Serbs, Today and Tomorrow

With the intention of offering its readers a more precise picture of what thoughts prevail on the Serbian political stage about why Knin fell, because of the surplus or the scarcity of national aims and whether it was possible to avoid future evil, Vreme talked to all major parliamentary parties early last week. Party leaders or members of the party leaderships were asked to answer the following three questions:

 

1) Do you think this is the "very last minute to determine the national aims of the Serbian people in order to prevent their further suffering" or are the events in Republic of Serbian Krajina the consequence of unrealistic national programs and aims and their definite end?

 

2) Do you think the implementation of a secret "national plan" might be in question and, if you do, what direction might the secret Serbo-Croatian arrangements take?

 

3) What is to be done now: to fight for national aims with arms or accept a political solution? In both cases: under what conditions?

 

Democratic Party (DS) leader Zoran Djindjic, New Democracy (ND) leader Dusan Mihajlovic, Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO) leadership member Milan Bozic and Civic Association of Serbia (CAS) Executive Board member Marija Obradovic sent their responses to the above questions on time. These are the exerpts.

 

Dr. Zoran Djindjic, Democratic Party leader

 

The regime in Serbia did not have clear national aims and it had not prepared means to achieve any goals except to stay in power. While the material resources - the army, the money, people's enthusiasm - lasted, things kept on moving somehow and the state and national aims changed almost every day, as the New York Stock Exchange. During these daily biddings, the craziest and most extreme aims were in circulation. When these resources were exhausted, extorted realism ensued, i.e. the theory that our chief national interest is that we have no national interest.

 

Dusan Mihajlovic, New Democracy leader

 

The developments in RSK are definitely an end to illusions of a "Greater Serbia" from Karlobag to Virovitica, to the political primitivism of "slaughtering Croats with a rusted spoon", to eating barbecued oxen on (Bosnian Serb political headquarters) Pale and "killing a hundred Moslems to retaliate for each Serb". Fortunately, that has never been the Serbian national aim. National and state aims and interests are not the same problem. A national aim is to enable a Serb to feel Serbian wherever he may be, from Knin, Pale, Belgrade to Australia and America. The means to achieve this end are not war, arms and borders, but culture, religion, enlightenment. That end could have been achieved in the RSK had it accepted the Z-4 plan, which offers elements of statehood: coat of arms, flag, anthem, police, national currency. Forget the last thing I mentioned: national currency. State interests imply that most Serbs live within the borders of their own state. Serbs already have that in the current Serbia and Yugoslavia, a state is big only as rich and strong it is. The issue of the Bosnian Serb Republic and its statehood is resolved by the Contact Group peace plan, which, besides all the elements I mentioned regarding the RSK, anticipates the Bosnian Serbs' own army, dual citizenship as well as the right to form a confederacy.

I believe peace is the only realistic national and state aim and interest of the Serbian people in the former Yugoslavia today. Everything else is a false and suicidal alternative in the current Balkan and world circumstances.

 

Milan Bozic, Serbian Renewal Movement Republican MP

 

Unfortunately, the thesis of one of the most eminent Serbian nationalist theoreticians, who summed up the 1992 war victories by requesting that the conquered territories be held for decades and at all costs in order to get the "Croats and Moslems used to the idea that it is not theirs", was very well received. This "Cyprusization" on our part was met by "Vietnamization" by the allies of Croats and Moslems, who refused to "get used to", and was successful this time. Their sponsors turned Croatia into a small local military power, maybe even the West's future "bulwark" in the Balkans, precisely to pit it against such a concept. Military balance has slowly but surely changed to the Croats' benefit and the strategy of "conquering and getting used to" has only countenanced Croatia since the Serbian side did not even try to fill the conquered territories with a political and civilizational content which would make them strong. Even combat readiness ebbed in the Serbian lands across the Drina, while the mother country spearheaded the eradication of civilization values.

 

Marija Obradovic, member of the Civic Association of Serbia (GSS) Executive Board

 

This war has shown that national interests are not achieved by war. The policy of waging war for national interests resulted only in disastrous destruction, the resettlement and exodus of the civilian population and the razing of cities and industry, which will render post-war renewal even more difficult. The monstrous war engineering of ethnic cleansing leaves such a brand on the souls of all the persecuted and suffering people, that we face threats of revenge and the cyclic recurrence of war in these parts. The war should end so that all three nations in Bosnia-Herzegovina make peace on condition that each of them enjoy the chance of free development, circulation and that their human and property* rights are respected. Also, we believe that all refugees should be allowed voluntary repatriation, which now above all pertains to Croatia, which in the future must not prevent Serbs from returning to their homes if they want to. Any international support encouraging armies and euphoric "victors", which the Croatian army considers itself now, would work directly against the resolution of open conflicts by political means. GSS in that context expects of the international community to immediately and unconditionally lift the sanctions off the FR of Yugoslavia, as part of the peace arrangement. Let us again recall that economy is the principal national interest, something the adventurists forget most often. GSS reiterated that no Serbian national interests can be formulated without Serbia, even if it were completely ruined.