All Meetings Of Milosevic And Tudjman

There were some indications last week that the meeting between Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and Croatian President Franjo Tudjman is likely to take place provided that some conditions are fulfilled that being highly unlikely. Can these two war leaders agree on something?

They are talking about peace now. But, even in July 1991, at the start of the war, Milosevic mentioned peace twelve and Tudjman seven times in the statements made after one of their meetings, when bridges, church towers and family homes were already blown up and people killed in most brutal ways.

The Presidents of Serbia and Croatia met for the first time to discuss our fate on January 25, 1991, in Belgrade a short time after Serbia ruined the country's monetary system and Slovenia opted for secession in plebscite. At the time the Serbs from Knin had already declared their autonomy, Croatia was intensively arming itself, and the Yugoslav Peoples' Army (JNA) was thinking about taking the situation into its own hands. The sixhourlong meeting ended with a short statement that ``the relations between the two republics were at an all time low.'' During the talks with Milosevic, Slovenian President Milan Kucan got the impression that the Serbian President will not oppose Slovenia's secession from Yugoslavia; in return Milosevic got Slovenia's understanding for the wish of the Serbs to live in one state. On return to Ljubljana, Kucan's plane still landed in Zagreb, because the President of Slovenia wanted to explain his option to Tudjman in person.

Milosevic and Tudjman had a plenty of time for talking at famous Yugoslav summits, in strict confidence or in the presence of international negotiators: Belgrade (January 25, 1991), Karadjordjevo (March 25), Split (March 28), Belgrade (April 4), Brdo near Kranj (April 11), the meeting in strict confidence in the border area between the two republics (April 15), Ohrid (April 18), Cetinje (April 29), Split (June 12), Stojcevac near Sarajevo (June 6), Belgrade (in the villa on Dedinje, the elite part of Belgrade, June 19), Igalo (September 17, with Lord Carrington), Belgrade (September 25, with then Federal Defense Minister Veljko Kadijevic), The Hague (October 25, 1991).

The meetings after the Hague round became less frequent: Brussels (March 7, 1992), London (July 17, 1992), Geneva (January 19, 1994).

During the last meeting, in the presence of Slobodan Milosevic and Franjo Tudjman, Foreign Ministers of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SRJ) and Croatia signed a joint statement on gradual normalization of SerbCroat relations. Similar statements had been signed before, the difference this time being the opening of bureaus in the two republics, which promised something more. After that both sides sent signals that they would not abandon this process, simultaneously making it clear that they were not in a hurry as well. What happened in the meantime is reminiscent of what followed the attempt of then Federal Prime Minister Milan Panic at SerbCroat normalization two years ago. In Budapest in August 1992 Yugoslav and Croatian Prime Ministers, Panic and Gregoric, agreed the exchange of 1,500 prisoners. The Serbian Radical Party (SRS) then threatened Panic with court action, and Milosevic with jail.

In London in September 1992 then Yugoslav President Dobrica Cosic and Franjo Tudjman signed a joint declaration on forming the joint committee between the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Croatia. Some results must be recorded somewhere on paper, but no one has seen them.

Numerous meetings of the Presidents of Serbia and Croatia in Tito's villas and Europe's conference halls (it would have been more honest if they had held their meetings in razed towns) were by rule seasoned with statements like ``the maximum degree of openness and good will'' that actually boiled down to their resolve to go to war.

It took three years of populist propaganda, a little over a year of warming up the atmosphere of war, a half a year for arming the civilians, illegal imports of arms, and forming of all kinds of armed formations, three months for the JNA disintegration, three months for the war to flare up and four months of the devastating war that broke the spine of the former federal state that lasted for seventy years and dreamed about for another two hundred.

The President of Serbia mentioned the SerbCroat war for the first time in his famous speech in the Serbian Assembly on March 16, 1991, and the President of Croatia told the news conference on July 22, 1991, that ``the citizens should be ready for a possible allout war.'' Since then until the most recent statements by Tudjman, the Croatian leadership has not abandoned its intention to subdue the Krajina Serbs by force should peaceful means prove ineffective. Tudjman claimed that they are ``Chetniks'' armed by Belgrade but that majority of the Serbs in Croatia remain loyal to him. Still he did not try to use them to reach an agreement, putting them in a marginal position with same fervor as the rebel Serbs from Krajina and the war lobby in Belgrade did it.

In the interview published by the Belgrade byweekly ``Duga,'' Dobrica Cosic said that Slobodan (as if talking about a close friend, Cosic did not say the Serbian President's last name) had told him that there had been an agreement to form a commission that would treat the SerbCroat question as a territorial issue. Cosic believes that Milosevic and Tudjman carefully covered up their respective intentions, ``They were feeling each other out through that commission.'' The details of these talks were brought up by some Croatian opposition leaders. However, Cosic claims that Tudjman and Milosevic never reached an agreement on the territorial demarcation.

Milosevic did not deny his intention to help the secessionism of Krajina, which could mean that he stuck to the formula of Aleksandar Karadjordevic, the Serbian king, about ``the amputation of Croatia,'' ``If they bother them so much why do they then need those Serbs in Knin, Petrinja, Lika, Banija, Kordun, Baranja, at all? The answer is easy. The Serbs are a problem, but the Croats want the territory. But, the Serbs are not renting that territory from them. Since the Vojna Krajina (the Military Frontier) and through history, they have lived there on their land. And they do not intend to leave the territories where they live.''

Cosic's advisor, Dragoslav Rancic, said that speaking with Milosevic and Cosic at each of the last three sessions in Geneva, Tudjman mentioned the necessity of establishing a communication link through the area of Maslenica, which is Croatia's narrowest section. According to Cosic, Tudjman was cooperative with regard to the agreement concerning Prevlaka that is crucial for the strategic control of Boka Kotorska, but insisted on the same kind of strategic security for Dubrovnik. This agreement best illustrates how both the Serbs and the Croats try to get their compensation in BosniaHerzegovina.

Again according to Cosic, Tudjman and Cosic presented the most radical proposals concerning the partition of BosniaHerzegovina in several conversations with Cyrus Vance and Lord David Owen in Geneva, when, as Cosic says, they ``absolutely agreed that Bosnia as a state entity is no longer viable.'' After speaking with Milosevic and Tudjman in Split in 1991, Alija Izetbegovic said, ``neither the cantonization not the partition of Bosnia had been discussed, although the topic could be discerned between the lines in the talks with Tudjman and Milosevic.''

As early as on July 13, 1991, the Zagreb daily ``Vjesnik'' quoted Ante Nobilo, the advisor to the Croatian President, who told ``The Times'' that Franjo Tudjman and Slobodan Milosevic discussed the division of Bosnia as a solution to the Yugoslav conflict at least during two of their meetings. The same claim recently came from the ranks of the faction headed by Mesic and Manojlic that broke off from the Croatian Democratic Community (HDZ).

When it comes to Bosnia, Tudjman got much favorable treatment from the international community, which may be the reason why he managed to come such a long way from the destruction of the historical bridge in Mostar to the construction of the MuslimCroat federation. By insisting on the alliance of sovereign states, Tudjman was closer to Izetbegovic, who said that sovereign Bosnia mattered more to him than peaceful Bosnia.

When Bosnia's partition is concerned, Tudjman and Cosic were more explicit and consistent than Milosevic who at the very beginning personified those forces that aimed at establishing a firm federation. When Croatia left Yugoslavia, he tried to include Bosnia in that firm federation through the socalled Belgrade constitutional initiative. The pressure put on Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic to accept the VanceOwen plan in 1992 could have been a sign of Milosevic's hopes to pull it through even after the bloodshed in Bosnia. The deal with Fikret Abdic, the leader of Western Bosnia, could also be taken as a reflection of Milosevic's aspiration.

One thing on which Tudjman and Milosevic did agree was to eliminate the reformists personified by former Yugoslav Prime Minister Ante Markovic.

Those who opposed the disintegration of Yugoslavia at the beginning of the Yugoslav crisis were favored by the international community. Yugoslavia was practically written off after Markovic's departure from the political life. The European Parliament Declaration (March 26, 1991), the CSCE Declaration (June 19), the European Parliament Declaration (July 9). CSCE adopted a declaration in Prague on September 5 on unitary Yugoslavia and denied its support to the secessionist acts. US supported the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia until the end of 1992.

The Hague conference, held in the atmosphere of the war in Croatia and the devastation of Vukovar, was a turning point:

The draft declaration on comprehensive solution to the crisis was presented on October 18. It envisaged the independence of republics and reciprocal recognition, the special status for the Serbs in Croatia followed by demilitarization, the international control and the request that the autonomous provinces in Serbia, Vojvodina and Kosovo, be returned the status they had before 1990 (This formula was to appear later on as KK, Knin for Kosovo). The second version, that was slightly modified, followed on October 23, then the third version on October 30, the provision on the autonomous provinces was dropped and the stand on demilitarization of all areas with the special status added, the fourth version followed soon and allowed a possibility to the republics to stay in the federation if they wish so. The representatives of Serbia and Montenegro rejected all proposals. Milosevic's advisors said that UN should deal with the Yugoslav case, and EC ministers adopted a decision on sanctions in Rome on November 8, 1992 and EC ships sailed into the Adriatic...

The two leaders disseminated the same sort of deceptionsone about a thousand year dream coming true, the other about dignity regained after six hundred years. Now they are trying to cover up their defeats. Tudjman doesn't control one third of his recognized state besides having to deal with at least 250,000 refugees. By embarking on the division of Bosnia, he allowed the Serbs in Krajina to refuse to recognize his authority. With the international public opinion still skeptical concerning the democratic nature of Tudjman's regime, the President of Croatia faces predictions (most of which are coming from Italy at the moment) that in case of extreme aggressiveness towards the Serbs in Krajina he risks losing the international support and the partition of Croatia's vulnerable territory, which means the loss of Istria and Dalmatia.

The results of isolated and condemned Slobodan Milosevic, the so called protector of the Serbs, are not any better. A third of the Serbs in Croatia whose position was used as a motive for war are now refugees, a third are besieged, and a third are loyal to Tudjman but still subjected to expulsions. The Croats are no longer in a hurry to solve that problem, but it is the Serbs in Krajina who are most seriously affected by that procrastination as their survival on that soil is now uncertain thanks to the wrong policy.

The turning point of the SerbCroat war now lies in Bosnia, where both leaders are involved up to their ears. It seems that the crucial decision will be made by Radovan Karadzic whom Cosic, for reasons unknown to us, has described as ``the most gifted Serbian politician.''