Software Vault: The Diamond Collection/The Diamond Collection (Software Vault)(Digital Impact).ISO/cdr16/yugo0395.zip/CLIP9504.TXT

Text File | 1995-03-16 | 68KB | 1,177 lines

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TODAY'S ISSUES==> TOPIC: MILITARY & ARMS      Ref: C3DQ2405
Date: 03/09/95 From: STEVE SCHULTZ (Leader)
          Time: 09:40pm \/To: ALL
                 (Read 8 times) Subj: "AGUSTA AFFAIR" BROADENS

LT GEN Jacques Lefebvre, Royal Belgian Air Force, was found dead
in a hotel room in Brussels yesterday, a day after he was
implicated in what has become known as the "Agusta Affair".
Brussels police said they are handling the death as an appearant
suicide.

A former Agusta representative has claimed that Lefebvre was
involved in the incident when he was Air Force Chief of Staff.

The incident revolves around the allegations that Belgian
politicians accepted $1.5 million in bribes in 1988 from Agusta
S.p.A. for awarding Agusta a $330 million contract. The Royal
Belgian Army bought 28 A 109HAs and 18 A 109HOs for the 17th and
18th Antitank Battalions based in Bierset, Belgium.

Three members of the ruling socialist party have been detained.
The current N.A.T.O. Secretary General, Willing Claes, has not
been charged and denies involvement. Claes was he Belgian
Economics Minister at the time of the sale, and had the
authority to approve the contract. (A.P./N.Y.T.)



=================================================================
===

TODAY'S ISSUES==> TOPIC: MILITARY & ARMS      Ref: C3DQ3432
Date: 03/09/95 From: STEVE SCHULTZ (Leader)
          Time: 09:57pm \/To: ALL
                 (Read 6 times) Subj: BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA UPDATE

Earlier this year, C.I.A. completed a report on atrocities
committed in Bosnia using aerial photography and "an enormous
ammount of precice technical analysis." Classifed at what one
official said was "an obscene level," the report concludes that
90% of the acts of "ethnic cleansing" were carried out by the
Serbs, and that Serb leaders almost certainly played a role. The
report states that while the Serbs were not the only ones
committing such acts, they were the only party doing so in a
systematic attempt to eliminate ethnic groups. It has reportedly
been submitted to the DoD, the State Department, and the N.S.C.

The report says that no conclusive evidence was found of direct
involvement of Serbian leaders in the planning and carrying out
of "ethnic cleansing" on a large scale, but that "the systematic
nature...strongly suggests that Pale and Belgrade exercised a
carefully veiled role in the purposeful destruction and
dispersal of non-Serb populations." The report also contains
specific evidence, such as instructions and admissions, that
some Bosnian Serb leaders - including Radovan Karadzic - knew of
the concentration camps in operation. The report also sates that
Bosnian Muslims and Croats committed atrocities as well but that
these actions "lack the intensity, sustained orchestration and
scale of what the Bosnian Serbs did."

The U.N. cut off all emergency relief food supplies to rebel
Serbs in Croatia yesterday, to press them to open new access
routes to nearby Bihac that avoid area controlled by Fikret
Abdic. Some 70,000 people are affected. Also, Bosnian Serbs,
appearantly worried about the implications of the U.N. withdrawl
from Croatia, have demanded increased food supplies by March 15
and have threatened to blockade peacekeepers in eastern Bosnia
if it is not delivered. (Roger Cohen and Alan Cowell/N.Y.T.)



=================================================================
====

 Milwaukee Journal, Editorial, 12 Mar 95

SETTLING WITH SERBS STILL URGENT

   A new report on atrocities in the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina,
prepared by the Central Intelligence Agency and made available
to  The New York Times, is a valuable addition to the historical
record  of this terrible conflict.  But at least two mistaken
conclusions  about the report need to be avoided.      The CIA
document, described as the most cormprehensive US  assessment of
war crimes in Bosnia, made two grave and important  assertions:
At least 90% of the atrocities in the war have been  carried out
by Serb nationalists, and Serb leaders almost certainly  played
a role in the war crimes.       These findings are appalling,
but they are neither new nor  surprising. Similar conclusions
about the "ethnic cleansing" of  Bosnian Muslims and Croats by
Serb militias have been reached by  journalists, human-rights
activists and other investigators.       Still, the report is a
useful and authoritative addition to the  record becauyse it was
prepared by the CIA on the basis of the enormous
information-gathering resources available to it, including
aerial photography. Because it was prepared by a US government
agency, it is bound to have an impact on Clinton administration
policy on this issue.

   It will also help demolish the insulting and preposterous
distortion that the conflict in Bosnia is a civil war rather
than a  campaign of aggression and that all sides have been
more-or-less equally guilty of human-rights violations. This
misinformation has  been propagated mainly by European leaders;
but it has also been put  forth on occasion by US officials,
including Secretary of State Warren Christopher.       The CIA
report showed that while Muwslims and Croats have engaged  in
despicable acts, their actions "lack the intensity, sustained
orchestration and scale of what the Bosnian Serbs did."

   Disturbing as it is, the CIA report does not justify
pessimism  about the prospects of negotiations with Sobodan
Milosevic, Radovan  Karadzic and other Serb leaders who have
been implicated in the atrocities. The fact that these men have
blood on their hands doesn't mean they won't negotiate an end to
the conflict if they can be  persuaded that such negotiations
are in their interest.

   Neither does the report justify a refusal to negotiate with
Serb leaders. The very fact that they have been implicated in
war crimes makes it all the more important to negotiate with
them, so that the ethnic cleansing they have promoted can, at
last, be ended.

   It is far from certain that negotiations will end the
fighting in  the Balkans.  In fact, the possibility that United
Nations  peacekeepers will be withdrawn from Croatia threatens a
widening, of  the warfare.  But the suffering in this conflict,
documented in the  CIA report, makes the need to try for a
negotiated solution even more  urgent.



=================================================================
=====

Milwaukee Journal, 12 Mar 95



   Washington D.C. - Western allies have struck a tentative
treaty with Croatia that would allow a sharply reduced
contingent of UN  peacekeepers to remain in the country, senior
administration officials  said Saturday.

   Croatian President Franjo Tudjman had threatened to deny the
12,000 troops an extension or their mandate when it expired on
March 31.       US and European officials had worried that a
pullout would require  the help of tens of thousands of NATO
troops, paralyze peacekeeping in  neighboring Bosnia and cause
the war to spread to other former  Yugoslav republics.       In
return for dropping his threat, Tudjman has won a promise that
the current UN contingent will be replaced by a force of 5,000
to  6,000 soldiers, of whom about 10% will guard border
crossings into  Bosnia and Serbia.       The officials said they
hoped that Tudjman would announce his  decision on Sunday at a
meeting with Vice President Al Gore in  Copenhagen, where they
are attending a UN conference on social  development. But they
acknowledged that the agreement could still  collapse over
details.       "It's fair to say Tudjman will announce on Sunday
that the  peacekeepers can stay, but in dealing with the Balkans
you always worry that thin a senior American diplomat said.



IN PLACE SINCE '92

       UN peacekeepers were placed between Croat government
forces and  rebel Serbs in Croatia in early 1992, after a
devastating six-month  war in which 10,000 people were killed.
    Tudjman has complained that the peacekeepers have shirked
their  mandate to disarm the secessionist Serbs and are in
effect  consolidating the Serbs' control over 30% of his
country.        But the United States and several European
nations have warned  Tudjman that his call to expel the 12,000
peacekeepers could not only  set off a new war in Croatia but
also worsen the conflict in Bosnia.        Under the tentative
deal, which has been pushed by the United  States and Germany,
most of the remaining UN troops would remain along  a 1,000-mile
ceasefire line that separates Croat troops and Serbs in
Croatia.       But bowing to demands from Tudjinan, the plan
envisions stationing  more than 500 peakeepers at two dozen
border crossings along the Sava  and Danube Rivers that connect
Croatia with Serbia and Bosnia.       "For Tudjman this plan is
important because it is a departure from  the status quo and
ends the creeping Cyprus-ization of his country,"   said a
senior American official, in a reference to the Mediterranean
island nation the has been divided for decades between Turkish
and  Greek sides.



======================================================================
The Economist, 11 March 95

MAKING RULES FOR WAR
The world tries again

   The United Nations knows where the bodies are buried.  The UN
war-crimes tribunal at The Hague-the first big international effort
to pass judgment on man's savagery to man since the Nuremberg trial in
1945-46-has records of some 150 mass graves in ex-Yugoslavia, each
holding between five and 350 corpses.  For good measure, it knows of
900 prison camps in the region, and about 90 murderous paramilitary
groups. It has 65,000 pages of documents, plus 300 hours of videotape,
all computerised on CD-ROM. In mid-February it at last took the
logical next step, by indicting 21 Serbs for what happened in a camp
at a place called Omarska; the 21 include the camp's commandant,
accused of genocide.

   The Hague tribunal's problem is not lack of information. It is
lack of political support.  Consider one of its best pieces of
evidence: one of those mass graves.  In 1991, the UN reckons, the
Yugoslav National Army and Serb irregulars shot about 200 Croats from
Vukovar (a Croatian town that had fallen to Serb forces), and buried
them in a field at Ovcara.  Such killings cannot easily be hidden from
forensic pathologists -- if they can dig.  They cannot.

   They have tried. In October 1993, a group Of UN human-rights
experts arrived in the Serb-controlled Krajina region of Croatia. The
team was led by forensic experts from an Organisation called
Physicians for Human Rights, with about 50 Dutch army volunteers. The
team had written permission to dig from the self-styled authorities
of the "Serb Republic of Krajina" in Knin; they were housed in a
former UN peacekeepers'barracks (which happened to back on to a
training ground for Arkan's Tigers, one of the most notorious Serb
death squads); they even managed to clear the ground at the Ovcara
site.

   So far, so good.  But then they met the local Serb general. Beneath
a portrait of Slobodan Milosevic, Serbia's president, the general
suddenly withdrew permission to dig.  Furious but powerless, the team
had to leave.  The grave is still undisturbed. That, in a nutshell, is
the pattern for the efforts to set up a Balkan war-crimes tribunal:
shocked outsiders, seeking justice and needing to be sure what has
happened; self-protecting locals, anxious to keep their secrets.
Still, the Hague tribunal plods on.  The UN is setting up a second
tribunal, with the same head prosecutor and appellate bench, for
Rwanda.  The Americans want to investigate the possibility of a third
tribunal, for Iraq. one is a fluke; two a coincidence; three would be
an institution.  Will it happen?

   In principle, the idea is splendid.  After a particularly atrocious
slaughter, an international tribunal finds out the facts and
impartially pins the blame on the individuals responsible, not vaguely
on whole nations. No long-lasting reconciliation between ex-enemies,
after all, can come about without a proper accounting for war crimes;
peace is built upon truth.  Such a process re-establishes confidence
in the rule of law.  It should also deter future killers.

   But only if it works.  So far, the record is not encouraging.  The
Balkan tribunal's successes, such as they are, have been achieved by
sturdy individuals in the face of fitful interest (America), foot-
dragging (Britain, France, Russia) or outright obstruction (the
accused parties).  Supporters of a Rwanda tribunal, noting the
experience of the Balkan one, are nervous. If such tribunals are to
become a part of the international landscape, governments must provide
something better than their current lip-service.

WILL IT BE LEIPZIG OR NUREMBERG?

   The first modern experiment with a warcrimes tribunal, in Leipzig
in 1921, was a debacle.  After the first world war, the treaty of
Versailles included four articles on the punishment of German war
criminals, including Kaiser Wilhelm II.  "Hang the kaiser!", people
shouted.

   But more sober voices counselled caution.  It would be wrong, they
(correctly) said, to let the search for impartial justice come to look
like the victors' revenge.  And it would be a pity if the passions
aroused by a trial upset Germany's chances of making a calm post-war
transition to democracy. In the end trials were held, in Leipzig; but,
of 901 cases, 888 were either summarily dismissed or resulted in
acquittal.  The kaiser, unhanged, died in exile in Holland.

   What lessons were to be learned?  First, a war-crimes trial can
have undesirable side-effects.  Second, therefore, if a trial is to
get off the ground, a few great powers must seriously decide that it
is worthwhile.

   That happened a world war later.  The idea of a war-crimes tribunal
had not been discredited by Leipzig.  In 1943, in the middle of the
second world war, the allied powers fighting Germany, Italy and Japan
set up a commission to investigate their enemies' crimes. It had a
tiny staff, little money and no investigators. It spent its time
arguing about the law, not chasing war criminals. Even so, the 1942
decision foreshadowed the post-war trials in Nuremberg and Tokyo.

   Those tribunals, unlike the present Balkan one, had great power.
Germany and Japan were shattered and occupied; the allies could do
whatever they wished.  And these courts already had their accused men
in custody.  The Nuremberg one -- with over 100 prosecutors and a
staff of 2,000 -- went right to the top of the German hierarchy.  No
fewer than 22 top Nazis, including Hermann Goering, Julius Streicher,
Rudolf Hess, Hans Frank and Joachim von Ribbentrop, stood trial.
Three defendants were acquitted; 12 were sentenced to hang.

   The Nuremberg trial sought to lay down several principles. One of
them -- that aggression is a crime -- has not endured: the Hague
tribunal looks at crimes committed in war, not at the act of starting
a war.  Two other notions emerging from Nuremberg have lasted better.
Most people now accept that to already existing offences (such as
shooting military prisoners) there should be added the concept of
crimes against humanity, the mass murder of civilians.  The Nuremberg
trial also ruled that it was no excuse to plead "I was following
orders."

   Although the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials were criticised by some as
winners-versus-losers justice, they seemed to have started something
new.  But then Realpolitik, in the shape of the cold war, intervened.
In a world divided into communist and non-communist camps no
bloodiness -- not even the staggering crimes of the Khmers Rouges,
shielded as they were by China's veto in the UN Security Council --
could be brought to globally accepted justice.

ONAMERICA'S URGING

   Now a new attempt is being made in The Hague.  The Balkan tribunal
is no Nuremberg.  The wars of ex-Yugoslavia rage on; atrocities are
still being committed; those who commit them are mostly beyond the
tribunal's present reach.  And the demand for justice is less than
full-throated.  Only the United States has given even moderately
consistent support to the Hague operation. Other countries have argued
sotto voce that the pursuit of justice might clash with the desire to
negotiate an end to the war. It is tricky, they say, to bargain with
one hand and indict with the other.  Britain, report American diplomats
and some of the tribunal's people, has been particularly sticky.

   The tribunal, in fact, has had only one powerful friend, the United
States.  That is a mixed blessing, given that the Americans are
increasingly critical of much of the UN's otherwork (and are about
$600m behind in their UN dues). It is no surprise that the tribunal's
creation, first mooted in 1992, has been a long series of near-death
experiences.

   "You see all sorts of things that are clearly designed to make the
tribunal not get off the ground," says Cherif Bassiouni, a law
professor in Chicago and the American member of the "commission of
experts", the body set up by the UN to compile evidence for the
tribunal.  Mr Bassiouni blames Britain and other European countries
for interfering with the tribunal, often through the UN bureaucracy.
Some of the resistance has been overt, as when UN officials told the
commission not to pursue Mr Milosevic or Radovan Karadzic, the leader
of the Bosnian Serbs.  At other times it was more subtle, as when the
UN'S office of legal affairs held up the commission's funding.

   In that case Mr Bassiouni, indignant, arranged for the money
himself: $1.4m from the Soros and MacArthur foundations, plus
voluntary donations from governments. But not a penny came from
France, Britain or Russia, and only $500,000 from America.  Most
countries have been slow to open their military and intelligence files
to the tribunal or its commission of experts. In September 1993 the
commission's chairman resigned, complaining of lackof support from
France and Britain.  And the commission was eventually shut down by
the UN bureaucracy three months before it was due to finish its work.

   The next step, the selection of a chief prosecutor, was hugely
important.  A weak prosecutor would mean failure; a forceful one might
spell success.  Half a century ago the United States showed its
commitment to the Nuremberg process by sending a Supreme Court
justice, Robert Jackson, to be chief counsel there.  This time, too,
the Americans favoured a forceful prosecution.  The Europeans
preferred milder candidates, men who would not disrupt the
peacemakers' search for a magic solution to the war.  The result was
a 14-month struggle of Byzantine silliness, the UN at its worst.

   In August 1993 the Security Council was torn between two
candidates: John Duncan Lowe, a Scottish law officer, and Mr
Bassiouni. Russia, France and Britain backed Mr Lowe; the United
States and the non-aligned countries supported Mr Bassiouni.  The
Bosnian government hoped the decision would not go to a tiptoeing sort
of prosecutor.  The UN's secretary-general, Boutros Boutros-Ghali,
tried to force the issue by formally nominating Mr Bassiouni.  Britain
squawked.  America gave up.  Both candidates were tossed out.

   The embarrassing led to the ridiculous.  Mr Boutros-Ghali suggested
the attorney-general of India.  That of course was shot down by
Pakistan. The Russians made it clear they would not tolerate a
prosecutor from a NATO country: out went an American candidate and a
Canadian one.  In October 1993, heartily sick of the whole thing,
the Security Council settled on Ramon Escovar Salom, the attorney-
general of Venezuela.  A man of "all talk and little action",
complained the Organisation called Human Rights Watch-Helsinki.  No
matter: last February, Mr Escovar dropped the job to become
Venezuela's interior minister.

THE MAN NOT THE MONEY

   Things looked grim; but at this point came a stroke of luck.  Enter
Richard Goldstone, a South African judge who had run a commission on
political violence in the most delicate stages of his country's
transition to democracy, and had vigorously attacked the South African
police force's dirty tricks.  No one dared play politics with such a
man. Last July Mr Goldstone breezed through the Security Council,
15-0.

   Then came a budget fight.  Mr Goldstone reckons that investigation
is his vital task, and that he needs twice the staff of 85 people he
has at the moment.  The UN at first offered about $32m for 1994 and
1995, ofwhich only $562,300 was for investigations.  The United States
has given $3m, plus 22 investigators and prosecutors; Britain $30,500
and one staff man (and $250,000 more is promised); France nothing.
Incredibly, Mr Goldstone has no budget f6r 1995.  After frantic
negotiations last December, he got $7m from the UN for three months of
work; the UN is now hearing his request again.

   But even if it had a big enough staff and enough money, the search
for Balkan war criminals has one built-in weakness.  You cannot try
people you have not arrested.

   Of course, to indict people for war crimes, even if they never get
brought to trial, does have some deterrent effect. Once indicted, the
accused cannot travel outside his home country without the risk of
being picked up by Interpol.  That may not worry minor thugs, but it
is a problem for the higher-ups.  And the responsibility for war
crimes can reach very high up the political ladder.  A man cannot hope
to be a world-class politician, Mr Goldstone pointedly notes, if he is
stuck inside a single country.  A trial would be better, of course.  But
the tribunal dealing with the wars of ex-Yugoslavia, unlike a national
court, cannot compel suspects to appear in front of it.

   They are unlikely to go there voluntarily. "I will go to a war-
crimes tribunal when Americans are tried for Hiroshima, Nagasaki,
Vietnam, Cambodia, Panama!", says Zeljko Raznjatovic, better known as
Arkan, the leader of those ferocious Tigers.  The government of Serbia
says that the Hague tribunal is biased. It had already blocked one
investigation by the UN, and another by the Conference on (now
Organisation for) Security and Co-operation in Europe.  Mr Goldstone
has been allowed into Belgrade to discuss what he wants to do (while
there, he refused to meet Mr Milosevic, a potential suspect).  Serbia
has organised a farcical show-trial of a drunken thug in Sabac, west
of Belgrade.  But that is all.

   Mr Goldstone says nobody on the political or military ladder is
immune, even at the top.  But he is starting near the ladder's bottom.
All of the 22 people so far indicted (one last November, 21 in
February) were Serb camp commanders or guards.  Only one of them is
in custody: Dusan Tadic, a Serb held in Germany, who is due to be
extradited to The Hague.  Mr Tadic, who survivors say worked in the
Omarska camp, is charged with murder, rape and making his prisoners
mutilate each other.  The other 21 suspects are still at large,
presumably in Serb-held territory.  Mr Karadzic has said he will not
turn them over.

   Those who do not co-operate with the Hague tribunal (which chiefly
means the Serbs) are in theory subject to UN sanctions. But the idea
of imposing sanctions arouses no enthusiasm in most of the west's
capitals.  Anyway, it is argued, the world's attempt to negotiate a
peace between the Serbs and their enemies may involve an amnesty for
war-crimes suspects-- or trials by the suspects' own national courts,
which might amount to the same thing.

   Madeleine Albright, America's UN representative, says the United
States is against an amnesty, but State Department officials admit
that this could change.  Britain is studiously non-committal.  And
Mr Goldstone?  He holds himself above politics, and says the Security
Council will have to shut the tribunal down to stop his work.

AND NOW RWANDA? WELL, MAYBE

   The other scene of current horror the war-crimes specialists are
looking at is Rwanda. The UN is in the process of setting up a
second tribunal to deal with the slaughter that happened there, with
the same Mr Goldstone as its chief prosecutor.

   In one way, Rwanda is easier than ex-Yugoslavia.  The killing has
ended and the Tutsis, its chief victims, have won the war. So, though
plenty of the people suspected of taking part in the attempted
genocide are now refugees in Zaire and elsewhere, some are in
detention, available for trial.  Even so, supporters of a Rwanda
tribunal look at the ex-Yugoslavia mess and cringe.

   Alain Destexhe, the secretary-general of Medecins san Frontieres,
an aid group that worked in Rwanda, has more confidence in justice
from national courts.  Last August Faustin Twagiramungu, the new
Rwandan prime minister, called for Rwandan trials rather than waiting
"more than three years for the United Nations to organise an
international tribunal".  But John Shattuck, America's assistant
secretary of state for human rights, pushed for an international
tribunal too, and Rwanda relented.

   One argument for an international tribunal for Rwanda is that
Rwanda's own judicial system has been destroyed.  It is reckoned that
fewer than 15% of those under detention in Rwanda have even appeared
before a court.  A better argument is that the attempt to set up an
international law against war crimes requires the relative
impartiality of an international court.  The winner of a war must not
set himself up as judge over the loser.

   There have been the predictable headaches.  Part of the new
Rwandan government's objection to an international tribunal was that
no UN court would use the death penalty.  Mr Goldstone's brief now is
to secure the prosecution of 50-100 people accused of leading the
genocide, who if found guilty will merely go to jail (whereas lower-
level killers could face death in Rwanda's own courts).  He will cover
only crimes committed in 1994, even though some reckon the genocide
was planned as early as 1992.  France is uneasy because it was a
notable backer of the Rwandan government of that time.  Still, there
should be fewer international complications over Rwanda than there
were over the Balkan killings.

THE START OF SOMETHING BIGGER

   This bid to outlaw some of war's worst horrors faces great
obstacles.  Yet it trudges on.  A dogged prosecutor is patiently and
quietly at work.  In Rwanda, at least, a lot of suspects are available
for trial.  So what are the lessons of the experiment's rough start?

   First, the case for an international trial must capture the
imagination of at least one great power -- in this case America (or,
more precisely, Mr Shattuck and Ms Albright) -- otherwise the project
is doomed.

   Second, the nervous and the reluctant can be nudged in the right
direction by energetic supporters of the idea.  That role has been
played in this instance by the Soros and MacArthur foundations,
Physicians for Human Rights, Medecins sans Frontieres, Human Rights
Watch and Messrs Bassiouni and Goldstone.  They have done admirable
work, and they have got results.

   And, lastly, take comfort: the process may become easier.  Every
effort at justice in this field, from Leipzig to The Hague, builds
on the previous ones, as the world gradually becomes accustomed to
the thought that there should be a court to deal with those who use
the machinery of state for mass murder.  The idea is taking root. If
a few of the world's main countries show courage and creativity, the
rest may follow.

======================================================================
=========================   FOREIGN POLICY   =========================
=========================     SPRING 1995    =========================
======================================================================

AMERICA'S LEADERSHIP, AMERICA'S OPPORTUNITY

By Warren Christopher
   U.S. Secretary of State

         (excerpt of portion pertaining to the Balkans)

   The NATO alliance will remain the anchor of American engagement in
Europe and the linchpin of transatlantic security. That is why we must
keep it strong, vital, and relevant. For the United States and its
allies, NATO has always been far more than a transitory response to a
temporary threat. It has been a guarantor of European democracy and a
force for European stability. That is why its mission endures even
though the Cold War has receded into the past. And that is why its
benefits are so clear to Europe's new democracies.

   The North Atlantic Treaty has always looked to the addition of
members who shared the alliance's purposes and its values, as well as
its commitment to respect borders and international law, and who could
add to its strength; indeed, NATO has expanded three times since its
creation. In January 1994, President Clinton made it plain that "the
question is no longer whether NATO Will take on new members, but when
and how." Under American leadership last December, the alliance began
a steady, deliberate, and transparent process that will lead to NATO
expansion. During 1995, we look forward to coming to agreement with
our allies on the process and objectives, and we will share our
conclusions with the members of the Partnership for Peace.

   When NATO is ready to turn to the question of candidates and
timing, each nation will be considered individually. No non-member
of NATO will have a veto.

   Expanding the alliance will promote our interests by reducing the
chance of conflict in Europe's eastern half -- where two world wars
and the Cold War began. It will help ensure that no part of Europe
will revert to a zone of great power competition or a sphere of
influence. It will build confidence and give new democracies a
powerful incentive to consolidate their reforms. And each potential
member will be judged by present-day realities, not by accidents of
history, according to the strength of its democratic institutions and
its capacity to contribute to the goals of the alliance.

   As the president has made clear, the United States has a major
stake in ensuring that Russia is engaged as a vital participant in
European security affairs. We are committed to a growing, healthy
NATO-Russia relationship and we want to see Russia closely involved
in the Partnership for Peace. Recognizing that no single institution
can meet every challenge to peace and stability in Europe, we have
begun a process that will strengthen the OSCE and enhance its
conflict prevention and peacekeeping capabilities.

   The quest for stability in Europe cannot rely on security
institutions alone. Economic integration is critical as well. Central
and East European countries must become full members of the world's
trading system through accession to the WTo and cooperation with the
OECD. We have made clear our hope that the association agreements
the EU has signed or will sign with Central European states will,
before long, lead to full EU membership. Together with our West
European partners, we must continue to lower trade barriers that limit
exports by the new democracies.

   As we work with our allies to shape Europe's future, we must also
confront the demons of its past. The wounds of the Cold War are
nowhere more tragically clear than in the shattered empire and
splintered states of the former Yugoslavia. We are all frustrated by
the intractability of the Bosnian war. But unilaterally lifting the
U.N. arms embargo would be dangerously shortsighted. We have always
believed that the arms embargo is wrong and counterproductive, but
going it alone would be worse. It would Americanize the conflict and
lead others to abandon the sanctions on Serbia. It would cause a
serious rift between the United States and our NATO allies, and a
confrontation with Russia. It would undermine the authority of all
U.N. Security Council resolutions, including sanctions on Iraq and
Libya. And on the ground, it would help no one it was designed to
assist -- not the Bosnian government, not the innocent civilians, not
the cause of peace. The president and I are determined to continue
pursuing an active diplomatic track with our Contact Group partners to
contain and resolve the murderous war in Bosnia and to preserve Bosnia
as a sovereign state within its internationally recognized borders.
Only a negotiated solution has any chance of lasting. And the war in
Bosnia makes ever more clear the need to adapt Europe's security
institutions to deal with ethnic conflicts and to bring stability
to Central Europe.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

RELEARNING INTERVENTION

By Charles William Maynes
   Editor of Foreign Policy

       (excerpt of portion pertaining to the Balkans)

   In traditional interstate conflicts, the number of rational and
accountable leaders on each side can be identified and is limited. A
handful of officials at the top are able to give orders and have them
obeyed. These officials order troops to fight and they order troops to
lay down their arms. Usually, the troops follow orders. That fact
dramatically influences the way that the international community
orchestrates its efforts at preventive diplomacy or humanitarian aid.
The United Nations, regional organizations, and neighboring states
attempt to pressure the small circle of accountable leaders to
persuade them to follow a conciliatory policy. Those efforts may or
may not be successful, but no one doubts where pressure must be
directed. That is what Washington has becn trying to do in North
Korea. But who are the real leaders in Bosnia or Haiti or Somalia?
Can the Bosnian Serb leaders successfully order their troops to cease
fighting? Can the Bosnian government command Muslim soldiers to stop
struggling to return to homes from which they were driven by force?

   In fact, in many intrastate conflicts, popular passions make elite
compromise difficult. Conflicts become less a matter of calculation
at the top than of mass emotion at the bottom. Leaders may rise up
to exploit those emotions, but the kind of leadership they display
resembles a man running ahead of a stampeding herd who maintains
that he is in charge. He may be able to lead the herd to move to the
right or the left but he cannot halt it. If he turns around to stop
it, he will be trampled.

   In intrastate conflicts, religious or ethnic hatred is often so
strong that dialogue becomes virtually impossible. The opposing side
is unfortunately viewed as almost subhuman. Extermination of the
heretic, expulsion of the outsider is declared to be God's work or a
patriot's duty. It is suggested that if the other side prevails, one's
own side may well disappear. Only one way of life is likely to survive.
In such situations, all individuals, old or young, male or female, are
identified as combatants. The Indians in the American West knew that
the arrival of an unarmed farm family was in effect a declaration of
war. It was the advance troop of a larger army to follow that would
make the traditional Indian way of life impossible.

   Several centuries ago in Ireland, the Catholic inhabitants may well
have viewed Protestant settlers as an even greater threat to the
welfare and security of the Catholic Irish than the British soldiers
who protected those settlers. The settlers represented another way of
life that would suppress or even eradicate their own. The struggle was
therefore to the knife.

   Modern ethnic and religious conflicts regrettably have not lost
this savage character. Palestinians and Israeli settlers on the West
Bank or various ethnic groups in Bosnia struggle like the ancient
Irish and for many of the same reasons. Each outsider, no matter how
young or infirm, is seen as a mortal danger. That is the rationale for
'ethnic cleansing," which has persisted throughout history.

   Another characteristic of internal conflicts is that each side seeks
total victory. Surrender is almost always unconditional. Victory for
one means oblivion for the other. There is therefore a desperate
quality to civil wars that makes them particularly hard to control
once they start. In such struggles, when accountable actors do step
forward and adopt unpopular positions, they often find that their own
lives are in danger. The United States suffered terribly from its
civil war, but it did have the good fortune that when one side
prevailed, the losing army was commanded by a leader who could order
his troops to cease fighting and gain compliance. Robert E. Lee
deserves his reputation for greatness because he told his generals it
was time to stop fighting and restore the nation. In many other civil
wars such calming advice is not given or is not accepted. The leaders
of the Irish uprising during and after World War I knew it was risky
to seek a compromise with the British. Michael Collins, the Irish
guerrilla leader, presciently stated that he had signed his own death
warrant when he agreed to leave the six most northern counties under
British control. He was assassinated eight months later. The
Palestinians over the years have eliminated leaders who threatened to
compromise with Israel. Today, Yasir Arafat may be in danger.
Afghanistan, Somalia, and Bosnia suffer in part because it is
difficult to identify accountable actors. There are too many who
claim to be accountable but cannot deliver their people. Those who
truly try may be pushed aside or eliminated. It is instructive that
in Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic is not the most extreme proponent of
Serbian nationalism.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

REASSEMBLING YUGOSLAVIA

By Flora Lewis
   Columnist, New York Times Syndicate

       (excerpt of portion pertaining to the Balkans)

   After all, the only solution to Yugoslavia is Yugoslavia. That is
certainly not everybody's view as the war in Bosnia rumbles on to the
end of a third year, the ceasefire in Croatia is being questioned, and
the Balkans remain generally unstable.  But some have been convinced
all along that it was a dreadful, avoidable mistake for the six
republics in the former Federation of Yugoslavia to cut all ties, and
more are coming to see the restoration of key links, including not
only trade and communications but also legal and political ties, as
the only basis for a durable peace.

   The American-brokered agreement between the predominantly Muslim
Bosnian government and the Bosnian Croat leaders is the pivotal point
for reversing direction and building a new confederal basis to end the
war.  The accord is not yet firmly founded and institutionalized
because continued hostilities with the Bosnian Serbs leave borders and
areas of responsibility unsettled.  But included in the negotiation
was the prospect of special, constitutional-type ties with the
Croatian state.  That can become part of a settlement only when the
Bosnian Serbs accept a plan for a Bosnian federation, and then they
surely will insist at the least on confederal provisions with Serbia
that are no weaker than those the Bosnian Croats have with Croatia.
Such ties would be a strong inducement to the Bosnian Serbs to accept
a settlement that would not separate them from the rest of Bosnia.  On
such a basis, Serbia and Croatia themselves would restore a loose
integration that could provide a satisfactory solution to the demands
of the Croatian Serbs in Krajina.  Montenegro would certainly follow
Serbia, and Macedonia, which never really wanted to be left all alone
and is having a desperate time facing Greek embargo and hostility,
would doubtless be delighted to sign back on with its former partners.
Then, mirabile dictu, Yugoslavia would be back on the map again, the
same old Yugoslavia -- minus Slovenia -- as be, fore the 1991 breakup,
but with rather different, much less constraining intemal relations
among the constituent republics.

   Such a loose confederation is exactly what the Slovenes and Croats
had been demanding for several years before they finally gave up in
frustration at Serbian intransigence and proclaimed independence in
June 1991.  It is what Europe and the United States should have
insisted upon, associating Russia with the mediation much earlier,
instead of the futile and hypocritical pledge to support whatever
settlement the Yugoslavs accepted among themselves.  It was obvious
to all that the Yugoslavs, without outside pressure and inducement,
were not going to agree on even a peaceable divorce.  Indeed, war
broke out immediately and conflict has been raging ever since.

   When the powers decided to recognize independent Slovenia and
Croatia in early 1992, the United Nations was able to gain acceptance
for a ceasefire on fighting there and dispatch peacekeepers to monitor
the lines established between ethnic Serbs in Croatia and the Zagreb-
led republic.  But that line will not now be accepted as a border by
Zagreb, which is growing impatient with the U.N. because its presence
consolidates the partition of the state.  Peace will require some kind
of agreement on the integrity of Croatia with significant
constitutional guarantees and autonomy for its ethnic Serbs.  Such
provisions will be far more feasible within the framework of a loose
new Yugoslav confederation than with the establishment of several
totally independent successor states.

   It was the recognition of an independent Croatia that left Bosnia
with the choice of remaining in a rump Yugoslavia with Serbia and
Montenegro, in effect accepting full Serbian hegemony, or of declaring
its own independence in turn.  The government of Sarajevo was well
aware of the risks, and urged the outside powers not to consecrate the
demise of Yugoslavia, to no avail.  Indeed, both Alija Izetbegovic of
Bosnia and Kiro Gligorov of Macedonia openly opposed the breakup of
Yugoslavia.  So, at foreign urging and with no acceptable visible
alternative, Bosnia held a referendum on independence.  The Serbs
boycotted the vote, the Muslims and Croats voted in favor,
independence was declared and recognized, and fighting began.

   This tragic scenario was foreseen and publicly discussed.  What had
not been foreseen was the extraordinary ferocity, the cruelty, the
wanton and deliberate massacre of civilians launched to redefine the
area's demography.  "Ethnic cleansing" was introduced to the modern
political vocabulary of horrors.  It could only be brutal because
populations were largely mixed and no amount of creative map-making
could have produced a mutually acceptable map of separation. Because
of mixed marriages over several generations, many people did not know
what allegiance to profess and had to be convinced to choose sides
with relentless force.

   Foreign intervention -- the dispatch of humanitarian aid and the
establishment of protected areas -- has now produced a kind of status
quo but not peace.  Hostilities go on and on since the foreign
intervention prevents a military resolution of the conflict.  The
serial attempts at mediation have all failed, and there is no reason
to think that any new mediation rooted in the same assumptions -- that
territory must be apportioned to separate people so they can form
"self-governments" on distinct ethnic or religious lines -- will work
any better. Whatever the allocation of land, it will rest on injustice
and there will be resistance.  Whatever the rules of division, there
will be a search for support from kin and sympathizers on the other
side of the new lines.  There must be a new approach to the conflict.

THE NEW OPPORTUNITY

   There have been two major changes in circumstances since the war
began.  One is that Serbia, hurt by the international embargo despite
its many leaks, is no longer quite so bellicose and determined to show
the world its power.  Slobodan Milosevic is still its undisputed
leader, but he has had some trouble controlling the wild nationalists
and thugs he unleashed.  He has less room for maneuver than he had
anticipated.  While he makes the most of foreign denunciations to
mobilize resentful, insulated Serb opinion, his country's isolation
has proven a costly burden.  This relative moderation of Serbian
ambition and aggressiveness may be temporary, to gain a respite and
recoup strength; but it is a new factor in the situation and could be
reinforced in an attempt at an overall settlement.

   The second change is ttic fury, hatred, and thirst for revenge that
have inevitably built up as the atrocities have continued.  It is a
nasty little myth that Yugoslavia was an "artificial" state that could
not have been expected to hold together without sheer force.  The
South Slavs had a disparate, eventful history and never had a chance
to form a state together until the Austro-Hungarian empire was
demolished in the First World War.  But Yugoslavia's coming a bit late
on the European state scene did not make it a less authentic country
than, say, Germany or Italy, which had formed unified states only a
few decades earlier.

   People forget the Catholic and Protestant split in Germany or the
very different political characters of southern and northern Italy.
"These people have been fighting each other for centuries," a phrase
used by President Bill Clinton, is a formula consciously or
subconsciously devised by leaders who need an excuse to shrug off the
outbreak of a major war in the heart of modern Europe and avoid
intervention.  It is simply untrue.  There is no comparison in the
historical record of hostilities, however measured, with the amount of
fighting that once went on between French and Germans, or French and
English, who have now joined their political fate to the European
Union. The one real precedent of terrible bitterness among the South
Slavs was in World War II, when the Nazis formed a puppet state in
Croatia that rivaled the S.S. for cruelty.  Alongside national
resistance to the Germans, there was a very niean civil war, but the
divide was ideologicat -- communists versus monarchists -- and crossed
all religious, ethnic, and territorial lines.

   A new book by Robert Donia and John Fine, Bosnia and Hercegovina: A
Tradition Betrayed, sets the record straight in great, scholarly
detail.  It recounts that a "centuries-long tradition of accommodation
and mutual coexistence of different religious communities and
nationalities" characterized Bosnia until only recently, along with
"historical patterns of coalition politics and compromise, coupled
with deeply-rooted traditions of cooperation and coexistence in
everyday life." The people are of the same stock, but because of
Turkish policies during the centuries of occupation, city-dwellers and
landowners tended to become Muslim while peasants remained Croat or
Serb.  There was no real consciousness of distinct ethnic identity
until the first provincial peasant rebellion in 1875, a phenomenon of
social position, not of nationality.

   Now it is undoubtedly going to be much harder to recreate a sense
of community.  How many people would want to return to the homes from
which they were "cleansed" by their neighbors is an unanswerable
question at this stage. What kind of judicial punishment and
retribution for crimes against humanity will be required to preclude
bloody waves of private vengeance is difficult to foresee, and it is
even more difficult to see how trials and reparations can be carried
out under the necessary conditions of compromise that are the only
hope for peace.  There is not going to be any unconditional surrender.
But the hardest part is finding the terms for ending the war.  If that
can be done, healing the wounds is another kind of enterprise that can
develop its own momentum, just as making war did.

EFFORTS AT COMPROMISE

   One of the people who has been arguing from the start for a
reconstituted Yugoslavia is Boris Vukobrat, a wealthy Serb businessman
who was bom in Croatia, married a Bosnian Muslim, and now lives in
Paris.  He has established the Peace and Crises Management Foundation,
and he works tirelessly to promote the cause among powerful statesmen,
intellectuals, and whoever offers support. He has published a small
book, based on the work of a committee of international experts,
entitled Proposals for a New Commonwealth of the Republics of
ex-Yugoslavia.  It contains draft declarations on fundamental rights
of all citizens and rights and freedoms of ethnic groups; a draft
constitution for the constituent regional republics, leaving open
whether the commonwealth tinking the republics would be based on a
constitution or a treaty; a plan for creating a number of regions
(like counties or shires) within the republics not based simply on
ethnic criteria; and a document on economic reconstruction
emphasizing the need for coordination of monetary and credit policies.

   Vukobrat is realistic enough to present his proposals as a staged
plan for gradual implementation, not as a blueprint.  But even
offering it for discussion is a step toward filling the vacuum that
prevents an end to the war.  It provides a vision of what might come
next, an incentive to move on from fighting to planning how life will
then go on. In June 1994, he attended a conference in Geneva of
distinguished intellectuals from all parts of the former Yugoslavia.
They issued a statement of the principles on which peace can be
established, including democracy, human rights, free communications,
and rejection of any border changes by force.  Vukobrat's continuing
efforts have brought no concrete results as yet, but they have created
a core group of people eager to look beyond the battlefield and
establish a basis for postwar coexistence and cooperation.  These
people are not just looking ahead; they are trying to break the
impasse that makes peace impossible for lack of a common view of what
it should bring. The list of participants was an impressive mixture of
some 30 artists, professors, business and community leaders,
journalists, and even a Catholic priest.  Their recommendations were
unanimous.  Each participant spoke on his or her own but with the
knowledge and encouragement of many others.

   That kind of thinking is not encouraged by the people who hold
power and are conducting the conflict, but it keeps surfacing when
the opportunity arises.  The New York Times's Roger Cohen reports
the "outrage" of Mimo Sahinpasic, a popular Sarajevo radio show
host, when the Bosnian minister of culture ordered him to stop playing
"aggressor music," that is, songs performed by Serbs.  "There are
Serbian singers -- like Djordje Balasevic -- whose antiwar songs have
done more for Bosnia than 80 percent of our leaders," the show host
said.  "So I ignored the letter.  I'm in Bosnia to fight for what's
left of the Yugoslav idea, not to live in a one-party state."

   Such attempts at attitude control by authorities and resistance to
that control are mounting, creating tensions even within the Bosnian
governing party.  Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic wrote a letter of
protest against growing authoritarianism, using as an example of its
effect the humiliation he felt as a child because his father wanted to
listen to Voice of America but had to make sure the neighbors could
not hear because it was forbidden by the communist authorities.  In
the atmosphere of inflamed emotion, which leaders need to keep their
people mobilized and which foes promote with renewed attacks, it is
difficult to measure how much support could be won for the idea of a
commonwealth.  It takes courage to speak out against prevailing storms
of passion inside what was Yugoslavia, but people do, in virtually all
the republics.  Those who do are coming under mounting official
pressure.  Recently, Milosevic took over Borba, the one remaining
independent Belgrade daily.  Its staff tried to defy the order, but
deprived of money, a distribution system, and regular printers, it was
reduced to little more than an underground publication that
nonetheless found eager readers when the journalists themselves took
to selling it on the streets at three times the usual price.

   The widely known dissident Mihajlo Mihajlov, who was persecuted in
communist days for his democratic views, has written against the
danger of accepting ethnic or religious partition as the basis for
solving the conflict.  "Acceptance of the nationalistic version of
self-determination, which in practice is the international community's
posture today, comes in the end to an acceptance of genocide," he
said.  He denounces as a myth the idea that it was the fall of the
dictatorship that unleashed ethnic conflict.  "In 1987 -- before
democratization began -- the press in each of the Yugoslav republics
was already becoming much more nationalistic.  In all of the republics,
the major media were monopolies of the republican authorities (as they
continue to be today).  As one Yugoslav writer said, 'Before anyone
was killed by bullets, they were killed ten times over by words."'
Mihajlov points out that what happened in Yugoslavia was not a
breakdown of normal relations among people after the communists lost
power, it was the replacement of a communist dictatorship by
nationalist dictatorships, necessarily rivals.  That is a most
important part of the development, which was ignored by the many
Western observers who scarcely noticed Yugoslavia until the killing
began.  Yugoslavia faced a dilemma of transformation not so different
from that in Russia and the East when communism could no longer serve
as the organizing principle of power.  And -- this is really the crux
of the matter -- to escape transformation to democratic principles and
the free market, key leaders shifted to nationalism as an alternative
base that would maintain the authoritarian state.  It was the refusal
to move toward real reform that made nationalism necessary, and that
continues to make it dominant.

   Serbia's Milosevic was the first to grasp the idea of that
approach, stirring historic Serb sentiment about the rise of ethnic
Albanians in Kosovo.  Even moderate, well-educated people responded to
his appeal because they felt Serbs were being pushed out of their
venerated heartland and that it had to be stopped.  But, of course,
skewing the regime inherited from josip Broz Tito to make Serbian
nationalism do the job of the discredited Communist party made it
impossible to maintain the federation.  Milosevic knew that all along,
and maneuvered around it, just as Boris Yeltsin knew when he planned
to challenge Mikhail Gorbachev's leadership by becoming president of
Russia that his success would doom the Soviet Union.  If the largest,
strongest part of a multinational or multiethnic state is persuaded
to make its own specific traditions and ambitions the basis of power,
the other parts will also look inward and to their specific past to
protect their share of identity.  That is what happened to Croatia,
where Franjo Tudjman built himself up by more or tess mirroring the
Milosevic strategy. (Something similar happened in Slovenia, but its
circumstances are different.  It is more Alpine than South Slav, and
more homogeneous than much of Yugoslavia.) There were people in the
federal government who tried valiantly to head off the collision that
Milosevic and Tudjman were engineering, but they were neither strong
nor charismatic, got little outside support, and in the end were
undermined and swept away.  Today, after so much blood has flowed
with so few positive effects, their voices may carry further.  It is
nonsense to claim that weak gestures to sustain the federation by then
president George Bush and then secretary of state James Baker gave
Milosevic the green light to go to war, ostensibly to "save
Yugoslavia." On the contrary, Milosevic complained bitterly that the
State Department was "anti-Serb." He was out alt atong to blow up the
country, create a "greater Serbia," and damn the rest.

   Naturally, the war has done nothing to promote the shift to
democracy and market economy that was the alternative to Yugoslavia's
intensifying problems during the 1980s, the alternative that the
promotion of rival nationalisms was designed to avoid.  Tito teft an
intricate system of regional checks in order to prevent the rise of
another Yugoslav dictator in his own image.  In that sense, he
succeeded too well.  Since the central authority coutd not dominate,
the republics went off in their own directions.  White he was alive,
Tito could settle frictions and disagreements by the personal force of
his own position.  His successors could not.  Trains had to be stopped
at the republic borders to change locomotives because the local
officials demanded the right to provide their own.  Republics printed
the federal currency on their own, without reference to the central
bank, bringing hyperinflation and undermining the promising federat
currency reform at the end of the decade.  At one point, the
International Monetary Fund (IMF), asked to help with a stabilization
program, found that nobody could answer its question about the total
of Yugoslavia's foreign exchange debt.  Various republic authorities
had borrowed abroad without bothering to tell each other or the
center. It took the IMF, on its own initiative, to collect and add up
the essential information.  The total debt was a staggering $20
billion.

   Officials in Belgrade, in Zagreb, and in Ljubljana complained in
the mid-1980s about the impossibility of making things work in this
uncoordinated way.  It seemed there were only two obvious ways of
dealing with the problem: Either restore a central dictatorship, which
would revive the discipline of central planning, or establish a
democracy and a free market as an approach to economic and political
coherence.  Neither one was acceptable to the people in power, and the
rest of the people were not allowed to voice their opinions.  A Croat
who had spent 40 years in exile because of the communist regime and
who had returned to serve as a Zagreb diplomat after independence said
that in the late 1980s there were more political prisoners in
Yugoslavia than in all the East European states of the Soviet bloc
combined.  Show trials of dissidents and outspoken writers ended in
heavy sentences.

   Even Bosnia, which looked toward democracy after the communists
were ousted and independence proclaimed, is turning back to the
authoritarianism that Serbia and Croatia never really left.  Slavko
Santic, a commentator for the struggling independent Sarajevo paper
Oslobodenje, told reporter Roger Cohen that the Party of Democratic
Action (headed by Izetbegovic) "is on its way to becoming a
totalitarian party, just like the Communists were.  We have no
political opposition to speak of here, police are everywhere, and
state jobs increasingly require party membership." Others have also
warned that Bosnia is turning into a one-party state.  Ethnic and
religious fury is needed to sustain cohesion in the absence of
democratic pluralism. "Demons must be created, and heroes, to justify
senseless suffering," Cohen writes.  "The alternative is to look the
enemy in the eye and recognize a brother, ethnically indistinguishable
and condemned to inhabit the same tand."

   That is particularly true of Bosnia, where people are so mixed, but
it has been true of Yugoslavia in general and it could be true again.
The overall issue is a free society, and in that circumstance there is
so much that people have in common, so much they need from each other,
that there is a real incentive to reconstitute something that could be
called Yugoslavia.  All of the breakaway republics desperately want to
join the European Union because they know they have little chance to
develop and prosper on their own, closed to their neighbors.  For now,
they ignore the obvious reality that they will have to trade,
communicate, and let people come and go once the fighting stops.  They
behave as though they expect to be part of the big European community
while denying community with neighbors who once again will be
indispensable partners.  But pushed, most ardent defenders of separate
and complete sovereignty say they will of course have to have economic
ties, some kind of common market at the least, and probably more.  The
basic issue remains borders and the protection of minorities, just as
it was when the war began.  And the solution has to be Yugoslav-wide,
rejecting all border changes imposed by force and guaranteeing the
rights of minorities.  That is the one way to find a peace that can
last and to satisfy moral imperatives that would be mocked by drawing
up new lines of partition.  As people from several republics point
out, all the plans proposed so far by one or another set of
representatives of the "international community" boil down to dividing
up Bosnia, and they fail because the combatants are not persuaded that
accepting a divided peace is better than continuing to fight for their
aims.

   The Vukobrat plan undoubtedly has flaws and is not meant to serve
as a definitive solution, but the underlying idea comes closer to a
constructive direction than anything in Vance-Owen, Owen-Stoltenberg,
Contact Group, or other proposals.  There are aspects of the plan that
enjoy support from one side or another, though the idea of a new
Yugoslavia does not yet resonate on the world scene.  For example, a
senior Croat official points out that Zagreb would favor the idea of
linking Bosnian Serbs in a Bosnian federation that would have special
ties with both Croatia and Serbia because it would give a kind of
insurance against the possibility of Bosnian Croats being overwhelmed
by Muslims who might tend toward fundamentalism in a smaller republic.
Already, on occasion, Croats and Serbs in Bosnia have joined in
fighting the Muslim-dominated forces, despite the federal agreement.

      As to the place of the minority Serbs in Croatia, they were at
one point offered dual citizenship in Croatia and Serbia if they
chose, providing they gave up the demand to change Croatian borders
made at the outset of the war when the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army
thought it was an irresistible powerhouse that could take what it
wanted.  Dual citizenship is not the same as being part of a confederal
Yugoslavia, but it is a step in that direction.

   The main argument against looking to Yugoslavia again is the trauma
of the war and its atrocities.  Branko Salaj, Croatia's ambassador to
France, points out that his country would have been quite satisfied
with some kind of confederal settlement in the first place. He is an
unusually reasonable man who spent 40 years in exile, mostly in
Sweden, because he was anticommunist all along.  He notes in half-
joking irony that Milosevic's nationalist extremism helped democrats
in the other republics because their communist leaders realized they
had to offer reforms to win public support.  But now, proclamations of
sovereignty have aroused their own enthusiasm and, perhaps more to the
point, have established political leaders who want no limits on the
power they have gained.

   Obviously, it will not be easy to reverse gears and persuade people
to try to live alongside each other again.  But the prospect would
provide hope for the many who are disgusted with war but feel they are
offered no honorable or tolerable alternative.  A battlefield solution
is conceivable if everybody else decides to get out of the way and let
the fighters slaughter each other until one side or the other cries
uncle.  That is what the French accuse the Americans of doing with the
proposal to end the embargo on arms for Bosnia, and they are almost
certainly right that it would lead to reinforcement with more arms and
fighters -- if necessary, from Serbia, and probably from Russia -- and
widen the war.  In any case, it is a way to make sure that only might
matters, that world order comes only out of the barrel of the gun, and
that the twentieth century ends with no more sense of humanity and
decency than it knew at its worst.  Furthermore, it is a way to make
sure that the vanquished will seek to turn the tables another day.

   It is not possible to say at this point whether a confederal
Yugoslavia or a Yugoslav Commonweatth will work.  Nothing else has so
far, and there is not the slightest sign that what has been proposed
as yet by outside powers can bring a settlement.  One thing that
practically all the people directly invotved agree on is that a
settlement is not to be found in smatter and smatter fragments,
focusing in turn on what to do about Bihac, what to do about Gorazde,
what to do about Sarajevo, and so on.  It is to be found in moving up
the scale, not down, trying to unite interests rather than dividing
them into ever more limited pieces.  It is true that the United
Nations, NATO, Europe, the United States, and the "international
community" look terrible in their impotence and indecision in the
face of this war.  They, too, would have much to gain by helping the
people of Yugoslavia find themselves Yugoslav again.

===========================================================

TODAY'S ISSUES==> TOPIC: MILITARY & ARMS      Ref: C3JN2849 Date: 03/15/95
From: STEVE SCHULTZ (Leader)                                Time: 07:47pm
\/To: ALL                                                 (Read 7 times)
Subj: BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA UPDATE

Nine French Army peacekeepers were killed and four injured yesterday when
their truck plunged off a road south of Sarajevo. The vehicle was
traveling on Mt. Igman when it went off the road and toppled 120 feet down
the mountain. It is the largest number of U.N. peacekeepers killed in any
single incident in Bosnia. French Defense Minister François Leotard plans
to fly to Sarajevo.

Flights into Sarajevo remain suspended after an aircraft carrying U.N.
Special Representative Yasushi Akashi was hit by anti-aircraft fire on
Sunday. Gunners opened fire around the airport at another aircraft on
Monday, which was landing to pick up Indonesian President Suharto. The
aircraft was not hit. (A.P./N.Y.T.)