NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/soc/culture/yugoslav/10678

Internet Message Format | 1993-01-24 | 5.6 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!portal!cup.portal.com!L-Bueno
From: [e-mail] (Louis Alberto Bueno)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia
Subject: NO PROGRESS IN PEACE TALKS, CROATIA GOES TO WAR
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 93 20:14:51 PST
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Distribution: world
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    Copied w/o permission from:
    The Los Angeles Times, January 23, 1993

    NO PROGRESS IN PEACE TALKS AS CROATIA LAUNCHES OFFENSIVE

    By Carol J. Williams

    GENEVA - As Serbian shells slammed into Bosnian cities and Croatian
troops pressed an assault on U.N.-protected territory, leaders of the
warring factions in former Yugoslav republics assured Western mediators
Saturday of their heartfelt commitment to peace.
    The escalating bloodshed in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia has
highlighted a flaw in the rationale of U.N. and European Community
diplomats, who contended that compelling the Balkan warlords to go through
what appear to be only the motions of negotiation was a safer alternative
to military measures that might force an end to the war.
    Far from deterring violence, the forum conducted by U.N. envoy
Cyrus R. Vance and the EC's Lord Owen was serving, in the view of Bosnia's
civilians and the embattled Sarajevo leadership, to create a smoke screen
for continued aggression and a high-profile venue for propaganda.
    The past week has witnessed stepped-up offensives on all sides,
including Croatian breaches of a year-old cease-fire, Bosnian Croat attacks
on communities governed by their Muslim allies and fierce fighting between
Bosnian Serbs and Muslims for control of towns and villages in the
republic's ravaged northeast.
    While the politicians talked, their rival militias continued to
battle over territory and intensified doubts about the worth of the
diplomatic breakthrough proclaimed here.
    U.N. peacekeeping troops in the southern Bosnian town of Mostar
confirmed that heavy shellfire had rained down on the city from Serb-held
positions, said Fred Eckhard, spokesman for the Geneva talks.
    Other U.N. sources confirmed that a Croatian offensive that began
Friday in a U.N.-patrolled area of Croatia was still under way, despite
official Zagreb claims to have completed a "limited operation" aimed at
securing a strategic bridge linking central Croatia with its Adriatic Sea
coast.
    The attacks reflected months of growing Croatian frustration with a
U.N. mission that has so far served to protect Serbian rule over one-third
of Croatian territory conquered in a bloody rebellion in 1991.
    The territory of Krajina's self-styled president, Goran Hadzic,
announced full mobilization of Serbs in the disputed area and declared "a
state of war."

    Eckhard announced here that Croatian President Franjo Tudjman and
Yugoslav leaders had been persuaded to restore order in Krajina. But there
was no immediate indication that fighting in the volatile region had been
quelled.
    "They agreed to contain this conflict and to do everything they
could to stop the fighting, and to get the local military commanders to
stop the fighting," Eckhard told a news conference.
    Tudjman appeared at the Geneva talks wearing a smug grin and
protesting that Saturday's session was sabotaged by Serbian negotiators
making too much of the Krajina "incident."
    "Unfortunately, there has been no progress so far," Tudjman told
reporters concerning the resumed peace talks.
    Serbian leaders from throughout the remains of Yugoslavia used the
Geneva forum to make impassioned appeals for peace in their homeland,
deploring the retaliatory violence spurred by their earlier offensives.
    "We strongly demand that all offensive activity stop immediately,"
Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic proclaimed before a forest of
television cameras, his hand held over his heart in a gesture aimed at
sincerity.

    Serb gunmen loyal to Karadzic have already seized 70 percent of
Bosnia, where Serbs were only 31 percent of the prewar population. His
forces also have been accused of the lion's share of war crimes committed
during the past 10 months of deadly sieges and "ethnic cleansing."
    Tens of thousands have died since Serbs rebelled against Bosnian
independence, which politically severs them from Serbia. Sarajevo officials
say that 80 percent of the casualties have been Muslim civilians.
    Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, usually loath to meet with
any Western press, strode up to a microphone here and declared with
determined sincerity that "the masters of war are trying now, when peace is
clearly reachable, to burn a new, big fire."
    Bosnia's predominantly Muslim leadership maintained a lower profile
at the conference, which they complained has rewarded Serbian aggression by
giving in to the rebels' demands for ethnic division of the republic.
    An exasperated Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic decried the
continued Serbian bombardment of his republic's main cities.
    "Again today there is shelling of Sarajevo and heavy shelling of
Mostar," Izetbegovic declared angrily, adding that his republic capital and
its 400,000 holdouts remain without electricity or water.
    Keeping with a pattern of papering over disputes threatening the
four-month-old Geneva talks, Eckhard sought to play down the escalating
hostilities.
    He described the Croatian offensive as "a limited action against
one bridge."
    Asked whether the U.N. considered the continued shelling of
Sarajevo to be in violation of the Vance-Owen peace plan, Eckhard replied
that "in theory" the fighting should have stopped.
    "The 150th cease-fire is with us, but the lesson we have learned is
that cease-fires are not meaningful unless they are underpinned by a
political agreement," Eckhard said.