly acquired professionalism is fatally undermined by the peacekeepers' inability to get together an equipped force in a hurry. Before a fire can be put out, mused one official, the fire station has to be built from scratch, each time. Around 30 governments have given the UN a list of the men and equipment they could provide in an emergency. But if their promise is called, as it was when the UN was trying to collect a force for Rwanda, they fail to deliver. (We were not asked for the right things, grumbles one contributor; the UN responds that it was well enough known what was wanted.) New mechanisms are clearly essential. The new agenda for peace calls for a rapid-reaction force, composed of units drawn from several countries and stationed on home ground but trained and ready to work together. The snag still is that national governments might not, when a crisis arises, allow their units to be deployed. Some UN hands have long argued that the Organisation should have its own foreign legion, directly under its control. There would be no difficulty, the UN says, in staffing such a force: it gets dozens of applications from would-be mercenaries each week. Opponents of the idea, who, for one reason or another, include most of the UN'S members -- the Dutch are an exception -- pile on the difficulties: how, for instance, would the UN find the money for training, housing and pensioning its soldiers? More to the point, governments are scared of control passing to the UN'S secretary-general -- even though he would act only under orders from the Security Council. The UN rather hopes that the bogey of a foreign legion may impel its members to search for lesser -- though still good -- alternatives. The Canadians, for instance, have organised a series of conferences this winter and spring to generate, or ventilate, new thoughts. Ideas include: * Countries that have trained, equipped and available units, but hate the prospect of being bogged down, could send their men swiftly to an emergency in the knowledge that they would be replaced after four to six months by a smaller power. * A big and a small country could work in tandem, one providing the equipment and the other the men. * Countries, such as Japan and Germany, with reservations about contributing armed men, could keep unarmed teams at the ready for immediate humanitarian relief. In the meantime, the UN tries to improve its efficiency by earmarking troops (which may not, when the crux comes, be available) and storing supplies rescued from old missions. Knowing its limits, it stresses the benefits of preventive action. But diplomacy might work better, says one official grown cynical, if it were buttered with a tiny proportion of the money spent on missions when diplomacy fails. Pre-conflict bribes may be the notion that best fits these disillusioned times. =================================================== THE ECONOMIST FEBRUARY 11 1995 Bosnia -- Good intentions -- SARAJEVO One of the few things preventing another outbreak of murderous violence in Bosnia is the Muslim-Croat federation, an agreement to pool sovereignty, signed last March by the Bosnian (Muslim) government and the Bosnian Croats after a year of fighting. It is surviving, but only just. In Munich on February 5th, after months of bickering that threatened to undo the agreement, the two sides undertook to submit their disputes to the binding arbitration of an international mediator. Volunteers for the job are unlikely to apply in droves. Last month, monitors from the European Union told their masters (confidentially) that Muslims and Croats saw the federation "as a temporary and inadequate solution, an arranged marriage of suspicious partners." There was a "growing acknowledgment that the practical reality of co-existence was a thing of the past." The biggest problem is that Bosnian Croats are divided over whether to support the federation. A majority of them do, arguing that it helps to counterbalance Serb power and worrying that, if they attempted to unite with Croatia proper, then some Croats would inevitably be left behind as a minority in a Muslim state. They point out that under the March agreement the federation can ultimately join Croatia in a loose confederation, which would provide the desired ties with the homeland. But some Hercegovinan Croats think this is not enough. They want to preserve their statelet, which they call the "Croatian Republic of Herceg-Bosna", so that it can become a unit of a greater Croatia that will, they hope, include much of Hercegovina. So they oppose the federation on nationalist grounds. Ante Pavelic, Croatia's leader in the Nazi era, came from Hercegovina, which has long been a Croat- nationalist stronghold. Hercegovinan Croats are influential in the Croatian government in Zagreb. Franjo Tudjman, Croatia's president, has sometimes favoured carving up Bosnia. But for the pastyear, with his arm twisted by Germany and America, he has supported the federation. Intransigence by the Hercegovinan Croats did much to undermine last year's talks on the federation. The Bosnian Croats would not share the customs dues they charge on goods entering Bosnia. They hampered attempts to resettle the refugees of both sides. They have also prevented the reunification of the divided city of Mostar, which they want for their capital, allowing only women, children and the elderly to cross the lines separating the Croat and Muslim parts of the city. Formally, the federal government already exists, its members doubling up as ministers of the Bosnian or Herceg-Bosna governments. The federal parliament has held several meetings but few of its laws have been implemented. There are still two legal, fiscal and monetary systems. Of the eight new cantons that are supposed to make up the federation, only one exists. One of the difficulties is that no one knows how much territory the federation will, ultimately, control. Another is that the Bosnian government wants a single, integrated army, while the Croats, who fear being outnumbered, want two armies under a joint headquarters (which has been set up). The Bosnian government wants to maintain the internationally recognised Republic of Bosnia (with, in theory, its pre-1991 borders) in perpetuity. The Croats will not accept that. "When the federation is built, the Muslim-dominated republic must cease to exist," says Jadranko Prlic, president of Herceg-Bosna and deputy prime minister of the federation. For their part, the Muslims ask why, if the Croats believe in a federation, they have conserved their statelet. Ejup Ganic, deputy president of the republic and the federation, says the Muslims will never abandon the republic, whose job is to represent Bosnia to the outside world. "The federation cannot become the main entity without an overall peace," says Mr Ganic. Under the terms of the March agreement, Mr Ganic should have taken on the federation's rotating presidency last month. But Kresimir Zubak, the Croat incumbent, refused to hand it over on the ground that Muslims were already president and prime minister of the republic. If the arbitrator has to sort out such minor rows, how much time will he have for the real problems? ======================================================= A Country Captivated Serbians dazzled as warlord, singer wed Milwaukee Journal, February 19, 1995 It has been billed as Serbia's wedding of the century. Rich, baby-faced Arkan - Serbia's most prominent warlord - marries Ceca, a 21-year-old glamour queen and its most popular folk singer. It matters not to the legion of breathless fans that much of the world regards Arkan as one of Serbia's worst war criminals. What matters about Sunday's ceremony, Serbia's answer to a Hollywood wedding, is the picture of love, beauty and riches lavishly drawn by magazine covers and photo spreads. They provide an escape from the daily struggle here to get by, as well as a symbol of Serb nationalism. "They are a perfect couple," said housewife Midana Trifunovic. "Who cares what the world thinks of Arkan? They are a picture of Serbian beauty and pride." Papers with stories about the couple are sold out, and their interviews glue people to the TV. The couple met when she sang for his Serbian Tigers paramilitary units. She also sang for some of his election rallies when he ran for parliament in 1993. Sociologist Danica Spasic regards the public attitude as "mass disorientation in a time of crisis. People are mixing good and bad because they elieve in state-run propaganda, which has completely distorted reality. "Everyone seems to have forgotten who Arkan is, or where did this money come from, at a time when the majority of Serbs have daily battles to make ends meet," she said. The 42-year-old Arkan's real name is Zeljko Raznatovic, and he has a criminal record long predating former Yugoslavia's wars. He is wanted for armed robbery in Sweden. The Tigers have fought in Croatia and Bosnia, spreading fear among non-Serbs and gaining a reputation for brutality. Former US Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger identified him as a likely war criminal. But in Serbia, Arkan is widely revered as hero, a Serb patriot and a successful businessman. Ceca (pronounced Tseh-Tsa), or Svetlana Velickovic, is a superstar who attracts tens of thousands to concerts of what is known here as "turbo-folk." The unique mix of traditional Slavic tunes and rock music helps make Serb nationalism palatable for new listeners. The cost of helping Serbs right wars in Croatia and Serbia, economic mismanagement, and international economic sanctions have left half of Serbia's work force unemployed and most people struggling just to survive. But there is no sense of limit to this wedding, estimated to cost half a million dollars. Five hundred people, including politicians, have been invited to the wedding at Belgrade's Intercontinental hotel. The menu ranges from caviar and champagne to Serbia's traditional plum brandy and roast lamb. Media reports say a race horse is among the presents Arkan will lavish on his bride. The couple are expected to honeymoon in Brazil. Arkan has seven children from two previous marriages. According to Serb tradition, Arkan must shoot an apple in front of Ceca's house before she can become his wife. "It makes me nervous," Arkan told the weekly Zena. "Everyone knows I'm not used to shooting apples." ----------------------------------------------------------------- "House Republicans, still smarting from a surprising defeat on the proposed deployment of a Star Wars missile defense system the day before, voted Thursday to significantly alter the U.S. relationship with the UN and foreign governments." CHICAGO TRIBUNE Copyright Chicago Tribune 1995 DATE: Friday, February 17, 1995 SECTION: NEWS PAGE: 4 SOURCE: By Steve Daley, Tribune Staff Writer. DATELINE: WASHINGTON GOP-LED HOUSE VOTES TO LIMIT U.S. ROLE IN UN PEACEKEEPING House Republicans, still smarting from a surprising defeat on the proposed deployment of a Star Wars missile defense system the day before, voted Thursday to significantly alter the U.S. relationship with the UN and foreign governments. In passing the national defense plank of its campaign "Contract with America," the new Republican majority handed President Clinton what the GOP termed a "mid-course correction" on his foreign policy. By a 241-181 margin, and over Clinton's strong objections, the House voted to require that the UN reimburse the U.S. for expenses sustained in peacekeeping efforts by deducting American costs from annual peacekeeping dues. The House action would also bar U.S. troops from serving under foreign command without the assent of Congress, and reduce the U.S. contribution to the UN peacekeeping budget from approximately 25 percent to 20 percent. The legislation urges the early expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to include Poland, Hungary and the Czech republics. Clinton, who insists the bill signals an ill-advised American retreat from the international arena, has indicated he will veto the legislation if it passes the Senate in similar form. The final count was 41 votes short of the number needed to override a veto, assuming the same number of members vote. Eighteen Democrats, mostly Southerners, joined 223 Republicans to vote for it; four Republicans joined 176 Democrats and one independent to oppose it. Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, the Senate majority leader, has introduced legislation aimed at limiting U.S. involvement with UN peacekeeping operations. Anticipating a veto, White House spokesman Michael McCurry said, "The bill would end UN peacekeeping and burden-sharing which helps the U.S. taxpayer by sharing the costs of important security endeavors . . . around the world." Over two days of bitter debate, House Democrats and a handful of Republicans raised fierce objections to the bill, arguing it would inhibit legitimate presidential authority and, in the words of UN Ambassador Madeline Albright, "force the U.S. to act alone (militarily) or not at all." Rep. Jim Leach (R-Iowa) offered an amendment which would have deleted the portion of the bill that constrained the U.S financial contribution to the UN. But he was joined by only six Republicans, and his proposal was defeated, 267-158. Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.), former chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the legislation "strikes at the heart of the president's authority to protect our national security and to conduct American foreign policy." "This legislation reverses one half-century of American leadership," said Rep. Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.). "We are losing our leadership to isolationism." Republicans contend they are simply reflecting public disaffection with UN operations in recent years, and reacting to a broader public concern that America is surrendering its military autonomy in the post-Cold War era. "This is an America-comes-first policy," said Rep. Dana Rohrbacher (R-Calif.). "The American people will not stand for the military adventurism of a liberal elite." According to UN figures, the U.S. was assessed $1.1 billion in peacekeeping costs in 1994, with UN expenditures set at $3.5 billion. Republicans insist the U.S. has been subjected to "double-billing" for peacekeeping costs. Thursday's action was set against a backdrop of fundamental party differences over foreign policy, and the results were indicative of the growing nationalist sentiment inside the GOP, particularly among younger House members. In their "Contract," Republicans maintain that Democrats have "undermined" the American military and ceded U.S. sovereignty to multinational groups. Throughout the 1980s, congressional Republicans accused Democrats of attempting to inject themselves in U.S. foreign policy under GOP presidents in Grenada, Panama and other areas. But many Republicans were outraged by the U.S.-UN partnership brokered by Clinton last year in his attempt to restore the Aristide government in Haiti. And recent UN military activities in Somalia and Bosnia, actions widely regarded as failures, have further soured the public view of the organization. But beyond the geopolitical and constitutional debates, the House action Thursday takes dead aim at Clinton and his management of foreign policy. In a Thursday press conference, House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said House Republicans "disagree deeply with the way they (the Clinton administration) would risk American lives around the planet." "This is not this Congress's last word on defense," House Majority Leader Richard Armey (R-Texas) said after the vote. Late Wednesday, House GOP leaders were shocked when 24 of their members defected to support a Democratic-sponsored amendment that gutted the portion of the "contract" designed to deploy a space-based antiballistic missile defense system. Gingrich has promised to revisit the Star Wars debate, but on Thursday he backed off any attempt to reverse Wednesday's defeat when it became clear not enough Republicans were willing to change their votes. ----------------------------------------------------------------- The cease-fire that Carter brokered has never taken effect in Bihac, the besieged city that prompted his intervention and was to have been its main beneficiary. Worse, the Serbs are now preparing a similar siege for Srebenica, another of the cruelly misnamed Bosnian "safe areas." 1995/The Times Mirror Company Los Angeles Times February 17, 1995, Friday, Home Edition False Hopes Only Lead to Tragedy; When will West face reality in the Balkans? SECTION: METRO; PAGE: B-6 TYPE: Editorial In the slow struggle toward peace in the Balkans, true hope will have to step across the corpses of at least three false hopes. The first is that Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic will seriously assist in restraining the Serb militants of Bosnia or Croatia. Milosevic, breaking past promises, has continued to supply the Serb rebels in both countries by air as well as by land. Incredibly, in view of this record, the U.N. Security Council--prompted by the five-power "Contact Group," which includes the United States--may soon suspend its economic sanctions against Yugoslavia in exchange for a new promise by Milosevic to stop breaking his old promises and, in addition, to recognize the nations he has been trying to dismember. Milosevic will violate the new commitments as he did the old. RUSSIAN SAVAGERY: The second false hope is that Russia will bring Serbia to the negotiating table. Russia and Serbia are linked, historically, by their adherence to Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Unfortunately, Russia's response to the Chechen uprising, a Muslim revolt within its own borders, implies only approval for Serb treatment of Bosnia's Muslims. The Russian siege of Grozny exceeds in violence the Serb siege of Sarajevo. Like the Serbs, but with greater savagery, the Russians have directly attacked Muslim civilians. Russia's action has endangered a crucial $6-billion loan from the International Monetary Fund and awakened Islamic militancy along Russia's southern border, but in Russia as in Serbia economic and diplomatic considerations have been swept aside by chauvinist militarism. The point of this folly for Western leaders must be that, at least when conflicts at the margins of the First World involve Muslims, Russia must be regarded as a part of the problem rather than any reliable part of the solution. With respect to the Bosnian conflict, in particular, Chechnya has crippled Russia's ability to play any significant role even as it has exposed the inability of the Russian military, for years to come, to pose any significant land threat to Western Europe. EMPTY CEASE-FIRE: A third Bosnian hope that many, most recently Jimmy Carter, have entertained is that the Bosnian Serb leadership might be persuaded to accept autonomy rather than independence in a peace plan that ratifies many of its military gains. Sadly, the cease-fire that Carter brokered has never taken effect in Bihac, the besieged city that prompted his intervention and was to have been its main beneficiary. Worse, the Serbs are now preparing a similar siege for Srebenica, another of the cruelly misnamed Bosnian "safe areas." The U.S. State Department recently decided to end official contacts with the Bosnian Serb leadership. Would that comparable realism ruled U.S. relations with Belgrade. In 1995 the attempt to halt Serb aggression stands approximately where the attempt to halt German aggression stood in 1942. The hour is dark, in other words. But abandoning false hopes regarding Slobodan Milosevic, Russian mediation and Serb willingness to settle for a large but partial victory can only hurry the dawn. 1995/The Times Mirror Company ---- "It is not possible to be a Serb and not be harassed here," said Ivan Cicak, president of the Zagreb office of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights. "We can perhaps understand the anger of some Croats toward Serbs, but it gives no one the right to oppress them." February 18, 1995, Saturday, Home Edition BYLINE: SCOTT KRAFT; TIMES STAFF WRITER PAGE: A-1 JALSEVAC, Croatia -- As Anna selects fairy tales for her nursery school class in Croatia these days, she knows that those penned by Serbs are off limits. And when some of her 25 pupils draw pictures of apes and say, "This is a Serb," or call each other "ugly Serb" on the playground, she knows to keep her mouth shut. Her family has lived here, in the country now called Croatia, for 800 years. She is a citizen of Croatia. She is also a Serb, holding on to her job only because no one, aside from her sympathetic principal, knows that. "None of the kids' parents even suspect," she said recently, pouring sweet black coffee for a visitor to her home. She insists on speaking behind a pseudonym, knowing that the Croatian authorities carefully read dispatches in foreign newspapers. "My principal says she won't be able to protect my job if anyone finds out." Still, this 36-year-old mother of two finds it difficult to hold her tongue and impossible to be optimistic about her family's future in Croatia. "When this kind of hatred is planted in kids this young, I don't see how it will ever end," she said. The Croatian state that emerged brom the former Yugoslav federation, and was recognized as a sovereign nation three years ago, has a state-of-the-art constitution firmly guaranteeing the rights of all minorities, including Serbs. But the law is not enforced, and the lives of Serbs here are a daily list of collective and personal insults, job dismissals, schoolyard harassment, ostracism from neighbors, threatening telephone calls, citizenship hassles and forced evictions. In a Zagreb restaurant on a recent evening, a male chorus employed by the management loudly serenaded diners with anti-Serb songs dating from World War II, when a short-lived Croatian government collaborated with the Nazis and killed tens of thousands of Serbs. The music continued the entire evening, with some patrons pausing from their plates of roasted meats to join in. "It is not possible to be a Serb and not be harassed here," said Ivan Cicak, president of the Zagreb office of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights. Cicak himself is a onetime Croatian nationalist who now supports the Serbian minority. "We can perhaps understand the anger of some Croats toward Serbs, but it gives no one the right to oppress them," he said. "We Croats were fighting for a democratic state during the war, not a state of hatred or racism." Complicating that legacy of hatred, for which both sides share responsibility in a long and tortured history, is the fact that Serbs and Croats, as ethnic groups, are not really very different. It is rarely possible, for example, for Croats and Serbs to tell each other apart by appearance alone. They speak the same language, known as Serbo-Croatian, and even share many of the same regional dialects, though Serbs write in the Cyrillic alphabet while Croats use the Roman alphabet. (...) But the main difference is that since the 11th Century, Croats have been Roman Catholic and Serbs have been Orthodox Christian. Also, many, though not all, names are recognizably Croatian or Serbian. And, of course, they've been on opposing sides of the bloody wars spawned by the breakup of the former Yugoslav federation. After the 1991 Serbo-Croatian war, the Serbs made up 12% of government-controlled Croatia, a proportion about equal, for example, to the percentage of African Americans in the United States. But 300,000 Serbs have fled, leaving only 150,000. Those who have remained are sometimes called "loyal Serbs," to distinguish them from the 300,000 rebel Serbs who hold a mountainous stretch of Croatian territory known as the Krajina, where it is the Serbs who have been the dominant ethnic group. The Serbs in Croatia have lived for generations with a Croatian majority, albeit in a country--the old Yugoslavia--in which Serbs were the dominant political power. Now, though, most of the Serbs in Croatia are or would like to be Croatian citizens. But the Croatian government, under President Franjo Tudjman, a 72-year-old war hero, has not exactly welcomed them. Under the constitution, Serbs are among the minorities guaranteed representation, proportionate to their numbers, in government, the judicial system and state enterprises. In one house of Parliament, 12% of the members are Serbs. But elsewhere, they are rare. Only one of Tudjman's 20 Cabinet ministers is a Serb, and he does not have any responsibilities. Serbs also feel the sting of discrimination in other walks of life, in ways subtle as well as overt. Job applicants must identify their ethnic group, and many employers won't hire Serbs. Some Serbs have changed their names and lied to get jobs. The government-influenced media, in what most Serbs consider a propaganda offensive, either vilify them or run stories showing how happy they are to be living in Croatia. A typical front-page headline recently read: "Serbs Be Damned--Wherever You Are." Even Tudjman, when he addresses the nation, begins, "Dear Croatians and other citizens of Croatia. . . ." And he has defended the eviction of Serbs from their homes by saying they were to blame for the military actions and anti-Croat atrocities of Serbs elsewhere, particularly in neighboring Bosnia-Herzegovina. (...) To the dismay of many Serbs here, the government has renamed streets in honor of leaders of the Ustashi, the collaborationist Croatian regime that killed Serbs and put others in concentration camps during the early 1940s. An intersection long known as the Square of the Victims of Fascism, in honor of those Serbs slain during World War II, has been renamed the Square of Croatian Greats. The new currency introduced last summer is called the kuna, the same name given to the currency during the Ustashi regime, and the Croatian flag bears a checkerboard reminder of that regime's symbol. When asked about its failure to protect Serbian rights here, the Croatian government says it will start honoring the constitutional guarantees as soon as rebel Serbs in the Krajina region return that territory to Croatia. But in the Krajina, rebel Serbs cite the oppression of minority Serbs in Croatia as one of the many reasons they could never agree to live under a Croatian government. Tudjman has decided to kick out the 12,000 U.N. troops providing a buffer zone between Croatia and the Krajina, hoping that will end the stalemate. World leaders say it will probably mean another war. The plight of Anna's family is emblematic of the problems Serbs face in Croatia. She and her husband, a laborer in Zagreb, live with their two sons, ages 11 and 18, in a two-story house they built in this rural suburb seven years ago. Out front, they have planted bright flowers, and in the back the soil has been turned, ready for another spring planting of vegetables for the table. But the family recently decided to leave Croatia and move to what remains of Yugoslavia, which is still run by a Serbian government and is home to many refugees from Croatia. "We don't have any job there, and we're well aware we'll have a lower living standard," Anna said. "But it will be better for the children. Having things is not as important as the psychological well-being of our children." Both of the couple's sons have found it difficult here in recent years. At first, the couple did not tell their youngest that he was a Serb. And they always left blank the space requesting ethnic identity on his school forms. But the boy's teacher was suspicious, and she began questioning the youngster about the names of his grandparents, who have more identifiable Serbian names. When she learned the truth, the teacher herself filled in the blank spot on the boy's school forms and, according to Anna, urged the other children not to play with him. (...) The family is worried that the father and oldest son will be drafted. As Croatia prepares for war with the Krajina Serbs, more and more "loyal Serbs" are being visited by military police, often in the middle of the night. Some are ordered into the service immediately, where they are usually given the most menial or dangerous tasks. Of the 25 children in Anna's nursery school class, six who were Serbs have moved away; only one Serb remains. And her job seems less sure every day. The school principal, a Croat married to a Serb, has been supportive. When parents ask if she has "any of them" on the teaching staff, the principal lies. "I'm just warning you, don't tell anyone you are a Serb," the principal has told Anna. "Times are hard, and you are lucky to have this job." So far, Anna has been protected by her first name, which is not readily identifiable as a Serbian name. Now she and her husband are quietly trying to find a buyer for their house, which is worth about $100,000. When they first put it on the market, the best offer they got was $30,000 from a Croat who said: "Go ahead. Move. You'll be lucky if you get a cent for this house." "As a Serb here, there's no chance to sell a house for a real price," Anna said. So the couple placed an advertisement in newspapers in Zagreb, the Croatian capital, offering to trade their house for one in Yugoslavia, where Serbs are the majority. Their aim was to attract Croats who still have parents or family in Yugoslavia and want to move them here. But the advertisement elicited only anonymous phone calls. "You think you'll make a deal," one caller seethed. "No way. We'll blow up your house first." All that has made them more determined to move. "The circumstances are forcing us," Anna said. "I was born here, and I don't want to move. But I have no hope that the situation will improve." Among Serbs who intend to stay, some have changed their names, hoping to hide their ethnic roots. Others keep to themselves, hoping to keep their jobs and their houses and avoid contact with racist Croats until the Balkan conflicts are resolved. A few Serbs in Croatia are staying on principle, determined to fight for their rights, but it is an uphill fight. Veselin Pejnovic, one of the Serbs in Parliament, sits on 16 separate commissions on human rights, which he admits are mostly ineffectual bodies that only give the impression of movement on the issue of minority rights. "It's a joke, really," he said recently. "This government has demonized Serbs for years and years," Pejnovic said. "What it needs to do now is just declare that Serbs are full-fledged citizens and that it is in the Croatian national interest that we remain here." (...) Among the most dogged fighters for Serbian political rights in Croatia is Milorad Pupovac, a professor of linguistics and head of the Serbian Democratic Forum. "I know this is a young country, and ethnic Croatians need some freedom to express the nationhood they've been wanting for centuries," Pupovac said. "But I expect more sensitivity to the fact that Croatia is not only inhabited by ethnic Croats. How can I be loyal to an authority that does not recognize me as a full-fledged citizen?" His job is complicated by tha actions of Serbs elsewhere. Fresh still are the memories of the Bosnian Serbs and their concentration camps and the Krajina Serbs who killed thousands of innocent Croatian women and children as they subjugated the eastern Croatian town of Vukovar. "Serbs have their responsibility in this war. I'd be the last to deny it," Pupovac said. "But just because a person was born a Serb doesn't make him responsible." 1995/The Times Mirror Company =============================================================== White House May Send GI's Into Croatia Washington Post Washington, D.C. - After two years of resisting military involvement in the Balkans, the Clinton administration has concluded that it may have to send thousands of U.S. troops to the region within weeks because of the threatened collapse of a U.N. peacekeeping mission. The U.S. forces would be dispatched as part of a NATO effort to protect the departure of U.N. peacekeeping troops, who on Jan. 12 were ordered to leave Croatia this spring by Croatian President Franjo Tudjman. Although Tudjman has threatened to expel the U.N. troops before, American and European officials say this time he appears serious and the 12,000 peacekeepers may have to depart between March 31, when their U.N. mandate expires, and .June 30, when Tudjman says the last U.N. soldier has to be gone. With concern building here and in Croatia, both Secretary of State Warren M. Christopher and Defense Secretary William J. Perry have recommended to President Clinton that he approve the operation to provide cover for a U.N. withdrawal from Croatia. According to administration officials, Clinton has withheld endorsement so as not to give the impression that a U.N. withdrawal is inevitable; American and allied negotiators are still trying to persuade Tudjman to permit at least a token U.N. force to remain to separate government forces from Croatian Serb rebels who control more than one-quarter of the country. Officials here and in Croatia have displayed growing concern that unless they can persuade Tudjman to relent, the immediate result would be renewal of war between the Croatian government and the Serbs in southern Croatia. Worse, these officials warn, the fighting would risk spilling over into neighboring Bosnia, where Serbs also are fighting for independence, and turn the neighboring conflicts into a regional war that could spin out of control. Fighting could erupt even while the peacekeepers are withdrawing, catching them in a cross fire, or the lightly armed peacekeepers themselves could become the target of attacks, officials warn. U.S. and other NATO officials assume that withdrawal of U.N. peacekeepers from Croatia would lead inevitably to the collapse of the U.N. mission in Bosnia as well. The U.N. troops in Bosnia could face difficulties getting supplies if the peacekeepers left Croatia, because most provisions for Bosnia pass through a logistical center in Croatia. "The key question is Tudjman's intent. Is he serious?" said a Western diplomat in the region. "The closer we get to March 31, the more it seems he is. But we still hope he'll change his mind." The Serbs have run an autonomous region in southern Croatia - amounting to 27% of the country - since the Croatian civil war halted in 1991. Tudjman's government in Zagreb long has complained that the 12,000 U.N. peacekeepers, originally stationed to prevent flareups along the wandering 1,000-mile ceasefire line, have in effect become buffers for the breakaway region, behind which separatist leaders are busily making their self-declared Serb ministate a reality. With the U.N. forces out of the way, the officials say, Tudjman could attack the Serb-held zone in an attempt to bring the whole country back under his authority. Further, they predict, rebel Serb forces in neighboring Bosnia would be tempted to help defend their Serb brethren in Croatia, broadening the battle into Bosnia and shattering that country's fragile ceasefire that has kept a relative peace since January. Clinton pledged last December to send U.S. forces to help the 25,000 U.N. troops in Bosnia stage a retreat, which looked then like it might become necessary. Although that crisis has subsided, a similar threat now hangs over Croatia because of Tudjman's expulsion order and, administration officials say, Clinton will soon extend the promise of U.S. forces to cover Croatia as well as Bosnia. =============================================================== NATO's Claes in Hot Water Milwaukee Sentinel A long-running corruption scandal has snagged a new victim: NATO Secretary General Willy Claes, who says he vaguely recalls an aircraft company offering bribes when he was Belgium's economics minister. NATO issued a statement expressing confidence in Claes. But increasingly hostile Belgian news reports Friday said his position is threatened by allegations his party accepted $1.5 million in bribes for a 1988 military helicopter contract. Claes approved the $330 million contract to the Italian aircraft manufacturer Agusta and previously insisted he had no knowledge of any illegal payments connected to it. The bribery allegations have long focused on Belgium's Frenchspeaking Socialist Party. Three French-speaking Cabinet ministers were forced to sign last year, and the unsolved 1991 shooting death of former party leader Andre Cools has also been linked to the case. The manufacturer denies wrongdoing. ============================================== TODAY'S ISSUES==> TOPIC: MILITARY & ARMS Ref: C31N2990 Date: 03/01/95 From: PRESTON MCMURRY Time: 07:49pm \/To: STEVE SCHULTZ (Leader) (Read 0 times) Subj: R: BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA UPDATE A U.S. military officer at the N.A.T.O. Southern Command Headquarters in Naples, Italy, has compiled a report saying that U.N. personnel were confused and inept in their accounts last month of a possible covert air operation delivering arms to the Bosnian Government. The report, which h infuriated the U.N., says the aircraft observed were either N.A.T.O. air patrols or commercial aircraft on approved flight plans in Serbian airspace. On February 10, a Norwegian military officer at the Tuzla airfield reported seeing a C-130 series Hercules accompanied by two fighter aircraft flying low over the airfield. When Norwegian troops investigate they were fired on by Bosnian Government troops. Two days later, a Briti officer reported a similar sighting, and there were further reports on February 17 and 23. While no aircraft were seen landing, no arms deliveries were seen, and n one knows the origin of the aircraft, the fact that it was a C-130 has l to suggestions that it was a covert U.S. or Turkish operation to supply Bosnian forces. And even the type of aircraft is in dispute. A U.N. officer, reviewing t report, said "the idea that trained officers could mistake a low-flying transporter over Tuzla for a commercial aircraft flying a 35,000 feet in Serbian airspace is frankly ludicrous and insulting." (Roger Cohen/N.Y.T ===================================================================== THE ECONOMIST MARCH 4TH 1995 Think again, Tudjman The Croatian president's decision to send the United Nations peacekeepers packing risks plunging former Yugoslavia back into war YUGO-FATIGUE affects outsiders even during periods of fighting. When, as now, the death rate is low and international diplomacy is stalled, the world readily forgets the woes of former Yugoslavia. It may soon get a vicious reminder of them. In Bosnia, the ceasefire between the mainly Muslim government and the Bosnian Serbs is fraying. The United Nations has reported secret flights delivering weapons to both sides, as they rearm in readiness for the end of a ceasefire that expires on April 30th. The situation in Krajina, a region of Croatia ruled by Serbs, is even worse. The opposing armies of the Croatian government and the Krajina Serbs are strengthening their fortifications and moving artillery to the front line. The peace that Croatia has enjoyed since early 1992 may well break down after March 31st. That is the day on which Croatia's president, Franjo Tudjman, says the 12,000 UN peacekeepers in his country must start to leave. Strung out along 1,600kilometres (1,000 miles) of ceasefire lines,they have successfully prevented small incidents from turning into full-blown war. Mr Tudjman says the soldiers must all be gone by June 31st, but magnanimously adds (to the delight of restaurateurs and brothel-keepers) that the UN can keep the bases in Zagreb and Split from which it services its forces in Bosnia. Withdrawing the UN's blue helmets could well prove hazardous, for most are quartered on Serb-held land. Fearful of what mayhappen when the troops leave, Serb civilians may try to stop them going, perhaps by lying down in front of their departing lorries. Serbian soldiers may demand that weapons be left behind. Belatedly, NATO is drawing up plans-involving the dispatch of extra troops, including Americans -- to help evacuate UN troops in Croatia. Mr Tudjman has ignored pleas from America, Russia, the UN and Germany (his chief ally) to revoke his expulsion order. His frustration with the UN is understandable. Its soldiers have failed to implement UN resolutions calling forthe disarming of the Croatian Serbs. And he fears that Croatia will follow Cyprus down the road to partition: there, the longer the UN'S peacekeepers have stayed, the more the illegal Turkish republic in the north has become a fait accompti. Facing elections early next year, Mr Tudjman wants to be seen to rattle the sabre of Croatian nationalism and to reassert authority over the 27% of his land that Serbs control. He seems to be gambling that the blue helmets'departure will set off a new round of diplomacy, from which a lasting settlement may emerge. Mr Tudjman should think again. His decision is already causing harm. Last December his government and the Croatian Serbs signed an economic accord which reopened an oil pipeline and the motorway from Zagreb to the Serbian border. Now the Serbs are refusing to implement the accord's second stage (on telecoms and railway links) unless the UN troops stay. Nor will they discuss a plan drawn up by the European Union, Russia, America and the UN, under which they would hand back some land in exchange for guarantees of autonomy. When Mr Tudjman says he does not want another war, he probably means it. His suggestion that a small force of unarmed observers from NATO or the Western European Union should replace the UN troops maybe proof of sincerity. But his assertion that the departure of the UN soldiers would probably not lead to war is doubtful. When they pull out, one opposing army will be tempted to grab strategically valuable points before the other can. A few toothless observers, of the sort Mr Tudjman envisages, could do little to prevent skirmishes escalating into war. Dread nationalism Many Croats claim that, in the @vent of war, they could reconquer Krajina without provoking intervention from Serbia. If that is Mr Tudjman's assumption, it is a foolish one. Senior figures in the Serbian and Bosnian Serb governments have already said they would defend their cousins in Krajina. Croatia has worked hard to build its military might, and can boast 1,000 pieces of artillery. But it could not defeat heavily armed Serbia. A new war in Croatia would reignite the Bosnian conflict and probably make it impossible for the UN to maintain troops there. Mr Tudjman may not care about that. But he should worry that most of Croatia, including Zagreb, is within range of Serb rockets. If Mr Tudjman really is the father of his nation, as he believes himself to be, he should have the courage to stand up to Croatia's nationalists and revoke an order which can only hurt his country, and the rest of former Yugoslavia. ===================================================================== THE ECONOMIST MARCH 4TH 1995 Post-Communist Vandalism Art treasures are being destroyed in the Balkans- by soldiers in what used to be Yugoslavia and by spivs in Albania The height of the battle forvukovar in ineastern Croatia in 1991, a soldier carefully unwrapped a bundle stashed amid the ruins of the town's just bombed museum. It contained a human foot. "We're looking for the rest of him," the soldier said. More than three years later Hans-Christoph von Imhoff, an art consultant, has been to the region to accomplish the rather less gruesome task of finding out what happened to the museum's collection. The good news is that he has found much of it in Serbia. The bad news is that thousands of other treasures are still unaccounted for, either lost, looted or destroyed. Mr von Imhoff was sent to hunt for the Vukovar collection by the Council of Europe. He arrived armed with a partial list of missing items provided by the Croatian authorities, and the Serbian officials obliged by showing him some 2,000 objects now stored in the northern town of Novi Sad. Many of these come from the Bauer collection of Croatian art, which, packed and stored underground by the Croats before Vukovar fell, was found by the Serbs at the end of their three-month siege. The Serbian authorities are keen to co-operate with the Council because they want to avoid charges of officially sponsored looting. Vukovar now lies in the self-proclaimed Republic of Serbian Krajina. Since 1991 the Croats have been charging the Serbs with "cultural genocide" and "urbicide", but they fail to point out that when the museum was bombed it was being used as a billet by their own soldiers. Although many artefacts were saved, many others were destroyed-including much of a cultural history exhibit. Croatian art experts say that overall some 50,000 items are missing while the Serbs put the figure at about 10,000. Some have certainly been looted. During both the Croatian and Bosnian wars religious buildings have been attacked and razed to the ground by soldiers brimming with ethnic hatred and religious bigotry. But a row nonetheless rages over the fate of thousands of Serbian Orthodox religious artefacts which were brought out from Croatia during the fighting. Nikola Kusovac, the curator of the National Museum in Belgrade, wishes people would calm down. Strolling through the museum's conservation rooms, he says that The Bauer collection has come to grief during the war with Croatia the Serbian government organised a committee to save Orthodox religious artefacts from the war zones and that in all about 1,500 were saved. Pausing before an iconostasis by Arsa Teodorovic from the Serbian Orthodox Bishop's Palace in Pakrac, Mr Kusovac notes that it was first damaged in 1941 and that it was reconstituted, using the surviving pieces. Pakrac is now under Croatian control. The looming dilemma is whether, following a peace settlement, this piece and others like it should be returned because they come from Croatia or kept because they belong to the Serbs. Mr Kusovac's committee was controversial while it operated because it worked to save only Serb treasures, and not Croatian ones, in the combat zones. Mr Kusovac is widely reputed to have said that "the Croatian and Catholic garbage should be left to be destroyed." He hotly denies this, pointing out numerous paintings by Croats and sculptures by a famous Croatian sculptor, Ivan Mestrovic, which remain in his museum. He says: "I had no permission from the Croats to enter their churches and can you imagine the catastrophe if it had been reported that a Serbian art expert was packing things up in a Croatian church?" In Albania historic monuments are threatened not by war but by an over-exuberant rush towards capitalism. Until 1991 responsibility for the monuments lay with the Ministry of Culture. Since then, laws to restore nationalised property to its original owners or their descendants have led to the handing over of some of these sites to private citizens out to make a quick lek. Among the casualties is one of the finest ottoman hammams (bathhouses) in the Balkans. Situated in the city of Elbasan, and dating back at least to 1670, this hammam was extensively and authentically restored during the communist period and its central fountain was put back into good working order. But it has now been transformed into a tacky discobar with plastic chairs, a plywood bar and bright green decor. Damage caused by the psychedelic paint and the constant cigarette smoke of patrons may prove irreparable. The snag is that the restitution laws passed since 1992 fail to make any distinction between historical monuments and ordinary dwellings when it comes to the transfer of property. And once the property is back in private hands the cash-strapped state cannot afford to buy back even the most valued sites. Last year a garage for car repair was set up in the grounds of one of Shkodra's most beautiful 19th-century houses. A cheap restaurant is open for business on what remains of Tirana's ancient city walls. In Durres, the largest Roman amphitheatre in the Balkans now accommodates many of the city's homeless. Albania is not extensively endowed with ancient monuments, and the loss and disfigurement of the few that have survived wars, invasions and earthquakes is hardly likely to encourage the growth of a tourist industry. Most Albanians show little interest in their nation's cultural heritage, especially when a nice little cafe or disco on a historical site can be a source of much needed income. After a half century of communist conformity, people are loth to allow the state any further say in how they conduct their own businesses or treat their newly reacquired property. Such short-sightedness will prove costly. Albania desperately needs more tourists to help it escape poverty. The republics of ex-Yugoslavia will eventually be in still more desperate need of foreign exchange to pay for its postwar reconstruction. But few visitors are going to travel to the Balkans to eat in an ancient monument that has been converted into a greasy-spoon with plastic fittings. Or to see churches and mosques that have been blasted, sacked and looted. =============================================== TODAY'S ISSUES==> TOPIC: MILITARY & ARMS Ref: C3AI3094 Date: 03/06/95 From: STEVE SCHULTZ (Leader) Time: 02:51pm \/To: ALL (Read 1 times) Subj: BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA UPDATE The commander of Bosnian Serb forces, GEN Ratko Mladic, allowed a U.N. convoy to bring supplies to Dutch peacekeepers yesterday. The permission came after the U.N. drafted plans to run the Serb blockade with helicopters escorted by N.A.T.O. aircraft. Ten trucks with 30 tons of food arrived in Srebrenica at dawn. About 730 Dutch soldiers are stationed there, and had less than two days of food left. (Reuters/N.Y.T.)