From: wam@zamir-zg.comlink.de (Wam Kat)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia
Followup-To: soc.culture.yugoslavia
Subject: Zagreb Diary
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 92 13:09:00 MET
Organization: ComLink-Network Germany - For Peace Zagreb
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Zagreb Diary
27-08-1992

Dobar Dan,

For the first time since I was here I had a meeting with a 
foreign minister, with minister of foreign affairs from the 
German Bundes Land Lower Saxony, the be precise. Of course is 
real title is not Minister of Foreign affairs, since to it is 
not possible for the different Bundes Lands of Germany to 
develop their own foreign policy, that is done in Bonn. 
Trittin's title is more like "Minister for federal and 
European Affairs of the State of Lower Saxony", but anyway it 
looks important to enough to take serious.

And so did the Zagreb organisation "Mothers for Peace", they 
had a meeting with him before we were invited and followed 
him to the Hotel, since they had the feeling that they hadn't 
explained thier standpoint well enough to him. Therefore the 
meeting started a bit in a chaos, how to fit about 10 people 
into a small room and were to talk about. The relation 
between the AntiWar Campaign and Mothers for Peace is a 
little in the cooler, since the war started and we don't know 
well enough what the others are doing and thinking.

Anyway after about half a hour the ice was broken and Trittin 
showed clearly his background, the green party, which gave we 
a good feeling. After the normal political statements and 
introduction of Zoran about how he sees the war and the way 
how to solve it, Nina and I took over the meeting more or 
less and introduced our vision on relief aid.

The reason for Trittin to come to Zagreb was the same as most 
of the official delegation which are running around the 
country, now it becomes more and more clear that it is 
impossible to host all the hundred of thousands of refugees 
outside Croatia (besides the fact if that is good for the 
people themselves to be transported to somewhere in the 
northern countries), more and more countries and 
organisations decided to adopt one or more refugee camps or 
build new ones for the winter is coming. Lower Saxony seems 
to thinking of building some new camps up to 55 million 
Dmarks, he told, and his mission was basically finding out 
what the possibilities were. 

He said that he was not so happy with the panic football type 
of solutions which are now made all over Europe. Hosting 
people in old army barracks, families, big halls, etc. 
without any vision what to do in the long run. F.e. just 
before we went to Trittin I could a phone call from 
Amsterdam, somebody telling me that the public housing office 
of the town of Amsterdam offered 5 houses for refugees from 
Bosnia. The gift is great, but is less than a drop on a hot 
stove.

Within a few minutes it become a short of open brainstorming 
about possibilities, who to involve people in solving the 
problem of the refugees in Croatia. If people in Lower Saxony 
are reading this diary it would be good if they contact 

Trittin's secretary to follow up this talks, since I think we 
came a step closer to solving our main problem, how to 
finances Grassroots relief work.

The best thing for me was to meet at least somebody high up 
in a government and from the Greens, who was against the idea 
of any type of military intervention, since day in day out we 
get confronted by peace groups and left-wing political 
parties abroad, who are advocating the need to send in the 
troops.

Back on the office this morning I met Martin, who is trying 
to get permission to take two boys from Bosnia with him out 
of the country to join them with their relatives, who already 
escaped Bosnia some months ago and live in Austria. These 
boys are related to a peace activist (woman), who herself 
could get out, but her husband was killed some days ago in 
Bosnia. If the reason for his murder was the fact that his 
wife is a peace activists or because the fact that he is from 
another ethnical background is not clear, but anyway we think 
it is safer for the whole family to leave Bosnia as soon as 
possible.

But now the border between BiH and Croatia are closed and 
only those who have a guaranty paper that somebody will take 
care of them when they enter Croatia, or that somebody or 
some organisation from abroad only needs a transit permission 
for Croatia, since they will not stay in Croatia and go 
directly to another country, can pass the border in the 
south, this always results in a lot of paper work. What is 
even more complicated since there are not many possibilities 
to communicate with people in BiH, most telephonelines are 
cut.

The situation in the south of BiH, near the town of Mostar is 
really horrible, thousands and thousands of people are coming 
together there in the hope that they can leave the country, 
now the northern route over Slavonski Brod is totally close. 
But Mostar, the town totally controlled
by the new formed state Herceg-Bosna and it's army HVO, (the 
surroundings of the town still under other control, people 
say that it are the so-called "Serbian Extremists" who shoot 
at the town and the surroundings) is not a real easy town to 
get out of. Most of the telephone lines are under control of 
the army or the new state and the rumours are that every 
phonecall is controlled, people anyway can't phone further 
then Split. People need special passes to leave Mostar and a 
total mobilisation is still going on.

For displaced people in BiH (which must be over the one 
million according to the rumours) who lost every thing they 
had, often including there passport getting this types of 
documents is next to impossible. But also in Zagreb it is not 
easy to get this type of guaranty papers, which are necessary 
to pass the northern borders through Slovenia to Austria. 
Martin had nice official papers in German, but the Croatian 
authorities didn't want to sign them if they weren't 
translated. The two boys became more and more nervous, afraid 
that if they couldn't get out of Croatia soon, they would be 

send back to Bosnia to fight.

With Love from ZA-mir-GREB,

Wam:-)