From: L-Bueno@cup.portal.com (Louis Alberto Bueno)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia
Subject: CROATS PRESS ASSAULT ON SERBS
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 93 20:15:30 PST
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Distribution: world

	Copied w/o permission from:
	The Washington Post, January 23, 1993

	CROATS PRESS ASSAULT ON SERBS

	By Blaine Harden

	BELGRADE - A two-day-old Croatian army assault against Serbs in
Croatia sparked an explosion of Serb rage across the former Yugoslavia
Saturday and risked reigniting an ethnic war that went dormant more than a
year ago.
	The Croat attack upstaged and could derail Geneva peace talks that
are struggling to end a communal conflict in Bosnia, which borders Croatia
in the defunct and war-shattered Yugoslav federation. Fighting raged across
much of Bosnia Saturday, with all three warring sides fighting each other.
	Reacting to Friday's attack by Croat infantry and armor, Serb
nationalist forces inside Croatia proclaimed a formal state of war,
launched a full-scale mobilization and this morning began shelling the
Croat coastal city of Zadar.
	U.N. officials said Serb shells were falling on Zadar at the rate
of one every 30 seconds. They also said Serb reinforcements were pouring
into the battle zone from other regions.
	Here in Belgrade, the Serbian capital, a host of paramilitary
military leaders pledged to take men and arms to Croatia to defend their
"Serb brothers."
	In Geneva, where top Serb, Croat and Muslim leaders from former
Yugoslavia assembled Saturday for a resumption of Bosnian peace
negotiations, the hard-line nationalist president of Serbia responded
angrily.
	Having been pilloried by the world for sponsoring Serb aggression
in Bosnia, Slobodan Milosevic seized the public-relations advantage offered
by the Croat attack and railed before television cameras against Serbia's
ethnic enemies.
	He said both the Croats in Croatia and Muslims in Bosnia had
launched "new criminal attacks" that could undermine the peace process.
	"The masters of war are trying now, when peace is reachable, to
burn a new war," said Milosevic, whose unexpected conversion this month to
peacemaker has struck many Western analysts as a tactical ploy aimed at
heading off Western military intervention in Bosnia.
	The Clinton administration, in describing ethnic conflict in the
former Yugoslavia as its number-one foreign policy priority, has hinted
that it wants to take a much more activist role here than did the Bush
administration. State Department officials said this week that they want to
lift a U.N. embargo that prevents the Bosnian Muslims from receiving arms.
	But the Croat attack, combined with recent signs of real fighting
ability by the Bosnian Muslims, suggests that the American government
interest in the Yugoslav crisis is coming just as its complications are
growing.
	Effective outside intervention, which had always struck Balkan
specialists as tricky, could become even more complex if the new
three-sided battles continue.
	The Croat assault took place in a pocket of Croatia called Krajina,
which is nominally under the protection of U.N. peace keepers. Serb forces
seized the region in a 1991 war, and have since infuriated the Croat
government-and violated a U.N. peace agreement-by refusing to cede local
police authority to U.N. peace keepers and allow the return of Croat
refugees.
	Frustration among Croats at what seemed to them open-ended Serb
occupation of Croat territory motivated Friday's attack, U.N. officials
said.
	The Croatian government, for the second day running, played down
the seriousness and size of its incursion across a U.N. cease-fire line. It
described the troop movement as merely a "police" action to secure the
rebuilding of a bridge near Maslenica that connects Croatia's main northern
highway with the Dalmatian coast.
	U.N. officials in Zagreb, however, said the Croats had moved with
tanks, artillery, mortars and infantry along a 60-mile front. Croatian
television tonight reported battles between Serb and Croat forces raging in
a series of towns about 10 miles from the Maslenica bridge, where the
attack began on Friday.
	"While we recognize their (Croat) frustration, to resort to
unilateral action is very dangerous and it sets back all the efforts" of
the past year, said Lt. Gen. Satish Nambiar, commander of the U.N.
Protection Force in former Yugoslavia.
	Nambiar said Serb fighters in the U.N. Protected Zones inside
Croatia have raided "most" of the 200 storage depots where they had
voluntarily placed their heavy weapons under international control over the
past year. The Serbs made off with tanks, anti-aircraft guns and hundreds
of pieces of artillery, Nambiar said.
	"Unfortunately, what I feared is taking place," Nambiar said about
the Serb weapons raids. He said no more than four or five U.N. soldiers
guarded the weapons sites and made no effort to resist the takeovers.
	Nambiar said U.N. troops from Kenya had been shelled in the town of
Bibinje, east of Zadar, but there had been no deaths or injuries. After an
overnight lull, the fighting renewed about 7:30 a.m. and continued during
the day, he said.
	   
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

	Copied w/o permission from:
	The Washington Post, January 23, 1993

	ANTIABORTION ACTIVISTS BLOCK 3 CLINICS

	By Brooke A. Masters and Linda Wheeler

	WASHINGTON - District of Columbia police arrested 307 antiabortion
demonstrators early Saturday during Operation Rescue blockades at three
medical clinics - including one where they chained themselves to cars
wedged against the doors - and protests at two more.
	Hundreds of abortion-rights supporters also turned out to form
human chains around area clinics and shield arriving patients from the
antiabortion demonstrators' shouts and signs. At every site, the opposing
groups stood face to face and often fell into debate over the issue, which
still divides the nation.
	For Operation Rescue, turning a patient away from a clinic means
giving her time to change her mind. For the Washington Area Clinic Defense
Task Force, helping her get inside means allowing her to control her
destiny.
	"I like doing this because I know I am saving a baby from dying,"
said Min McManus, of Malaga, N.J., at age 13 a veteran of more than 20
blockades. "I think when women come to get an abortion, they see us, get
embarrassed. . . and say, `I'm not going to kill my baby.' "
	"I don't care about the content of the choice," said Jennifer
Saunders, 23, a legal assistant who lives in D.C. "I don't even think about
abortion and babies. This is about the right to ... make rational
decisions."
	The battle was joined before dawn when about 55 demonstrators
struck the Hillcrest Women's Surgi-Center on Pennsylvania Avenue at 4:30
a.m., delaying its 7:30 a.m. opening by an hour. The largest crowd began
gathering at Planned Parenthood's clinic on 16th Street at 5:30 a.m. and
kept most patients out for the next three hours.
	Police cleared the third and last blockade - the Hillcrest Women's
Surgi-Center on upper Georgia Avenue NW - 10:15 a.m. Scattered
demonstrations and prayer vigils continued at clinics until midday.
	Most of the 286 adults and 21 juveniles arrested yesterday were
charged with "incommoding, a type of disorderly" conduct that includes
blocking public access, said Chuck Brown, of the D.C. police department.
Brown said all were being processed and released.
	Clashes at clinics have become a regular part of abortion-related
demonstrations across the country in recent years.
	"The more disturbance, the more tension in the streets, the better
for us," said Patrick Mahoney, an Operation Rescue spokesman. "A (pregnant)
woman 17, 18, is already in a dreadful emotional state. If you saw us,
would you go in?"
	Ten patients, escorted by task force volunteers wearing yellow
T-shirts and bright yellow hats, got into the clinic before the blockade
tightened and police arrived, according to Rosann Wisman, president of
Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan Washington. Another 15 of the clinic's
40 scheduled patients came later.