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OMRI Pursuing Balkan Peace, No. 37, 96-09-17
From: Open Media Research Institute <http://www.omri.cz>
Pursuing Balkan Peace
No. 37, 17 September 1996
CONTENTS
[01] BOSNIAN ELECTIONS END.
[02] IZETBEGOVIC LEADS IN BOSNIAN PRESIDENTIAL RACE.
[03] NATIONALISTS RIDING HIGH.
[04] BOSNIAN SERBS WANT TO PLACE JOINT INSTITUTIONS ON DEMARCATION LINE.
[05] BOSNIAN SERB LEADER CONFRONTS SERB UNITY.
[06] PLAVSIC APOLOGIZES FOR SECESSIONIST RHETORIC.
[07] WHAT IS MILOSEVIC UP TO?
[08] IZETBEGOVIC AND MILOSEVIC TO MEET THIS WEEK.
[09] ARKAN ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL.
[10] "EVERYTHING WENT SMOOTHLY."
[11] MORE ELECTION IRREGULARITIES: KARADZIC VOTES WITHOUT INCIDENT.
[12] OBSTRUCTIONS IN GORAZDE.
[13] SREBRENICA POLLING MADE DIFFICULT.
[14] INADEQUATE TRANSPORT.
[15] MEDIA SHORTCOMINGS.
[16] QUESTIONABLE CAMPAIGN FUNDING.
[17] DISASTER ON THE HORIZON?
[18] CROATIA'S NEW AMNESTY LAW.
[19] CROATIAN OFFICIAL ON REFUGEE ISSUES.
[01] BOSNIAN ELECTIONS END.
Voting took place across Bosnia-Herzegovina on 14 September for six categories
of offices, international media reported the next day. OSCE monitors called
the elections one of the most complicated in history, but also described the
vote in glowing terms as a virtually flawless success (see below). Estimates
of the turnout ranged from roughly 60-80% of the electorate. The BBC pointed
out that despite stringent security measures taken by IFOR and the UN police,
only about 15% of the potential refugee voters made use of bus transportation
to cross the former front lines to vote in their old homes. Parties have
already begun exchanging charges of vote-rigging. In particular, the governing
Muslim Party of Democratic Action (SDA) and the Serbian opposition Alliance
for Peace and Progress have slammed the behavior of the governing Serbian
Democratic Party (SDS). -- Patrick Moore
[02] IZETBEGOVIC LEADS IN BOSNIAN PRESIDENTIAL RACE.
President Alija Izetbegovic is ahead of his top challenger for the Muslim seat
on the Bosnian presidency, Haris Silajdzic, by 81% to 15%, OMRI's special
correspondent reported from Sarajevo on 17 September. In the Serb race Momcilo
Krajisnik has 78%, but his opposition challenger Mladen Ivanic has 20%, which
is a remarkably strong showing given the hold of the SDS on the police and the
media. A similar development is taking place among the Croats, where Kresimir
Zubak is polling only 85% despite his Croatian Democratic Community's (HDZ)
virtual monopoly on Croatian political life. His opponent Ivo Komsic has 13%
as of 9:00 Tuesday morning. Izetbegovic narrowly leads Krajisnik in total
number of votes, which puts him in line to be the first to hold the rotating
chair of three-man presidency, Reuters noted. CNN said that final presidential
returns are expected later in the day. The complete tally for all contests is
not due until later this week. -- Patrick Moore
[03] NATIONALISTS RIDING HIGH.
OMRI correspondents in Sarajevo witnessed numerous irregularities or
provocations, such as incomplete voting lists, voters being given pencils with
which to mark their ballots, refugees not being provided with bus
transportation, and refugee polling places being set up not in normal
buildings but in a mine (see below). The correspondents gained the impression
that the "international community" was determined to call the vote a success
and hence any irregularities simply "would not matter." It appears likely that
the three nationalist parties will take the most votes across the board among
the Muslims, Serbs, and Croats, respectively, although anti-nationalists may
do well in isolated cases such as Tuzla. If so, the vote is unlikely to mark a
return of Bosnia to being a single multi-ethnic state but rather constitute
one more step on the way to a partition along ethnic lines. U.S. envoy John
Kornblum is now stressing the need to build common institutions, but it is
difficult to see how this will happen with nationalists in control of all
three groups. In event, OMRI's special correspondent reported from Sarajevo on
17 September that the Bihac pocket kingpin and enemy of Izetbegovic, Fikret
Abdic, attracted few votes in his presidential challenge. In Muslim-held
Bugojno, experts said that the bomb that blew up the home of a prominent Croat
on 13 September was the work of a professional, Onasa reported on 16
September. -- Patrick Moore
[04] BOSNIAN SERBS WANT TO PLACE JOINT INSTITUTIONS ON DEMARCATION LINE.
In the meantime, the officials of the SDS are already making plans that seem
at variance with Kornblum's. Aleksa Buha, the titular head of the SDS,
expressed worry about the location of future common governmental institutions
and said that equality must prevail, Nasa Borba and Oslobodjenje
reported on 17 September. "There was plenty of time for [the international
community's high representative] Carl Bildt and [deputy high representative]
Michael Steiner to find premises on the demarcation line between the Bosnian
Federation and the Republika Srpska, or even to build new buildings [along
that line]. I foresee further problems regarding this issue," Oslobodjenje
quoted him as saying. -- Daria Sito Sucic
[05] BOSNIAN SERB LEADER CONFRONTS SERB UNITY.
Other Serb leaders have been active as well. The Republika Srpska's (RS)
acting president and the SDS candidate for RS president, Biljana Plavsic, has
again spoken out on the question of a greater Serbia. Plavsic, in remarks
reported by Nasa Borba on 12 September, observed that there is "no peace
without the unity of all Serb lands." Plavsic also went on record as saying
that the RS "has only that sovereignty which is afforded it by the Dayton
peace agreement, and for now we are happy with that." Nevertheless, she said
"there won't always be this kind of anti-Serb climate in the world," implying
that her commitment to partitioning Bosnia remains solid. -- Stan
Markotich
[06] PLAVSIC APOLOGIZES FOR SECESSIONIST RHETORIC.
The OSCE on 13 September nonetheless ordered Plavsic to apologize on Serbian
television for making repeated calls for the breakup of Bosnia in violation of
the OSCE ban on such comments, Onasa reported. Plavsic, a hard-line
nationalist follower of indicted war criminal and de facto Bosnian Serb leader
Radovan Karadzic, read the apology three times that day. But Krajisnik said
the following day that Plavsic's statement was given under pressure and "we
will quickly forget it and move forward." -- Daria Sito Sucic
[07] WHAT IS MILOSEVIC UP TO?
But Bosnian Serb politics are not determined only in Pale. What is emerging a
question of open speculation is how Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic is
influencing parties under his control in the Republika Srpska to address, or
specifically to evade, the issue of the Bosnian Serb entity's political and
legal status. On 12 September Nasa Borba reported that Milosevic recently
held a closed-door meeting with officials from the Socialist Party of the
Republika Srpska (SPRS), including with its chairman, Zivko Radisic, who
subsequently dropped his candidacy for the RS presidency. But Radisic
maintains he was not forced to withdraw his candidacy, only that Milosevic
requested that he mute any rhetoric dealing with "the issue of unity with
Serbia because they [Milosevic's governing Socialist Party of Serbia] are
under great international pressure to recognize Bosnia and Herzegovina." The
limelight and the politicking of dealing with the RS's status, Nasa Borba,
noted, was the "hot chestnut [Milosevic] tossed into Plavsic's hands." -- Stan
Markotich
[08] IZETBEGOVIC AND MILOSEVIC TO MEET THIS WEEK.
And Milosevic may have a chestnut or two for the Muslims as well. French
Foreign Minister Herve de Charette confirmed on 16 September that Izetbegovic
and Milosevic will meet in Paris this week, AFP reported. The summit will be
the first bilateral meeting between the two presidents, although they have met
at several international conferences on Bosnia. Despite an earlier visit to
Belgrade by Ejup Ganic, the Bosnian Federation vice president, after which
communication links between the two countries were reestablished, Belgrade has
yet not formally recognized the Sarajevo government. Belgrade warned it would
not establish diplomatic ties with Bosnia until Bosnia dropped a charge of
genocide filed against rump Yugoslavia with the Hague-based International
Court of Justice. -- Daria Sito Sucic
[09] ARKAN ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL.
Returning to the elections, accused war criminal and paramilitary leader of
the Party of Serbian Unity (SSJ), Zeljko Raznatovic, alias Arkan, spoke at a
10 September rally for his SSJ presidential candidate for the Bosnian Serb
entity, Ljilja Peric-Tina. He used the occasion to blatantly revive calls for
Serbian state expansion. Despite the fact that calls for secession are in
contravention of the Dayton accord, Arkan said to his 3,000 followers: "Don't
forget one thing, your capital and that of all Serbs is Belgrade... Serbia,
Montenegro and the Republika Srpska -- that is [all] one state." In any event,
on 4 September Beta reported that the OSCE provided Arkan's party with 300,000
marks (about $222,000) in campaign funds, mainly at the expense of German
taxpayers. -- Stan Markotich
[10] "EVERYTHING WENT SMOOTHLY."
On election day itself, technically speaking, nearly everything went as
smoothly as the masters of ceremonies announced that evening in Sarajevo. They
included former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke, his
successor John Kornblum, Carl Bildt, and head of the Sarajevo OSCE office
Ambassador Robert Frowick. Virtually nobody in Bosnia expected them to say
anything different, no matter what occurred or how the other actors performed.
The masters of ceremonies were comfortably helicoptered to neatly set-up
polling stations in locations where neither dramatic nor embarrassing scenes
were likely to disturb the impression of "elections as free and fair and
democratic as one might expect here," as one of them put it.
"Minor incidents," such as incomplete voter lists; a shot here and there; a
lack of transportation in one village and empty buses in another; and voters
waiting in vain to cross the Inter-Entity Boundary Line (IEBL) could not
disturb the overall impression of a wonderful success -- a success Frowick
summarized with the relieved words, "no one was shot."
But the first reports from exhausted journalists and representatives from the
UNHCR and non-governmental organizations who returned to Sarajevo in the late
evening told a completely different story. Theirs was a story of humiliation,
despair, and inhumanity, a story created not in the least by the international
civilian and military community. But no one on the ground in Bosnia believes
that revealing the facts that brought about the celebrated electoral success
will alter the OSCE's prefabricated final word on the election's validity --
although that final word must supposedly wait for the official monitors' (none
of whom were observed at the polling sites visited by OMRI) report and the
judgment of Ed Van Thijn, Election Monitoring Group chairman.
The IEBL for Muslim refugees from the municipality of Zvornik, now in the
Republika Srpska, runs along the village of Mahala, a recent scene of clashes
between visiting Muslims, local Serbs, and RS police. On the sunny election
day, hundreds of Muslims assembled around the main square in the federation
village of Kalesija waiting for shuttle buses to bring them across the IEBL to
the polling stations in their former villages. The place was filled with a low
murmur and not the loud laughter or impassioned discussions one usually
expects at any large gathering in this part of the world. When a shabby old
bus offering at most 30 seats returned from its last run, at least 60
people silently squeezed into it. The drive to Mahala -- turned into a
fortress secured by U.S. IFOR troops and observed by the UN's International
Police Task Force (IPTF) policemen and French UN Civil Affairs representatives
-- lasted only five minutes. Days of heavy rain had turned the boundary line
area into a mud field ploughed by U.S. tanks and "Hum Vs." As agreed between
the parties, the bus was searched by federation police on the "sender's side,"$
while Republika Srpska police on the other side were supposed to accompany
it to the polling station. With OSCE support, the local RS election committees
had carefully arranged for Muslim refugee voters not to meet a single Bosnian
Serb. IFOR eagerly helped to enforce this apartheid at the polling stations,
which were often surrounded by barbed wire. The OSCE, IFOR, and the Office of
the High Representative had agreed with the parties' interior ministers on
"secure routes" that had to be used by voters driving vehicles carrying not
less than eight persons. "Well, freedom of movement may be limited today," one
friendly U.S. soldier said. Given that no refugee was allowed to continue from
the polling stations miles outside Serb-inhabited areas to his or her place
of origin, "limited" seemed far from the right word. "It's about security,
not about terms," explained the soldier.
Many refugees had no idea that they would not vote where they had registered
to vote, and that there would be no chance to at least look at their
former property or to meet a friend. Some took that news with fatalistic
silence, while others simply would not go along with it. "We registered for
Caparde, and that's exactly where you drive us now and where we are going to
vote," said young Nedim B. after discussing the problem with his fellow
refugees on the bus. The U.S. officer in charge made clear that IFOR would not
accompany the bus to Caparde, just a few miles away from the official polling
station. "It's much too dangerous," he said. "Republika Srpska police do not
guarantee your safety if you go any further than planned." An old woman who
had followed the translated exchange silently said firmly: "What do you think
we are afraid of? We survived Omarska [concentration camp]!" The discussion
became louder and increasingly emotional. Two new buses were already waiting.
No one really understood who was in charge of what. The 14 allegedly IFOR-
"protected" roads were instead called "monitored" roads. The small IFOR convoy
patrolling the area between Mahala and the polling stations "is not going any
further, period," said the soldier.
The Bosnian Serb police in charge of accompanying the buses on RS territory
said they had too few cars and personnel to provide security for anybody
driving a few miles further. The Nordic IPTF policeman, watching and listening
to the cacophony, jumped in: "The voters are free to go wherever they want."
The French UN Civil Affairs representative asked disgustedly: "Remember
Talleyrand? What can you expect in the Balkans but chaos!" Finally, the bus
returned to Kalesija. The majority of refugees from Caparde decided to believe
the threats and to vote with absentee ballots.
A single RS police car had been available to accompany all the buses traveling
between the polling stations and Mahala. The tactic behind that was simple:
the longer the procedure, the fewer Muslims vote. Finally, the police car
arrived back from one mission and headed with the next two buses for the
Grbavci polling station "in Zvornik."
"Zvornik" turned out to be a wide, muddy rock quarry surrounded by woods in
the middle of nowhere, 16 km outside the town of Zvornik. Twenty-two Bosnian
Serb policemen were standing around six supposedly unavailable police cars,
watching a humiliating scene: Just as patiently and silently as they had
waited in Kalesija for the buses to arrive, the refugees now waited in the mud
to be allowed to vote. An OSCE representative led groups of them in rows of
two toward two green army tents erected by U.S. IFOR troops at the furthest
end of the rock quarry. A Serb flag without the Republika Srpska insignia
waved above one of the tents.
In a humane gesture that seemed entirely alien in that ghastly place, U.S.
soldiers handed out cookies. "Babi Yar," commented one journalist. "Kurdistan,"$
suggested another. Overhearing those comments, a local translator replied,
"No, Zvornik!" There were many execution sites similar to this around Zvornik,
he said. "Just imagine, the families of Zvornik residents who might have
been executed right here are being brought to this very place to vote." Only
one kilometer down the road stands a row of empty houses. "It would have been
easy for OSCE's monitors to at least insist on that more decent place, even if
their superiors were not willing to insist against this apartheid voting from
the very beginning," the translator concluded angrily.
But technically speaking, "everything went smoothly." Three kilometers further
away, was the village of Lazete, the site of mass executions and a grave
containing 155 Muslim civilians from Srebrenica. Lazete's "Serbs only" polling
station was in the very school where the victims had been herded the night
before the execution, 200 meters from the mass grave. "I don't know of any
executions or Muslims held here," said an elderly man on his way to vote.
"Anyway, a school is a school," he mumbled, and turned away. Elections are
elections are elections, say the masters of the game. -- Yvonne Badal in
Sarajevo, 15 September
[11] MORE ELECTION IRREGULARITIES: KARADZIC VOTES WITHOUT INCIDENT.
Indicted war criminal Radovan Karadzic voted in person at polling station No.6
in Rakovac, near Pale, at around 3:30 p.m. on Saturday, 14 September. IPTF
spokesman Alexander Ivanko said that local UN civilian authorities "did not
think this event important and did not inform IFOR about it."
[12] OBSTRUCTIONS IN GORAZDE.
According to the UNHCR, nearly 600 voters from the Federation were unable to
cast their votes in the Serb-controlled section of Gorazde because of
obstructive behavior by the RS police and election committee members. The
police deliberately slowed down buses carrying voters from the Federation. An
ad hoc European Parliament delegation present in the rechristined "Community
of Serbian Gorazde" had strong objections to the way voting took place: "The
single polling station designated to displaced persons from the Federation
processed voters much more slowly than the five polling stations designated
for Serb voters, many of whom had been bused to Srpsko Gorazde from Belgrade,
Vukovar, and other Serb areas. By midday, ten times more Serb voters had been
able to vote than had persons who had been displaced from Gorazde. Those
figures grew increasingly out of balance while thousands waited at the IEBL
for transport to the polling station. Only the direct intervention of
observers alleviated the situation late in the afternoon, when an additional
polling station was opened." European Parliament delegation-members told OMRI
they estimated more than 1,200 people were unable to vote in the district.
[13] SREBRENICA POLLING MADE DIFFICULT.
The Srebrenica polling station for voters from the Federation was actually in
the forests ten kilometers from Srebrenica center. To reach it, voters had to
walk nearly a kilometer uphill along a muddy track.
[14] INADEQUATE TRANSPORT.
According to foreign journalists, several thousand Muslim voters from Zenica
who wanted to vote in the Serb-held town of Doboj were unable to do so because
of a lack of transportation. According to some of the refugees from Doboj,
that obstruction was orchestrated by the Muslims' own SDA. That party was
afraid to lose votes in presidential elections, since Federation voters
casting their ballots in the Republika Srpska could only vote for a Serb
candidate.
[15] MEDIA SHORTCOMINGS.
The European Institute for the Media (EIM) -- which has since 1992 monitored
the media during ten parliamentary and presidential elections in post-
Communist countries at the request of the European Commission -- carried out a
monitoring mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina from July through September. Their
preliminary report, issued in Sarajevo on 15 September, states that: "The EIM
mission found serious shortcomings in the performance of the media throughout
Bosnia and Herzegovina, especially within Republika Srpska and the Croat-
controlled part of the Federation. In both those areas, the inadequacies have
been so great as to call into question the poll itself."
[16] QUESTIONABLE CAMPAIGN FUNDING.
Doris Pack, chair of the Ad Hoc Delegation of the European Parliament, told
OMRI: "We were very unhappy and angry with the way the OSCE handled the
financing of political parties' media campaigning. It was our taxpayers' money
and to see it spent by the parties of people like Arkan or Seselj, or for TV
programs where the SDS speakers praised indicted war criminals, one must say,
that it was not given in the best way." Pack further noted that there is no
visible sign of return of refugees or freedom of movement; there is a lack of
independent media; local elections had to be canceled because of large-scale
fraud and manipulation; and thousands of voters were prevented from voting
both abroad and within the country itself. She concluded by saying: "The time
before the elections was tense and not free and fair. Preconditions were not
met. But everyone, including the opposition, wanted these elections. Elections
were wanted by the people here, they proceeded in a peaceful way, and now we
have to entrench new joint institutions and see if people are ready to move
on." -- Jan Urban in Sarajevo, 16 September
[17] DISASTER ON THE HORIZON?
But, once again, it seems that the idea of building new institutions is
somewhat less than realistic. According to IFOR's projected election results --
modeled on a statistical analysis of voter movements and on numbers of people
crossing from rump Yugoslavia into the Republika Srpska -- a "nightmare
scenario" is in the offing, with Krajisnik becoming the first president of the
new Bosnia and Herzegovina.
And the Pale media's already victorious tone and a set of ultimatums targeting
the OSCE and issued in the first hours after the polls closed are likely just
the first signs of a hardened negotiating style that the international
community may expect to encounter in the coming months. For example, an RS
government minister told OMRI on the eve of the elections that the only
compromise his government was ready to offer in the Brcko arbitration is
whether to widen the corridor connecting the eastern and western part of the
Republika Srpska from its present six kilometers to 19 kilometers. He
specifically excluded the possibility of refugee return or giving up part of
Brcko's river port, let alone a part of Brcko itself. No dramatic gestures are
expected before the automatic lifting of sanctions against Belgrade and Pale
six days after the certification of elections.
Bildt is meanwhile trying to convene a meeting of the three members of the
collective Bosnian presidency in New York before the sanctions are lifted, in
an effort to extract some promises before the threat of sanctions disappears
forever. Documents obtained by OMRI prove that IFOR and the IPTF decided two
days before the elections not to actively promote freedom of movement, both
outside the so-called Recommended Voter Routes and even within them. Instead,
IFOR and the IPTF agreed to accompany the buses and provide security on roads,
but prevent voters from traveling beyond designated special polling stations
(see above). That is understood as a clear policy decision made on the highest
level and a model for the future: no action will be taken to promote the
fulfillment of the Dayton peace accord except in areas where the agreement of
a signatory party is obtained, in this case the RS police.
The anticipated decisive victory of the HDZ in Croat areas of the Federation
strengthens speculation about future cooperation between the HDZ and the SDS
in the parliament and presidency. It is unclear whether those two
nationalist parties agree to local elections taking place under OSCE
conditions. If the 14 September elections are to be taken as an example of the
organization, transport, and blocked freedom of movement across border lines
under international supervision, it is difficult to imagine that many people
will try to exercise their right to participate in local elections across the
IEBL again. In that sense, the elections have strengthened the sense of
the inevitability of separation among people on the ground.
The presidential triumvirate is meanwhile expected to enter into discreet
negotiations on a tripartite split even before the local elections. Only
significant gains by the opposition in both the Republika Srpska and the
Federation could change that. Such gains would strengthen support for the
still-powerful faction within the SDA leadership that is genuinely fighting to
preserve a multi-ethnic Bosnia and Herzegovina. Without that support, the SDA
will be pushed to further slide toward representing a narrow nationalist
Muslim outlook as a mirror image of the SDS and HDZ. Most significant in this
sense will be the election results from Sarajevo and Banja Luka.
Many politicians on the Muslim side, moreover, feel betrayed by the "tasteless
and unfeeling" behavior of Holbrooke and the U.S. congressional monitoring
delegation he led on election day. Most of the criticism targets their self-
congratulatory tone used in the media and their far-reaching conclusions based
on insufficient information, comments many believed were an attempt to
influence the OSCE certification process. As one of the opposition leaders put
it: "They do not understand that there are still strong forces who would still
prefer a war to division of a country."
Frowick too has been criticized, but for inaction. This centers on the
seemingly non-existent efforts of the OSCE Media Experts Commission and the
only last-minute activities of the Election Appeals Sub-Commission -- two
powerful tools that his mission could have used to influence the fairness of
the campaign. Changes in the OSCE mission are expected very soon to prepare it
to function better in the next two big confrontations: the arbitration on
Brcko due by mid-December and the local elections. -- Jan Urban in Sarajevo,
16 September
[18] CROATIA'S NEW AMNESTY LAW.
One other possible flash point that seems fairly tranquil for now is Serb-held
eastern Slavonia, the last bit of Croatian territory still under Serbian
control. Jacques Klein, head of UNTAES, or the UN Transitional Administration
in Eastern Slavonia, has said that a new amnesty bill is slated to be
discussed in Croatia's parliament, Croatian Radio reported on 10 September.
According to Reuters, Croatia drafted the law on amnesty for Serbs living in
eastern Slavonia at least partly in response to mounting international
pressure demanding that rebel minority Serbs (except war criminals) fighting
against Croatia in 1991 receive a pardon. -- Stan Markotich
[19] CROATIAN OFFICIAL ON REFUGEE ISSUES.
Ivica Vrkic, the head of the Croatian government's office for eastern Slavonia,
was quoted by Hina on 11 September as saying that all citizens have legal and
constitutional rights to return to their homes. In what appeared to be a
reference to ethnic Serb refugees from western Slavonia now in eastern
Slavonia, however, Vrkic said that any mass return of displaced persons and
refugees is "not possible" and that the issue has to be resolved "gradually."
Vrkic added that "What [is]...needed first is the establishment of an open
dialogue, regardless of differences in views, so that we can solve problems of
all people affected by war." Vrkic, along with UN officials, was visiting with
local authorities in the Serb-held town of Bilje. -- Stan Markotich
Compiled by Patrick Moore and Josephine Schmidt
This material was reprinted with permission of the Open Media
Research Institute, a nonprofit organization with research offices in
Prague, Czech Republic.
For more information on OMRI publications please write to [email protected].
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