From: trh@jack.sns.com (Al Trh)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish
Subject: News
Date: 18 Dec 1992 02:46:29 -0600
Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway
Reply-To: Turkish Cultural Program List <TRKNWS-L%USCVM.BitNet@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU>
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu

12/17 U.S. Offers Planes For Bosnia

   BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- The United States on Thursday
offered aircraft to enforce a ban on Serbian aircraft over
Bosnia-Herzegovina but failed to rally support for such a
move from its NATO allies, officials said.
   Dutch Foreign Minister Hans van den Broek said U.S.
Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger made the offer at
a meeting of foreign ministers of the 16 NATO nations.
   It is unclear if the United States would act unilaterally
without a NATO consensus.
   Van den Broek said only the Netherlands also offered to
make warplanes available to keep the skies clear over war-
torn Bosnia in support of an October United Nations
resolution.
   "I see great hesitancy (among the NATO allies) to enforce
the no-fly ban," Van den Broek told reporters during a break
in the ministerial session.
   Other ministers echoed that view.
   German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel repeatedly stressed
the nations should exercise restraint in any attempt to try
to bring an end to the fighting.
   Van den Broek said some NATO allies also are concerned
that any strong NATO action could lead to retaliation
against U.N. troops in Bosnia.


   BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- The NATO allies met Thursday to
consider calls for the use of military force, if asked by
the United Nations, against Serbian aircraft violating a
"no-fly" zone over Bosnia-Herzegovina.
   "Sanctions which are constantly being violated ... are
becoming meaningless," said Dutch Foreign Minister Hans van
den Broek before the start of a two-day meeting of the 16-
nation North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
   The talks are the third international discussion this
week on the war in the former Yugoslavia.
   NATO Secretary-General Manfred Woerner opened the meeting
by reminding the allies about the conflicts unleashed on the
eastern half of the European continent following the demise
of Communism.
   He warned that the fighting could spread instability
throughout Europe. "It is in our vital interest that we must
help to end the violence."
   On the eve of the meeting, U.S. Secretary of State
Lawrence Eagleburger called for tougher action to end the
fighting that has killed more than 17,000 people this year
in Bosnia.
   "It is clear that the international community must begin
now to ... contemplate more aggressive measures," he told a
Yugoslav peace conference Wednesday in Geneva.
   He said the United Nations Security Council should
authorize enforcement of a ban imposed in October on Serbian
military flights over Bosnia.
   Allied warships already are taking part in a naval
blockade of Serbia and Montenegro in the Adriatic Sea as
part of an effort to enforce a U.N. embargo against the two
remnants of the former six-republic Yugoslavia.
   Moreover, thousands of allied soldiers have been guarding
aid convoys to Bosnia.
   Cyrus Vance and Lord Owen, co-chairmen of the Geneva
peace conference, on Wednesday expressed concern that using
force to enforce the ban on Serbian military flights could
put peacekeepers and relief workers at risk.
   Britain, which has about 2,700 soldiers guarding aid
convoys in Bosnia, also has been reluctant to expose its
troops to additional risks.
   Vance acknowledged there had been violations of the
flight ban, but said the United Nations had not found cases
in which aircraft were used to support combat missions.
   Foreign ministers attending a meeting earlier in the week
of the 51-nation Conference on Security and Cooperation in
Europe endorsed using warplanes to enforce the no-fly zone.



 12/17 EC MISSION TO PROBE TREATMENT OF MOSLEM WOMEN

    DUBLIN, Dec 17, Reuter - Irish Foreign Minister David
Andrews said on Thursday reports he had read of the alleged
systematic rape of women in the former Yugoslavia were
"sinister and deeply repugnant."
    Andrews announced that he will fly to Geneva on Friday
where the EC investigative mission on the treatment of
Moslem women in former Yugoslavia will begin its work.
    He said in a statement "The reports that I have read of
the alleged systematic rape and abuse of women in the former
Yugoslavia are sinister and deeply repugnant.
    "I have assigned two senior diplomatic officers from the
Irish Foreign Affairs department to travel to Croatia later
this week with the British (EC) Presidency team to undertake
preliminary investigations of this appalling nightmare.
    "I am anxious that this exploratory mission be
undertaken and completed as soon as possible so as to enable
me to visit Bosnia early in the New Year."

12/17 GERMANY TO TAKE ANOTHER 6,000 BOSNIAN REFUGEES

    BONN, Dec 17, Reuter - Germany said on Thursday it would
take another 6,000 detainees languishing in Serbian prison
camps in war-torn Bosnia-Herzegovina.
    "We are negotiating about taking in a further 6,000
former detainees from camps in Bosnia in a humanitarian
effort," an Interior Ministry spokesman told Reuters.
    He said Bonn was currently in talks with its 16 federal
states who will be offering temporary shelter to the former
detainees.
    "We hope they'll arrive as soon as possible," he said.
Asked whether that might be before Christmas, he added: "I
wouldn't rule that out."
    Germany has already agreed to take in about 1,000
detainees by Christmas on the condition that other European
Community members pull their weight and agree to shelter
more refugees.
    Many prisoners have been unable to leave Bosnia because
Europeans and other states have refused to offer them
shelter, refugee officials have said.
    The International Red Cross has said prisoners, held in
filthy conditions without sufficient food, medicine or
clothing to ward off the winter cold, would face death
unless there was a concerted effort by other states to offer
them refuge.
    It estimates that Serbia is holding at least 13,000 men
captive, German radio reported.
    State premier Erwin Teufel said on Saturday that wealthy
Baden-Wuerttemberg state would launch a single-handed effort
with the help of aid groups to help the refugees if Bonn
declined to take on another 6,000.
    According to figures released by Bonn, Germany has so
far accepted 235,000 refugees from former Yugoslavia, the
largest contingent in western Europe.
    Switzerland is sheltering 70,000, Austria 57,000,
Hungary 50,000, Sweden 47,000, Italy 17,000, Turkey 15,000,
Netherlands 6,300, Britain 2,000, Belgium 1,800, Denmark
1,700, and France 1,100.
    Other states have taken in a total of about 30,000
refugees.

12/17 U.N. FORCES MAY BE DECLARED HOSTILE - KARADZIC

    By Sue Baker
    LONDON, Dec 17, Reuter - Bosnian Serb leader Radovan
Karadzic warned the United Nations on Thursday that its
forces could be in danger of attack if a no-fly zone was
enforced by military action.
    Karadzic sent British Prime Minister John Major and U.N.
Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali a letter saying he
could not guarantee the safety of U.N. troops in Bosnia if
Serb aircraft were destroyed.
    "If it is decided that the U.N. Security Council
resolution should be enforced by the use of force and this
results in the destruction of our helicopters, the
parliament of the republic ... will almost certainly declare
all U.N. forces as hostile," Karadzic's letter, faxed to
Reuters in London, said.
    The Bosnian Serb leader's warning appeared to be aimed
at thwarting moves led by the United States and France to
enforce the U.N.-declared no-fly zone as a means of turning
up the pressure on the Serbs to end the conflict.
    A U.N. resolution adopted in October banned Bosnian Serb
combat missions over Bosnia but Western officials say there
are continuing helicopter and other flights, some carrying
arms and troops, and pressure is mounting for U.N. measures
to stop them.
    Karadzic said in his letter there had been no Serb
combat missions since October 13 and flights since then
"tend to be for the transportation of the sick and wounded
who will die unless moved to more suitable medical
premises."
    Instead of enforcement, he suggested increased U.N.
monitoring to confirm the humanitarian nature of the
flights.
    Major and Boutros-Ghali jointly chaired the London peace
conference on former Yugoslavia in September.
    Major's office confirmed that Karadzic's letter had been
received but had no immediate comment. A spokeswoman said it
was not clear whether Major, who left on Thursday morning on
a flight to Canada, had seen it.
    Major has been cool to international moves to enforce
the no-fly zone by possibly shooting down Serbian planes
violating it, saying he fears retaliation against unarmed
U.N. aid workers and British forces escorting aid convoys on
the ground.
    "We are considering our policy with our allies and
partners, but we have to weigh the desirability of enforcing
the no-fly zone against the possible impact of that on the
United Nations humanitarian effort and on the safety of our
own troops," the British prime minister told parliament on
Tuesday.
    Karadzic, playing on that fear, said his influence over
Serb military units on the ground would be limited in the
event of U.N. action and he urged a contingency plan for
evacuating U.N. forces be drawn up immediately.
    "It would not be possible for us to guarantee their
safety in the light of the popular revolt which we can
anticipate from our people," Karadzic, president of the
self-declared Serbian Republic in Bosnia, added.
    He said enforcing the zone would be a retrogressive step
that "cannot possibly help anybody on the ground and will
not save a single life." He said the flights were not a
factor in the continuation of the war or the intensity of
the fighting.
    The United Nations has declared Serbia the main
aggressor in the Bosnian conflict between Serbs, Moslems and
Croats which erupted eight months ago after the republic
declared its independence from the federal state of
Yugoslavia.



12/17  NAMING SERB WAR CRIMINALS SEEN AS EMPTY GESTURE

    By Alan Elsner
    BRUSSELS, Dec 17, Reuter - U.S. Secretary of State
Lawrence Eagleburger's denunciation of Serb leaders as war
criminals has gained only lukewarm response and is seen as a
largely empty gesture in efforts to end the Yugoslav
conflict.
    While Eagleburger was denouncing Bosnian-Serb leader
Radovan Karadzic as a war criminal on Wednesday, Yugoslav
peace envoy Lord Owen was inviting him to peace talks early
next month.
    And the man himself wandered freely around the Palais
des Nations in Geneva, brushing shoulders with delegates to
an international conference on the Yugoslav conflict and
even briefly coming face-to-face with Eagleburger himself.
    Was he war criminal or negotiating partner or possibly
both?
    This unanswered question highlighted what some officials
saw as the essential emptiness of Eagleburger's gesture. It
was perhaps one of the last headline-grabbing acts of a lame
duck secretary of state who will retire to his farm a month
from now, in all probability leaving the Yugoslav conflict
still raging.
    Eagleburger justified on moral grounds his demand for
war crimes trials of individuals suspected of involvement in
atrocities together with their political and military
leaders, headed by Karadzic and Serbian President Slobodan
Milosevic.
    "We have a moral and historical obligation not to stand
back a second time this century while a people faces
obliteration," he declared, invoking a link to the Nazi
genocide of Jews and gypsies during World War II.
    The response from some European officials was lukewarm.
Nobody spoke against the idea as such, but several pointed
out the obvious difficulties.
    "If you want to try Milosevic, first you have to catch
Milosevic," said one diplomat. "Nobody has yet pointed out
how to do that."
    Eagleburger conceded the point and acknowledged that war
crimes, if they took place, could only do so at some
undetermined time in the future.
    He said he was interested in "laying down a marker" and
expressed hope that the administration of President-elect
Bill Clinton would take up the theme after it assumed office
on January 20.
    Eagleburger envisages an international court under
United Nations auspices being established similar to the
Nuremberg tribunal which meted out justice to a handful of
top Nazis after the allied victory in 1945.
    But the differences in the two situations are striking.
Nuremberg took place after a war in which the winners had
pursued a policy of total victory and the losers had been
forced to surrender unconditionally.
    Yugoslavia presents a far different case. Western
countries, the United States among them, are not at war with
Serbia and are straining every diplomatic and political
muscle to avoid direct military involvement.
    Since the United States has ruled out trying suspected
war criminals in abstentia, only a total political upheaval
in Serbia could make a war crimes trial of that country's
current political leadership feasible.
    But mediation efforts headed by former U.S. Secretary of
State Cyrus Vance and former British Foreign Secretary Lord
Owen focus on ending the war through some form of political
accommodation with these same leaders.
    Owen and Vance invited Karadzic and Serb General Ratko
Mladic to Geneva for talks with other former Yugoslav
factions beginning January 2.
    Secondly, the massacres of which they were accused were
already over when the Nuremeberg defendants stood trial. But
atrocities including ethnic cleansing are still going on in
Bosnia and there are fears of a new wave of horrors in the
Serb province of Kosovo.
    Cynics suspect Eagleburger's gesture, though no doubt
sincerely felt, also played the role of diverting attention
from the inability of the civilized world to protect
defenceless civilians in parts of former Yugoslavia from
persecution, torture, rape and murder.
    They recalled that President George Bush threatened war
crimes trials of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and other
Iraqis during the 1990-91 Gulf crisis, at a time when it
suited his political purpose to whip up public sentiment
against the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait.
    But later, when the United States adopted a policy of
preserving the unity of Iraq, Washington dropped the war
crimes issue and nothing has been heard about it since.
    Some diplomats also worried that by naming Milosevic as
a suspected war criminal, Eagleburger removed any possible
incentive he might have to seek a political settlement.
    "Now he knows his back is against the wall. He has
nothing to lose," said one European official.
    Eagleburger said he had accepted this argument for a
long time but he no longer believed in it. Perhaps by naming
names, he said, others would think twice before committing
such crimes in the future.
    Perhaps.