The elusive peace
BORIS YELTSIN'S victory in the Russian constitutional referendum may remove one of the obstacles to military intervention in the former
Yugoslavia by United Nations/NATO troops, giving NATO a chance to try out its new post-Cold War "peace-keeping" role.
Demonstrations for May 8 are planned in Strasbourg, Stuttgart, Geneva and
International Viewpoint #245 May 1993 armed clashes in the shadow of the more visible Serb aggression. We hear much of Srebrenica; under Serb attack, but less of Mostar, where the Muslims are being squeezed out by their erstwhile Croat allies.
CATHERINE SAMARY — Paris, April 29, 1993
T HE Yugoslav crisis has
already served as a reason for getting German military forces involved in foreign military action for the first time since the Second World War, and is not impossible that Eastern European forces will go into action alongside NATO
On April 27, Yeltsin declared in Moscow that "the time has come to take decisive measures to put an end to the crisis". Without making precise proposals, he stated that "Russia will not stand alongside those who oppose the European Community".
Two different but equally reactionary plans both for domestic and international affairs are on offer in Russia: one, with a neo-liberal outlook, is striving to create a strong state to impose market discipline and is allied to the United States on international questions. The other, a coalition which embraces the "patriotic" far right rejects foreign dikmeetings in spring 1992 in the Austrian city of Graz between Bosnian Serb and Croat warlords Radovan Karadzic and Mate Boban, on the same subject — the division of B-H.
Meanwhile the Bosnian Serb nationalists under Radovan Karadzic continue their efforts to establish a unified territory directly linked to Serbia — something their Bosnian Croat counterparts under Mate Boban have already achieved, with Croatian passports alrea dy distributed in Herceg-Bosna. While world attention is focussed on the Serb onslaught on Srebrenica, the Croat nationalists have been demanding the "application of the Vance-Owen plan" by which they mean the withdrawal of Bosnian government troops.
There, and in central Bosnia, ethnic cleansing is going ahead by means of
Srebrenica is key because without it Serb territory is not continuous. And it presents the "international community" with a dilemma. Either a substantial military force is stationed there permanently or they must finally accept the inner logic of their own plan - peace by territorial separation. In the latter case, it becomes necessary to collaborate with ethnic cleansing, evacuating populations "humanely"
This attitude is not a result of the overwhelming "complexity" of the Yugoslav issue. The Western states support the strong and in the Yugoslav case this means Serbia and Croatia. The first necessity for countering the whole process is to allow the Bosnian forces — not only Muslims, but Croats and Serbs - to get the arms with which to defend themselves. This means lifting the embargo on arms for the Bosnian resistance. *
The Verona Forum tats both domestically and internationally. The latter are ready to come to the
A "FORUM for Peace and Reconciliation in the former Yugoslavia" took aid of their Serb brothers.
place last September in Verona organized by Greens and with participation
The so-called International Comfrom the various republics of the former Yugoslavia. A second session of munity" has no stable or united position the Verona Forum took place on April 2-4 this year. While several particiabout what to do about Yugoslavia. In pants favoured a Europe-wide initiative for May 8, the difficulties in the first place this is because it does not organizing this mean that it was finally proposed to have actions in as many have a big stake in the outcome. Under cities as possible on that day, for a multi-ethnic Bosnia, against the break-up pressure from public opinion it of the republic and against ethnic cleansing.
condemns in words what it has under-
There were widely different points of view on the issue of the war as such.
written in practice.
Some adhere to total pacifism, others want the embargo on arms to the Bos
From early on it has accepted the nian forces lifted, and others see foreign intervention as the answer. There principle of dividing Bosnia-Herzegoviare also differences on the attitude to take to the Vance-Owen plan.
na on ethnic lines. The Vance-Owen
However, it was agreed to allow this debate to continue while taking com plan envisaged the cutting up of ethnimon actions where possible — in support of independent media, for link-ups cally mixed B-H into three ethnic canwith all anti-nationalist and antiwar movements, for anti-racist values and in tons. The pattern set by the meetings between Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic and his Croat counterpart Franjo
Tudjman before the outbreak of the war in B-H was continued by further solidarity with all the war's victims.
elsewhere. *
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