BY ARGIRIS MALAPANIS
An international conference in Konigswinter, near Bonn, Germany, approved extending the mandate of NATO forces in Bosnia - currently occupied by 34,000 foreign troops - beyond June 30, 1998, the deadline for withdrawal set last year. The move, spearheaded by the U.S. government, is another step in the five-year-long drive to reestablish the domination of capitalist social relations in all the republics of the former Yugoslav federation and expand Washington's hegemony as the number one military and economic power in Europe.

The December 9 - 10 meeting was sponsored by the governments of the United States, Britain, Germany, France, and other capitalist states with forces in Yugoslavia, as well as Moscow. Officials from 51 countries took part in the so-called Peace Implementation Conference, which meets annually to discuss enforcement of the Dayton "peace" accord that paved the way for the partition of Bosnia and the NATO invasion. The U.S. government forced the warring parties in Yugoslavia to sign the agreement at the Patterson Air Force base in Dayton, Ohio, in the fall of 1995.

The conference took place a week after the meeting of the defense ministers of NATO's member states in Brussels, where the occupation of Bosnia by the Atlantic military alliance topped the agenda. Gen. Wesley Clark, the U.S. commander of NATO's forces in Europe and an architect of Dayton, pushed for maintaining substantial military forces in Bosnia beyond next summer to implement the accords and break what he called "the wall of Serb resistance." If NATO troops pull out, Clark argued, war would resume in the Balkan country.

"Clark is not afraid of using the necessary firepower to keep the agreements on track," said an unnamed diplomat from Europe, according to the December 3 Washington Post. "Unlike other American generals we have seen over here, he is not afraid of mission creep."

The defense ministers at the Brussels meeting asked NATO's military commanders to prepare a plan for renewing their forces in Bosnia by March 1.

The Clinton administration has maintained troops in Bosnia for nearly two years, now numbering 8,000, that are leading the NATO occupation. The White House has not announced yet the exact U.S. military commitment it will project. But the course laid out at the Brussels and Konigswinter meetings had already been announced earlier by U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright and other government officials.

A month earlier, Albright said that "a consensus was emerging" in Washington to keep U.S. troops in Bosnia past the previously announced deadline.

During the recent U.S. military provocations against Iraq, the British government was Washington's main ally among the major imperialist powers, in contrast to Paris, whose opposition dealt a setback to the U.S. government's plan for military strikes. In a similar way, London, which has already announced its troops will stay in Bosnia beyond next June, has been the main advocate for maintaining a large U.S. military contingent in Yugoslavia. "We have used both private and public exhortations to make sure there is an American presence," said British defense minister George Robertson in a joint press conference with his U.S. counterpart William Cohen in London, December 4.

New powers for Westendorp
The conference in Germany gave new powers to Carlos Westendorp, the international commissioner in Bosnia appointed by the powers backing the Dayton accord. The High Representative in Bosnia, as the former Spanish diplomat is referred to in the big-business press, was granted the authority to make binding decisions on the timing, location, and chairmanship of governing institutions in Bosnia; impose interim solutions in cases of dispute; and even dismiss Bosnian officials whom he deems are blocking the Dayton accord.

Since 1995, Bosnia has been divided between a precarious "Muslim-Croat federation" and a "Serb republic," with supposedly federal institutions where both entities are represented. Westendorp complained, among other things, that authorities in Bosnia are not moving fast toward establishing a common currency, laws on foreign investment, or private corporations. He and other capitalist politicians wrapped these worries in a pious concern for the plight of 1.5 million refugees, many of whom are prevented from returning to their homes by competing chauvinist politicians in Bosnia.

Referring to Bosnian government officials, Westendorp said, "If they do not do their job, we have to do it in their place."

U.S. deputy secretary of state Strobe Talbott was among the strongest proponents of this decision. "We agree with the wisdom of giving [Westendorp] the authority to override the obstructionism of those who want to block the full implementation of Dayton," he said.

At the end of the Konigswinter meeting, the delegations from the Bosnian Serb republic and Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia (comprised of Serbia and Montenegro) stormed out of the conference. They did so to protest a statement in the conference's final declaration about "escalating ethnic tensions" in Kosovo, a region in southern Serbia where 90 percent of the population is of Albanian origin.

The Stalinist regime of Slobodan Milosevic in Belgrade, supported by its backers in Bosnia, revoked the status of Kosovo as an autonomous region in 1989 after strikes by miners and other workers against austerity and massive protests against national oppression of the Albanian population. Since then, Kosovo has been under a state of emergency and Belgrade has used repression against rebellious Albanians demanding the return of their right to use their language and culture in schools and elsewhere and run the local government. Thousands of Albanians demonstrated in Kosovo's capital, Pristina, in October to press such demands.

In late October, 17 men went on trial in Kosovo accused by Belgrade authorities of terrorism and of belonging to the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which Serbian officials allege has carried out violent attacks over the last year.

Washington and other imperialist powers are using what they refer to as "human rights violations" by Belgrade to maintain sanctions on Serbia and Montenegro and justify their drive to extend the occupation of Bosnia.

The U.S. government is also using the imperialist tribunal in The Hague to pursue those it accuses of "war crimes." Those opposed to the Dayton accord, like chauvinist Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, are special targets.

NATO expansion tied to Bosnia
The big-business press has continued to push this campaign. One such article appeared in the September 12 International Herald Tribune under the headline "The U.S. can't demand a bigger NATO while it's turning tail in Bosnia." The column, by Richard Cohen, was published earlier in the Washington Post. Cohen advocated a more aggressive drive by NATO troops to arrest Karadzic and other "war criminals." He also said that the projected expansion of NATO into Eastern and Central Europe will rise or fall on its success in Bosnia.

"What is NATO if it cannot bring one man to justice and end a war in a small country?" Cohen wrote. "In fact, the failure of NATO - whether expanded or static - is inextricably linked to what happens in Bosnia. And that, in turn, is linked to what the United States does. If it leaves Bosnia without finishing the job, with homicidal maniacs just waiting to crawl out of their respective holes and the war just waiting to resume, then how can NATO be taken seriously?"

Intervention in Yugoslavia and NATO's enlargement are also at the heart of expanding Washington's hegemony in Europe. This point was made bluntly by Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security adviser during the U.S. administration of James Carter. Speaking at a conference on German-Polish relations and NATO on December 6, Brzezinski said NATO's expansion into Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Poland solves a problem that had been considered "impolite" to mention until recently: the "disproportionate power" of Bonn. "Involving Germany in a wider framework," he said, "allows us to cope with Europe's central security problem of the 20th century: how to cope with the reality of Germany's power."

NATO has difficulty in reaching goals
Over the last few months, Washington has fostered divisions between the leadership of the chauvinist Bosnian Serbs to advance its goals. NATO troops have taken over police stations and television transmitters from Karadzic loyalists and turned them over to supporters of Bosnian Serb president Biljana Plavsic, who broke with Karadzic earlier this year.

In a November 22 - 23 ballot in the part of Bosnia controlled by nationalist Serb forces, carried out under the control of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Karadzic's Serbian Democratic Party lost control of its majority in the 83-seat regional assembly but remained the biggest political force with 24 seats. With massive financial and military backing from NATO forces, Plavsic's electoral formation got 15 seats. The Serbian Radical Party of rightist Vojislav Seselj, which has made electoral gains in Serbia recently and has usually allied with Karadzic in his quest for a "greater Serbia," doubled its seats to 15. Supporters of Milosevic's Socialist Party also won 9 deputies.

Since then, Karadzic's party has claimed fraud in the elections and vowed not to accept the results. And Plavsic has turned down U.S. demands to arrest Karadzic and hand him over to NATO troops, saying she does not recognize the authority of the tribunal in The Hague. "The move to use the assembly to get rid of Karadzic has failed," said an unnamed diplomat in Europe quoted in the December 8 New York Times. "Plavsic has much less support than even we imagined."

Over the last year, Washington's relations with the regime of Croatia president Franjo Tudjman have also been strained. Tudjman's government has slapped criminal convictions on officers of the Open Society Institute, a foundation underwritten by U.S. financier George Soros, that promotes the rapid establishment of a "free market" economy and capitalist "democracy." Tudjman has accused Soros of promoting a "dangerous alien ideology." Washington in turn has accused the government in Zagreb of "human rights violations" and non- compliance with Dayton.

Washington's inability to accomplish its goals through the means it has used thus far is behind the decision to extend the occupation of Bosnia.  
 
 
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