Subject: YDS 9/7 From: ddc@nyquist.bellcore.com (D.D. Chukurov) 7. SEPTEMBER 1995. YUGOSLAV DAILY SURVEY CONTENTS: BELGRADE DIPLOMATIC ACTIVITIES - SERBIAN PRESIDENT MILOSEVIC RECEIVES STOLTENBERG ON NATO AIR STRIKES - THE AIM OF NATO STRIKES IS CHANGING BALANCE OF POWER IN BOSNIA - NATO IS TRYING TO COVER UP CIVILIAN CASUALTIES IN BOSNIA - BOSNIAN SERB ARMY SAYS ABOUT 100 CIVILIANS KILLED IN NATO AIR STRIKES FORMER BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA - GALBRAITH: SERBS IN BOSNIA TO HAVE LINKS WITH YUGOSLAVIA CROATIA - KRAJINA - MILAN DJUKIC: TRACES OF GENOCIDE IN SERB VILLAGES FROM FOREIGN PRESS - NATO ATTACKS ON SERBS ENCOURAGING MUSLIMS - RUSSIA: WESTERN SECRET SERVICES ORGANIZED SARAJEVO BOMBING - FRENCH DAILY ABOUT TORCHING AND PLUNDERING OF SERB HOUSES IN KRAJINA - CROATIAN OPPOSITION OFFICIAL: ETHNIC CLEANSING OF SERBS ALMOST OVER BELGRADE DIPLOMATIC ACTIVITIES SERBIAN PRESIDENT MILOSEVIC RECEIVES STOLTENBERG B e l g r a d e, Sept. 6 (Tanjug) - Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic conferred on Wednesday with Co-Chairman of the International Conference on Former Yugoslavia Thorvald Stoltenberg about efforts to ease existing tension in former Yugoslavia. In frank and cordial talks, Milosevic and Stoltenberg discussed conditions for resuming and successfully completing the negotiating process with a view to bringing about a restoration of peace and a global normalization of relations among the peoples in the former Yugoslavia. Milosevic and Stoltenberg voiced hope that success would be achieved in the latest drive and activities, which are part of comprehensive preparations for the forthcoming international peace conference and within which the first preliminary meeting, at the ministerial level, has been convened in Geneva. They also expressed hope that coordinated moves and the international community's impartial position would help ensure in these preparations the necessary mutual understanding among the sides in regard to ways for reaching a political settlement of the crisis. ON NATO AIR STRIKES THE AIM OF NATO STRIKES IS CHANGING BALANCE OF POWER B a nj a l u k a, Sept. 6 (Tanjug) - NATO strikes on military and civilian targets in the Bosnian Serb Republic are an aggression that is synchronised with the attacks of Muslim-Croat forces, a statement of the Bosnian Serb Army General Staff said Wednesday. The statement said that the stepped up Muslim-Croat attacks in the past few days substantiated this claim. The statement, signed by Chief of General Staff Gen. Manojlo Milovanovic, said that the aim of the air raids was to change the balance of power in the area of Bosnia-Herzegovina to the profit of the Muslim-Croat coalition, with the help of NATO planes and the Rapid Reaction Force. The General Staff said that these aims were far from being realised. Considerable material damage had been caused and losses sustained among Bosnian Serb troops and civilians, it added. The statement said that the Croat and Muslim forces, which had launched powerful attacks parallelly with the NATO aviation, had sustained far greater losses. The Bosnian Serb Command said that all its defense lines were stable and that the Bosnian Serb Army had a strategic initiative in the western parts of the front. Commander of the Bosnian Serb Army General Staff Gen. Ratko Mladic and Chief of General Staff Gen. Milovanovic are in constant contact and are coordinating actions in the western and eastern fronts and in other parts of the Bosnian Serb Republic, it said. 'The Bosnian Serb Army and people are determined and ready to defend the borders of the Bosnian Serb Republic, its territory, the Serb people and their state,' the statement said. It said that the Bosnian Serbs were at the same time defending themselves from the NATO air operation with success, and the downing of a number of aircraft in NATO combat actions was proof of this. NATO IS TRYING TO COVER UP CIVILIAN CASUALTIES B e l g r a d e, Sept. 6 (Tanjug) - A NATO Spokesman in Brussels said on Wednesday that its air strikes had targeted solely on Bosnian Serb military positions, but southern Commander U.S. Admiral Leighton Smith admitted that certain 'collateral damage' had occurred. Admiral Smith did not use the words 'civilian casualties,' but rather a phrase employed by western officers when they want to avoid the embarrassment of mentioning civilian deaths. Despite NATO's efforts to cover up the extent of the 'collateral damage,' facts about Serb civilian casualties are surfacing. A number of western TV stations showed the consequences of last week's air raids, while Reuters news agency on Wednesday carried a story on the civilian casualties in the Serb part of Sarajevo. Reuters said that about 250 Serb civilians had taken shelter from the bombs in the basement of the technical university in Sarajevo's Lukavica suburb. The university building, which is still being shelled, was heavily damaged last Wednesday, the first day of the NATO blitz. On Tuesday, NATO's fighter-bombers blew up a water supply station located on a nearby hill, thus leaving without drinking water the hospital in Sarajevo's Kasindol suburb, the hospital's Director dr. Zdravko Zdralje said. Zdralje said that the water station was used solely for civilian purposes. The Bosnian Serb TV carried a story showing a house completely demolished by the shelling in which a man was killed and a woman and two children injured. A 60-year-old woman said that the air strikes reminded her of the nazi bombings during World War Two which she experienced in her childhood. While bombs are falling on Sarajevo, U.S. pilots on board the aircraft carrier Theodore Rosevelt on station in the Adriatic seem to be unaware they are becoming war criminals. 'It is good to be doing something constructive, to bomb someone,' Reuters quoted a sailor who was bored with the waiting for the start of the operation. 'We feel we have fulfilled out mission,' another sailor said. ABOUT 100 CIVILIANS KILLED IN NATO AIR STRIKES B a nj a L u k a, Sept. 6 (Tanjug) - The General Staff of the Bosnian Serb Army said late Wednesday that about 100 civilians have been killed and several hundred wounded in the NATO air strikes so far. The statement was released by the Staff's Information Service 'on the occasion of the continued unscrupulous and barbaric bombing of Bosnian Serb territory by the NATO air force.' 'With such air strikes the world's power wielders show their option that NATO use force to help Muslims occupy Serb Sarajevo,' said the statement. NATO planes have 'dropped several hundred tons of devastating bombs and missiles on districts of Serb Sarajevo, the Romanija plateau, Mt. Majevica, Grebak, Kalinovik, Visegrad, Cajnice, Srbinje, Han Pijesak, Doboj, and other places, killing about a hundred innocent civilians and wounding several hundred others,' said the statement. 'Criminal airplanes of the western alliance aimed their deadly cargo at health centers, schools, transformer stations, workers' and refugee restaurants, postal centers, radio stations, water system reservoirs of drinking water, warehouses of humanitarian aid, TV and radio relays, agricultural farms and other civilian objects, some as many as 100 km away from the frontline,' said the statement. Before the statement was released, Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic urged an end to the NATO air strikes. Speaking for CNN TV from the Bosnian Serb administrative center of Pale, Karadzic said that civilians as well as military targets had been heavily damaged in the NATO actions which have been underway since last Wednesday. The Bosnian Serb Army Command said that 'simultaneously with the launching of the latest bombing operations by the NATO air force and Rapid Reaction Force, Muslim forces from the so-called protected area of Sarajevo set off in several directions to attack Serb defense positions and carry out new terrorist actions in efforts to maintain anti-Serb sentiment in world media.' 'There is no doubt that the latest barbaric action by the NATO air force and Rapid Reaction Force intervention against Serbs are proof of the extremely biased stand of the United States, and thus also the NATO force and the UNPROFOR, toward one of the sides in the conflict,' the statement concluded. FORMER BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA GALBRAITH: SERBS IN BOSNIA TO HAVE LINKS WITH YUGOSLAVIA Z a g r e b, Sept. 6 (Tanjug) - U.S. Ambassador in Zagreb Peter Galbraith said Tuesday evening that the Serb part of Bosnia would be able to link up with the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. He said for the Croatian state television that the Serb entity in Bosnia would have similar links to those the Muslim-Croat federation had with Croatia. He added that there were in the U.S. plan clauses about this which had yet to be negotiated. In his view, neither of the two entities in Bosnia would be internationally recognized as a state as Bosnia-Herzegovina as a whole would be internationally recognized. CROATIA - KRAJINA TRACES OF GENOCIDE IN SERB VILLAGES Z a g r e b, Sept. 6 (Tanjug) - The President of the Serb National Party in Zagreb Milan Djukic said Wednesday that Donji Lapac and surrounding villages in Lika, in the south of the Republic of Serb Krajina, were totally destroyed in operation Storm only because they were Serb. Djukic told reporters that he had seen for himself the extent of the looting and torching of Serb property when he visited Donji Lapac several days earlier. There were no more Serbs left in Donji Lapac, the monuments were torn down and the graves dug out, while a smell of burning spread over the entire area and there were visible traces of genocide, he said. He said that those in Croatia's top echelons were responsible for such a state of affairs from Franjo Tudjman, Jure Radic, Adalbert Rebic to Bosiljko Misetic whose statements contributed to the realisation of a policy that expels Serbs and violates the constitution. The situation is further aggravated by the passive stand of the opposition and the Croatian people who are not raising their voice against what Djukic termed as 'barbaric acts' towards the Serbs. FROM FOREIGN PRESS NATO ATTACKS ON SERBS ENCOURAGING MUSLIMS L o n d o n, Sept. 6 (Tanjug) - NATO attacks on Bosnian Serbs could jeopardise the continuation of the Bosnia peace process because they are encouraging the Muslim side, London dailies wrote Wednesday. Every new NATO strike is actually the fulfilment of the Muslim Government demands, The Independent said warning that the Muslims could, encouraged by the continued bombing of the Serbs, practically reject any agreement by posing new conditions. Since the Muslim Government succeeded in involving NATO on its side in the civil it was no longer interested in any compromise peaceful solution, the paper said. No one in the west seems ready to pressure the Muslim Government especially since the Muslims have been portrayed as the greatest victims of the war by the media, The Independent said. The Financial Times said that NATO's bombing policy could backfire on the west by causing even greater rifts among the allies, which could jeopardise overall relations in the world. If the latest peace initiative for Bosnia does succeed however a peace agreement should be concluded by the end of september, the British papers said quoting U.S. sources. The western allies have already started preparations for forming a so-called peace implementation force which would replace the present U.N. Protection Force. According to the plan, the west would send between 40,000 and 70,000 troops to Bosnia who would be deployed along separation lines, The Daily Telegraph wrote. The force would remain in Bosnia until the end of next year and would then be replaced by a 12,000-strong NATO force, the paper said. WESTERN SECRET SERVICES ORGANIZED SARAJEVO BOMBING B e l g r a d e, Sept. 6 (Tanjug) - Top Russian military intelligence officers said that the bombing of civilians at a Sarajevo market, which triggered NATO air raids on Bosnian Serb positions, were masterminded by western secret services as a pretext for the bombings and were executed by forces of Muslim army Commander Rasim Delic. This, as the officers told the Russian ITAR-TASS news agency, pertained to the Aug. 28 explosion which killed 37 people. The Russian experts, who just returned from the former Yugoslavia and spoke on condition of anonymity, specified that the western secret services launched as early as February this year the 'Cyclone-1' operation aimed at discrediting the Serbs in Bosnia before the world public. What ensued was mass anti-Serb hysteria in the media and the idea about NATO bombing was advanced. Later, the Russian experts say, it became clear to the U.N. personnel that the Serbs could not physically have staged the explosion that killed a large number of civilians. Although such reports appeared for a brief time in the western media, the mechanism of retaliation had already been launched. The latest bombing of civilians near Sarajevo's Markale market was part of the 'Cyclone-2' operation launched because autumn was already approaching and poor weather conditions were deteriorating for the Muslim military actions. Another goal was to force the military leaders to make a quick decision. Firing the grenade at this particular time had been carried out from the roof of a building that was close to the said Sarajevo market, said the Russian experts. The Russian secret service came to learn about the 'Cyclone-2' operation on Aug. 20 and informed the Croats, Germans and Americans. They, however, did nothing to cut short the provocation and kept silent about the information. The Russian experts blamed the U.N. Command for biased investigation and said its results were predetermined. In the field, the operation was executed by men of Rasim Delic, the Muslim Commander, whom the Russian intelligence officers describe as having been an officer in the army of the former Yugoslavia in charge of a military dump and as having been selling property from the dump on the black market. Had not the former Yugoslavia broken up, they say, he would have been convicted for his shady dealings. LIBERATION ABOUT TORCHING AND PLUNDERING OF SERB HOUSES P a r i s, Sept. 6 (Tanjug) - One month after the Croatian conquest, the Knin Krajina abandoned by the Serb population is still on fire, the Paris daily Liberation wrote Wednesday. The plundering of abandoned Serb houses has become the favourite week-end pastime of the population of surrounding villages - special correspondent of the French daily from Knin Elen Despic Popovic wrote, pointing out that while she toured the region in the last 48 hours she counted over 15 torched houses. Even Knin was not spared, the daily said. Official Croatian spokesmen claim, allegedly, that they do not have enough policemen to protect Serb property, the daily wrote, and added that a U.N. patrol which was warned about the fire was prevented by the police from coming to the spot in central Knin. 'The next day an entire block of houses was turned to ashes, and only six chimneys were left', the daily said, noting that the Croatian authorities had informed that the fire was caused by an electrical failure. All international monitors have come to the same conclusion that the goal was intentional destruction whose final purpose is that Serbs from Krajina be prevented from returning to their homes, the daily said. The daily quoted the official U.N. Spokesman in Knin, Alan Roberts, that all Serbs are targeted by Croatian destruction whether they live in the city or in the village, and at the same time Roberts cautioned that the 'destruction of villages meant the cutting of the roots of Serbs.' In Krajina, entire villages have ceased to exist - the daily said, citing the example of Kistanje, south of Knin, which is a wasteland with only the Orthodox church left intact. Croatian authorities 'do not give an explanation how they were able to save the church from destruction, and not the Serb houses,' the daily said. Pointing out that the number of victims will never be known, the Croatian aggression on Krajina was carried out with the 'tacit approval of the international community', the daily said, and added that a source of growing concern is the assertion of international humanitarian organisations that the 'harassment of the elderly who stayed behind in Krajina is continuing.' The daily added that the livestock of Serb inhabitants is 'systematically poached or killed' and that Serbs are left without any source of livelihood.' U.N. patrols are finding the bodies of old people killed after the cessation of hostilities - the daily said, quoting the statement of an unnamed member of a U.N. patrol that 'of the seven victims he found personally, six had been shot in the back of the head'. ETHNIC CLEANSING OF SERBS ALMOST OVER Lj u b lj a n a, Sept. 6 (Tanjug) - Croatian opposition politician Stipe Suvar said that ethnic cleansing of Serbs in Croatia was almost over. Suvar said that there remained about 130,000 Serbs in Croatia as against the 700,000 Serbs who had previously lived there. In an interview with the Slovenian workers' paper Delvska Enotnost, Suvar said that the number of Serbs in Croatia had dropped from 12% to about two percent. In this century, Croatian nationalism has strived to eliminate Serbs in Croatia and has now achieved its aim. Nowhere in Europe has nationalism been so successful in ethnic cleansing like in Croatia, Suvar said. Croatian President Franjo Tudjman decided to achieve in another context what Ante Pavelic had failed to do, Suvar said adding that Croatia would be disgraced for a long time for what it did, although it would be eager to conceal it. Suvar quoted figures from the 1981 census and said that he doubted in the truthfulness of the 1991 census as the Yugoslav crisis and national euphoria in Croatia had already erupted. According to the 1981 census, there were 531,502 Serbs (11,50%) and 379,057 Yugoslavs (8.2%) in Croatia, Suvar said. There was about 20% of non-Croatian population (Serbs, Yugoslavs and those who did not declare themselves) in Croatia in 1981, Suvar said. Serbs and Yugoslavs constituted a majority in between 10 and 15 municipalities. A total of 202,787 Serbs and 228,015 Yugoslavs or more than one-third of the total population lived in the 14 largest cities (Zagreb, Karlovac, Slavonski Brod, Vinkovci, Vukovar, Pula, Rijeka, Sisak, Dubrovnik, Split, Sibenik, Zadar, and Varazdin), Suvar said. Suvar pointed out that the Orthodox monastery of Krka was 700 years old and that the Croatian people were blind and ignorant. That can explain their wish to see the Serbs leave Croatia, he said. Suvar said that they had forgotten that the Serbs had lived in those lands for at least 300 hundred or four hundred years, and some even 700 years. Those Serbs and Croats guarded christianity as a striking fist of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the west, Suvar said. =============================================================== -- I speak for no one and no one speaks for me -- D. D. Chukurov ddc@nyquist.bellcore.com ===============================================================