Page 1

FOCUS - 2 of 4 DOCUMENTS Copyright 1995 The New York Times Company The New York Times January 13, 1995, Friday, Late Edition - Final SECTION: Section A; Page 3; Column 1; Foreign Desk LENGTH: 1002 words HEADLINE: Croatia's Way: Dealing Without U.N. and Serbs BYLINE: By ROGER COHEN, Special to The New York Times DATELINE: ZAGREB, Croatia, Jan. 12 BODY: By announcing that he will end the United Nations mission to Croatia, President Franjo Tudjman has underscored the fact that the problems of Yugoslavia's violent dissolution remain unresolved, interconnected and as profound as ever. With fighting now reduced in Bosnia, Sarajevo far more quiet than Grozny, and a long-closed stretch of the main Zagreb-Belgrade highway in Croatia reopened, a mild optimism had been in the air at the United Nations headquarters here. But Mr. Tudjman has now made clear that this sanguine New Year mood amounted to little more than a flight from reality. The reality is that, more than three-and-a-half years after the former Yugoslavia began to come apart, the problem posed by the country's disintegration remains: what to do about the Serbian minorities in Croatia and Bosnia who wish to retain their links to Belgrade rather than join new states. In more than three years in Croatia, the United Nations peacekeeping mission has made little or no headway on that question. The 15,000 United Nations troops and personnel have quelled a war between Croats and Serbs that cost more than 10,000 lives in 1991, but have never come close to convincing the Serbs of the so-called Krajina region that they should accept Croatia's borders. "We don't want to be in Croatia, in any form," Savo Strbac, a minister in the self-styled government of the Krajina region, said recently. "Our wish is to live with the other Serbs of the former Yugoslavia, as we did for the past 70 years." Today, in a brief, grave televised address to the nation, Mr. Tudjman made clear that this wish of the Serbs, who accounted for just over 12 percent of Croatia's prewar population, must be abandoned within the next few months or the risk of renewed war will be real.

Page 2 Croatia's Way: Dealing Without U.N. and Serbs The New York Times January 13, 1995, Friday, Late Edition - Final

He blamed the leaders of the Croatian Serbs for the impasse, but reserved his invective for the Serbian President, Slobodan Milosevic, saying that chief responsibility lay with "the Greater Serbian Belgrade leadership who want to integrate these Serbs into Greater Serbia." Employing unusually vitriolic language, Mr. Tudjman continued: "These Greater Serbian anti-Croatian terrorist elements have made it impossible to disarm Serbian paramilitary units or bring about the return of Croatian refugees or establish control over Croatia's borders." This focus on Mr. Milosevic was significant. Because the Croatian Serbs depend heavily on Serbia for their survival, Mr. Tudjman is convinced that Mr. Milosevic has the power to rein them in. But the Croatian President also believes that only the departure of the United Nations troops will oblige the Serbian leader to do so. Mr. Tudjman's gamble -- which he described as a means to accelerate a peaceful settlement rather than an option for war -- is a big one. For the first time in at least a year he has ignored American advice, shunning a letter from President Clinton that urged him to refrain ending the United Nations mandate. In effect, at a time when slow-moving economic talks were gradually easing Serbian-Croatian tensions, he has tried to force the pace -- and Mr. Milosevic is a man deeply attached to setting his own, generally laborious, momentum for peace negotiations. The Krajina Serbs, who seemed increasingly interested in the economic talks that led to the recent opening of part of a major highway, reacted bluntly. Their self-styled Prime Minister, Borislav Mikelic, a man very close to Mr. Milosevic, described Mr. Tudjman's decision as "absolute folly." At the very least, Mr. Milosevic is committed to holding on to Serbian-occupied territory around Vukovar in eastern Croatia, an area where Serbs are exploiting a substantial oil industry and are determined to maintain control of the Danube. Moreover, any abandonment of the Serbs of Croatia through a recognition of Croatia's international borders would still amount to considerable political risk for Mr. Milosevic, who sent the Yugoslav army to their defense just three years ago. It is unclear whether Mr. Milosevic is even close to being ready to take such a step. By ending the United Nations mandate on March 31, Mr. Tudjman has also taken a risk in trying to force the United Nations and the international organizations to move faster in bringing peace to the former Yugoslavia Today, he said the United Nations presence had caused a "freezing of a negative status quo." But it was this status quo that international negotiators saw as a necessary backdrop to peace talks over Croatia and Bosnia in the coming months. Yasushi Akashi, the chief United Nations representative in the former Yugoslavia, summed up international concerns by saying that Mr. Tudjman's decision could cause increased tensions that spilled over into Bosnia and "a major escalation of fighting" if the United Nations leaves Croatia. In effect, the United Nations plans have been upset. With a four-month cease-fire in place in Bosnia and broadly holding for now, it had foreseen a period of relative calm in which political negotiations could be pursued by the so-called contact group made up of officials from the United States, Russia, Britain, France and Germany. But the fact is that, in Bosnia as in Croatia, international groups have still made no real progress in determining what to do about the Serbian minority. The Bosnian Serbs make up a third of the population of Bosnia and do not want to be part of that country. The Bosnian cease-fire, like the three-year-old Croatian truce, has not eased this basic problem.