WHO ASKS FOR MORE, GETS LESS

Aleksandar Nenadovic Changes and Illusions

With the entry of the Croat armed forces in the now perhaps already former UNPA in western Slavonia, the Yugoslav crisis has, in all likelihood, embarked on a new stage. The decisive one perhaps. How could it evolve now? Towards the spreading of the armed confrontation due to which UNPROFOR would have to leave, or towards taking account of experience which warns even the most self-confident ones that who attempts to grab something more today with arms and threats will tomorrow perhaps have to accept less than was offered to him yesterday.

Although, unfortunately, the possibility is not ruled out of things "becoming even worse before they become better", a positive feature may be that, so to put it, the fog is clearing. Some masks concealing chauvinistic pseudopatriotism have fallen before the scenes of this fresh, now Slavonian, horror. On both sides at that. Both in the belligerent core of Knin which ordered the insane shelling of Croat towns, and in the top of the Zagreb war lobby.

Cleverly devised and effectively implemented in military terms, Tudjman's blitzkrieg stunned, in places, even those who had accorded significant priority to Croatia's politics. Although for the most part they are not abandoning the assessment that Belgrade shoulders the main responsibility for the nightmare of war in the former SFRY, they are less prone to qualify aggressive nationalism as a Serb invention or monopoly. It seems that even in western countries, of crucial importance for Croatian politics, such as Germany and the United States, there is no doubt that the rapid taking of the western Slavonian UNPA leaves painful and counterproductive consequences.

The most important ones are, indubitably, the ones that heal the slowest: the already unbearable Serbo-Croat inter-ethnic gap and moral-psychological abyss have been dangerously widened. Even those exhibiting understanding for Tudjman's "impatience", or satisfying themselves with the assumption that, this time, official Belgrade was lenient towards him, do not deny the most important thing at this juncture of the Yugoslav crisis : the acts of the executors of the military "feat" in western Slavonia lend credence to the accusations that this is the Croatian version of shamefeul ethnic cleansing.

It turns out that current Croatian politics is, by military-political violence in western Slavonia, doing its best to prove what Serb ultranationalists care for the most: that the Serbs and the Croats can never and nowhere live together again. For, if even external observers, members of the "blue helmets", or special correspondents from the UN Headquarters testify to chicanery, and even to the killing of the innocent Serb population, how can then the wounds of Jasenovac and other old wounds be healed? How can the anti-Croatian fever, persistently incited and frenziedly expoloited by war lobbies both among power-lovers in Knin, at Pale and in Belgrade and in "overall Serbdom" be soothed?

Under such circumstances the only conditionally comforting prognosis could be: the fall of western Slavonia and the decision of Knin to bombard Zagreb and other Croatian cities, as an ominous development at which even foreign partners remain dumbfounded, could serve as a sobering challenge. If only for the reason that it forces both the domestic factors and the foreign mediators to make faster and more specific decisions.

The hazardous "military adventurism" of Zagreb and the ominous, revengeful passions in which Knin is not alone, should, in other words, speed up the decisive options. On the one hand there is the latent danger of the renewal if not also of the spreading of the Serbo-Croat war for territories, which is the geo-political epicenter of the Yugo-Balkan, nationalistic eruption. One the other hand, it seems, that despite bullying diversions, "material fatigue" is increasing, as are the possibilities for a compromise political deal. Namely, a return to the negotiating table on the basis of the Z-4 plan for Croatia and the one prepared by the five-member Contact Group for Bosnia.

Judging by their reactions in this matter, by what they said or did not say and do, some have already made that choice. But, to start from the beginning, along the line of new challenges. From Zagreb.

Croatia officially remains committed to the "peace process", but that, to put it mildly, does not sound convincing after it forcibly entered western Slavonia. It will be even less convincing if Zagreb continues doing what it has been doing in so provocative a manner since the "closing of the Pakrac pocket" : assigning tasks to the "blue helmets" in the "liberated" UNPA zone, reducing them to impotent if not undesirable observers, instead of obeying the orders of the world organization which, among other things, demands the withdrawal of the Croatian army.

(Truth to tell, the "world power holders", including the European Union and the Security Council, are not exactly unshakeable as unbiased mediators; Ghali's innocent, not infrequently pathetically lonely envoy Akashi, could say a lot about that. But, let us go back to the domestic, certainly most responsible, factors).

On the other side are the Serb leaders across the Drina river. In the critical choice exacerbated by the Slavonian drama, they are hesitant least of all. KaradziS and MartiS sought to confirm that they would not abandon the idea of "victory" at any cost, by activating the military alliance of their nowhere recognized states. But in the heat of the Croatian offensive against Pakrac, this had very modest political and practically no military results. Except perhaps as an announcement of the threat that Knin and Pale were not abandoning the idea to pull in the Serb mainstream in their already ominous war games, in the name of suppressing Croat or Moslem agression.

We could say that there are no major uncertainties in the mainstream either, where the opposition (except for the SPO (Serbian Renewal Movement), the GSS (Civil Alliance of Serbia) and other smaller groups) persistenty attacks the person of Slobodan MiloseviS; making use of the dramatic ordeals of the Serbs of western Slavonia in their attempt to anathematize and pinpoint him as a national traitor. Without much success, for the time being. If any changes or dilemmas exist in the Belgrade top at all, they are not visible from without.

The official slogan "that there is no alternative to peace", which at one point replaced the war cry "that freedom has no price", was never for a moment pushed aside due to Croatia's raid on western Slavonia. On the contrary. Peacemaking seems to be more in the forefront than before. Tudjman's adventure has, in fact, been vehemently condemned as arrogant aggression, but Martic's rocket "diplomacy" has also not been spared.

Along with the no less conspicuous, secret visits of foreign emissaries, including Clinton's envoy to the Contact Group, it seemed that Belgrade was courageously fighting for a political solution even while Zagreb was forcibly destroying UNPA zones. Despite that, some important unknowns remain. The most important being: is this an indication of Milosevic's greater readiness to normalize relations with the neighbours, Croatia and B&H primarily, in exchange for a more generous suspension of the sanctions? (AIM)