YU Merry-Go-Round

Pick of the Week

"It may sound absurd, but the Ustasha Movement was an anti-fascist movement" - Dobrosav Paraga (leader of the Croatian Rights Party) in an interview to Slobodna Dalmacija

MIHAILO MARKOVIC, an academician and the SPS Vice-President, has expressed his view on the creation of the Serbian Democratic Movement during his electoral promotion in Uzice (western Serbia): "It (the Movement) is made up of that particular part of the opposition which stands no chance in the legal federal elections. It is made up of those who claim that political parties do not have equal treatment in the media. Indeed they don't, but this is at the expense of the ruling party, since most of the press sympathizes with the opposition. Even in TV Belgrade more than a half its journalists have been openly working against us and for the opposition leaders (...) The number of self-proclaimed independent intellectuals and 'peacemakers' is increasing in Serbia. These people are 'cosmopolitans' who can't see Serbia from the center of Belgrade ".

RADOVAN KARADZIC, the so-called leader of the Bosnian Serbs, says in an interview to Duga: "When foreign journalists ask me how it happened that we have for centuries lived in peace, and are now waging a war against each other, I always say that we never lived together. We lived together either under occupation or dictatorship - never of our own free will (...) When you ask me about Sarajevo and its streets, I can tell you that we shall never again set foot in Tito's Street (...) Sarajevo will never again be what it was. First of all, one part of the city will be Serbian, and it already has a clearly defined territory and will slowly expand".

About the destruction of Sarajevo, Mr. Karadzic said the following: "As for the ruins, my heart aches for them, but the five or six hundred Muslim snipers that have been shooting at everyone cannot expect the Serbian defense to remain indifferent - its response is more than fierce (...) I think that any Serb trying to restore the former fake unity and friendship would be cursed."

About his moving away to Pale, Mr. Karadzic says: "I have not, as some claim, fled Sarajevo, since Pale belong to the Sarajevo municipality. I often visit different districts in the city... Therefore, we never left Sarajevo. We simply moved away from a dangerous, deadly and unpleasant neighborhood, i. e. the part where the Muslims are in the majority".

About life in general, the poet Karadzic muses in the following way: "I would never switch places with anyone. If I were born again, I would be the same as I am today. Sarajevo will be my town forever and a part of my most cherished memories, although I must say that the Sarajevo Serbs were fed up with the way Muslims were leaving their mark on Sarajevo and Bosnia. As if Serbs were not Bosnians and as if nothing good in Bosnia was Serbian. There is practically not a single traditional love song which is not Serbian."