Doris Pack
Member of the European Parliament;
President of the delegation of the European Parliament for south-eastern Europe

The events in Kosovo clearly showed Greater Serbian expansionism. The calls for help from Croatia and Slovenia to western countries should have given them cause to assist in the process of establishing new national countries not retarding it.

Still today, after four years of war, ethnic cleansing, killings and burning, concentration camps and countless rapes there are politicians in western Europe who still think Yugoslavia is ideal and would rather re-establish Yugoslavia again.

Many chose not to see that "Yugoslavia" was to the Serbs de facto Greater Serbia or a single party country. On the other hand, maybe they saw and thought this sort of situation as being correct. The words and actions of the so called mediators for the European Community, Lord Carrington and Lord Owen are proof enough of their manner and thinking.

UN mediator Stoltenberg recently announced that all the people of the former Yugoslavia were originally Serbian, and that this conflict should be viewed from a new stand point. It shows how little these "experts" in fact know about the structure of these countries.

Western countries had their embassies located in Belgrade. The people from these embassies were only acquainted with one side - Serbian, so their reports to their governments contained only the Serbian viewpoint.

This was clearly stated in 1992 by the newly appointed ambassador of Great Britain to Croatia, namely, prior to Zagreb he had been in the English Embassy in Belgrade.

In a conversation with me he stated that he had only now become familiar with the reality of the other side and that he deeply regretted this was so.

Bearing in mind that England and France regard Serbs as their allies in the Second World War nobody finds it particularly difficult to attribute to the Germans the same manner of thinking in relation to the Croats.

We apparently want an outlet to the Adriatic Sea - at least that was talked about after Germany’s insistence upon the recognition of Croatia after the fall of the Croatian town of Vukovar and four months of war in Croatia.

Such openly proclaimed thoughts show something terrifying: after the Second World War the Germans started from nothing, forever burying the idea of a Greater Germany and were re-educated into a democratic way of thinking. Nobody forced the victors to change their way of thinking, and even today they are burdened with the unchanged prejudices from the first half of this century.

A unified Germany represents in their eyes such a clear German dominance, so that many politicians in the West would have nothing against a great and strong Serbian counter-balance, allowing ethnic cleansing in order to create a strong Serbia. Such thoughts are found undisguised in French and English media.

Today we stand before the remnants caused by the inconsiderate, selfish and cowardly politics of the West.

SREBRENICA HAS FALLEN!
I remember my discussion with French General Morillon when he left the Srebrenica safe haven. I accidentally met him in the Hotel Esplanade in Zagreb. I asked him whether he realised that he was doing the work for the Serbs. He had disarmed the Muslims and left behind a handful of UN soldiers so that the Muslims no longer had access to their weapons (the UN soldiers could not protect these people anyway because they were too few) thereby opening the way for new Serb conquests. Being in a bad mood, he arrogantly tried to hide his anger towards my words and then later attempted to counter my "naive" analysis. His words have recently been disproved in the most atrocious way.

The Muslims of Srebrenica which he disarmed had nothing to defend themselves with when the Serbs attacked. 35,000 women, children and elderly men are on the run, thousands of men have been imprisoned.

Zepa, a neighbouring safe haven looks as if it awaits the same fate. The Bosnian government asked the UN to return the confiscated weapons so the population could defend itself. The answer was "No"!

The UN has promised protection, however, it is these safe havens which are the least safe places in Bosnia. I suppose that by safety they do not mean the safety which is offered by a UN tank when people hide behind it while running across the most dangerous places in Sarajevo.

Safety also includes access to gas, water and electricity. The UN has not undertaken any measures to ensure the provision of these elementary needs. When I asked Mr. Akashi, the UN Special Envoy in Zagreb, this question he could only smile tiredly. The provision of these items depended entirely on the Serbian side and he could not achieve anything there.

During my last stay in Sarajevo the Serbs stopped the tank in which I was travelling from the airport. I, therefore, had the opportunity to speak to the French UN soldiers who were accompanying us. They believed they had been left on their own to complete a duty which they simply were not able to do.

"To keep the peace where there is none and shelling and explosions are a daily event. Assistance is limited to aid following Serbian attacks, it is not possible to stop them." Those poor youths, they will go mad there.

The Security Council came to a grotesque decision about Bosnia three years ago. By imposing an embargo on the import of weapons on the Muslims, Croats and Serbs the Council took the side of the Serbian aggressor. The Serbs had then, and still do today, enough weapons - and supplies from Serbia are still guaranteed despite Milosevic’s insistence to the contrary. The victims continue to be helpless so that they can continue to be expelled, killed and raped.

The Bosnian Premier has from the time of the imposition of the embargo repeated that the embargo was an immoral and illegal act. Every member state of the UN has according to Article 51 of the UN Charter a right to self-defence. The West has effectively prevented this by not allowing the victim to actively defend itself.

This attitude of the West which many in Bosnia and outside of it interpret as anti-Muslim, could have serious consequences. I have often been told, and not only by Muslim leaders, but also by Bosnian citizen of all classes that we Christians do not want the Muslims and that they have know taken the role of Jews.

I tried to explain that the cowardly actions of the West were not anti-Muslim but that they were the inarticulate attempts by the West not to get involved and not to anger the aggressor. Did the Croats as a Catholic people receive help? No.

The so called Christian world allowed the Serbian aggressor to do what it wanted. From this the moderate Muslims in Bosnia could reach a conclusion that their moderation was of no help. The truth is that since 1992 we have tolerated Serbian aggression and even rewarded it by territory.

During many conversations in Mostar, Tuzla and Sarajevo I was warned by wise men, Muslims. I was told that the West would promote the road to Islamic fundamentalism, of which they were all afraid, if they lifted the carpet from under the feet of the Bosnian Muslims who were Europeans of the Muslim faith just as the Croats are Europeans of the Catholic faith.

It is only through their short-sightedness that, faced with a possible conflict between Islam and Europe, we have not been able to keep the Bosniacs as our allies.

The supposed neutrality, which the West at one time proclaimed, has led it to share the guilt since it has not made a distinction between victim and aggressor.

Rapid reaction troops cannot be used to protect Bosnians, they are to be used for the protection of the UN soldiers, whose lives are clearly more valuable than those of the Bosnian population.

The withdrawal of the UN troops and the arming of the Bosnians is the only action which can follow from the chain of our defeats. Those who continue to place all hope in negotiations should listen to the French General Lasprelle who has clearly stated that a political solution through negotiations is only possible if equally strong military forces exist on both sides. Why should the stronger party in negotiations give something to the weaker party if it can obtain more through war?

The West, since the beginning of this war, has not taken notice of its experiences in the last 50 years. It did not use any means to frighten whilst it still could have achieved results - when the Yugoslav Army attacked Croatia - the West should have arrived with aircraft carriers in the Adriatic. Later, after the attack on Bosnia-Herzegovina, it did not bomb the Serb position around Sarajevo, as was the wish of the then NATO Secretary General Wörner, and the Serbs continued to conquer, expel and kill. We were always told that such military intervention was not possible due to the Serbs and the geographic location of the war zone. These were the lies fed to us to hide the bias of the West.

That this was possible had to be demonstrated by the Croats, firstly in western Slavonia and later in the Krajina region and Bihac. It is shameful for the West that the people in the so-called safe haven of Bihac were liberated thanks to the brave action of the Croatian Army. Following this, the US was encouraged to take military steps which, perhaps, bought the war closer to an end.

Croats from western Slavonia and Krajina waited from February 1991 for the implementation of the Vance Plan so that they could return to their homes. Nothing happened in three years, aside from the fact that their homes and churches in the Serb-occupied areas were destroyed.

Now, when Croatia has with one quick action returned its formerly occupied areas, there is no need to lament, but rather, it should welcome this act of liberation which should have occurred long ago. When the European mediator Bildt condemns this action and states that it is an invasion which deserves every condemnation and that President Tudjman, alongside Karadzic, should be placed on the defendants dock in the Hague, then this arrogant and stupid statement clearly exposes his pro-Serbian stance and disqualifies him as a European Mediator.

The coming peace agreement must deal with all the problems. I sincerely hope that the Serbian side is prepared to return eastern Slavonia to Croatia by peaceful means. To maintain a united Bosnia and at the same time allow a confederation with Belgrade and Zagreb actually spells the end of a united Bosnia. It would be dangerous not to solve the problem of Kosovo, which was in fact the initiator of the disintegration of Yugoslavia and to leave the Albanians at the mercy of the Serbs.

The question of refugees and displaced persons also has to be solved by peaceful means so that conditions can be created for their return to their homes. Ethnically clean areas are unnatural, areas like Krajina and eastern Slavonia in Croatia were the homes to many Serbs, just as Banja Luka was, for example, the home of many Croatians.

I very much hope that this war will soon end and that the peace agreement will not carry with it the seeds of a new war.