THUS SPOKE THEY

Without pretending to be wise after six years, I have to say now that at the moment I entered the duty room on the third floor of Sarajevo Neuropsychiatric Hospital "Dr.Nedo Zec" for the appointment I had made with the SDS President Dr.Radovan Karadzic, I thought that the man was either mad or a genius, and that in future there would certainly be many reasons to mention him. It was early November 1990, around 8.00 p.m. and Dr.Karadzic had not yet left his job as a psychiatrist in the mentioned hospital. When I entered the tiny room I saw him with his longish hair, a phone receiver in each hand, watching TV News and at the same time out of the corner of his eye scanning the list with my questions I have sent earlier.

"The Serbian people will not attack anyone. The SDA claims that the Serbs are getting armed are sheer nonsense. See what are they doing with the Croats. It is practically impossible for us to have any decision adopted without the HDZ and SDA alliance refuting it. All that we do is and shall be according to the law and Constitution. Not a single decision, as our rivals like to say, will be carried arbitrarily. We first ask for the opinion of the people about everything we do, and then act on that opinion. We have the approval of the Serbian people for everything and that is where the prattle about the SDA ends", a man who will be proclaimed a war criminal several years later concluded his brisk recital into a dictation machine. I did not manage to ask him anything. Continuing his statement Karadzic demonstrated his ability to persuade his collocutor in the truthfulness of his words. When he later started corroborating his policy with ethnic cleansing, many denied ever knowing him or simply forgot that they ever had any contact with the doctor.

I visited Bozidar Vucurevic in his court at Trebinje sometime after the November elections. At that time there was a joke about him and the Mayor of Dubrovnik who refused to accept the official visit of a "truck driver" from Trebinje without previous announcement. Rumour has it that Vucurevic remembered the insult so that when the Mayor of Dubrovnik paid a return visit to Trebinje Vucurevic received him with all honours. In the middle of discussion with his guests he suddenly got up, asked those present to excuse him and turning to the Mayor said: "I just have to transport one shipment and will be back in a second. See colleague, one has to make a living." What I remember well even today is a large military map in Vucurevic's office under the glass table. That November 1990 the borders of Eastern Herzegovina that was to become Serbian, i.e. their state which was in the process of foundation, were already marked. Sitting at that same table, Vucurevic "explained" what was actually in question:

"The decision on the formation of Eastern Slavonia does not have a party character, nor any national connotation. The exclusive motive that has prompted the bringing of this decision is of economic nature. The programme of the B&H Government did not include a single proposal we had submitted for this region so that we were forced to resolve major economic problems in our own way. It is quite true that such an initiative can raise fear, which in this case is absolutely unfounded. This decision does not mean the secession from B&H nor joining Serbia."

After that the things took a different turn and I do not know whether the Moslems from Trebinje might sarcastically laugh at this Vucurevic's claim uttered only few months before they started their sleepless nights in their home-town. After that they dispersed all over the world...

I had several talks with Stjepan Kljujic, HDZ President for Bosnia and Herzegovina, the first of which was most unpleasant. I wrote the article for the Belgrade magazine "ON", and the editor gave it a title "Tudjman Cannot Relieve Me". Yet, after that someone (probably Tudjman) relieved him and the bodyguards of this bow-tied gentleman paid me a call and told me to "take heed of what I wrote about" in future. We next met at a pre-election panel held in the hall of the Sarajevo Law Faculty where he was a guest together with Miss Biljana Plavsic and late Professor Fuad Muhic. There we patched up our differences. Concerning the election plans Kljujic said:

"The HDZ of B&H is fully independent from Croatia when it comes to issues concerning Bosnia and Herzegovina. Naturally, when we send an appeal to exiles, we do it through Croatia. When it comes to Mr.Tudjman removing me from office I must point out that he really cannot do that. You probably had in mind the case of my predecessor Davor Perinovic. He was relieved at the Mostar meeting. After a debate he left the meeting and since people had no one to complain to, they went to Zagreb. Out of 132 of them only one was for Perinovic. In other words he was relieved by the HDZ B&H leadership".

Asked whether he considered himself a journalist or a politician, Kljujic responded that he was a journalist by sensitivity and in every other sense, but as regards politics he added:

"I have tamed my right wing and, it seems to me, played a missionary role between Karadzic and Izetbegovic. I think that it was me who linked them, although both of them demonstrated a good will. I think that the moment we sat to talk together was crucial for the B&H elections. We reached an agreement on the division of power."

On his talks with Adil Zulfikarpasic, his present coalition partner (Kljujic's Republican Party is on the Joint List with Zulfikarpasic's MBO) Kljujic said: "After four hours of discussions I came to the conclusion that our partner was the SDA and not the MBO, and it turned out that I was right."

Miss Biljana Plavsic received me in the company of her colleague Nikola Koljevic at her working place at the Faculty of Philosophy:

"Well, I definitely do not understand the fear of the HDZ and SDA members, the two coalition national parties which are in agreement to forestall our work in the Assembly. Our party is no different from theirs, but what they do in the media presents us as war mongerers of sorts, separatists who want their own state, etc. The idea of seceding from B&H, let alone creating the Great Serbia, which we have been accused of, never crossed our minds. They also say that we have been arming the Serbian people. Young man, tell me how is that practically and theoretically possible? How could we have any arms? We only wish to know where precisely is every Serb so that we can try to organize them to finally start using their own heads, without any pressures from the past", said Miss Plavsic in clear jekavian dialect, probably unaware that she was soon to change both her dialect and place of abode.

Later during the election of the B&H President when Fikret Abdic was supposed to assume that office(as regards the number of votes) Plavsic added another sentence which today, after four bloody years can be interpreted in different ways: "The Lord himself has sent us Mr.Izetbegovic and he is the one who should be the President of B&H".

One of the SDS leaders, Momcilo Krajisnik, loved the journalists - but only in cafes. He was not particularly deft collocutor so that on several occasions, forgetting what he had said previously, he called the journalists and complained of what was published about him. When I interviewed him for the Sarajevo "Valter Express" it was from him that I heard for the first time that many problems laid ahead for Bosnia and Herzegovina, maybe even the war, that the Moslem people were getting armed, so that the Serbs had decided to do the same. He also said that every Serbian village was armed, and that the time had come to do the same in larger cities. All this was published and I kept the cassette, which proved to be very wise. An hour after "Valter" hit the streets Krajisnik called me and mentioned my family in quite an unpleasant tone, threatening me and saying that anything was possible if I continued to write trumped-up stories. Instead of replying I just played the tape with the interview into the phone receiver. A day after a telefax arrived to the editorial office with apologies and an invitation to an official lunch to be hosted by the SDS.

I also had several talks with Mr.Zulfikarpasic, all permeated with the same underlying thesis that he was the only right person to lead B&H to a better future. He told that story before and after a schism with the SDA and Izetbegovic. What Zulfikarpasic had promised to the peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina was extremely far fetched: "Here in Bosnia we shall have some sort of a "New Deal"; a motorway will lead from Germany through B&H all the way to the Adriatic coast..." By some trick he allegedly got large credits from somewhere to help pensioners live in wealth until their last hour. When the shooting began, Mr.Zulfikarpasic went to where he belonged - to the world of Swiss bankers.

Vladimir Srebrov, a man who for a long time was nicknamed the "Bosnian Yeltsin", one of the founders of the SDS and a man whom during the war this party kept in Kula prison, near Sarajevo, for three and a half years said in an interview: "Bosnia is starving while Karadzic wants a war". Today, as an independent candidate at the September elections he could use that sentence for propaganda purposes. Srebrov concluded with the following words:

"I am not a prophet, but I am deeply convinced that B&H is a country of the future Yugoslav prosperity. Such as it is, a mixture of all nations, it can bring peace to Yugoslavia. It will bring that peace by calming down the two parties - the SDS and the HDZ - in their demands, but also the political hawks from the SDA. The first task is the agreed moving of Kadijevic's tanks out of this country..."

Rasim Kadic, todays President of the Liberal Party, became a member of Parliament in 1990 as the President of the Alliance of the Socialist Youth of B&H. Only few days after his election he reasoned:

"I am not against possible international involvement in the process of reaching a new agreement in Yugoslavia. I also think that possibilities of further negotiations are far from being exhausted. If only we had turned more to Vranitzky and Bush earlier. Then Iraq and Russia would not have owed us as much as they did. We would have ourselves realize how bad were the cars we were manufacturing, and we would not have sought to teach the pigs how to fly."

At the last pre-war elections the President of the League of Communists - Party of Democratic Changes, today the Socio-democratic Party of B&H, Nijaz Durakovic received me several minutes before the holding of a large rally in Titova Street in Sarajevo under a slogan "NO". On that occasion Durakovic said:

"One cannot live on Serbdom, nor Croat-ness nor Islamism. That was certainly a good motivating factor, but sooner or later it will come back as a boomerang. Recall the time of the so called anti-bureaucratic revolution when everything was solved at rallies, and that rally was almost the end of the authors of that concept."

As Durakovic said, the boomerang really returned, and several years later the leader of former communists wrote a book "The Curse of the Moslems" explaining how he was among the first Moslems to come to reason who did not need a mediator in his relations with the Allah.

Ejup Ganic, a former Yugoslav from the Reformist Party of the last Federal Prime Minister Ante Markovic, was not much inclined to giving statements, although even those rare ones stood quite apart from the alleged pro-Yugoslav stance and involvmenet of the Reformists. His statements given in jekavian dialect frequently confused his listeners:

"I taught in the States for quite some time and I understand the economy, so that you can believe me when I say that Bosnia and Herzegovina has all chances to soon reach the level of the developed West. We have woods, fields, factories, and what is most important, the people who like to work. Our workers abroad are the best and most appreciated. We have to keep that in mind. We do not need any nationalism. People are wasting their energy on it for nothing. We need work, and only work, and only then we shall have Switzerland here", claimed Ganic.

Mr.Alija Izetbegovic, SDA President always had time for the journalists in the pre-election days of 1990. Later on, during his term of office that time was reduced at the expense of domestic journalists, and to the benefit of foreign colleagues. At that time we learned that there would be no "revanchism against those who tried him and his followers at the trials of Young Moslems in 1982". Asked why the SDA had no Moslem prefix before its name, the present President of the B&H Presidency replied:

"We shall not change the name for the time being. That has crossed our minds at the time of the founding of the party, but the applicable laws prohibited the use of any national prefixes. Everything will remain the same until the elections, we have already started the campaign with the name SDA and it would not be good to change it."

For the Belgrade "Intervju" (Interview) after his return from Turkey, in an article entitled "The Bosnian Pot" Izetbegovic said: "My visit to Turkey is misinterpreted. I went there to resolve some economic issues, but there are rumours that I went to ask for military assistance. Why would we need any military assistance when there will be no war! I can state that openly and freely. Those who intend to recognize B&H as a sovereign state surely have ways of resolving all possible problems. According to my information, the American fleet is already in the Adriatic, which also means that any armed conflict is out of the question. If anyone would want it, I cannot imagine how he would do it since we simply refuse to war."

In order to prove that there is no war and that there will not be one - at the time of of YPA "banana" shipments in cooperation with the SDA and the entrenching of their artillery in the city surroundings - accompanied by his bodyguards and TV cameras one April evening of 1992 Izetbegovic walked through the center of Sarajevo and tried to persuade the passers-by: "There will be no war! Someone is spreading the war psychosis among the citizens without any reason. I repeat, there will be no war - sleep peacefully".

GORAN DzAMASTAGIC (AIM)