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THE YUGOSLAV federal Minister of Defence has just called for the rapid creation of a mini-Yugoslavia!. He believes that the army has accomplished its mission": to protect the Serbs from "a new genocide perpetrated by the Ustashe" and to secure the right to self-determination of those who wish to remain part of a smaller Yugoslavia.
CATHERINE VERLA
• HE tone is the same as that of Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic: "Serbia is not at war. It does not want the army to conquer the
Croat territories, nor to block the exercise of the right to self-determination of the other peoples who have together constituted Yugoslavia and have the right to separate from it". Certainly, the Serbian regime and the army top brass add, the unilateral declarations of independence by Croatia and Slovenia are "illegal" in relation to the Yugoslav Constitution which stipulates that the dissolution of the country must be done in a concerted manner.
But they add, "the will for separation is there. We will not hold by force those who wish to leave Yugoslavia. But we will not allow them to infringe on the right to self- determination of others who wish to remain in Yugoslavia". As to the frontiers,
"the Constitution allows that they can be modified but on the basis of common agreement. The declarations of independence change the external frontiers, such was not our wish. But when the equilibrium of the whole, Yugoslavia, is challenged, then it is necessary also to renegotiate the internal frontiers". Such is the argument, extremely coherent with regard to "legality", developed by the representatives of the "Yugoslav bloc".
But legality itself can be applied in different ways. And behind the law, there is the relation of forces. It is this latter which in the past has forced the Albanians of
Kosovo to accept a "Yugoslav" framework that they rejected (after the defeat of the plan for a Balkan confederation including Albania).
It is also this that has made Kosovo, cradle of the first Serbian medieval kingdom
(but with an Albanian population of more than 90%) a province of the Republic of
Serbia. It is again this relationship which has denied the Albanians of Kosovo the status of a "nation" (with its own republic/ state), making them instead a "national minority" inside Yugoslavia, without the right of secession.
This double standard is continued in
Slavonda Kraina ITALY. these cease-fire agreements, which, far from treating the Albanians in Serbia and the Serbs in Croatia symmetrically, will recognize the rights of the second and completely ignore those of the first. Until Kosovo explodes again, without doubt this time supported by Albania.
But the relationship of forces is also unequal between the recognized nations: in the first place, of course, the force of the Croatian state has been imposed on the Serbs of Croatia, just as that of the Serbian state was legally (but first politically and physically) imposed on the provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodi-
A balance of pressures
Under different forms, it could be said that in the Yugoslav constitution of 1974, the last of the Tito era, a balance between all the pressures from below was realized: Serbian sovereignty on the territory of the Serbian republic would stop at the frontiers of the provinces recognized as quasirepublics with the right to a veto at the level of the federation; Croat sovereignty over the Croatian republic was shared with the Serbs of Croatia, treated as a constituent nation; in the same way, Bosnia-Herzegovina was a state of Serbs, Croats and Muslims (Islamicized Slavs recognized as an ethnic entity).
In other words, Yugoslavia was not only in itself a federation of republics, but these latter were also (for the most part) multinational states, with equal rights. This did not reflect an artificial division, but long term mixes and movements of population (the Albanians moved to Kosovo after the Serbs had fled the Turks, the Serbs of Croatia and of Bosnia-Herzegovina lived for some centuries in the frontier zones between the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires, and so
It is obvious that the challenging of the multi-ethnic equilibrium of the 1974 constitution is the product of the overall crisis of the Titoist regime at the turn of the
BOSNIA -HERCEGOVINA Vude Sarajoro . YUGOSLAVIA SERBIA Adolesto MONTE • 80a NEGRO Progno
Thogr Stopia MACEDONIA OREECE 1980s. This crisis produced on the one hand the recentralizing tendencies (liberal or backward-looking, respectively behind Milosevic who fought for a recentralized Yugoslavia), and, on the other, tendencies towards a break up of the federation through the reaffirmation of nation-states (states of one principal nation). The Serbian and Croat nationalists share common sources in this process, and have nour-
Faced with the defeat of a Yugoslav centralist project, the Serbian powers turned to a "Serbo-slavia" supported by an army whose raison d'être is to have a state to defend (the biggest possible). To maintain the old Yugoslavia by force is comimpossible. Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina play a dramatic and pivotal role in the project of maintenance of a Yugoslavia without its separatists. To consider that they are simply manipulated by Milosevic's Serbian regime is to pass over the political defeat of Croat president Franco Tudjman, which was not inevitable, unlike the military defeat which became certain when the army took on the role of protector of the Serbs.
An odious assimilation
It is odious to assimilate Croat national sentiment with the fascist nationalism of the Ustashe and it is unacceptable to equate (as the Serbian nationalists have done) any project of a Croatian sovereign state (including in a confederal Yugoslavia) to a Ustashe state.
The propaganda of the official Serbian media has used this war to sharpen the memories and the hatred lingering from the wartime period. But the Tudjman government has given it arguments which have made the task easier: the hasty proclamation of a charter of the rights of Serbs and of minorities on June 25, 1991, the day of the declaration of independence, came too late, and was perceived as an attempt to throw sand in the eyes of the 1 1
1. Le Monde, December 5, 1991.
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of a state
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BULGARIA
The manoeuvres
International Viewpoint #219 • December 23, 1991
YUGOSLAVIA international community, without real effect or credibility; it came after the sabotage of the negotiations initiated by the
Serbian representatives in Croatia. The begin demands initially made by these latter amounted to infinitely less than what the
Croatian government is proposing today.
Tudjman's declaration that he was happy
AFTER three months of dithering, the Europe of the Twelve that his wife was neither Serbian nor Jewhas decided to recognize Croatla and Slovenia. From ish, his anti-Semitic and reactionary economic sanctions against all the republics, there will now nationalist writings, the tolerance towards the Ustashe groups whose support he be an economic boycott of Serbla and Montenegro alone.
needs in the areas where the war is sharp-
The Serbian regime has thus been put on the blacklist by est, all this has exacerbated the fear and the European Economic Community.
hatred.
The current repression against the far
This turn by the EEC seems to be an expression of the right Croatian Party and its leader Paraga, growing weight of German diplomacy in the Yugoslav crisis.
in a context of military defeats attributed
It amounts to a change in the European position, made to Tudjman and in which the Ustashe have necessary by the expected sending of UN troops to Croatla.
gained a reputation as the best fighters on the ground, will lead to a political disaster:
The manoeuvres over the redrawing of frontiers to the profit now seen as victims, the far right currents, of a Greater Serbla have only just begun.
favoured by the logic of war, could gain in strength at the next elections. And yet the
SLAVKO MIHALJCEK
Serbs do not form a homogeneous bloc, whether in Serbia or Croatia: still today, in the villages of Banija as in the big cities where half of them live, there are many who reject what has now become an aggression against Croat sovereignty and against real self-determination for every
Serb.
For if Serbs are accused of "treason", of collaboration with the Ustashe, when they reject the war and recognize Croatian sovereignty, there is no self-determination.
Nor is there any possible sovereignty on an unmanageable Croatian territory, cut in two and reduced by a third.
There is no possible peace through the imposition, by armed force, of the "liberation" of towns or villages where less than
20% of the population is Serb, as is the case in Slavonia, or when those who refuse to fight are repressed as "war criminals" or sent forcibly to the front, as is the case in Vojvodina. The intervention of troops of the United Nations Organization(UNO) is today accepted on both the
Croat and Serbian sides. But who represents and who controls who? Nothing could be less clear, whether at the level of the army high command, the village fighters or the paramilitary groups.
Nothing is clear either as to the objec-
HE task is all the more difficult in that it is necessary to convince the Croats that they are being supported while getting them to accept the loss of a part of their territory where the population is 70% Croat.
While the UN's mission of mediation is now underway, the aims and methods of the intervention remain the subject of tense negotiations. The Serbian regime flaunts its serenity and claims that the position of the UN emissary, former US secretary of state Cyrus Vance, is "close" to its own.
The latter meanwhile has reiterated that the international force can only deployed with the consent of all parties. Serbian consent is conditioned by the proclamation of "Vukovar, a Serb city", and of a "Serb government" in the "liberated territories", as well as by appeals for the colonization of villages from which the Croat majority of the population has been forced to flee.
Croatia's President Tudjman has been forced to accept the deployment of the international force, not along and Osijek, and reluctant to continue to support a policy that seem to encourage Serbian expansionism, Germany's leaders have been actively trying to convince the Twelve, and above all France, of the need to seize back the initiative in Yugoslavia.
The French, in the name of European solidarity, will follow under duress, with the intention of marking out their own positions when the time comes.
France's President Mitterrand continues to refuse to distinguish between the aggressor and the victim.
Making a distinction between "current administrative frontiers" and the "future international frontiers" which "do not automatically coincide", Mitterrand places himself in continuity with the Treaty of Versailles, which was in its time one of the causes of the rise of the exclusive nationalisms in the Balkan countries. In Croatia, European recognition will favour the mobilization against the far right.
Denounced for several months by the Croat press for its exactions and its ties with European fascists, the Party of Law
MILITIAMAN AVENGING tives. What will become of the disputed
HIS BROTHER-IN-LAW
KILLED IN 1917 territories? The logic of war is still there;
it will remain there as long as it is not admitted that Serbs and Croats can live together. The logic will accentuate with
Bosnia-Herzegovina, the break-up of should the Muslims choose to regroup in
"their" state and redefine their boundaries with the other republics; it will spread to
Macedonia where the Albanians wish to join a greater Albania and
Bulgaria,
Greece and Serbia want to carve up what will remain of the Macedonians; it will inevitably return to a Serbia which all its
12 minorities will wish to leave. * the former frontier between the two republics, but between that frontier and the current front line, this being the price for European recognition.
The question is: will the UN troops assure the separation of the belligerents and a return to the prewar situation, or will they legitimize Serbia's territorial conquests?
Under pressure from a public disturbed by European indifference to the slow agony of the inhabitants of Vukovar
SOLDIER
AVENGING HIS
BABY THINKING
COUSIN,
RAPED
IN 1944
OF AVENGING
HIS FATHER
IN 2023
YUGOSLAVIA / WESTERN EUROPE
Stateless nations demand freedom
THE CONSEU (Council of Nations Without a State in Europe)
### Kosovo
WHILE the Croat parliament discusses a statute giving wide autonomy to the Serb minority in Croatia, the two million Kosovo Albanians continue to choke slowly under Serb military occupa- held a press conference in Paris on October 27 to remind tion. A new appeal by the people of the democratic demand for the right to
Social Democratic Party of self-determination for all peoples, including within the present
Kosovo to the United Nations, European Economic Community (EEC).
asking for protection for its people, has gone unreported in the media. In the last year
100,000 Albanian workers have been sacked for their beliefs; 450,000 Albanian school students have yet to return to school after the summer break. The situation in
Kosovo is explosive. - S. M. has finally become the subject of a number of legal proceedings and its leaders have been arrested.
Lacking popular support, this party's militia has not attempted a putsch against the so-called "government of national unity" currently in place, which brings together liberals, social democrats, reform Communists and others.
Decomposition of Serbian regime
In Serbia, the ideological decomposition of the regime of Slobodan Milosevic has continued with giant steps, with attacks on the opposition and increasing reliance on the Chetnik bands of V. Seselj (who has publicly declared in the Serbian assembly that to finally solve the Croat problem it is necessary to cut the throats of all the Croats).
Faced with disobedience and mass desertions by young Serbs, the regime has resorted to sending to the front Chetnik volunteers who specialize in "cleaning up" and pillaging the conquered villages. After the arrests, physical attacks and the sacking of the premises of pacifist associations continue in Belgrade.
Milovan Djilas has broken his silence and characterized the Serb intervention in Croatia as an unjust war doomed to failure.
This former Communist leader, expelled from the CP in 1965 for his criticism of the bureaucracy as a "new ruling class", has affirmed that the Yugoslav frontiers established in 1945 are the best possible.
He also recalled that the present Serb/ Croat frontier was drawn by a mixed Serb and Croat commission led by himself, a neutral Montenegrin, after detailed visits and consultations in all the villages concerned. *
ALAIN NAZIER
The CONSEU is a forum for exchange and cooperation, whose main founding and participating organizations are Sinn Fein (Ireland), Herri Batasuna (Euskadi) and A Cuncolta (Corsica). It has extended its audience to other nationalities, notably in eastern Europe and looks to the participation of 25 members.
In May 1990 this organization adopted a Charter of the Rights of Peoples (see IV 189, July 16, 1990) which demanded the right to "self-determination in an independent and sovereign manner and to self-government in following the democratic choices of its members" (articles 6 and 7 of the Charter).
The aim of the press conference was not only to popularize this platform but also to give an account of the initiatives taken. The day before, the CONSEU had met European parliamentary groups in Brussels and held a press conference there. This is the first time that the CONSEU had tried such a move, which is a sign that it is going on the political offensive.
The political aim was twofold. The first is to get written into the political rules of "Europe 1992" the principle of the right of all peoples without exception to self-determination. A letter to the current EEC president, Lubbers, put forward this demand. Political solution to national questions
The second is to promote the idea of a political solution to the national questions in Corsica, Euskadi and Ireland on the occasion of the Maastricht summit. For the initiators, the struggles of peoples and nations has come emphatically back to the centre of the historical stage with the collapse of the bureaucratic regimes in the East, something they consider positive in
But they denounce the practice of the West European states of granting their favours in a discriminatory tashion. They salute German reunification, the independence of the Baltic States, and consider positive the efforts to find a rapprochement of the two Koreas.
They also denounce the fact that the EEC states only accept the right to self-determination for others and refuse it in their own states, thus causing conflicts which have persisted "for decades" in
Thus in Ireland there have been 3,000 deaths in the past 22 years, which, as Sinn Fein's Tony Hartley pointed out, would be the equivalent of 100,000 deaths in
This is in clear contradiction with article 8 of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (Helsinki agreement) which states that "states will participate in the equality of rights of peoples and their right to self-determination... these have the full right to dispose of themselves in full liberty at the moment of deciding when and in what way they wish to decide their internal and external political forms, without outside interference... The participating importance of eliminating any kind of violation of these principles."
Gulf between words and
What a gulf between words and deeds! The recent example of the French state taking upon itself the right to decide if the Corsican people is fully a people or not is a sad and grotesque example of this.
The process of European integration does not seem to tend in this direction, as one of the CONSEU's spokespersons, Mikel Egibar, stated regretfully. The only latitude offered by the EEC is regionalization in the framework of the existing
Such an administrative decentralization does not offer these entities real rights to political decision making nor better economic possibilities, even when it does not render official the partition of peoples between states, such as is the case in the Basque country and Ireland.
A Cuncolta, in the person of Jean Guy Talamoni, reaffirmed with vigour that self-determination is not only an institutional issue leading if need be to independence, but also the me had of popular in 113 organization used to reach that goal, in
Europe after