3A - The Michigan Daily - Monday, October 2, 1995
4
i a
U communiy disagrees on
importance o Serb airstrikes
ly Joyce Barretto ment with as little combat as possible.
,or the Daily Jacobsen, however, suggested that
With negotiations underway among through airstrikes, the United States "risks
3osnian factions, the debate over the becoming identified with one side of the
iecessity of U.S. intervention contin- conflict,"increasingthechanceofattacks
ies in Congress and on campus. on the American soldiers, he said.
NATO began bombing Serb targets Tanter said the United States has no
ast month in retaliation fora Serb shell- choice but to take part in peacekeeping
ng of a Sarejevo marketplace. The implementation. "The U.S. is the leader
irstrikes continued until the Serbs of the western world. ... Military in-
igreed to demilitarize their stronghold volvement comes with the role of being
Af Banja Luka. a great power," he said.
"I think the airstrikes gave impetus to Many members of Congress from
he negotiations and contributed to pres- both parties oppose sending U.S. troops
ure to bring about an agreement," said to Bosnia. Whether they will attempt to
)olitical science Prof. Harold K. Jacobsen. prevent the deployment is still unknown.
Rackham graduate student Jennifer "If the United States is not willing to
Tilton said, "If it's true thafthe bombing commit enough intervention ... then
ed to the peace talks, NATO should feel they are wasting their time and re-
'ery silly for not having done it earlier." sources," said Engineering junior Ken
Political science Prof. Raymond Patterson.
anter disagreed. "I think that the With the help of U.S. mediators, the
irstrikes weren't as important as mili- Bosnians, Croats and Serbs have agreed
ary victories on the ground by the gov- on a constitution providing a shared
,rnment of Croatia," he said. presidency and parliament, both made
President Clinton is urging Congress up of two-thirds Muslim-Croats and
tnd the American people to support the one-third Serbs. Bosnia will remain a
teployment of 25,000 U.S. troops in single state, but the issue over how the
Bosnia. The President's position is that territory will be divided is unresolved.
4ATO's recent bombing campaign, in Assistant Secretary of State Richard
ddition to Croatian gains, make it pos- Holbrooke is in Serbia negotiating a
ible to limit the peacekeeping assign- cease-fire.
AP PHOTO
A wounded Serbian volunteer guard member is carried away as a Bosnian Serb soldier looks on along front line positions on
Mt. Manjaca yesterday.
a
Distrust
thireatens
aliance
inBosni
From Daily Wire Services
KULEN VAKUF, Bosnia-
Herzegovina - In the complex patch-
work of the Balkan war, this riverfront
swatch is a peaceful one. Bosnian Serb
rebels have been chased away, ending
three years of occupation. And hun-
dreds of mostly Muslim residents are
lining up to rebuild their ruined homes.
But trouble on a narrow bridge that
spans east and west belies the village's
long-awaited tranquillity. An uproar
over a barricade of sandbags and barbed
wire illustrates how distrust is tearingat
the seams of the Croat-Muslim allian
in Bosnia-Herzegovina - and threat-
ens to unravel delicate U.S.-led peace
talks in the region.
A Bosnian police officer, working
crossword puzzles on a concrete stocp,
guards the bridge's unobstructed east-
ern entrance. Overhead, a Bosnian flag
dangles from a broken electrical wine.
On the river's west bank, beyond
rickety planks that fill a treacherous
gap in the bridge, a Croatian army sol-
dier patrols a shoulder-high mound of
sandbags and barbed wire. Above him,
a Croatian flag flaps in the autumn
breeze.
"All of this over here is Croatia, and
all of that over there is Bosnia," the
soldier, Mile Smolcic, said. "I've ward
adjustments are going to be made to the
map."
The mangled Kulen Vakuf brilge,
built years ago as a local link for villag-
ers, has been transformed by the
Croatian army into a self-proclaimed
international frontier - even though
the internationally recognized border
between Bosnia and Croatia is four
miles away.
The two sides are not warring across
the disputed divide - the Croatis and
Bosnians are allies against the rebel
Serbs - but the Croatian arn has
orders not to allow Bosnians to pass the
fortification into the village's western
side. The order has infuriated retrning
Muslims, who make up 95 percent of
the population.
"We don't care who is Musln and
who is Croat - we just want to live
again in our town," said Mahmut
Vajzovic, among the first villagers to
return home. "We want freedom of
movement. We've had enough of this
war."
The emotional standoff here, though
involving only a small village ina small
corner of northwest Bosnia, reflects
deepening - and potentially calami-
tous - fissures in the fragile Muslim-
Croat alliance, the greatest diplomatic
achievement of the 41-month-old
Bosnian war.
The bridge dispute strikes atthe heart
of Bosnian insecurities aboiut their
Croatian allies, who have Icng been
suspected of having eyes for Bosnian
territory. Over the summer, Croatian
President Franjo Tudjman reportedly
drew a map on the back of a dinner
napkin showing Bosnia meted out be-
tween Croatia and Serbia, and even
today, Croatian government officials
do not rule out such a scenario.
"Croatia would rather have Bosnia-
Herzegovina remain as a whole state,
but if that is not possible... Croats there
would have no other option than to
create some sort of connection with
Croatia," said Bosiljko Misetic,
Croatia's deputy prime minister.
"Croats can't just continue giving up
forever in Bosnia."
For the past few months, Muslims
and Croats in Bosnia have been on the
same warring side, thanks to a U.S.-
brokered agreement betweco Tudjman
and Bosnian , President Alija
Izetbegovic, who heads the Muslim-led
but secular Bosnian govermnent.
The so-called Bosnian-Croat federa-
tion turned a chaotic three-way war-in
which Serbs, Croats and Muslims in
Bosnia were fighting one another-into
a two-sided conflict. Withoat the federa-
tion, the current U.S.-led peace effort
would be impossible; its cpllapse, ana-
lysts say, would send the tals into a free
fall andprovokeabloody landrush-across
Bosnia by all three ethnic groups.
In talks with Tudjman yesterday, U.S.
Assistant Secretary of State Richard
Holbrooke again raised the issue of the
federation, which U.S. mediators con-
sider a cornerstone of any peace settle-
ment but which skeptics believe
Tudjman pays only lip service to.
"For four years Tudjnn has wanted
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