Box Of Grenades Among Writers

President of the Serb Republic in Bosnia-Herzegovina Radovan Karadzic is probably going to Bijelo Polje (Montenegro) to receive the award for poetry ``Risto Ratkovic.'' This was decided by the jury of the traditional ``Ratkovic's Evenings of Poetry'' held in the honour of Montenegrin poet Risto Ratkovic in Bijelo Polje. The three-member jury--Chairman Ranko Jovovic, Zelidrag Nikolic and Stevan Kordic--was unanimous in its decision that Karadzic's collection of poems ``The Slav Guest'' was the best book of poetry in Serbian between the two festivals.

Their decision has been met by a deathlike silence in Montenegro, shattered only by Jevrem Brkovic, a Montenegrin poet living in Zagreb for two years now. ``Having learned that this year's prize ``Risto Ratkovic,'' awarded for the best book of poems of a Montenegrin author, according to the Festival statute, has been given to the war criminal Radovan Karadzic for his book of poetry ``The Slav Guest,'' which was published by the Belgrade publishers BIGZ and a private Podgorica Chetnik publisher, it is a moral obligation for me (...) to renounce the prize and return the Diploma to the Bijelo Polje Municipal Assembly, which has founded the award,'' poet Jevrem Brkovic writes from Zagreb.

Poet Brkovic qualifies this year's laureate as the greatest European war criminal in Europe today, a Bosnian Eichmann and calls on all ``honourable Montenegrin poets'' to renounce the prize disgraced by this act, to return their Diplomas and erase their names from the list of laureates which will now include the war criminal Radovan Karadzic.

This has been the only public reaction to the jury decision by the time this issue was closed; no other laureate of ``Risto Ratkovic'' has spoken up. One of them, who wished to remain anonymous, said he would not return his prize until Karadzic received his. The Bijelo Polje Municipal Assembly did not react either.

The ``Risto Ratkovic'' prize was awarded to the President of an ethnically cleansed state still in creation by an ethnically cleansed Association of Writers, assess most of the writers, who do not wish to publicly comment ``the latest scandal,'' as they call the jury decision to award Karadzic. Most of all, they maintain that Karadzic is a minor poet, ``although he has been a regular visitor of evenings of poetry, not with the intention of participating in them but with a special assignment which made the poets shrink from him.''

On the other hand, awarding the ``Risto Ratkovic'' prize to Mr. Karadzic is interpreted in Montenegro as the culmination of a scandalous policy. Some members of the Montenegrin Association of Writers have formed a strong alliance with nationalists in Serbia and the writers-``patriots,'' and, under the auspices of the disintegrating Writers' Association, raised hue and cry after anyone ``who is not with us.''

At one point, 30 writers, who have been awarded significant literary prizes, walked out of this Writers' Association. All those who have not declared themselves as Serbs were forced to leave it.

Not one literary work confronting the political line of the ``patriotic writers'' could have been published in Montenegro. These ``literary patriots'' not only supported but also organised the war campaign, expressing hatred of members of other nationalities. For all of this, they had considerable appanage of the Montenegrin authorities and no-one has ever stood up to them.

``I was shocked,'' the former President of the Association Miodrag Tripkovic said recently, ``when I found a box of grenades on the Association's premises! What are of grenades doing on the Association's premises? Who has brought them there? Where have armed writers come from? Poets with guns. Who has given guns to poets? I noticed that some members of the Association were using Interior Ministry cars. If the Association is not helping the Ministry of the Interior, if its leadership is not a branch office of the Ministry, then why are they doing the Association such favours. Do independent writers get the same treatment, I asked. No!''

This is what Miodrag Tripkovic says about the Association, popularly called ``the strongest and most literate para-military formation in Montenegro.''

Bets are now being laid: Will the Association award Radovan Karadzic a box of grenades and will Karadzic respond with a small cannon and an idea which might prove to be an appropriate spark of freedom the Bosnian way?