4 November 2003 Morning Edition

Kosovo News

· PM calls for action on KLA photo (Beta)
· Nordic defence ministers consider troop reduction in Kosovo (AFP)
· Scandinavian defence ministers visit Kosovo (dpa)
· Senior Nordic defense officials visit troops in Kosovo (AP)
· U.S. diplomat to visit Pristina, Belgrade (dpa)
· CoE should adopt resolution on human rights in Kosovo-Metohija (Serbian Government)
· Resolution on protection of human rights in Kosovo and Metohija necessary (Tanjug)

Regional News

· Serbia appeals for help in search for war crimes fugitive Mladic (AFP)
· U.S. restoring normal trade with Serbia (Reuters)
· US resumes normal trade relations with Belgrade (B92)
· Construction of Durres- Kukes Road a Priority for the Albanian Government (SE Times)

Other News

· Owen rails at Milosevic over failure to sway Serbs (Guardian)
· Owen says Milosevic was not racist but could have stopped ethnic cleansing
(The Independent)
· From Bosnia to Baghdad (Washington Post)

BELGRADE -- Monday – Serbia’s prime minister has called on the international community to react to a photo published in a Belgrade newspaper today showing a group of people dressed in uniforms of the outlawed Kosovo Liberation Army holding a number of severed heads.

Zoran Zivkovic used the continuation of a no confidence debate in his government today to appeal to the United Nations mission in Kosovo, the multinational peacekeeping force and the international community as a whole to identify the people in the photo in Vecernje Novosti, arrest and convict them.

“We kept being told in The Hague [war crimes tribunal] that there’s no evidence of war crimes committed in Kosovo by the Albanian side”, said Zivkovic. “Now we have a document and it takes just a little effort to identify the people in the photo and convict them”.

Nordic defence ministers consider troop reduction in Kosovo

PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro, Nov 3 (AFP) - Defense ministers from four Nordic countries visited Kosovo on Monday in a brief mission to assess possible reduction of the NATO-lead peacekeeping mission (KFOR) in the UN-administered province.

Svend Aage Jensby of Denmark, Seppo Kaeaeriaeinen of Finland, Kristin Krohn Devold of Norway and Leni Bjoerklund of Sweden, were accompanied by ambassador Kristin Arnason, representing Iceland, whose country has no regular armed forces.

Bjoerklund said the commitment of the Nordic countries to the region was long-term, despite the planned troop reduction within the KFOR mission.

"We are travelling together to get an impression on how to downsize KFOR ... and match it with UNMIK and see that we obtain what we are here for: a peaceful solution of the problem and for the people of Kosovo," Bjoerklund said.

The officials met with KFOR commander Holger Kammerhoff as well as the chief of UN mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), Harri Holkeri.

KFOR numbers some 20,000 troops and is in charge of security in the province. Albanian-dominated Kosovo has been under UN administration since June 1999.

Scandinavian defence ministers visit Kosovo

Pristina (dpa) - Defence ministers from four Scandinavian countries - Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland - arrived Monday on a two day visit to Kosovo to consider reducing the numbers of their peacekeeping troops in the country.

``The Nordic ministers of defence are travelling together to get an impression on how to do the downsizing of the KFOR as suitable as possible to match it with UNMIK'', Swedish Defence Minister, Leni Bjorklund, told reporters at UNMIK headquarters.

``Western Balkans is an important part of Europe and we are European countries,'' she said in explaining the commitment of Scandinavian countries to Kosovo.

The Swedish minister, who was accompanied by her counterparts from Denmark, Finland and Norway, also said her country would wait for a NATO assessment on the downsizing of KFOR.

The delegation met on Monday with the head of the United Nations mission in Kosovo, former Finnish prime minister Harri Holkeri, and with the commander of the NATO-led KFOR force. They also visited the Swedish military camp Victoria, which is located near Kosovo's capital Pristina.

Finland has 800 soldiers in Kosovo, Sweden 700, Norway 400 and Denmark 350.

Senior Nordic defense officials visit troops in Kosovo

By FISNIK ABRASHI

CAMP VICTORIA, Serbia-Montenegro (AP) _ Senior defense officials from Nordic countries arrived Monday in Kosovo for a two-day visit aimed at assessing their troop contribution in the NATO-led peacekeeping force in this troubled province.

Defense ministers from Sweden, Finland, Denmark and a Norwegian state secretary kicked off their visit at Camp Victoria, the Swedish peacekeepers' base some 10 kilometers (6 miles) east of Kosovo's capital Pristina.

Leni Bjoerklund, the Swedish defense minister, said she and her colleagues discussed with international officials ways of downsizing the 21,000-strong NATO-led peacekeeping force without jeopardizing the province's political process. Nordic countries have some 2,250 troops serving in Kosovo.

The battalions of Nordic countries are part of the NATO-led peacekeeping force. The force had 50,000 troops deployed immediately after the war in 1999. As the situation improved in the province, the force's size has decreased.

Finland has about 800 soldiers deployed in Kosovo, Sweden has 700, Norway 400 and Denmark 350.

The ministers met with the top U.N. official in Kosovo, Harri Holkeri, and the head of the NATO-led peacekeepers here, Lt. Gen. Holger Kammerhoff.

Kosovo has been administered by the United Nations and NATO-led peacekeepers since June 1999, when the alliance's air war forced a halt to a crackdown by Serb forces on independence-seeking ethnic Albanians.

U.S. diplomat to visit Pristina, Belgrade

Pristina (dpa) - U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Marc Grossman will visit Pristina and Belgrade this week during a European trip, the U.S. diplomatic office in Pristina announced Monday.

The U.S. diplomat will meet Wednesday in Pristina with the head of the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) and with leaders of the Provisional Institutions of Self-Government (PISG) and other political leaders in Kosovo.

``In his meetings with local and international officials, including representatives of Kosovo's minority communities, Mr. Grossman will discuss the international community's efforts to help UNMIK and the PISG operationalize the 'standards before status' benchmarks set by the international community,'' a statement from the U.S. office in Pristina said.

The ``standards before status'' policy was adopted more than a year ago by the U.N. in Kosovo. It requires certain standards to be achieved in Kosovo prior to initiating the resolution of its final status.

Kosovo leaders have largely dismissed the policy lately as unrealistic and demanded a parallel approach, arguing that Kosovo's unresolved status is hampering its democratization and economic development.

Since the end of the war in June 1999, Kosovo is a U.N.-administered protectorate, formally remaining a part of Serbia and Montenegro. Its final status has yet to be decided.

The Kosovo Albanian majority wants full independence, while Kosovo Serb minority and Serbian officials want Kosovo returned to their authority or partitioned along ethnic lines.

During his five-day European trip, Grossman will also visit Paris, Brussels, Belgrade and Skopje.

CoE should adopt resolution on human rights in Kosovo-Metohija

Serbian Government

Belgrade, Nov 3, 2003 - Speaker in the Parliament of Serbia-Montenegro Dragoljub Micunovic said that Serbia-Montenegro will keep the issue of human rights violation in Kosovo-Metohija open in the Council of Europe (CoE) until the CoE adopts a binding resolution on the protection of human and minority rights in the province.

After meeting with Serb representatives from Kosovo-Metohija, Micunovic said that he believed that Serbia-Montenegro was on the right path in its coordinated activities in defending the rights of Serbs in the province, adding that there was a widespread consensus on that issue in the state union's parliament.

Serbian Deputy Prime Minister and Head of the Coordinating Centre for Kosovo-Metohija Nebojsa Covic said after the meeting that the issues of solving human rights problems and decentralising the province's institutions have been launched in the CoE.
He said that the existence of certain "parallel institutions" in the province was necessary so that the Serb ethnic community in Kosovo-Metohija could survive.

Head of Povratak Coalition caucus in the Kosovo Assembly Dragisa Krstovic expressed hope that the CoE would do everything to promote human rights in the province so that Serbs in Kosovo-Metohija could obtain better living conditions.

Resolution on protection of human rights in Kosovo and Metohija necessary

BELGRADE, Nov 3 (Tanjug) - Serbia and Montenegro Assembly President Dragoljub Micunovic said on Monday that the issue of Kosovo and Metohija, first and foremost of human rights, will be kept permanently open "with the ambition that there will soon be a resolution that will be binding for all states to protect human and minority rights in Kosovo and Metohija."

Micunovic, following a meeting with representatives of Serbs from Kosovo and Metohija, said he believed that we were on a good way of defending the human rights of Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija, with joint forces, and full consensus, assessing that in the Assembly of Serbia and Montenegro there was a wide consensus on the issue.

Serbia appeals for help in search for war crimes fugitive Mladic

LISBON, Nov 3 (AFP) - Serbia-Montenegro President Svetozar Marovic urged his fellow countrymen on Monday to cooperate with the authorities in their search for Bosnian Serb genocide suspect Ratko Mladic.
"We do not know where he is," he told reporters here following talks with Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Manuel Durao Barroso. "Therefore looking for him cannot be a job just for us."

His comments came less than two weeks after a Serbian newspaper published a poll which showed the vast majority of Serbs would not tell police if they knew the whereabouts of Mladic, one of the UN war crimes court's most wanted fugitives.

Mladic has been indicted for genocide and war crimes for his part in atrocities committed during Bosnia's 1992-95 war by the court, which is based in The Hague.

Together with his former political boss, Radovan Karadzic, he is accused of genocide for allegedly ordering the massacre of some 7,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995, Europe's worst single atrocity since World War II.

But many Serbs consider Mladic a hero and posters, T-shirts and badges depicting the fugitive are sold on the streets of Belgrade.

Half of the 300 people surveyed in Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia said they would actively help him avoid arrest and most said they would probably shake his hand or buy him a drink if they met him on the street, the survey published by Vesti newspaper on October 22 showed.

Serbian police launched a search for Mladic late last month in the outskirts of Belgrade following an anonymous tip-off but failed to find him.

Prime Minister Zoran Zivkovic has since said Mladic's capture is a priority for Serbia and he has warned police would react to any plausible tip-offs which might lead to his detention.

Officials in Belgrade had previously dismissed allegations that Mladic is hiding in Serbia, saying he was probably in the mountainous east of Bosnia near the Serbian border.

U.S. restoring normal trade with Serbia

WASHINGTON, Nov 3 (Reuters) - The United States said on Monday it has decided to restore normal trade relations with Serbia and Montenegro, a move Belgrade expects to stimulate the economy by sharply reducing the U.S. tariffs on Serbian goods.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell determined Serbia and Montenegro has met the conditions set by Congress and normal trade relations will resume in 30 days after a break of 11 years, department spokesman Adam Ereli told a daily briefing.
The change will dramatically cut tariffs on Serbian imports into the United States, in some cases by more than 70 percent, and trade with the United States is expected to expand by $300 million in the first year alone, one official added.

The United States revoked normal trade relations with the former Yugoslavia in 1992 because of Belgrade's support for Serbian paramilitary forces accused of ethnic cleansing and other abuses in the Balkan wars, officials said.

``Belgrade's relationship with Bosnia and Herzegovina has been fundamentally transformed. Serbia and Montenegro has adopted a policy of cooperation and partnership with its neighbors and the international community,'' Ereli said.

Restoring normal trade would also encourage the kind of domestic economic reforms Washington favors, he added.

An official from the Embassy of Serbia and Montenegro in Washington said the decision would cut tariffs on Serbian goods to about 2 percent from about 40 percent.

``It will be a great boost to the economy,'' added the official, who asked not be named.
A State Department official said the tariff cuts varied according to category. Some would fall from 60 percent to 5 percent, and some from 73 percent to zero.

Serbia and Montenegro is the new name for what is left of the former Yugoslavia, which once included what are now the independent states of Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia and Macedonia.

US resumes normal trade relations with Belgrade (B92)

WASHINGTON -- Monday – The United States confirmed today it has decided to resume normal trade relations with Serbia-Montenegro, three years since the overthrow of the Milosevic regime.

“Normal trade relations status was revoked in 1992 in response to support by the Milosevic regime for ethnic cleansing and other acts of aggression and human rights abuses in Bosnia and by the army of Republika Srpska and Serb paramilitary forces,” said State Department spokesman Adam Ereli.

“Since then, and in the context of both the 1995 Dayton Accords and particularly since the fall of Milosevic in 2000, Belgrade’s relationship with Bosnia and Herzegovina has been fundamentally transformed.

“Serbia-Montenegro has adopted a policy of cooperation and partnership with its neighbours and the international community, as well as beginning to implement tough measures necessary for economic reform after a decade of sanctions.”

Ereli said that the decision would come into effect in 30 days. The move, he said, underscored Washington’s support for reform and economic growth, “a key component to maintaining stability in the region”.

Construction of Durres- Kukes Road a Priority for the Albanian Government

By Orest Erzeni for Southeast European Times in Tirana - 03/11/03

Construction of a road linking Albania's main port of Durres with the country's northernmost city, Kukes, is a key part of the government's strategy for developing the national road network during the period 2003-2005. The road will link the east-west and north-south regional corridors and will thus be one of Albania's major road axes. It will also be one of the most difficult to construct.

Under the final plan, approved at a meeting of the national council of roads on 7 October, the four-lane road will be 175km long and is expected to cost more than 256m euros. Two additional plans were presented at the meeting, which was chaired by Prime Minister Fatos Nano. One envisaged a 250km-long road costing 213m euros. The decision was made in favour of the plan which called for the shortest road, one which could be traveled within two hours.

The Durres-Kukes road is a priority for the government, Nano declared, adding that it will create the best possibilities for integrating the national market and strengthening co-operation links with neighbouring countries in a region that is becoming more and more open and integrated. The government's strategy for developing Albania's road network has been developed in co-ordination with the World Bank, the European Bank for Investments (EIB), the EBRD, and relevant EU agencies, Nano said.

The regional implications are clear. The road will not simply end in Kukes, but will link up with Morina, on the Albania-Kosovo border, thus providing a connection between Pristina and the Adriatic Sea. The idea for constructing a road from Durres to Kukes, and beyond that to Pristina, was originally put forward by former Prime Minister Pandeli Majko in 1999.The vehicle tax which he introduced in order to finance the road became known as the "Majko Tax".

The proposal has broad support in Kosovo, where a link with the Adriatic is seen as providing new opportunities for economic development. The Association of the Communes in Kosovo and the Association of the Municipalities of Albania have signed a joint document pledging to establish local government co-operation along the whole length of the projected Durres-Pristina road, with the aim of accelerating its construction. The project has the support of all major political forces within Albania and, according to officials in Tirana, is backed by NATO authorities.

A feasibility study by the World Bank was completed just prior to the meeting at which the road project was approved. The Albanian government has secured international financing for some segments of the road, while others will be realised through domestic financing, including the "Majko tax." A special role is being given to the engineering corps of the Albanian Army, which has significant experience with building roads in difficult mountain zones.

Albania has generally been successful in securing international participation and financing for its national road projects. In July, it signed an agreement with the World Bank on an 11m euro credit for a road maintenance project; this was an addition to the 14.5m euros which the Bank had provided earlier for the same purpose. Financing for a 30.5km segment of Corridor 8, linking Elbasan and Librazhd, has been secured from the EBRD and the Italian government. The EIB has provided funds for the 34km segment of the road linking Vlora city with Fieri, which will cost 17.5m euros. The 65m euro, 82km Fieri-Tepelena segment, meanwhile, is also being built with financing from the EIB and the EBRD.

The Albanian government has begun to award concessions for different road segments. It has already approved a concession for the first, 55km-long Rogozhine-Tirana-Thumane segment, which will cost 150m euros. This project will give Albania its first highway which meets European measures and criteria.

The national roads strategy is oriented towards creating the most efficient connections between Albania's road network and the lines of communication in neighbouring countries. To this end, roads linking the border points are included as part of the construction programmes. The EU and World Bank are funding construction of the Three Bridges-Carshove segment, with a link to the Greek border, as well as the Sarande-Konispol road, which also continues up to the Greek border. A segment between Shkodra's Buna Bridge and Muriquan provides a link to the border with Montenegro. For the road connection with Macedonia, work is going on in the Qukes-Qafe Thane, Peshkopi-Blace and Gorice-Liqenas segments.

Another key part of the national strategy is the establishment of links with the seacoast tourist areas. The Vlora-Saranda road along the country's southern seacoast, the Velipoja road in the northern seacoast area, and the Divjaka and Seman roads in the middle part of Albania are all being constructed with this goal in mind.

Owen rails at Milosevic over failure to sway Serbs

Ian Black in The Hague - The Guardian

Slobodan Milosevic fatally failed to pressure fellow Serbs to end the Bosnian war, Lord Owen, the former president's old negotiating partner told the UN war crimes tribunal yesterday.

But he depicted Mr Milosevic, facing genocide charges for his role in the war, as a pragmatic nationalist who made a "massive mistake" a decade ago in not exerting what influence he had. Lord Owen, a former foreign secretary, spent three years mediating in the Balkan conflict.

The former Serbian and later Yugoslav president is charged with shared responsibility for ethnic cleansing, the siege of Sarajevo and the Srebrenica massacre, Europe's worst atrocity since the second world war.

"Milosevic is not fundamentally racist," Lord Owen told the Hague court, now in its 21st month of hearing the case. "He is a nationalist, but even that he wears very lightly. He's a pragmatist who wanted the Serbs to be in the majority. I don't think he was an ethnic purist."

Lord Owen stepped down in 1995, shortly before the US-led Nato intervention that led to the Dayton peace agreement, where he acknowledged Mr Milosevic's "helpful" role.

Lord Owen, criticized for underplaying the role of Serbian aggression, appeared as a neutral "court witness" because he wanted to protect the position of international mediators.

Under cross-examination, Lord Owen addressed Mr Milosevic directly, saying the defendant had tried to make the world believe that the Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic - both wanted for genocide and still at large - were beyond his control.

"I think you knew perfectly well that I knew that that was not the truth," he said.

The prosecution is seeking to produce more evidence of clear links between Mr Milosevic and the Bosnian Serb leaders in Pale, their capital.

Establishing Mr Milosevic's responsibility for Bosnia is difficult, since at the time he was president only of Serbia, unlike in the Kosovo conflict in 1999, when he was president of federal Yugoslavia.

Lord Owen said Mr Milosevic should have cut off fuel and other supplies to the Bosnian Serbs in 1993 when they failed to accept the peace plan he co-authored with Cyrus Vance, the US envoy. The plan, dividing Bosnia into 10 ethnic cantons, was accepted by the Muslims, but the Serbs said it gave them too little territory.

"I don't mind admitting that I failed to mobilize the western world to interdict the supply lines," Lord Owen told Mr Milosevic. "But why did you fail to use your influence to cut the supplies off?"

The defendant answered: "I endeavored to wield my influence, but quite obviously that was not strong enough."

Mr Milosevic denies 66 charges of war crimes, which the prosecutors say were part of a conspiracy to create a pure "greater Serbia".

Lord Owen testified that in April 1993, Mr Milosevic had expressed concern about a confrontation between Muslim and Serbian forces at Srebrenica, where more than 7,000 Muslims were murdered in 1995.

"He feared that if the Bosnian Serb troops entered Srebrenica there would be a bloodbath, because of the tremendous bad blood that existed between the two armies," Lord Owen said.

Owen says Milosevic was not racist but could have stopped ethnic cleansing

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic and Stephen Castle – The Independent

The former Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, was "fundamentally not a racist" but a nationalist who failed to use his power to stop the Bosnian war and prevent two years of slaughter, the EU's former peace envoy said yesterday.

Lord Owen told the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague that Mr Milosevic harnessed Serb nationalism for his own political ends, but failed to use his influence to end the Balkan conflict. Mr Milosevic faces 66 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.

"He was in charge of a government that could stop [Bosnian Serbs] from shelling Sarajevo and stop ethnic cleansing," said Lord Owen. "If he would have done that, it would have brought peace to Bosnia two years earlier."

Lord Owen argued that Mr Milosevic's main aim in fomenting Serb nationalism was to keep himself in power.

As the EU's peace envoy and co-author of a peace plan drawn up in the early stages of the war, Lord Owen's evidence was carefully balanced and given with half an eye to defending his own record as an interlocutor with the accused. A strong theme of his testimony was the opportunity lost when the plan he co-authored with the American diplomat Cyrus Vance was spurned.

The blueprint for peace, which was accepted by Bosnian Muslims, would have divided Bosnia into 10 ethnic regions. Bosnian Serbs rejected it at the crucial session of their parliament in May 1993, arguing that it awarded them too little land.

At times Lord Owen was sharply critical of Mr Milosevic who, he said, tried to make the world believeBosnian Serbs were beyond the control of Belgrade when he "knew perfectly well that was not the truth".

"I believe he did have that power. I know at times he felt he didn't, but at that time his power and influence over the Bosnian and Croatian Serbs was strong," said Lord Owen.
But he portrayed Mr Milosevic's influence over the Bosnian Serbs as being in sharp decline after that crucial moment. That could bolster Mr Milosevic's claim that, at the time of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, he had no control over the Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic.

Lord Owen also testified that, more than two years before the fall of the enclave, Mr Milosevic expressed concern about a confrontation between Muslim and Serbian forces.
"He feared that if the Bosnian Serb troops entered Srebrenica there would be a bloodbath because of the tremendous bad blood that existed between the two armies," he said.

Nevertheless, Lord Owen said Mr Milosevic had a "measure of command" over Bosnian Serb forces and that he had been urged, "time and time again" to cut off their fuel supplies and ammunition to force them to stop fighting.

More than 7,000 Muslim men were killed after the Bosnian Serb army overran the enclave of Srebrenica. The massacre is an important element in the genocide charge against Mr Milosevic.

From Bosnia to Baghdad

By Richard Cohen – Washington Post

Last week I wrote on why we are not in Vietnam. I mentioned a 1965 speech that Lyndon Johnson gave at Johns Hopkins University, "Why We Are in Vietnam," and a book Norman Mailer published two years later with a similar title but a very different slant. Today's column could be called "Why We Are in Bosnia," and it is written in the hope, a bit forlorn after the recent attacks on American troops in Iraq, that I am right. I am a bit tired of being wrong.
I was wrong about Bosnia. I thought -- along with Colin Powell and many others -- that it would be a mistake for the United States to intercede in the civil war there. I feared that if we put a toe into the Balkans, we would soon be up to our necks in an awful guerrilla war -- in other words, a quagmire.
My misreading of the situation in Bosnia was hardly the product of armchair thumb-sucking. I went to Bosnia (and Croatia) during the war and viewed the topography with trepidation. Much of the country was heavily forested and mountainous, with poor, two-lane roads. It seemed invincible to air power, not the triple canopy of the Vietnam jungle, but close enough. I was aware also that during World War II, Yugoslav partisans had tied up whole German divisions. The place reeked of Vietnam.
It is Vietnam, of course, that comes to mind now with Iraq. That's not only understandable but prudent. The United States should never forget the lessons of Vietnam, not only the ones we learned on the battlefield but also what we learned about having clear war aims and keeping the American people honestly informed. The Bush administration has obviously forgotten the one about candor. It exaggerated the Iraqi threat.
But for some of us who supported the war in Iraq, Vietnam was not the only lesson. Bosnia was one also. It became something of a tipping point. Whatever doubts we had about the threat Iraq posed -- especially the constant hyping of a nuclear program that turned out, as some of us suspected, to be nonexistent -- the chance to eradicate unmitigated evil, the Saddam Hussein regime, spoke louder. In Bosnia we had heard only what Madeleine Albright, in her memoir, "Madam Secretary," calls "the Vietnam bug" humming in our ear. It distracted many of us.
So for the longest time, the United States and NATO did next to nothing in the Balkans. As with Iraq, the United Nations passed multiple resolutions calling for an end to the fighting. NATO and the United Nations established no-fly zones and so-called safe zones. Europe was hopeless. Ultimately, some 7,000 unarmed Muslim men and boys were massacred by Serb forces at Srebrenica. It was one of the U.N. safe zones.
If Vietnam taught the United States to stay out of Iraq, Bosnia taught just the opposite. As in Iraq, here, too, the United Nations was proving ineffective. Here, too, Europe was eschewing force in favor of constant and ineffective negotiations. Finally, Bill Clinton acted and pounded Bosnian Serb positions. Air power proved effective, and by the end of 1995 the Dayton Accords were signed. Significantly, the United States and NATO had what was to be lacking in postwar Iraq -- a workable plan to secure the peace.
For me, Iraq suggested Bosnia all over again. Hussein, too, massacred his enemies at will. He, too, was a megalomaniac sociopath, much like Slobodan Milosevic and his Bosnian Serb button man, Gen. Ratko Mladic. He, too, had violated countless U.N. resolutions, and he, too, took the measure of Europe and NATO and found them ultimately spineless. (Germany and France wanted sanctions lifted.) The world would yammer and negotiate until, finally, it lost interest.
The Bosnian precedent is worth bearing in mind. It does not trump Vietnam -- nothing does -- but it significantly modifies it. It was only by overcoming the lessons of Vietnam (and reexamining the lessons of the Holocaust) that the United States, leading NATO as it always must, put an end to the Serbian rampage in the Balkans. This -- the application of force to end a human rights nightmare -- was the bottom line for me. The Balkans had proved it could be done. The Balkans had proved that without U.S. leadership, nothing would be done.
Choose your lesson: Vietnam or Bosnia. I chose Bosnia, vowing never again to be what the late Arthur Koestler once called "an accomplice by omission." I may have made the wrong choice, and the recent downing of a U.S. helicopter (16 dead) seems to suggest so. But one incident, no matter how horrible, does not decide a war, and our choice now is only to persevere. For a variety of reasons, we are not in Vietnam. Let us hope we are in Bosnia instead.