A FAREWELL TO ARMS

AIM Osijek, June 21, 1996

Jacques Klein, administrator of the transitional UNTAES administration, was obviously in a good mood when on June 21, in the press conference room of the seat of peace forces in Vukovar, he declared to the journalists that the most complex part of his job - demilitarization of eastern Slavonia, Baranja and western Srem - was completed successfully and when scheduled. Mr Klein has thus succeeded in accomplishing what UNPROFOR had been hopelessly enageged in for almost two and a half years, although it should be noted that his mission has been going on in essentially different circumstances from those which had prevailed before operations "Flash" and "Storm". Although nobody, probably not even Klein himself, has any illusions that this was final "farewell to arms", when speaking of reintegration of Croatian side of the Danube river valley, the fact that heavy arms, or at least their main force, have crossed the Danube in the direction opposite from the one they had usually travelled, is a good sign that Erdut agreement could be implemented as planned. Regardless of the fact that Croatian army with its forces had an incomparable advantage in relation to potentials of the remnants of units of the former army of the "Republic of Serbian Krajina", presence of any heavy arms seemed to have encouraged those not inclined towards peaceful reintegration. On both sides.

Negotiating position of Goran Hadzic and his team is now quite fragile and the only thing the Serb party can insist on is strict adherence to the Erdut agreement. In this, but only in this, they will enjoy support of the international community. The experimental balloon which carried the demand for political autonomy of eastern Slavonia and Baranja burst almost at the same time it was blown up. Unyielding reactions of Croatia and not a bit more lenient ones of the international community left no room for reinitiation of talks about political autonomy in the way once conceived in plan Z-4. This was stressed by Klein too, after he had said "farewell to (Serb) arms": the story about autonomy was nothing but hot air which nobody had either will or time for any more. Even Goran Hadzic is aware of this, since to this journalist, four days before the end of demilitarization had been over, he said that rejection of plan Z-4 was a "big mistake". "Obviously, certain leaders have placed their own interest above the interest of the people", he said denoting the present demand for autonomy "exaggerated", equally as Croatian reactions which followed appearance of this document: Hadzic is advocating implementation of the Erdut agreement.

A day before Jacques Klein announced that units in the region which Hadzic usually calls Serb district of eastern Slavonia, Baranja and western Srem was disarmed, the current leader of the region had gone to Belgrade to talk with the Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. Although Hadzic does not like to be considered to be a "Milosevic's man", one of his associates told the journalist of AIM that there was no doubt about the reason for Hadzic's visit to Belgrade: "Milosevic used to tell him that the process of reintegration should be accelerated, but when Hadzic pushed it too hard, the Serbian President told him to slow down a little after all. What he will tell him now, we shall see when Hadzic comes back".

"A month ago, I did not even dare utter the words 'peaceful reintegration'", a citizen of Vukovar said for AIM about a week ago. "Now, it is possible to talk about it, but everything is going too fast and people need more time to get used to it". But, there are also some unbending stands. "I will personally kill the first returnee to Vukovar along with CNN. It will probably be an elderly woman with a retarded child who did no harm to anyone, but I will kill her anyway, because she will be the first", says Zoran Ajdinovic, a 32-year old invalid, irreconcilable to the end. Since 1991 - when on Petrova Gora near Vukovar a shell fragment hit him - he has been condemned to a wheel-chair. Ajdinovic says that he does not wish to torture people to take him to Goran Hadzic to tell him in person what he thinks about the Erdut agreement and peaceful reintegration. He is convinced that the Croatian army will intervene, because "peaceful reintegration simply is not possible".

Officials of the UNTAES who this journalist had the opportunity to talk to reject every possibility of the Croatian Army taking over by force the region which will anyway, by the end of next year at the latest be reintegrated in the constitutional system of the Republic of Croatia. "Now that the region is demilitarized, there is no army which would take pride in such liberation", an official of UNTAES stated, under the condition that his name would not be mentioned. He believes that the Croatian state leadership is also aware of it, as well as of negative consequences which this could have on the already bad position of Croatia in the international community.

Having boasted that demilitarization had passed without incidents, Jacques Klein announced next steps in the job he had accepted as the transitional administrator. Joint police forces consisting of the Seerbs and the Croats completed training in Budapest, and they should beginning patrolling in just a few days. Ivica Vrkic who is in charge of the process of peaceful reintegration on the Croatian side tells an anecdote from the training American FBI organizes for members of mixed Serbian-Croatian police forces. Having seen members of the joint forces in police uniforms in Budapest, a Croatian official commented in bewilderment: "I was not at all able to discern which were ours and which were theirs". Is it going to be like that in the field remains to be seen on July 1, when Mr Klein has announced joint police patrolling will begin.

As the next phase of peaceful reintegration, the railroad between Vionkovci and Sid should soon be opened, in other words, traffic should be reestablished on the once busiest railroad of former Yugoslavia between Zagreb and Belgrade. However, this railroad, just like opening of the highway between these two cities, at least in the beginning, will have little practical meaning for everyday life of this region - mostly foreign cargoes will be transported down the railroad and the road, while free flow of people will have to be postponed for some time.

Real challenges will occur when the first banished persons decide to come home and Mr Klein is deeply aware of the difficulty of the task. Before the return to some "difficult places", such as Vukovar for example, actually takes place, he will try to feel the pulse with pilot projects of return to selected places where it is assessed it could pass comparatively smoothly. But nobody, not even Jacques Klein, knows what will happen if during return of the first banished persons, during possible squaring of accounts, a serious incident occurs. Will that be the end of peaceful reintegration and a reason for intervention of the Croatian army, nobody wishes to guess. However, UNTAES spokesman, Philip Arnold was quite definite about one thing: should Croatian Army set out to reintegrate the Croatian side of the Danube river valley by force, UNTAES will not be able to protect the local Serb population.

Among the steps which will soon be taken, Klein announces introduction of the kuna as the currency in the region of eastern Slavonia, Baranja and western Srem. This journalist was a witness to a conversation which went on about twenty days ago in front of the UNTAES headquarters in Vukovar, where local population is trying to draw a dollar or to from members of the peace forces by selling them juice, sandwiches and fruit. A Croatian journalist asked a girl at a counter if she would sell him a can of coca-cola if he paid in kunas. She very resolutely refused, but the seller next to her was willing to take kunas from anybody who agreed to the offered exchange rate.

A citizen of Vukovar whom we talked to last week, sees no problem in replacement of Yugoslav dinars by Croatian kunas. "We should wait for some time for the exchange rates of dinar and kuna in relation to the German mark to become completely equal. While it is necessary to give 3.3 dinars for one mark, kuna rates lower and amounts to 3.6 per 1. Do not think that this approximation of exchange rates is quite accidental. It is easiest to replace money when the ratio is one to one", he says.

DRAGO HEDL