Subject: BosNet NEWS - September 1,2&3, 1995 From: Dzevat Omeragic ------------------------------------------------------------------------- B o s N e t - September 3, 1995 ========================================================================= To subscribe to BosNet-B (in Bosnian language), please send a message to LISTSERV@novell.business.uwo.ca, containing: SUB BOSNET-B _________________________________________________________________________ BosNet in English is also available on Usenet as BIT.LISTSERV.BOSNET To unsubscribe send mail to LISTPROC@DOC.IC.AC.UK, WITHOUT the subject: UNSUB BOSNEWS. DIGEST is default, report problems to BosNews@doc.ic.ac.uk _________________________________________________________________________ - President Chirac: "Dont carve Bosnia" - Silajdzic demands justice for ``genocide'' in Bosnia - Bosnia rejects formal Serb link to Belgrade - Sacirbey's statement about the air strikes - Serbs mortar U.N. checkpoint on Mount Igman - Bosnian premier reports new attack - Sacirbey met French Foreign Minister Herve de Charette - Dole Criticizes Airstrike Halt - Izetbegovic slams bombing pause - Janvier-Mladic held more than 13 hours of talks - NATO rejects Serb conditions for withdrawal - Serbs Reject UN Demand - UN and NATO give Serbs until 5 p.m. EDT Monday - U.N. tests freedom of movement - Where will negotiations lead? - NATO says "plenty" of Serb targets left - Remarks about Milosevic - Russia, Germany differ on Bosnia airstrikes - German minister: "Not a penny" for Serbs - Bosnian leaders due in Turkey for talks - Senator says Dole should not delay Bosnia vote - Serb army, politicians differ over Sarajevo route - Five E.U. monitors relised - Britain warns of more action against Bosnian Serbs - Russian diplomat blames Serbs for NATO strikes - Hunger Striker Praises Strikes -------------------------------------------------------------------------- French President Jacques Chirac said last Thursday that France rejects any partition of Bosnia-Herzegovina and insists it retain its integrity as a state, "Any other solution would be an insult to our values and to the future. France will not accept a partition of Bosnia which would mean a new tragedy for the Muslims and other Bosnian communities, any more than it can accept the barbaric initiatives, from whatever quarter, that consist in the forcible transfer of populations and acts of ethnic cleansing." "It is necessary to impose as a non-negotiable condition the maintenance of a Bosnia-Herzegovina that the international community has recognized as a state and that must again become the link between communities that for many decades constituted a country living in peace." He also said that France would not exclude what he called "flexible institutional arrangements." Mr. Chirac also put forward a French proposal to its allies to reopen Sarajevo to the outside world by securing the main roads. "We must go beyond this. Free access to the city will have to be ensured in a first stage not only by fully securing the Mount Igman road, but also by controlled re-opening of the usual access road from Kiseljak. This access route must henceforth be permanently guaranteed by all appropriate means." -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bosnian Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic Thursday opened an international conference on mass killings in Bosnia-Herzegovina by condemning those who watch evil unfold and do nothing to stop it. "Public genocide is happening in Bosnia-Herzegovina because we know that everyone knows what is going on." In the message to conferece experts, Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic urging the five-day seminar to focus on the mass killings, "It is up to you to throw more light on this plunge into anti-civilization." Commenting on the air strikes Mr. Silajdzic said that they showed the outside world was finally prepared to start addressing injustice. "The raids were steered and pushed by people. People demand a minimum of justice for civilization to go on." Marek Edelman, former commander of Warsaw ghetto resistance said "When one looks at the past 50 years, one is almost tempted to say that Hitler has triumphed from the grave." -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bosnian Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic expressed reservations on Friday about an American initiative to end the war in his republic, rejecting a formal link between Bosnian Serbs and Belgrade in any peace settlement, "A confederation with Serbia, with the aggressor, with people who committed genocide, will not happen." He told reporters that Bosnia's sovereignty and territorial integrity were non-negotiable, but added that the government was prepared to grant Serbs a high degree of autonomy within a unified Bosnian state. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bosnian Foreign Minister Muhamed Sacirbey told reporters after meeting U.N. commander in Bosnian Gen. Rupert Smith on Friday: "Gen. Smith informed us that there will be a pause in the NATO and U.N. action." "Any pause would be seen as counter-productive to the peace process. The Bosnian Serbs would not be under the same psychological pressure to withdraw their heavy weapons. Those behind this will bear a strong responsibility for the pause by undermining the safety of citizens of Sarajevo and the loss of momentum in the peace process." -------------------------------------------------------------------------- A U.N. spokesman, Major Guy Vinet, said that separatist Bosnian Serbs fired one mortar bomb at a U.N. checkpoint on Mount Igman west of Sarajevo on Saturday and the U.N. Rapid Reaction Force retaliated with 24 120mm mortar bombs. Vinet said a car had also been fired on: "At 1740 hours (1540 GMT) one mortar round landed by the French checkpoint at the upper part of the Igman road and at the same moment a Bosnian car travelling on the road was fired upon by a heavy machine-gun." -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bosnian Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic said that separatist Serb forces took advantage of the suspension of NATO air raids and fired a mortar shell at a Sarajevo suburb Saturday. Six people were wounded. U.N. military officials in Sarajevo said they were not aware of the incident. Silajdzic said at a news conference late Saturday: "I don't understand why they have paused because the objectives have not been achieved...lifting the siege of Sarajevo and the removal of heavy weapons." "If the objectives are not met, I do not think that we should continue with the peace process." -------------------------------------------------------------------------- After talks with French Foreign Minister Herve de Charette, Bosnian Foreign Minister said: "I don't wish to start on a bad note but I'm not sure there will be a Geneva (meeting) unless there is continuing effort to lift the siege (of Sarajevo)." "We are prepared to continue with Geneva as long as there is a simultaneous effort to bring an end to the siege and to remove the heavy weapons or to neutralise them." "I think Mr De Charette agrees that the people of Sarajevo and the government of Bosnia will not be forced to negotiate with a gun to their head." De Charette said: "I confirmed to Mr Sacirbey that France considers that the immediate lifting of the siege of Sarajevo is a vital imperative." -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole on Saturday strongly criticized halting the NATO bombing of Serbian position around Sarajevo, saying it was premature and that rebels should be forced to loosen their hold on Sarajevo. Dole, the leading Republican presidential candidate, also threatened to strengthen efforts to override President Clinton's veto of a bipartisan bill that would have lifted the arms embargo on Bosnia. Dole said in a statement: "The past three and a half years have demonstrated that Serb promises are worthless and that the only meaningful measure of progress must be results on the ground in Bosnia." "I believe that the halt in NATO's bombing campaign was premature. At the very least, the Serbs must not be allowed to keep a stranglehold on Sarajevo and other so-called safe areas." "In my view, the only hope for achieving a just and lasting settlement in Bosnia is to keep the pressure on the Bosnian serbs and the Milosevic regime. Therefore, in my view, the Clinton administration should exercise its leadership in NATO in support of continued NATO military action, at least until the siege of Sarajevo is lifted." -------------------------------------------------------------------------- In letters to Presidents Jacques Chirac and Bill Clinton carried on the Bosnian government press agency on Saturday, Bosnian President Izetbegovic complained that Serb forces were using the lull in NATO strikes to shell the only supply route into the city over Mount Igman. "There are clear signs that the action against the Serb machine for killing civilians has been stopped. The old game is continuing." -------------------------------------------------------------------------- U.N. Force commander Lieutenant-General Bernard Janvier met commmander of separatist Serb army and indicted war criminal General Ratko Mladic. They held more than 13 hours of talks on Friday and early Saturday. Mladic refused NATO-U.N. demands to pull heavy weapons back from Sarajevo and made counter-demands on the Bosnian government. In a characteristic act of brinkmanship Mladic, according to western diplomats, gave a "Yes, but" answer, offering to pull back his guns only if his Bosnian foes made a similar gesture. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- NATO on Sunday rejected Serb conditions for the withdrawal of heavy weapons around Sarajevo and authorised NATO commanders to renew attacks if NATO demands were not met. The NATO Secretary General, Mr. Claes said: "The reply of General Mladic is not sufficient and does not constitute a basis for terminating air strikes." Claes, speaking after a meeting of NATO ambassadors, said NATO commanders were authorised to resume air strikes at any moment while NATO conditions were not being met. Those conditions were no more Serb attacks, the withdrawal of heavy weapons from the exclusion zone around Sarajevo, the free movement of people and officials, and the opening of Sarajevo airport. Earlier, U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke had urged the ambassadors to keep up the pressure on separatist Bosnian Serbs until Mladic "matched words with deeds," NATO sources said. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- On Sunday, NATO gave another ultimatum to Serbian leaders: remove heavy guns and end the 3 1/2-year siege of Sarajevo or face more punishing airstrikes. The US. ambassador to NATO, Mr. Robert Hunter, said: "They had better get on with it." Mr. Hunter dismissed demands by nationalist Serb military leader Gen. Ratko Mladic that his forces wouldn't back off until NATO airstrikes stopped with one word: "garbage." "If I were Mr. Mladic, I would not sleep very well tonight, and I certainly would not waste any time tomorrow. If Mladic and Co. don't do what they are supposed to do, the bombing will start again." U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, in a statement issued Saturday night in New York, emphasized his desire for a diplomatic solution and urged the Bosnian Serbs to "act with a sense of responsibility." The NATO official said Holbrooke found Mladic's defiance "insulting." For some NATO members, Mladic's comments alone were enough to declare the diplomatic efforts failed. "Airstrikes should be the first answer if they don't withdraw their heavy weapons from around Sarajevo," said French Foreign Minister Herve de Charette. "The withdrawal of heavy weapons should not be conditional." -------------------------------------------------------------------------- The United Nations and NATO have told the Bosnian Serbs that they will assess whether they are complying with demands to roll back their heavy weapons from around Sarajevo at 2100 GMT (5 p.m. EDT) Monday. A U.N. spokesman, Lt. Col. Chris Vernon, said to CNN: "A sort of time interval is that tomorrow at about 11 o'clock (5 p.m. EDT) will be a key point when we assess how far we are getting." Asked whether the assessment could be brought forward, Vernon said: "No, we've given them that as a key assessment point from our time scale." Asked whether 11 p.m. Monday was a deadline after which bombing would resume in the event of non-compliance, Vernon said: "I wouldn't go quite that far, let's see what the situation is at 11 o'clock tomorrow night. Air strikes could take place any time before then if the Bosnian Serbs threatened any other "safe area"." U.S. Navy Admiral Leighton Smith, head of southern command in Naples, Italy, said that in order to avoid further punishment, the Bosnian Serbs also must halt attacks on Sarajevo and other U.N.-declared "safe areas", allow unimpeded movement of humanitarian aid into Sarajevo and other Bosnian towns and re-open Sarajevo airport. "They have very little time in which to make a decision to start showing progress in this. And it's up to them as to whether bombing starts, if it should start again." -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Without waiting for the Serbs to respond to NATO's latest ultimatum, the United Nations decided to test one of its demands -- freedom of movement in and out of Sarajevo. In a symbolic first step Sunday, civilian trucks full of food crossed the airport into the city. The Serbs were notified -- not asked -- in a bold move on the U.N.'s part. And the convoy traveled safely over the Mount Igman road with no response from the separatist Serbs. NATO is continuing to pressure the nationalist Bosnian Serbs to pull their heavy weapons back from Sarajevo and open the airport or else. U.N. spokesperson Chris Vernon said: "We will use air power and turn it on straight- away. We have planes up in the sky as you've probably heard. They can be brought in at a moment's notice." -------------------------------------------------------------------------- White House spokesman, McCurry said: "The vice-president once again restated the international community's determination to see that any further attacks on Sarajevo and other safe areas in Bosnia cease and desist." Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke arrived to Belgrade to meet with Serbia's president in preparation for the coming peace conference in Geneva. Holbrooke said: "Each side's map is really 60-40 in their own favor. This is going to be the toughest issue. The war was about land -- and of course, ethnic hatreds -- and the war's solution will require a solution to that issue." Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Connecticut, issued a following statement about the vote on arms ambargo against Bosnia-Herzegovina: "There are peace talks going on. I would not want to bring the question of whether or not we're going to override the president's veto to the floor and find out we don't have enough votes. I'd rather keep the sword hanging over the Serbs." Holbrooke hopes it stays that way. He said such a vote would disrupt his negotiations at what he called a critical juncture, with Serbs and Moslems still far apart on how to achieve a lasting peace in Bosnia. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- NATO said on Sunday its warplanes still had plenty of targets to hit if air strikes resumed against the Bosnian Serbs. Captain Jim Mitchell, spokesman at NATO's southern command in Naples: "We haven't run out of things to do. If we felt targets were related to the security of Sarajevo or other "safe areas" in Bosnia they would be hit...We struck at least one bridge the other day." -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Once branded a war criminal, Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic has grown from a master of brinkmanship to a pivotal force in peace efforts in the former Yugoslavia. U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke, said after talk with Milosevic: "Peace was more important to him than war." "He wanted to rebuild his country and I think he was genuinely getting tired of what the Bosnian Serbs are doing." A western diplomat in Belgrade said: "Milosevic has mastered the art of the possible. It is a rare gift in the Balkans, where the word ``concession' does not exist. For a man who won total Serb support in 1987 by promising all Serbs will live in one state, this is a major turnabout. Milosevic was faced on the one hand with the lack of will by the Serbians to fight for their ethnic kin in Bosnia and Croatia and ruination of the U.N. sanctions-ridden economy. On the other hand, the world was telling him (to) forget Greater Serbia. A banker at heart, he understood how far he could go. After all what he now stands to get is not bad at all." Former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger commented the latest initiative and Serbian President: "Milosevic, who in my judgment is a liar and a thief and a scoundrel, may now have reached the point where he realizes he pushed the issue as far as he can and he may be prepared to be more reasonable." -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Russia said Sunday that Germany shared its opposition to the use of force in former Yugoslavia, but German Chancellor Helmut Kohl said he and Russian President Boris Yeltsin had different views on the use of air strikes. "The Russian president and the German chancellor were united in rejecting forcible methods to resolve it (the conflict) and in supporting the efforts of the international Contact Group." the Yeltzin's office said in a statement. German Kanchelor Kohl, who arrived Saturday for a working visit, told a news conference at Moscow airport before leaving: "There we have different opinions but I did not have to come here to find that out. I knew that already." TASS news agency reported: "According to our information, Helmut Kohl is inclined to support the initiative of Boris Yeltsin to hold a top-level international conference in mid-October with the participation of the Bosnian sides and country mediators." -------------------------------------------------------------------------- German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel urged Germany and the rest of Europe to help rebuild war-torn Bosnia with a "Marshall Plan" once the conflict in ex-Yugoslavia was over, a German newspaper Welt em Sontag reported on Sunday. But Germany's economic cooperation minister said Bonn would draw the line at offering aid to nationalist Bosnian Serbs whom he labelled "war criminals" and "murderers," according to Bild newspaper. "The Bosnian Serb war criminals and murderers cannot rely on Germany to reward their brutal violence subsequently by helping them with reconstruction." "They will not get a penny," he said. "Those who are responsible for such unspeakable suffering must be forced to reap the consequences." -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic and Foreign Minister Muhamed Sacirbey would hold talks with Turkish President Suleyman Demirel, Prime Minister Tansu Ciller and other officials. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Vatican says NATO air raids are not an act of war An editorial in the Vatican's semi-official newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, called the air strikes a ``painful recourse to force'' and said they should be followed immediately by diplomatic efforts to find peace. "The strong retaliation decided by the U.N. and NATO to the massacre Monday in Sarajevo cannot, must not, be considered an act of war against one party, but a warning of their determination to make sure the rights of the entire population are respected." -------------------------------------------------------------------------- The United Nations decision to reopen a so-called "blue route" puts further pressure on the nationalist Serbs. In a statement on Sunday the army called the opening of the route unilateral, saying the U.N. had failed to consult it and insisting access had to be negotiated. In a separate statement, speaker of the Serb "parliament" Momeilo Krajisnik, said he "welcomed" and "we agree" to opening the route. He said opening the airport road removed an issue which the Moslem-led Bosnian government could use to derail peace negotiations, according to the Pale-Serb agency SRNA. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Five European Union monitors, three Spaniards, an Irishman and a Dutchman, at one stage reported killed in NATO air raids, have been released by separatist Serbs and are on the way to the Croatian capital Zagreb, a European Commission source said on Friday. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- In an interview to BBC last Thursday, British Defence Secretary Michael Portillo said on Thursday more action against the separatist Serbs was in prospect to ensure that the Bosnian capital Sarajevo would be safe from further attack. "More action is certainly in prospect. Our objectives are to make Sarajevo safe and that can be achieved either by the destruction of the artillery or the withdrawal of the artillery." "We shall want to assess how much of (the artillery) has now been destroyed but we shall also want to see whether the Bosnian Serbs are of a mind to remove the artillery and so leave Sarajevo safe. So we are looking for a response from the Bosnian Serbs -- a concerted and clear one. It's poised somewhere between defiance and compliance with conditions that have been set down by the United Nations, and that needed to be clarified." -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rival Republican presidential candidate Sen. Phil Gramm Thursday challenged Senate Republican Leader Robert Dole's willingness to consider delaying a Senate vote on breaking the Bosnia arms embargo. "The sooner we let Bosnians defend themselves (by lifting the U.N. arms embargo), the sooner there will be no reason to send American pilots to fight in Bosnia." "It is Bill Clinton's right to be consistently wrong, but Republicans shouldn't fall in line behind him." -------------------------------------------------------------------------- A senior Russian foreign ministry official, on Thursday said the nationalist Bosnian Serbs had only themselves to blame. The anonymous diplomat, quoted by Interfax news agency, said the Serbs had "crossed certain limits beyond which the actions of the parties in the Bosnian conflict cannot be left without a response." -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Renowned French theater director Ariane Mnouchkine and three colleagues called off their monthlong hunger strike Thursday as their way of applauding Western nations' decision to take a more aggressive strategy in Bosnia. They had gone without food for 28 days to draw the world's attention to Bosnia's plight. On Wednesday, Izetbegovic took time out from talks with French officials to visit Mnouchkine's Theatre du Soleil east of Paris. "Stop your strike. You have achieved your aim. France has finally chosen an appropriate stance toward Bosnia-Herzegovina." Initially, Mnouchkine and her theater friends just launched a petition, collecting over 10,000 signatures from artists and writers around the world calling on the West to use military means to protect Bosnia. But they decided signatures were not enough, and began the hunger strike. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Opinions expressed/published on BosNews/BosNet-B do NOT necessarily always reflect the views of (all of the members of) Editorial Board, and/or moderators, nor any of their host institutions. Zeljko Bodulovic Dzevat Omeragic Davor Wagner Nermin Zukic