RATIFICATION OF CEASEFIRE

AIM Zagreb, September 22, 1996

Seventy two in favour, eighteen abstained, five against. This is the outcome of voting in the Croatian Assembly on ratification of the agreement on normalization of relations between Croatia and Yugoslavia, which may freely be said not to reflect the atmosphere which accompanied it. After foreign ministers of the two countries, Mate Granic and Milan Milutinovic signed the agreement on establishment of diplomatic relations in Belgrade, Zagreb lived in the atmposphere of doubt whether the war had a just ending and whether all accounts had been settled (at least that was the atmosphere within political parties).

It was expected that these questions would be opened first by rightist parties which always become vivacious when speaking of war and peace. But, this time large parties from the centre readily joined in the discussion - the Croatian Peasants' Party (HSS) and the Croatian Social Liberal Party (HSLS), the latter even by announcing that it would demand from the Assembly to refuse to ratify the agreement and in this way practically to suspend diplomatic relations. Due to opposition to such hard-core and intolerant stance from within the party, the HSLS came to the Assembly session with a softened stance that it would abstain from voting. However, it could be seen that the leadership of the party unwillingly agreed to this modification, so that the head of the HSLS, Vlado Gotovac, sharply attacked the agreement with the "Balkan butcher" in the Assembly hall, because it insulted the victims of war, destroyed hope that crimes would be punished and war damage compensated for. It was clear that Gotovac was intentionally insisting on the gloomiest stereotypes from the past war, which until recently the Croat Democratic Community (HDZ) itself had insisted on, in order to underline the hypocrisy of the "peace-making" shift between quite recent warring parties. But, even there, in the Assembly, he was welcomed by implicit disagreement of his party colleagues (Vladimir Primorac) who declared that it was necessary to be "sensible" and "realistic", because "we are getting peace" after all, and that meant "a great deal". This certified that normalization with FR Yugoslavia was almost equally an internal political and internal partisan issue as it was a foreign political issue. This was, indeed, known before and it was not the first time that relations between Zagreb and Belgrade appeared in that light, but it was somewhat new that this time the ruling HDZ avoided these perturbations.

This time Tudjman's party was quite disciplined and complied with the decision of their party and state leadership, although it would probably be more precise to say that this time they have more carefully than before surpressed and concealed frustrations they themselves were tormented by. Concealed discontent showed just for a moment, when one of the deputies sighed because Croatia had given up Srijem and Boka Kotorska, and majority of the others reconciled themselves to typical party ideological interpretations of the signed agreement (allegations about triumphant victory over Milosevic and the idea of Greater Serbia which were defeated by conceptual advantages of the Croatian state). On the other hand, there were attempts to use the Belgrade agreement for settling open issues between the parties, so Vice Vukojevic, one of the most prominent members of the radical faction of the HDZ, attacked the HSS for having criticized the Croatian-Yugoslav agreement allegedly because it was secretly lamenting over former Yugoslavia. With this agreement, according to him, it was finally and definitely buried.

Deputies of the Croatian Peasants' Party got greatly agitated because of this and demanded interruption of the session in order to take a stance about it, and some opposition parties offered them support, including even the Chairman of the Assembly Vlatko Pavletic (who expressed "understanding for the anger of the peasants"). However, this gale in which even Vukojevic received quite a few "punches", ended after all with the victory of this HDZ deputy, because he drew the HSS into a feverish struggle for proving "state-building" in which the HDZ has never lost a battle with the opposition. Because, in the discussion about normalization, the HSS has advocated equally hard-core stance as the HSLS - it accepted it only as the fact that peace was established, but by no means as a diplomatic document - and later, in the discussion about the Law on General Amnesty, it was even more critical.

The Liberals agreed with this Law, while the peasants were just "basically" in favour, but presented a whole series of complaints against it, considering it to be morally unacceptable.

"How is it possible to forgive anyone at the moment when dead bodies are being dug up in Ovcara without our representatives, and when we still have great problems on the occupied territory", leaders of the HSS wondered and added that pardon should be given "only after Croatia as their homeland was accepted by those Seerbs who are still threatening that it was not over yet". This dubious moralizing offered an opportunity to a few members of the HDZ to pathetically reject these accusations and state their stance which even they did not believe. And this was that the Law pardoned only those "who have not stained their hands with blood", but not war criminals.

As if the Croatian state was just and did not accept the principle that "everybody was responsible for one, and one for all" (Vladimir Seks). A whole new discussion could have been opened concerning this alleged righteousness, without even broadening the cause outside the topic which was on the agenda of the Assembly. The Ministry of justice of Croatia has already publicized a list of more than eight hundred citizens this Law would not refer to. Temporary administrator of Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and Western Srijem, Jacques Klein, who had most persistently advocated adoption of this Law, assessed immediately that that this list was so broad that he sarcastically wondered he had not found his name on it. But, there was nobody in the Assembly to even mention it.

These two laws were discussed for three whole days in the parliament, along with another one without whose adoption it is impossible to effectuate mutual diplomatic recognition of Croatia with FR Yugoslavia (suspension of the sanctions against Belgrade in accordance with the obligation from UN resolution). In view of the fact that these laws mean formal ending of a brutal war which had brought about numerous direct and indirect traumas, it is in a sense understandable. On the other hand, persistent attempts of the opposition to prove that these laws were unacceptable and hastily elaborated, because they did not reflect the fundamental truth about the past war, dispersed because of the fact that not even the opposition itself cared to say this truth, although perhaps it knew it.

In this cruel but futile wrestling of the two semi-truths about the same events, head of Croatian diplomacy, Mate Granic, claimed the role of some kind of a mediator. Although he spoke for two whole hours, he did not get involved in judgements whether these laws were good or bad, but simply declared that they were - inevitable. In this sense they did not differ from tens of other agreements signed in similar circumstances, i.e. after wars in which no party had defeated the opposing one. All such agreements, he said, were concluded on the basis of a compromise, and none of them determined who had been the aggressor and who the victim, because it was believed that it would only prepare the ground for a new conflict. For a neutral observer it was quite evident that Granic was implictly polemizing not only with the wrathful opposition but also with the silent, but intimately discontented majority in his own party.

In this sense, these agreements, observed not only from the Croatian angle, really do have primarily the meaning of a cesefire than of a stable and healing peace. But, after the international community seems to have finally got hold of the keys of war and peace - this is not of primary importance. Fortunately!

MARINKO CULIC