The. Indiana, PA Gazette Sunday, June 4,1995 A-5 Clinton to take heat for any Bosnia policy By WALTER R.MEARS AP Special Correspondent WASHINGTON — President Clinton ventured into the Bosnia policy maze even before he got to the White House. Now he's in the middle, with military and political hazards at each turn, and no sign of a winning route out. The conflict and killings in what was Yugoslavia, and the agonizing siege of Sarajevo, were diplomatic and military dilemmas for George Bush first, and Clinton made it an issue in the last presidential campaign. Now he's got to deal with the latest in a series of crises, setting policy that may well be at issue next year as he seeks a * second term. His leading Republican rival . says Clinton may risk American lives to reinforce a failed policy of U.N. peacekeeping attempts. Clinton said he was weighing the tempo- rary use of U.S. ground forces. Sen. Bob Dole said that shouldn't be done. With more than 200 U.N. peacekeeping troops held hostage by Bosnian Serbs in retaliation for NATO air strikes, Clinton said the United States can't leave its European allies in the lurch, and should be prepared to help them militarily. The White House called it a moral commitment to European allies with forces in Bosnia. "I have decided that if a U.N. unit needs an emergency extraction, we would assist, after consultation with Congress. This would be a limited, temporary operation, and we have not been asked to do this," Clinton said Saturday in his weekly radio address. "I think it is highly unlikely that we would be asked to do it." Republicans in Congress will no doubt want a say on any Bosnian troop deployment, just as Democrats did when they ran Congress and Bush sent forces to confront Iraq. Bush got a congressional OK, even though he said he had the authority to do it himself as commander in chief.' Clinton takes the same position on the powers of the presidency, although in an earlier policy round on Bosnia he said he would want congressional backing to send forces. "I would want a clear expression of support from the U.S. Congress," he said in 1993, when the question was of sending troops to help guarantee a Bosnian peace accord that's never been reached anyhow. Clinton had said U.S. forces might be used on that mission; he'd also said they might be sent to help in a withdrawal of embattled U.N. peacekeeping forces if need be. Now he's added another potential mis- sion: To help in a NATO-backed "reconfiguration and strengthening" of U.N. forces. Dole called that a significant policy shift,.and said there will be Senate hearings on it when Congress reconvenes this week. Sen. Jesse Helms, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, set the tone in advance, saying that Clinton is "setting the stage for the involvement of U.S. ground forces in the war." "Not on my watch," the North Carolina Republican said. He'd already said Clinton isn't qualified to make such decisions. Helms, and Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the only U.S. role should be to help in a withdrawal of allied forces. Anything more would be "mission creep," one said, a phrase that recalled the failed American effort Bush began and Clinton ended, first to send food and then to bring stability to Somalia. Beyond the air strikes and repeated warnings to the Serbs, American policy has not been clearly defined. But then, that's been so since Bush decided to advocate but not join in the peacekeeping effort. As a candidate, Clinton was a hawk on Bosnia, saying he would do whatever it took to stop the ethnic killing, beginning "with air power against the Serbs." He said Bush wasn't being tough enough. His was the opposition case then. Now he's got his own to make, and not only with . the Republican Congress. A policy that involves the use, and risk, of U.S. forces in Bosnia is going to have to be convincingly explained to everyday America. It won't be easy, after more than three years in which two administrations have avoided that course. Walter R. Mears, vice president and columnist for The Associated Press, has reported on Washington and national politics for more than 30 years. Karadzic's Bosnian war: myth melts into madness By ROGER COHEN N.Y. Times News Service SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina — Dr. Radovan Karadzic, the leader of the Bosnian Serbs, noted last week that the Roman Emperor Ca- ligula once appointed his horse as a senator. "That horse," Karadzic said, "was more of a senator than Bosnia is a state." This was a graphic way of making a point that Karadzic has been determined to prove for more than three years — that Bosnia does not really exist. In order to prove it, the Bosnian Serbs have cajoled and killed, negotiated and shelled, manipulated and massacred. Last week, they took hundreds of United Nations peace- 5-* * "Vwi % .. •>.••.•, ' '' J keepers hostage and shot down a U.S. jet fighter. Bosnia, of course, was recognized in 1992 by the United States and other Western governments, a move that set them on a collision course with Karadzic and his nationalist followers that has come close as ever before to outright conflict since NATO bombed a Bosnian Serb ammunitions depot last week. Karadzic, 50, confronted the crisis with typical bravado. He promised "a butcher's shop" if Western governments tried to rescue the United Nations hostages and declared Saturday that "the sooner American planes get out of our skies, the less they will be shot down." A professional psychiatrist from Montenegro who has a reputation as to ** * m Tt 1 Jtl*xU Feb. 5 - Sixty-eight people killed when mortar slams into Sarajevo marketplace. Feb. 9 - NATO gives Bosnian Serbs 10 days to withdraw heavy guns from Sarajevo region or face air strikes. Feb. 20 - 400 Russian peacekeepers arrive in Sarajevo area in accordance with Serb leader Radovan Karadzic's demand. NATO deadline expires; United Nations says it is satisfied heavy guns are being removed. Feb. 28 - NATO F-16 fighters down four Bosnian Serb warplanes violating "no-fly" zone over Bosnia: the first shots fired in alliance history'. March 18 - Bosnia's Muslim-led government and Bosnian Croats sign U.S.-brokered accord. April 10 - NATO forces bomb Bosnian Serb tank and command post near government-held Gorazde. April 11 - Two U.S. Marine FA-18's attack Bosnian Serb tank and armored personnel carriers near Gorazde. May 13 - International mediators announce new peace plan. July 20 - Serbs reject plan. July 21 - U.S. civilian wounded when gunfire hits a U.N. plane at Sarajevo airport, forcing suspension of the airlift. Defense Secre"tary William Perry cancels Sarajevo visit. Sept 6 - Pope postpones visit to Sarajevo. Sept. 20 - Two NATO British Jaguars and American A-10's attack Serb tank near Sarajevo in retaliation for Serb attacks on French peacekeepers. Nov. 18 - U.N. says two Croatian Serb fighter planes attacked U.N.-protected town of Bihac. Nov. 21 - NATO launches largest military action in its history but fails to take out Serb jets at a Croatian Serb air base. Nov. 25 - Serbs detain 55 Canadian peacekeepers against further air strikes. NATO attempts air strike on Serb positions near Bihac. mission called off. Nov. 29 - U.N. says more than 400 peacekeepers detained. Dec. 20 - Former President Carter ends two-day mediating mission with announcement of nationwide cease-fire. 1995 They control the Bosnian government. Their initial goal was to maintain a '. unified Bosnia. Jan. 1 - Four-month truce takes effect. Feb. 13 - International tribunal indicts 21 Serbs on war crimes charges in Bosnia. March 23 - Bosnian army launches major offensive near government-held Tuzla. April 8 - U.S. aid plane hit by gunfire, all U.N. aid flights to Sarajevo canceled. May 1 - Cease-fire expires. May 24 - U.N. commander in Bosnia orders Serbs to return heavy weapons taken from U.N. collection sites and withdraw all heavy weapons from around Sarajevo. May 25 - NATO attacks Bosnian Serb ammuntition depot after Serbs fail to comply with U.N. ultimatum. Serbs shell U.N.-protected towns, killing 76 people. May 26 - NATO warplanes attack additional Serb ammuntion depots. Serbs take U.N. peacekeepers hostage. May 27 - Serbs invade all nine U.N.-monitored weapons collection sites around Sarajevo, seizing more than 250 weapons and U.N. peacekeepers. Two French peacekeepers killed after attempting to retake Sarajevo bridge. May 28 - Serbs capture 33 British peacekeepers in Gorazde after storming a U.N. observation post. Bosnian Foreign Minister Irfan Ljubijankic killed when his helicopter was shot down. May 29 - U.S. fleet and about 2.000 Marines transfer from Sardinia to the Adriatic Sea. May 31 - Thousands of Western troops arrive in Split, Croatia. Transport planes carrying 36 British soldiers, mine-clearing and engineering equipment and light cannons land in Split. June 1 - A Swedish U.N. civil officer is taken hostage. June 2 - A U.S. F-16 fighter plane is shot down near Banja Luka. il Croats They formed a federation with the Muslim government, but remain divided. Some want their own tiny state; others would ally with Croatia. They want their own state, with Serbia and parts of Croatia linked with the land they've seized in Bosnia. AP/Terry Kola an inveterate gambler and an indifferent poet, Karadzic loves to talk tough in pursuit of his vision of turning much of what is now Bosnia into an ethnically pure Serbian state. But his penchant for purple prose does not exclude sober political calculation. Hence the Bosnian Serbs on Saturday released 120 of the more than 300 peacekeepers they had taken hostage — a gesture designed to cool growing outrage in the West. The move was consistent with two basic calculations of the Bosnian Serbs over the three-year course of the Bosnian war. The first is that no Western government wants to fight for the multi-ethnic state that Kar- adzic wants to destroy, so even the consistent use of terror and hostage- taking will be excused if an occasional conciliatory gesture is made. The second is that Bosnian Serb forces do not have the power to take all of Bosnia, so some sort of Western acquiescence is ultimately needed for the preservation of something close to the status quo — that is, Serbian control of 70 percent of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Karadzic's argument that Bosnia does not really exist has many layers. Bosnia has no recent history as a sovereign state, he would argue. It was ruled for more than five centuries by the Ottoman Turks, the Austro-Hungarian empire, royalist Yugoslavia and then communist Yugoslavia. The Serbs who rriade up one third of Bosnia's pre-war population had no wish to see such a state created. Moreover, Karadzic would argue, the Muslims who now make up the relative majority of Bosnians are not really Muslims at all — they are Serbs who converted to Islam under Turkish domination. Thus, as Kar- adzic often maintains, the Bosnian Serbs are fighting "Europe's last anti-colonialist war." That war, he says, is to avenge the persecutions and uphold the sacrifices of Serbs in the past. After all, it was a Bosnian Serb nationalist who shot the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne in Saraje- vo in 1914 to protest the empire's 'annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908, triggering the start of the First World War. And it was the Serbs, mainly from northwestern Bosnia, who bore the great brunt of massacres by fascist forces during World War II. These are the seeds of a contemporary struggle that, when mixed with Serbian myth, take on the tone of a heroic epic. Today, the Serbs' enemies in Bosnia are Muslims, just like the enemies of Prince Lazar, the Serbian leader at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389. The prince was defeated. He died in battle. But his sacrifice became the denning element in the Serbs' vision of themselves as "a celestial people" battling the world's incomprehension. The reality of the Bosnian war has, of course, been much more sordid than the myth. Karadzic's forces have slaughtered tens of thousands of Muslim civilians — most recently 71 youths with a single shell in the northern town of Tuzla. He has thrown out more than 700,000 Muslims from the 70 percent of Bosnia he controls. He has used concentration camps to sift populations and kill prominent Muslims. He continues to plot a divided Sara- jevo in which an ethnically pure Serbian city would be built where the airport now stands. In all this, he has been true to his word. Before Bosnia opted for independence in 1992, he stood in what was then the assembly of the Yugoslav republic and warned that the Muslim people could "disappear" if they did not choose to remain in a Serbian-dominated Yugoslavia. 'The reason for this warning was clear: the Muslims must go because they stood in the way of a Greater Serbia extending west of the Drina river into land never previously ruled by Serbs. Ellen Ruddock admires the newly acquired star on the shoulder of her husband, Rodney Ruddock, at their home in Indiana. (Gazette photo by Tom Peel) Local Reservist attains star rank Continued from Page A-l ment for me," he said. "Our units and personnel distinguished themselves in that assignment." More than 2,000 soldiers of the 99th were activated during the Gulf War. Some replaced active duty forces at U.S. bases and in Germany. But a significant number of 99th ARCOM soldiers were sent to the gulf region to supply troops with petroleum products and water — including the members of the 14th Quartermaster Detachment in Greensburg, the unit devastated by an Iraqi Scud missile. "One of my unfortunate duties was to provide support to those families," Ruddock said. "It was a very difficult assignment. It's something I hope I never have to do again." The new general has been witness to three decades of changes in the reserve forces. "I think we've always had quality soldiers. But the demands on soldiers in the reserves today is greater than they've ever been." Many 99th units have been identified as Contingency Force Pool components that will provide long- term support for active duty combat units, so their training is more demanding. Army Reservists today are better prepared for that mission, Ruddock believes, because they train on specific tasks each year. "Annual training was once an 8-to-5 experience. Now it's 24-hours- a-day for eight to 10 consecutive days of field experien'ce. Down-sizing doesn't suggest weakness. It means we have to be better prepared." Ruddock believes the additional reliance on the reserves will continue. Reserve units increasingly are receiving equipment that is state-of- the-art, and training on that equipment must be expanded. "We will be training more closely with active components, so we understand each other's roles and capabilities," he said. His goals for the 99th: "To continue to improve the quality of soldiering," with aggressive training programs. Another goal is to give additional attention to programs that link Reservists and their families when the soldiers are called to full-time duty. There are similarities between overseeing the training of thousands of soldiers and supervising the education of hundreds of junior high students. "I like to maintain high standards, realistic goals, and work closely with individuals to make sure we're all heading in the right direction," he said. Regardless of the type of organization, if they do those things it will be successful, he added. The educator-general combination also provides another opportunity for Ruddock. He believes it's important to promote the democratic ideals of respect and community service, and his Reserve affiliation allows him to demonstrate that to his students. "We need to model that for students today," Ruddock said. "I'm extremely proud and privileged to represent the community. I look back at what Indiana has meant to me, and this allows me to give something back." United We Stand invites candidates WASHINGTON (AP) — A meeting of Ross Perot's backers is expected to draw top Republican leaders, presidential hopefuls and possibly President Clinton — evidence of the group's continuing political influence. Perot's United We Stand America organization is slated to meet in Dallas Aug. 11-13. Over the past week or so, Perot's invitations have been accepted by GOP presidential candidates including Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas, Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander and commentator Pat Buchanan, according to campaign spokesmen. The New York Times has quoted Perot as saying the other GOP contenders had accepted as well. And, barring a conflict, House Speaker Newt Gingrich is expected to attend, an aide to the Georgia lawmaker said. Several of Perot's state organization leaders took the invitations as evidence that Perot has decided against turning United We Stand into a third party and is searching for another way to influence the 1996 campaign. But Perot spokeswoman Sharon Holman said the question would be settled based on input from the state leaders. The forum could prove reminiscent of one Perot held two months before the 1992 election, after he had withdrawn from the race. Perot has said he has no plans to run in the 1996 race, although he has hardly slammed the door shut. White House aides said Clinton's political advisers want the president to make a personal appeal to the Perot supporters and contrast his government reform record with that of the GOP. U.S. press is warned in Toronto By CLYDE H. FARNSWORTH N.Y. Times News Service TORONTO — The judge presiding over a sensational murder trial in Toronto recently warned American journalists here that they could not only be barred from his court but that they could be charged with an offense under Canada's criminal code if they reported prohibited testimony. • In an American court, as millions know who watch the sparring in the murder trial of O.J. Simpson daily from Los Angeles, little that goes on in open court is withheld from the public. But the restrictions imposed here by Judge Patrick LeSage in a sexual torture case that has dominated the news here the past couple of weeks places the differences in the two legal systems into sharp relief. The American emphasis on press freedom sometimes clashes with the Canadian view of restrictions required to insure a fair trial. LeSage had been angered by a report by a Buffalo, N.Y., television station of the defense counsel's call for a mistrial, made while the jury was out. The press can report on developments here only when the jury is present. The panel, it is argued, might otherwise be influenced by press interpretations of what happened in its absence. For similar 'reasons, the courts routinely ban news media coverage of preliminary hearings. The Canadian courts take these steps "to insure the jury is not polluted," said Kent Roach, a professor of criminal law at the University of Toronto. "The inherent power to order bans is a deeply ingrained mechanism in Canada." Lisa Flynn, the court reporter for WKBW, the Buffalo television station covering the trial, said she was aware of the ban by LeSage. She has been commuting from Buffalo and was in Buffalo when she reported the mistrial request. "The position of our management is that when we're in the U.S. we don't have to obey the Canadian laws." she said in ,an interview. LeSage did not agree. "If you have any difficulty in abiding by our rules, then simply do not come into the courtroom," he said. "Or else you will be subject to charge if you violate Canadian laws." Many of the grotesque details of the deaths of two teen-agers allegedly slain by Paul Bernardo that are now being described — and even seen on videotape — in LeSage's court, were the subject of an earlier publication ban, during the trial of Bernardo's former wife, Karla Homulka, two years ago. The prosecution contends that Leslie Mahaffy, 14, and Kristen French, 15, were held captive in the Bernardo house in St. Catharines, Ontario, and tortured sexually before being strangled with an electrical cord. Several American publications ignored another Canadian judge's publication ban in the Homulka case, and a black market developed in smuggled copies of the illicit articles. The Canadian authorities accused the American media then of failure to respect Canadian traditions, but took no punitive action against American reporters in Canada. Unhappy at being muzzled, the Canadian press fought the ban, but did not succeed. "Are jurors really such empty vessels waiting to be filled that they are automatically influenced by anything they might happen to read in a newspaper or hear on TV?" complained the Toronto Sun editorially. In July 1993, Ms. Homulka was sentenced to 12 years in prison for manslaughter, and she is now expected to be the main witness against her husband.