President of Croatia blames Milosevic for Yugoslavia's ruin
Croatian President Stjepan Mesic is whining about the current state of Croatia, and blaming it on former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. To say that this is somewhat disingenuous would not begin to describe where things stand in the former Yugoslavia.
THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- Two men intimately involved in dismantling the Yugoslav state came face to face on Tuesday, in a confrontation that was notable both as a milestone in international law and as the first encounter of two Balkan leaders in a court examining the region's wartime atrocities.
The adversaries met under the bright lights of the international war crimes tribunal -- both aging politicians, both important players in the period when Yugoslavia spiraled into nationalist warfare and tore apart.
The president of Croatia, Stjepan Mesic, 69, was on the witness stand. Slobodan Milosevic, 61, the Serbian leader charged with war crimes, including genocide, was in the dock. Even before Mesic walked in, Milosevic called him a criminal.
What followed was an exceptional passage in Milosevic's trial. The Croatian president accused Milosevic, who was long the Serbian leader and eventually the Yugoslav president, of staging land grabs to enlarge Serbia, and of provoking warfare that created "rivers of blood."
Mesic was the first head of state to appear as a witness at the tribunal, a landmark in international law in the view of several jurists following the trial.
During almost four hours of testimony, the Croatian president calmly took the court back over a decade, to the planning of the breakup of Communist Yugoslavia. That nation had been created by Tito, who after World War II fashioned the jigsaw of six semi-autonomous republics.
Prosecutors consider Mesic a vital witness because he was the last Croatian to have been president of the Yugoslav Federal Republic before its breakup. He assumed that position in July 1991.
Mesic confirmed that a crucial meeting took place at the end of March 1991 between Milosevic and Croat leader Franjo Tudjman, who died in 1999. The two men talked at the meeting about carving up Bosnia and Herzegovina and dividing it between them, he said. The meeting took place at Karadjorgevo, on the Serbia-Croatia border, three months before large-scale fighting began and Serbian rebels occupied a third of Croatian territory.
The meeting, which became public knowledge only a year later, was crucial because it signaled that dismemberment of the state would become a reality, Mesic said. Milosevic always denied that such a meeting took place.
Mesic said that he had not been at the meeting, but that Tudjman had briefed him and several other top politicians a few days later. "Tudjman had always been in favor of Bosnia and Herzegovina remaining one entity," he said. "But after that meeting, Tudjman changed his opinion."
"Milosevic told him, `Franjo, you take Turkish Croatia, I don't need that,' " Mesic said. Turkish Croatia meant the northwestern corner of Bosnia, which had a large Muslim population. "The public did not know what was discussed in Karadjorgevo. But the agreement began to work on the ground. Separate parts of Bosnia began to announce their independence."
1991, Tudjman and Milosevic met to carve up what was then Yugoslavia. The resulting wars can largely be laid to the plans and schemes agreed to at that meeting. To come back 11 years later and attempt to assess blame for the shortcomings and deceptions perpetrated by your own government is, to me, the height of arrogance and refusal to accept responsibility.
During my time in Croatia, I saw and heard nothing that led me to believe that Croats were anything but thrilled to have their homeland back and free once again. For their President to turn around and blame Milosevic for their current sad state of affairs is absurd. Decision have consequences; Croatia's are no different. It's time to quit trying to assess blame and deal with the realities that the decisions of your government have created. Croatia needs leadership and vision to pull itself out of it's self-made hole, not whining and buck-passing. Deal with it and move on....
