The War in Bosnia - part six

                         CHAPTER EIGHT

                       The Negotiations

           "The Second Conversation with Izetbegovic"

Many Bosnjaks have noticed the huge number of Izetbegovic's "errors." 
People were rationalizing those in different ways.  Some were convinced it
was just his inexperience that led to so many "mistakes".  After all, he
was just a lower level clerk in the judicial system until he was sentenced
for "subverting the Bosnia-Herzegovina Constitution" in 1983.  Some
thought he was unqualified to rule (Bosnia) and some thought he was too
weak.  There were others who were convinced that what appeared to be
"errors" were just the "disguised" actions and intrigue of a superbly
intelligent wisdom.  However, none of it is true.  Izetbegovic knows
diplomacy well, and he also knows enough about politics and the law to be
a good president.  I can personally testify to that.  Being convinced at
the time that he was just a misguided patriot and someone without enough
political "savvy," I spent an hour on the phone with him trying to explain
to him the consequences of negotiating.  Today it is clear that he already
knew well what the consequences could be, but unfortunately, he abused
that knowledge in order to partition the State of which he was the leader
and not to try to save it.  He broke the sacred oath he took when assuming
his office, oath under which he swore to protect the entire state of BH,
not to help and destroy it, as he has done. 

The witness to my conversation with Izetbegovic is a J. O., at that time a
manager of a Tuzla company. I can't divulge his entire name since he is
still living in Bosnia. 

I called Izetbegovic immediately after his return from Geneva, after the
first round of talks about the Vence - Owen plan, January of 1993.  In
order to explain some of his reasoning, I will cite some of that
conversation: 

When I asked him, "Mr. President, will that be a unified BH if the
Karadzic's Serbs are the legal police in Banja Luka, if we couldn't travel
through Banja Luka or over the Romania mountain, for example?"  His answer
was "can you now travel through Banja Luka or over the Romanija mountain?" 
In other words, he accepted it as a "done deal" that everything the Serbs
have conquered belongs to the Serbs.  Could Karadzic possibly have had a
better negotiating partner than Izetbegovic?  Try to imagine Stalin
regarding USSR cities of Kijev and Krakov as being German just because the
Germans have occupied them.  But that was the reasoning Izetbegovic was
using. 

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Among others, I told Izetbegovic that there can be no "ethnic borders" 
drown anywhere in BH.  If they are not drawn, the war might last another
ten years, but BH will survive. If they are drawn, the war will again last
another ten years, and when everyone is sick and tired of war, the only
thing remaining will be several little states where BH once stood, but
their will no longer be a Bosnia-Herzegovina. 

"But what will you do with the Croats? They too want us to divide up BH,"
asked Izetbegovic. 

"Those Croatians who want to divide BH are in the minority.  Even in the
HVO (the Croatian run military forces in BH) there are many Muslims.  They
(the Croats) are leaving the war zone in large numbers and would not cause
a problem if they saw that we are determined not to divide BH.  Vance -
Owen plan gives them almost one third of BH.  That is influencing the
Croats towards Bosnia's partition, rather than a united country.  The
"peace" plan will eventually cause a war between the Croats and the
Bosnian government.  That is why it would be much better if you didn't
negotiate at all, but you should insist instead on preserving BH in the
shape and size that was recognized by the rest of the world.  Croats
wouldn't dare to attack us since that could mean sanctions against them
also.  Besides, the Croats can't afford to let the Serbs overrun us
because without us, the Croats would be weaker than the Serbs.  In other
words, you must be tough with Boban (the then Croatian leader in Bosnia),
because the Croats need us too," I told Izetbegovic.

Here are a few more "pearls of wisdom" from our president Izetbegovic: "We
must negotiate.  If we don't, they will consider us as the guilty ones." 
To that I answered: " That is not correct.  A victim can not become the
guilty party in a conflict just because he refuses to negotiate with his
executioner."  To that he answered: "I know that our people would fight to
save Bosnia, but I am also sure you are aware of the pressure that the
world has put on us to negotiate.  Vance and Owen are demanding it from
us."  To which I answered: "We don't have to accept anything they ask. 
They are only the mediators.  The mediators don't dictate or judge.  Their
task is to listen to both sides and find out on which points both sides
can agree on.  At that point the mediator formulates a proposal that he
thinks might be acceptable by both sides.  Just as you can fire the agent
who is trying to negotiate on your behalf a purchase of a house, you can
do the same with Vance and Owen." 
                       
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Vance retreated soon afterwards.  Izetbegovic never "fired" Owen, who
voluntarily acted as the one responsible for the division of R BH.  Owen
stoically carried the burden of the person responsible for the division of
Bosnia, hiding from the Bosnians the fact that he can make proposals about
Bosnia's division only because Izetbegovic is willing to sign such
proposals.  Lord Owen has completely "forgotten" that he is only the
mediator, yet he behaved as someone whose job was to decide and judge.
That is how it happened that he (Owen) removed?!  Dr. Durakovic and Dr.
Filipovic from the Bosnian negotiating team in the fall Geneva 1993,
Bosnjaks who did not accept partition of the country and had the trust of
the Bosnian Assembly and the Bosnian people. Instead of immediately
ceasing negotiations in such situations, Izetbegovic continued as if
nothing has happened.  Allowing the mediator Owen to influence who will
represent BH, Izetbegovic negated Bosnian sovereignty.  That was also the
method Izetbegovic used to get BH enemies to help him in breaking
Bosnjaks resistance to the division of R BH. 

The fact that we as a party to the negotiations have the right to "let go" 
of the mediator if we don't like him was proven by Izetbegovic himself
when he fired Jasushi Akashi two and a half years later, because of the
fall of Srebrenica. However, Akashi w as "fired only so that the fault for
the fall of Srebrenica falls on only one person and thus Izetbegovic has
the excuse to retain UNPROFOR.  By removing Akashi, Izetbegovic released
the U.N. from any culpability related to the loss of "safe havens" and t
his kept the UNPROFOR in BH, even though the U.N. no longer brought food
or protected Bosnians.  Izetbegovic needed for the U.N. to stay in Bosnia,
otherwise if they left, the Arms embargo against Bosnia might have been
lifted.  The fact is that after the fall of Srebrenica, the UNPROFOR was
supposed to leave Bosnia and at the same time, the U.S. Congress passed a
bill lifting the arms embargo.  Izetbegovic kept the UNPROFOR and blamed
Akashi for the fall of Srebrenica, claiming that he would let the U.N.
stay in BH for "only another five months." The point of the above is that
Izetbegovic didn't want the embargo lifted, since then he would have no
excuse for not fighting in order to liberate all of R BH. 

But let's get back to my conversation with Izetbegovic.  When he became
restrained by the arguments about the role of the mediator (middleman) in
the negotiations, he resorted to some dirty tactics. He said: "Can you
gather 100 intellectuals to back your stand?"  He knows well that the
correctness of a particular stand is not measured in votes.  The truth
and lies are absolute categories and they don't depend on the number of
votes.  The role of a mediator is such that no matter how many votes I get
in Tuzla, he is still only the "middleman." 

Besides, he (Izetbegovic) tried to hide behind other "experts."  He told
me how many Islamic leaders urged him to negotiate.  He mentioned only
Jaser Arafat.  Supposedly Arafat told him to take whatever they are
offering him, because he (Arafat) is sorry that he didn't agree to a
Palestinian homeland that they offered him earlier.  I don't know for sure
if Arafat really told him that, but it is wrong anyway.  The big
difference is in the fact that Alija Izetbegovic already was the leader of
an internationally recognized country, meaning he already had that of
which Arafat can only dream about.  Whether Izetbegovic only invented
Arafat's advice or only used it as an argument, in either case we can see
Izetbegovic even back then accepted the death of R BH and was planing on
some future creation of a smaller Bosnian state that someone will "give"
him in place of BH. 

I concluded the conversation with Izetbegovic by repeating: "stop the
negotiations and any discussion on changes in BH constitution and borders,
don't barter."  His answer to that was: "wouldn't it be better for us to
accept the Vance-Owen plan and that they (the Serbs) don't?"  Soon
afterwards the telephone connection with Izetbegovic was lost. 

During the first part of March of 1993, Izetbegovic signed the Vance-Owen
plan in New York.  Soon afterwards, the war with the Croats started,
because they eagerly accepted this Danaian's gift by Owens.  It was clear
to me that Tudjman would eagerly accept the offer by Owens of ten major
cities (in BH) in which the Muslims were in the majority.  That would help
him (Tudjman) to forget the fact that one third of Croatia was still
occupied by the Serbs.  It was also very apparent that the Bosnjaks
(Muslims) in those cities would certainly not accept that "deal" and war
with the Croats was sure to follow.  That is exactly what happened.  The
day after Izetbegovic signed the Vance-Owen plan, the HVO (Bosnian Croats)
blocked any further deliveries of weapons t o the Bosnian government. 
Less than a month after the signing, a very bloody war started in Konjic
(April 10), to the "delight" of the "peace makers" Vance and Owen. 

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Alija Izetbegovic is a very smart man, and I am sure he understood what I
told him.  I also know that the members of the BH negotiating team in
Geneva, also told him: "if we sign the Vance-Owen plan, we will have a war
with the Croats."  Even General Ivan Siber (a Bosnian Croat), who was also
a member of the BH negotiating team told him that.  Professor Muhamed
Filipovic, Harris Silajdzic, Kasim Trnka and my brother Musadik Borogovac
(from whom I learned about much of what went on) asked and implored
Izetbegovic not to sign the Vance-Owen plan.  Nothing helped.  Within two
months Izetbegovic distanced himself from the Bosnians control and signed
the Vance-Owen plan in New York (March of 1993). 

During a conversation with Ivica Misic, a member of the BH Mission at the
U.N., I learned of one more facet of Izetbegovic's methodology: 

Izetbegovic was to have arrived in New York and I decided to write him a
letter criticizing his role in the division of BH.  The letter was sent to
the BH Mission in New York by FAX.  I called Misic and asked him to
personally deliver the letter to Izetbe govic.  He told me he would do
that because he liked the letter; "there is nothing in that letter that
even I wouldn't sign."  In addition, he said that even the members of the
Bosnian Mission at the U.N. are urging him to quit negotiating, to which
he a nswered that he is being urged by the people of Bosnia to negotiate
as soon as possible because "they can't take it any more" and are
supposedly urging him to end the war under any circumstances.  In other
words, when he is home in BH, Izetbegovic keeps c laiming that he is
forced by the "World" to negotiate, and to his own diplomats he is saying
that it is the Bosnian people who are demanding the negotiations. 

The reasons for my opposing the negotiations so hard will be explained later.


                The International Law or the Negotiations?


Every conflict between two parties can be resolved in two different ways. 
The first way is the established legal way.  That means that according to
the rules and the laws of the established authorities, a determination
will be made as to who is the guilty party and who is the victim. 
Afterwards, the victim is exonerated and the guilty party is punished.  In
the case of the war in BH, the overseeing institution is the Security
Council of the U.N., which determined that the aggressors (and the guilty
party) are Serbia, Montenegro and the JNA (Yugoslav Army), as stated by
the U.N. resolutions 752 and 757, during 1992. 

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The other way of resolving differences between parties is by negotiating. 
If the opposing parties find a common interest and are wiling to resolve
their differences by negotiating, the eventual agreement is then signed by
both parties.  The signed agreement then becomes the legal basis for
solution of any future disagreement and conflict.  The start of
negotiations between the opposing parties also signals the end of any
legal proceedings against the guilty party.  It was by agreeing to the
negotiations (instead of allowing the international community to punish
the guilty party) with the Serbs that a major mistake was made on the part
of the Bosnian government. 

Alija Izetbegovic has agreed to negotiate with the aggressors at the very
beginning of the war.  Soon after BH was recognized as a independent
country on April 7, 1992, President George Bush gave an ultimatum to the
JNA, which the Security Council has already proclaimed as the aggressor,
to withdraw from Bosnia by May 15, 1992.  But right after the ultimatum
was issued, Alija Izetbegovic went to Macedonia, where he met with the JNA
generals.  During those meetings he reached some sort of "understanding"
with the generals, of which the only result was the tying of President
Bush's hands.  How could he take any military actions against the Serbs if
the Serbs and the Bosnian government have reached an agreement?

President Bush realized what kind of person Izetbegovic was and he tried
to distance himself from BH and its problems.  Bush understood that
Izetbegovic will take the "path" of compromise with the Serbs and that the
legally simple situation in which there is a clearly defined victim and
the aggressor will bog down in a tangled knot of agreements which neither
the lawyers nor the politicians would be able to untangle. 

Because of this distancing himself from the BH quagmire, Bush was
characterized as an enemy of Bosnia.  However, the truth is that he was
neither an enemy nor a friend of BH.  He simply was a men who wanted to
literally enforce the international law, which for BH was the only true
path.  Mr. Bush gave the Europeans the mandate to solve the Yugoslav
crisis by applying all the legal means available.  Because he verbally
distanced the USA from the Yugoslav crisis, he also cleverly kept the
Russians at bay, and thus made it possible for the "New World Order"
principles to take hold and for BH to be recognized.  Although Bush was
proclaiming Yugoslavia an European crisis, he nevertheless forced Tudjman
(of Croatia) to recognize the sovereignty of BH and he als o gave an
ultimatum to the JNA generals. 

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As soon as Bush understood that Izetbegovic was moving from the field of
international law, which was clearly in BH corner, and in to the field of
negotiations with the Serbs, he realized that BH could easily become a
quagmire for anyone attempting to help.  Those are also the basis for the
later greatly reduced involvement in regards to BH.  Alija Izetbegovic
agreed to negotiate about Bosnian Constitution on London conference in
summer 1992 and to talk with Karadzic about it as early as December of
1992.  By that very gesture three major mistakes were committed: agreeing
to negotiate was the first mistake.  Allowing for Karadzic to be the
Serbian representative was the second major mistake.  The opening of the
talks on the future of the BH constitution w as the third major mistake. 

                     The Decision  to Negotiate

By the very agreement to negotiate, any action directed at punishing the
aggressor was suspended.  It is not possible for the two sides to be
negotiating at the same time that a legal process was initiated against
one of the parties.  Let's not forget that by the U.N. resolutions 752 and
757, Serbia and Montenegro were proclaimed as the aggressors and BH as the
victim.  The punishing of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) were
initiated as the result of those resolutions.  Economic sanctions were
instituted against them, followed by a total blockade.  The "new" 
Yugoslavia was not recognized as a country, it was expelled from the U.N. 
and all of the European organizations.  But by Izetbegovic agreeing to
negotiate with the Serbs, the punishment process was suspended.  Later,
during a lull in the talks, the "no fly" zone was instituted, which was of
great help to the BH Army.  All this proves that the "World" was not
Bosnia's enemy but that it tried to protect it, starting with the
recognition, on to the "no fly" zone and the NATO's bombing of the Serbs
in August of 1995.  But any new action against the Serbs was always
interrupted by Izetbegovic's agreement to negotiate with the Serbs. 


  The Decision to Accept Karadzic to be a Partner in the Negotiations

With that gesture, we went from a clear situation defined in the U.N.
resolutions 752 and 757, by which the war in BH was a case of aggression
by Yugoslavia on the independent country of Bosnia, to the Serbian claim
that Bosnian war was a civil war between the "Bosnian" Serbs, Croats and
Muslims.  With that, we made it impossible for our friends in the U.N. to
fight for any military aid for Bosnia, as the victim of aggression. 

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The point is that the subjects of international rules of law apply only to
states and not different movements within those states.  The U.N. has no
right to get involved in to internal problems of a country or in to a
civil war.  By qualifying the war in BH as an internal, civil war instead
of aggression (by the Serbs) any attempt of open military action on the
side of BH was eliminated.  There is nothing in the BH declaration that
would justify military intervention by the U.N. against one side in a " 
civil" war.  Just remember the bloody civil wars in Cambodia, Uganda and
Rwanda, in which the U.N. could not interfere. 

From the very beginning, the war in BH was looked at as the fight between
the victim and the aggressor, which was in BH favor, since the whole world
considered us to be the victims.  But the strategic Serbian propaganda
goal was to make the world forget that and look at that conflict as a war
between the Muslims and the Christians.  The Serbs have succeed completely
in that.  Let's take as an example of the success of the Serbian
propaganda a battlefield map that appeared in a Detroit newspaper in the
Spr ing of 1995: all of the Bosnian positions were marked with the Muslim
symbol, the crescent moon, while all of Serbian positions were marked with
the Christian crosses.  It is natural that the mighty Christian West
started aligning it's self with the Christian Serbs.  That Serbian
propaganda victory was won the moment that Alija Izetbegovic agreed to
negotiate about the future of BH with Karadzic and Boban (Croatian leader
in Bosnia).  With that action, the president of BH reduced himself to the
level of the leader of the Bosnian Muslims (instead of head of a state)
and fulfilled the Serbian claim of the war in BH is a religious, civil
war.  Those living in the West realize how much have the Serbs gained with
that.  The anti-Muslim hysteria has taken over in the West a long time ago
and any identification of the Bosnian Army as someone that is fighting for
Islam makes that more difficult for any friends of BH who are trying to
remove the weapons embargo.  Izetbegovic's announcement of six months
postponement for the lifting of the weapons embargo (at the U.N. General
Assembly on September 26, 1994), had as its goal the destroying of the
last chance of having the embargo against BH lifted. 

Besides that, by agreeing to negotiate with Karadzic, he helped to turn a
war criminal in to a diplomat who is now negotiating the new BH
constitution with the legally elected president of Bosnia.  We should
remember that Lawrence Eagleburger declared in the name of the American
Administration that Karadzic and Milosevic were war criminals. 

Karadzic then left Geneva in fear of being arrested.  That announcement of
the American Administration was a clear signal to Izetbegovic not to agree
to any further negotiations.  However, January 2, 1993 he resumed
negotiations with the Serbs anyway.  Because of that, everything that
Karadzic and the Serbs have done to the Bosnian people received a sort of
amnesty (for all of their sins).  The breakaway Serbs were recognized as
the legitimate Serbian authority in Bosnia, and those Serbs still loyal to
the Bosnian Government were left out.  There is no precedent for such a
speedy recognition of a rebel organization by the legitimate government. 
Let's take as an example the Kurds, Basques, North Irish or Corsicans. 
Many decades have passed, yet the legit imate authorities of Turkey, Iran
and Iraq do not recognized the right of the rebel Kurd leaders to
represent the Kurdish people.  The Basques are only considered to be
rebels by the Spanish and French authorities, with no legal standing. 
Izetbegovic knew what he was doing. Even the simple, uneducated Bosnians
realized the seriousness of his actions.  The Bosnians were appalled by
the realization that Karadzic could become a legal representative and
leader in the future Bosnia, most likely as the president of that part of
Bosnia that he has ethnically cleansed of the Muslims and Catholics, and
which he now calls "Republika Srpska." 

I must also add that by recognizing Karadzic as the representative of the
Serbs, Izetbegovic gave stature to the man responsible for the deaths of
over two hundred thousand Bosnjaks (10 % of the population), the rape of
thousands of Bosnian women, and thus he also insulted the dignity of the
Bosnian people.  Dignity of a people is not just an academic question.  By
the natives lack of "any national dignity," the English were able to
enslave many other people.  You can enslave someone who lacks any national
dignity because without it, slavery doesn't hurt as much.  To show that as
a nation we have no dignity hurt us more than the occupation of over half
of our country. 

Our dignity  was "sold out" in many ways.  Here are just a few of them:  

- The signing of all the documents placed in front of Izetbegovic.

- Constantly agreeing to less and less

- One sided acceptance of many documents and offers

- Honoring of the agreements that the other side ignored.

                 The Agreement to negotiate the BH Constitution


Agreeing to negotiate a new BH constitution with the Serbs was the third,
and the worse mistake.  A state is defined by its constitution and its
borders.  A state is carracterised by the writing of its Constitution. 
After more than two thousand years of legal governments, people came to
recognize that the constitution is the life of a state.  That is why in
all the countries of the world, the president takes an oath to protect the
constitution and the borders of his country.  A country agreeing to
negotiate its constitution is a lot like a man holding discussions about
his very life.  Imagine a man saying: "take my life, but what will I get
in return?"  Thanks to Alija Izetbegovic, that is exactly what the
negotiations on the BH constitution are leading to.  BH has agreed to
renounce its own constitution by agreeing to all the offers of a partition
based on the religious lines.  Any new "constitution" created by the
negotiations was instantly accepted by Izetbegovic, thus destroying a
thousand years old entity called Bosnia.  Whether it was the Cutilero plan
from the early 1992, the Vance Owen plan from March of 1993 or the
Owen-Stoltenberg plan of three separate ethnic states from July of 1993,
or the Tudjman-Milosevic "Union" plan from September of 1993, or the
"Contact" group plan from June of 1994, the part that changes the BH
constitution was always signed by Izetbegovic without any hesitation.  The
only "problem" Izetbegovic had was with the maps of ethnic division.
Karadzic always wanted part of Sarajervo, the wider corridor (at Brcko) 
and the enclaves.  Because of the fear for his position, Izetbegovic
couldn't announce to the residents of Bihac, Brcko, Gorazde, Srebrenica
and Sarajevo that the parts of Bosnia they defended and died for will now
be handed over to the Serbs.  That is why the Serbs have always delayed
the signing of any agreements, hoping that these strategic locations which
they would like to see in "Greater Serbia" will be also militarily taken
over by them, so that Izetbegovic would have no trouble signing them
legally over to Serbs, just as he has done with Banja Luka, Prijedor,
Kljuc, Drvar, Foca, Zvornik and many other BH cities.  Before the betrayal
of these Bosnian cities by Izetbegovic, he usually held political rallies,
where he stated that "what is ours is what the Bosnian Army controls",
which he then uses as an excuse to sign over to the Serbs the cities
occupied by them. 

The negotiations on the future of BH constitution have shown one more time
that the very fact of negotiating with the enemy about a constitution is
deadly for a nation. 

The end of the 6th part.

[END OF PART SIX]

[PART SEVEN]