NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/soc/culture/turkish/14916

Internet Message Format | 1993-01-25 | 6.4 KB

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From: [e-mail] (Al Trh)
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Subject: Clinton to Review Bosnian Policy
Date: 25 Jan 1993 03:32:46 -0600
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 1/23 Talks Resume On Division Plan
 01/22 1752  CLINTON TO REVIEW BOSNIA POLICY, INCLUDING ...


   ZAGREB, Croatia (AP) -- While factions in Bosnia grope
toward peace, violence is reigniting in another region of
what was once Yugoslavia. A Croatian attack on U.N.-
protected Serb areas prompted a Serb leader to declare a
state of war.
   The leaders of Serb-dominated Yugoslavia, Serbia and
Croatia as well as the three Bosnian warring factions opened
a new round of peace talks in Geneva Saturday.
   The resumption of talks follows a vote by the Bosnian
Serbs' self-declared parliament to accept a proposed
constitution that rules out a Serb mini-state. But the Serbs
reiterated demands for self-determination -- and the chance
to secede and join a Greater Serbia.
   Former U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and Lord Owen
of Britain, who are mediating the Bosnian peace talks, were
to concentrate Saturday on winning quick agreement on their
plan to divide Bosnia into 10 autonomous provinces, U.N.
spokesman Fred Eckhard said Friday.
   To that end, they dropped their demand that Bosnian Serbs
unconditionally accept the proposed constitution.
   Eckhard said the Geneva negotiators also will address the
developments in Croatia. The U.N. Security Council condemned
Croatian troops for Friday's offensive and urged them to
withdraw.
   "It is a true war that is being waged," Dobrica Cosic,
president of Serb-dominated Yugoslavia, said in Geneva
Saturday. He said U.N. peacekeepers had fled the fighting.
   "I hope and I want to believe that acting under
instructions from the U.N. Security Council, Croatia will
desist and withdraw its troops from that territory," Cosic
said.
   Croatian forces attacked the area of Maslenica and
Zemunik, in a region known as Krajina near Croatia's coast,
with mortar and artillery, U.N. spokeswoman Shannon Boyd
said.
   Croatian radio said the Croats were responding to a Serb
attack on Croatian police. The police, backed by the army,
had moved into an area northwest of Knin on Friday to
prepare to install a strategic pontoon bridge.
   The bridge, on a major highway leading to the port of
Zadar, was destroyed by Serbs in November 1991. It is the
only land link between most of Croatia's Dalmatian coast and
Zagreb.
   Croat police control the area south of the bridge, while
Serbs are in the U.N.-protected area to the north.
Journalists in Zadar, reached by telephone, said the
Croatian forces had crossed over to the northern bank.


CLINTON TO REVIEW BOSNIA POLICY, INCLUDING LIFTING ARMS BAN
    By Carol Giacomo
    WASHINGTON, Jan 22, Reuter - U.S. President Bill Clinton
will soon review U.S. policy on the Bosnian civil war and
one option being discussed is lifting the arms embargo that
Bosnian Moslems contend give Serbs the upper hand, U.S.
spokesmen said on Friday.
    They also stressed that Clinton supports U.N.
peacemaking efforts in Bosnia by mediators Lord Owen, a
former British foreign secretary, and Cyrus Vance, a former
U.S. secretary of state who has close ties to Clinton aides.
    But the new administration, like its predecessor, has
avoided endorsing the specific peace plan now on the table
which some critics say codifies the Serbian practice of
"ethnic cleansing."
    At the White House, spokesman George Stephanopolous told
a news briefing, "The president and the national security
advisers will clearly be reviewing all of our options in
Bosnia, along with the other situations the president has to
deal with around the world."
    "I expect that there'll probably be an NSC (National
Security Council) meeting soon on all of these issues," he
added.
    At the State Department, spokesman Richard Boucher
stressed that Secretary of State Warren Christopher and
other officials were giving "urgent attention" to the
Bosnian war, which the department's latest human rights
report said "dwarfs anything seen in Europe since Nazi
times."
    Under questioning, Boucher restated what Christopher
told the Senate Foreign Relaitons Committee last week --
that "lifting the arms embargo is an idea that we're
considering" as one new policy initiative towards Bosnia.
    Bosnian Moslems, victims of most of the violence by the
better-armed Bosnian Serbs, have pushed the international
community for months to lift the arms embargo that was
imposed by the United Nations as punishment against the
Serbs.
    The Bush administration had rejected the idea, arguing
it would only escalate violence in the Balkans.
    Boucher noted that because the embargo is tied to U.N.
Security Council resolutions, lifting it would involve
consultations with other countries.
    Asked if those had begun, he said: "At this point it's
an idea that we're considering."
    He would not go into other options under review but
Clinton, while ruling out introducing American ground
troops, in the past had raised the possibility of air
attacks on Serbian or Bosnian Serb ground targets.
    U.S. review of military options occurs against a
backdrop of efforts by Owen and Vance -- whom Christopher
once served as deputy secretary -- to negotiate a peace
accord that would divide Bosnia into 10 largely autonomous,
multi-communal provinces under a weak Moslem-Serb-Croat
central government.
    Stephanopolous said Clinton "continues to believe and
continues to support the U.N. and E.C. processes to bring
all the parties together in Bosnia."
    "Any outcome, any settlement must be agreed to by the
parties themselves," he added.
    Boucher reiterated that the United States was not taking
a position on the specific plan. Told by reporters that that
left the impression the United States would support it if it
was accepted by all parties, he said: "I didn't say that."
    "I'm trying not to second-guess the negotiators at this
point or try to characterize or comment in any detail on
their plan," he said.
    Boucher said a draft resolution to enforce the Bosnia
no-fly zone that Serbian forces have violated was
circulating at the United Nations but "several important
details remain to be decided." REUTER CG JE LD