"Germany and France should back a quick conversion of the SFOR force in Bosnia into a European-led operation..." RedNet News News and Views from the Communist Press NATO-occupied Bosnia >From [EMAIL PROTECTED], 13/02/01 06:51:32 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [En Español] [Em Português] [En Français] [In Italiano] [Auf Deutsch] [??-??????] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- FROM THE MORNING STAR 11/2/1 NATO-occupied Bosnia by BRIAN DENNY THE European Union troika presently touring the Balkans, led by EU foreign policy tsar Javier Solana, cancelled a visit to NATO-occupied Bosnia this week. The western ruler of Bosnia Wolfgang Petritsch, known as the High Representative, said that they had to cancel the visit "because there is no government." Bosnia's state parliament failed to approve a new prime minister amid a power struggle between nationalists and a Western-backed coalition of parties. One of the reasons for the impasse was made clear when the tripartite presidency's Serb member Zivko Radisic accused US Ambassador Thomas Miller of interfering in the country's internal affairs by intimidating parliament deputies to support the pro-western coalition and its candidate for prime minister. Even the Croat presidency member Ante Jelavic agreed. "With due respect for US Ambassador Thomas Miller, I personally disagree sometimes with his behaviour and political actions, because he oversteps sometimes. . . the limits of normal diplomatic behaviour," he said. For further evidence that Bosnia is no more than a colony of the West, run by increasingly autocratic bureaucrats, take a look at the high representative's legendary dictatorial powers. Mr Petritsch has imposed his own choices for the country's currency and the design of new coins. His office even directed the selection of a new national anthem. Candidates for public office have been barred from the ballot by Mr Petritsch for transparently cynical reasons. In the spring 2000 municipal elections, the commission in charge banned the entire slate of the Radical Party which had won the presidency in the previous national elections. An action akin to the electoral commission in Britain disqualifying the Labour or Conservative parties. In April 1999, the west's puppet media commission even ordered a Bosnian Serb television station to carry an address by US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to explain why Yugoslavia had to be mercilessly bombed into the stone age. Party for Democratic Progress chair Mladen Ivanic said: "The high representative makes, forms laws, he takes over a legislative function and thus makes the local authorities invalid. "Everyone knows that, eventually, the high representative will make a decision. In such conditions no one is forced to make agreements, to look for solutions and compromises," he said. Western powers also harass or suppress media outlets that dare to criticize the so-called Dayton "peace" accords. Six years after the accords were signed the western military occupation continues and rule by western diktat has been institutionalised. Despite systematic attempts by Western powers to undermine them, nationalist parties fared well in the November elections, as they have in every election since 1995. Therefore, when all else fails, western authorities simply remove elected officials they dislike. The most prominent official purged to date was the Bosnian Serb Radical Party's Nikola Poplasen. Bosnia today illustrates the ugly face of new-style western colonialism which also imposes policies mass privatisation as a matter of course. The mass sell-off follows the redrawing of Bosnia's laws by the west to enable the country's state-owned industries to be privatised. As the Bosnian Embassy spokesman in London Radomir Kosic said in December during a presentation to the Department of Trade and Industry, giving details of the first 289 companies to be sold. "Companies that were formerly worth tens of millions of dollars can be bought for a few hundred thousand," he said. On the military front, Germany and France issued a call last month for the EU to takeover military operations in the former Yugoslav province and push the US out. "Germany and France should back a quick conversion of the SFOR force in Bosnia into a European-led operation and thus work towards a fair trans-Atlantic burden sharing," former German minister Volker Ruehe said. Worst of all, the west apparently views the Bosnia intervention as a template for similar missions in the Balkans and beyond. Back
