A Serbian Lord Owen

The signatories of the Declaration seem to be unclear about the nature of a declaration and the nature of an agreement. On the one hand, the document is called a ``Declaration'' and is signed by Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and Fikret Abdic, President of the autonomous Cazin enclave in Western Bosnia, and is followed by a supplement which speaks of a ``reached agreement'' and is signed by Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. One cannot rid oneself of the impression that either the signatories do not differentiate between a ``declaration'' and an ``agreement,'' or Milosevic, who has a degree in law and is desperately in need of peace in BosniaHerzegovina in order to remain in power in Serbia, has abused the term ``declaration'' by signing what he proclaimed a ``reached agreement.'' As any law student knows, ``declarations'' are not legal means of establishing and restoring peace between warring sides. Peace is reached in agreements, treaties... but not in declarations. Declarations have a demonstrative character, they can express the spirit of a possible peace agreement, political aspirations towards peace, the warring sides' will to restore peace, but they cannot replace actual peace treaties or peace agreements as legal and internationally binding legal forms and obligatory instruments for achieving peace.

The charade concerning the Declaration was accompanied by an extremely tasteless emphasis of Milosevic's role in its adoption, which is particularly evident in the written commendations of his allegedly inevitable contribution. Milosevic, for instance, deserves credit for Karadzic's and Abdic's meeting, since he had ``invited'' them. Also, if it hadn't been for Milosevic's involvement, it seems that the adoption of the Declaration would have been impossible. The climax is Karadzic's and Abdic's written emphasis of their ``expressions of gratitude'' to Milosevic for his ``major contribution to the reaching of a just and lasting peace between'' Serbs and Moslems!

Finally, it is Milosevic who ``verifies'' the ``reached agreement and assumes the obligation to mediate in case of difficulties in its implementation...'' It seems that Milosevic intends to become a peacemaker, a Serbian Lord Owen. One should not be surprised if the Moslems erect a monument to Milosevic one day, as the Croats did to former German Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher.

The controversy regarding the document reaches a climax with the signatories of the Declaration writing the word Moslem(s) with a small ``m'' in the preamble. This would probably not have drawn the attention of those not well acquainted with the Moslems' status in these parts. Most people in the West have heard of Moslems as a religious group of different nationalitiesEgyptian, Moroccan, Indonesian, Libyan... Their religious creed (moslem) is written with a small ``m,'' while their nationality is written with a capital letter, as are the names of all nationalities worldwide. Two and a half decades after WW II, Moslems in the former Yugoslavia were still treated as a confessional group not as a nation, just as they had been in the Yugoslavia that existed between the two world wars, when the Moslems were treated as Serbs or Croats of the Islamic faith.

It was in the seventies that the national status of Moslems in BosniaHerzegovina and Sandzak (Serbia) was recognised and their nationality has since been officially and unofficially written with a capital ``M.'' Therefore, anyone who today writes the word Moslem with a small ``m'' not only reduces the Moslems to a religious, nonnational group, but denies their very existence as a nation. The symbolism of the small letter ``m'' actually reveals antiMoslem nationalism. All the more when ``peace declarations'' are in question. How can one then actually believe in the peaceful character of such ``declarations''?