Subject: YDS 8/19 From: ddc@nyquist.bellcore.com (D.D. Chukurov) 19. AUGUST 1995. YUGOSLAV DAILY SURVEY CONTENTS: FROM THE F.R. OF YUGOSLAVIA - PAPOULIAS: THE COMING DAYS WILL BE DECISIVE - YUGOSLAV GOVERNMENT REJECTS ACCUSATIONS OF MUSLIM LEADER IZETBEGOVIC YUGOSLAVIA - RUSSIA - YELTSIN: LIFTING OF SANCTIONS - A STEP TOWARDS RESOLVING CRISIS BOSNIA - SERBS - KARADZIC: INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY READY TO END WAR IN BOSNIA CROATIA - KRAJINA SERBS - U.N. SEEKS INVESTIGATION OF POSSIBLE MASS GRAVES IN KRAJINA - U.N. SAYS CROATIA VIOLATES HUMAN RIGHTS - TUDJMAN INSISTS CROATIAN FORCES DO NOT TORCH SERB VILLAGES - MARTIC SENDS LETTER TO BOUTROS-GHALI AMONG THE REFUGEES FROM KRAJINA - TESTIMONIES - THE TRACTOR PEOPLE SERBIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH - HOLY SYNOD APPEALS FOR PEACE, UNITY AND AID TO REFUGEES - SERBIAN ARCHPRIEST IN ZAGREB CALLS FOR END TO CRIMES IN KRAJINA YUGOSLAVIA - UKRAINE - AIR TRAFFIC AGREEMENT FROM THE F.R. OF YUGOSLAVIA PAPOULIAS: THE COMING DAYS WILL BE DECISIVE B e l g r a d e, Aug. 18 (Tanjug) - The coming days are crucial for the denouement of the Yugoslav crisis, Greek Foreign Minister Karolos Papoulias said after talks with Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic in Belgrade on Friday. Papoulias also said Greece 'was always on the side of those who have together with Belgrade urged peace and pointed out that President Milosevic is a protagonist of peace.' 'People must realize that, when President Milosevic is fighting for peace in Serbia and Yugoslavia, he is at the same time fighting for peace in Europe,' Papoulias said. Greece has always urged the lifting of the sanctions against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, because they do not help in any way toward the efforts to establish peace, he said. Pointing out that Russia also shared this view, Papoulias said that now many of his counterparts in Europe and even across the Atlantic were accepting talks on the lifting of the anti-Yugoslav sanctions. Yugoslav Foreign Minister Milan Milutinovic, who took part in the Milosevic-Papoulias talks, said that when all sides had the same objective - peace, differences could be removed with good will. YUGOSLAV GOVERNMENT REJECTS ACCUSATIONS OF IZETBEGOVIC W a s h i n g t o n, Aug. 19 (Tanjug) - The Yugoslav Government has categorically rejected as unfounded, absurd and ill-intentioned Bosnian Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic's accusations in connection with the settling of Serb Krajina refugees in the Raska region in Southwestern Serbia. Head of the Yugoslav U.N. Mission in New York Dragomir Djokic presented a Yugoslav demarche to the U.N. Security Council President Indonesian Ambassador Nugroho Weishnumurti, on Friday. The demarche said that Izetbegovic must know that Raska was an integral part of Yugoslavia and that it was the sovereign right of every government to decide where on its territory to settle refugees. In a letter sent to the Security Council President, Izetbegovic accused Yugoslavia of allegedly wanting forcibly to change the ethnic profile of the Raska region by sending there Serbs expelled from the Republic of Serb Krajina. The Yugoslav Government said in the demarche that Izetbegovic's letter was an explicit example of interference in the internal affairs of Yugoslavia and that it reflected the real intentions of the Muslim authorities in Sarajevo. YUGOSLAVIA - RUSSIA LIFTING OF SANCTIONS - A STEP TOWARDS RESOLVING CRISIS B e l g r a d e, Aug. 18 (Tanjug) - Russian President Boris Yeltsin said in an interview to the Japanese paper Nihon Keizai Shimbun carried by the Radio Voice of Russia that Bosnian crisis could not be resolved by military means and that the lifting of anti-Yugoslav sanctions would create a favourable atmosphere for its settlement. The measures should include the lifting of anti-Serb sanctions, as Yugoslavia has fully complied with all demands of the world community, he said. The Contact Group plan should remain the basis for negotiations of Serbs, Muslims and Croats in Bosnia, and equal treatment must be ensured for all negotiators, the Russian President said. This includes the right of Bosnian Serbs to establish confederal ties with Yugoslavia, but this should not be linked with the recognition of Bosnia-Herzegovina by Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, but with the right acquired by the Muslim-Croat federation to form similar ties with Croatia, he said. BOSNIA - SERBS INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY READY TO END WAR IN BOSNIA B i j e lj i n a, Aug. 18 (Tanjug) - Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic assessed on Friday that the international community was for the first time determined to end the war in the former Yugoslav republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina. 'For the first time I have observed signs of determination of the international community that the war should end. It seems to me that, for the first time, the United States is also interested in having the war end,' Karadzic said. It is quite possible that a favourable political solution will be proposed in 3-4 weeks' time, Karadzic said, speaking at a rally in the town of Bijeljina in the northeast of the Bosnian Serb Republic. Karadzic said he did not know exactly how that offer would look, but said he was ready to have the Bosnian Serb Republic take an active part in its shaping. Karadzic believes the Bosnian Serb Republic will not get less than 50 percent of the territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and that it will be a compact territory with a good and reliable corridor. 'I believe that the international community is also not adverse to granting us access to the sea,' Karadzic said. CROATIA - KRAJINA SERBS U.N. SEEKS INVESTIGATION OF POSSIBLE MASS GRAVES IN KRAJINA B e l g r a d e, Aug. 18 (Tanjug) - U.M. members have found bodies of killed civilians, some of them mutilated, and possible mass graves in Krajina, U.N. spokesman Chris Gunness said on Friday. Gunness told reporters in Zagreb that U.N. Civilian Police had found four bodies in the village of Zagrovic near Knin on Wednesday. Three bodies were men shot in the head at apparent close range, Reuters said quoting Gunness. 'The right hand of one appeared to have been mutilated with four fingers cut off,' Gunness said. The fourth body was badly decomposed and it was impossible to determine the cause of death, he said. Gunness said the bodies of three more civilians had been found in the nearby Village of Zvjerinac. U.N. members in Knin itself counted 96 crosses placed on the sides of four mounds. 'Despite the Croatian authorities' evident efforts in preparing the site, the area gives an impression of a mass grave,' Gunness said. 'When a U.N. Civilian Police team tried to investigate another suspected grave site, they were fired on by a sniper. Twenty-two new graves were counted there. Five bore names,' Gunness said. In the town of Vrlika near Knin, bulldozers were seen near the Serb Orthodox cemetery. Gunness said: 'we observed protective masks and rubber gloves discarded at the site (later).' Gunness also spoke about looting and torching of houses, saying the U.N. had registered 39 torched houses near Knin. U.N. SAYS CROATIA VIOLATES HUMAN RIGHTS B e l g r a d e, Aug. 18 (Tanjug) - The United Nations' top-ranking human rights official said on Friday he was deeply worried by abuses of Serbs' rights in the Krajina region since the Croatian army invaded the territory a fortnight ago. Reuters quotes U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Jose Ayala Lasso as appealing to the Croatian authorities to put an end to the violence and human rights violations wherever and against whomever they might occur. Ayala Lasso said there were reports of the systematic torching of houses and fields in the Southern part of Serb Krajina 'which have practically resulted in the destruction of entire towns.' 'Witnesses speak about the lack of reaction on the part of the local authorities and in some cases about the involvement of armed personnel in these acts,' he said. He said the acts were 'in clear contradiction of international human rights standards' and of a Security Council resolution requiring Croatia to respect the rights of the minority Serbs and to create conditions for their return home. TUDJMAN INSISTS CROATIAN FORCES DO NOT TORCH SERB VILLAGES Z a g r e b, Aug. 18 (Tanjug) - Croatian President Franjo Tudjman told a press conference in Zagreb on Friday that the Croatian army was not torching and plundering Serb villages in the Krajina region. To reporters' remark that there was ample evidence of the plundering and torching of Serb villages in Krajina, confirmed also by U.N. officials, Tudjman said that the Croatian army 'did not do that'. Tudjman said that the Serbs' departure from Krajina (some 250,000 people left their homes) had changed the demographic structure of the region, making it impossible to implement a law which had provided for a special status for the Knin and Glina municipalities. 'There is no Serb majority there any more,' the Croatian President said and stressed that Croatia had now become a 'respectable regional power', a fact which would reflect on its external relations. MARTIC SENDS LETTER TO BOUTROS-GHALI B a nj a l u k a, Aug. 18 (Tanjug) - Serb Krajina President Milan Martic called on the United Nations Friday to inaugurate a process for checking Croatia's aggression on the Republic of Serb Krajina, securing the withdrawal of Croatia's troops from the occupied territories and enabling the return of the expelled population. Martic said in a letter sent to U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali from his 'provisional headquarters in Banjaluka' that the latest tragedy of the serbian people was a consequence of the actions of the most powerful countries in the world and decisions of the U.N. Security Council which had spurred and aided Croatia's aggression. Martic requested that U.N. Protected Area sectors be again placed under U.N. control and in that context invoked the Sarajevo agreement of Jan. 3, 1992. He said the Krajina Serbs and leadership would otherwise resume their just struggle for the liberation of their ethnic territories. AMONG THE REFUGEES FROM KRAJINA - TESTIMONIES THE TRACTOR PEOPLE ("NIN" - 18 August 1995) Radmila Dragicevic (34), a chemical engineer, from Gracac, a refugee with her two daughters: "The shelling of Gracac began on Friday morning. About 3 p.m. we were told that we had to flee, since the Ustashe were only a kilometre away from the town. The children told me:"Mummy, take our toys." I picked up their toys and two winter jackets, took them by their hands and began running. The grenades were falling, the people were running; in fact we did not know where we were running. In the panic the only thought that crosses one's mind is how to save the children. One goes, one runs, without knowing where. From Friday evening we travelled in a tractor, twenty of us, with two babies, six and nine months old. The tractor was driven by my sister's son who lost his leg in battle in 1993. We were surprised that he could drive with one leg and were all afraid that some point he would say that he could not go on, that he would leave us, but he made it through. It was raining almost every night; then, we would stop the tractor and squeeze ourselves beneath the trailor to get some sleep. Before Petrovac our column was strafed by Croatian planes. It was frightening. I saw a truck explode in front of us, while several cars exploded a bit further away. Burned steel, greasy stains and blood was everything that one could see thereafter. This was all that was left of them. People were petrified. In the beginning, we did not know what was happening and then, speechless, we stood and gazed at the blaze and explosion. Perhaps from fear, one gets paralysed and resigns oneself to its fate. If a grenade falls on me - so what. The fear is ineffable. You simply do not take it in as a reality, as truth. It seems that it is a nightmare and that everything will disappear tomorrow morning when you wake up. Five babies and many old people died in our column; we left them by the road since we were told that ambulances would come to pick them up. "The artillery fire was calculated to destroy the town", said Milos Bradas (39), the owner of a bus company from Knin. "In the last four years I lived through many shellings, so that I became almost indifferent, but this shelling cannot be described. It was destructive, targeting residence buildings and houses. Since I had a truck, I hooked on a trailer on Friday evening and drove away to Zagrovic. Many people were fleeing the town and therefore I parked it up in the village so that all who wished so could get on the truck. I also sent out children to the village to call people to leave with us. After that, I took on thirty more people at Pedjen, the nearby village, and finally 150 people, including my immediate family, were in the truck. Fortunately, I had enough fuel so that I gave about 150 l of petrol to the people driving tractors. We had no special problems on the road, but near Prnjavor, after Banjaluka, we saw a horrible scene. A tractor driver who had run out of fuel, probably in a nervous breakdown, shot dead his wife, two children and himself. People tried to stop him but they failed. I was against the war and I had many Croat friends. I hoped, I had some illusion, that we would live again together as before. I looked after the house of one of them with all the furniture. This is irrelevant now, since everything was burned down. I hoped that he would come before the scavengers to save his, as well as my property, and if the States were to agree on a sort of settlement, I would come over to take them back. However, the people who left Knin a day later told me that my house was razed to the ground. It was located at the exit of the town in the direction of Zadar, at a curve where speed is to be reduced. Since they noticed that a great number of people were leaving the town in that direction, they shelled this area destroying it completely; people say that many lost their lives in cars. I have also found out that two of my cousins were killed. Obrad Bojanic was killed in fighting on Mt. Dinara, and Momcilo Marjanovic was killed in bed by the first shell fired on Knin. SERBIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH HOLY SYNOD APPEALS FOR PEACE, UNITY AND AID TO REFUGEES B e l g r a d e, Aug. 18 (Tanjug) - The Holy Synod of the Serbian Orthodox Church appealed Friday to all refugees not to lose faith, to all people of good will and the authorities to offer help and be united, and to the faithful to pray for peace. The Holy Synod appealed to all in positions of responsibility in Yugoslavia and the world to enable the expelled to return to their destroyed homes and desecrated holy sites in the shortest possible time. Those in endangered areas should stay home, by their holy sites and the graves of their ancestors, the Holy Synod said in a statement issued at the end of a two-day session focusing on the suffering of the Serb people. Patriarch Pavle on Wednesday appealed to humanitarian organizations to provide aid to the Serb refugees from Krajina, and to the refugees and the orthodox population to refrain from intolerance towards members of minorities in Serbia, the Bosnian Serb Republic and elsewhere. SERBIAN ARCHPRIEST IN ZAGREB CALLS FOR END TO CRIMES IN KRAJINA Z a g r e b, Aug. 18 (Tanjug) - Serbian Orthodox Church Archpriest in Zagreb Milenko Popovic called on Friday on the international community and the churches to help halt the crimes against the remaining Serbs in Krajina. Popovic quoted Serb and Croat eyewitnesses, who continue arriving at the Serbian parish in Zagreb, telling about crimes committed against Serbs in the areas of Slunj, Kostajnica, Petrinja, Vojnic and Dvor on the Una. 'These people tell about the killing of old persons, the burning and plundering of the houses not yet destroyed. They tell about many corpses lying in courtyards and being torn to pieces by animals, and about soldiers throwing corpses inside burning houses,' the appeal said. YUGOSLAVIA - UKRAINE AIR TRAFFIC AGREEMENT B e l g r a d e, Aug. 18 (Tanjug) - Representatives of the Yugoslav and Ukrainian governments initialed an air traffic agreement in Belgrade Thursday. Under the terms of the agreement regular reciprocal flights will be established between the two countries, in line with international regulations. 'This agreement means a lot to Yugoslavia, because it enables it to cooperate widely with Ukraine in the field of commercial air transport and in the field of transport in general,' Secretary of the Yugoslav Transport and Communications Ministry Zoran Kracic said. 'It goes even further, it opens the door to the development of bilateral cooperation in economy, culture and sports,' Kracic said adding that the document would soon be signed. The head of the Ukrainian delegation Vadim Shmigun also said that the agreement was significant because Ukraine was now laying legal foundations for flights to Yugoslavia. Specifying that for the moment the agreement only established air links between the two capitals Shigmun said he hoped that after the lifting of the sanctions against Yugoslavia the cooperation between the two countries in that field would be further extended. =============================================================== -- I speak for no one and no one speaks for me -- D. D. Chukurov ddc@nyquist.bellcore.com ===============================================================