Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1994

Allow me, at the outset, to

commend Mr. Samuel Insanally for the able manner in

which he conducted the work of the forty-eighth session

of the General Assembly.

I would also like to congratulate you, Sir, on your

election as President of this, the forty-ninth session. I

wish you success in pursuing this very important task.

I thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak

on behalf of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina at

this distinguished gathering.

I come from Bosnia and Herzegovina, a far-away

country that has currently been the subject of many

discussions.

Unfortunately, I have to begin my statement by

repeating facts that, for most of you, may be or should be

well known.

At the time - some three years ago - when

Yugoslavia experienced its dissolution, we were doing our

best to carry out the separation in a peaceful fashion and

without any violence. For reasons already known, our

initiatives did not bear fruit.

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When Slovenia and Croatia seceded, and the

dissolution of Yugoslavia had become inevitable, we

organized a referendum in order to decide, in a democratic

manner, the fate of Bosnia. By a two-thirds majority -

exactly 64.4 per cent of the body of registered voters,

citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina, opted for the country’s

independence in the referendum of 1 March 1992.

International recognition of our country followed soon

thereafter, and so did the aggression against it. The

decision on its recognition was made on 5 April 1992 and

was announced the following day, 6 April 1992. The

Serbian and Montenegrin aggression against Bosnia and

Herzegovina began on 5 April 1992, the very day when the

decision on recognition of the country was adopted.

The aggression has continued to this day with more or,

at times, less intensity, and without any prospect of its

coming to an end in the near future.

The war that was forced upon Bosnia and Herzegovina

and its peoples - and that has now entered its thirty-first month -

is one of the bloodiest wars in the history of mankind. At

the very beginning, it was not a war but rather an attack by

a well-armed and equipped army, the former Yugoslav

army, against defenceless citizens.

The results of this uneven struggle are as follows:

70 per cent of our country came under occupation in the

first months of the war; more than 200,000 civilians have

been killed; over 1 million - or one fourth - of our

inhabitants have been expelled from their homes; hundreds

of cities and villages have been destroyed and burned. This

cannot be described as a classic example of warfare

between two armies. This has been a war of an army

against civilians, followed by genocide and, to date,

unprecedented destruction of cultural and religious objects.

The world has not responded in an appropriate manner

to such barbarity.

Whether it was because of the brutality of the attack,

or because it was morally and psychologically unprepared,

or perhaps because of its entanglement in its conflicting

interests, the world seemed confused and hesitant.

When the news and pictures of new concentration

camps in the heart of Europe came out, the public was

astonished or shocked, but for the most part those

responsible kept silent. Tens of thousands have perished in

those camps and many thousands have disappeared without

a trace. The more brutal an attack, the more hesitant the

world became. The free world neither defended nor

supported freedom. Our people, facing the threat of

extermination and a clearly pronounced death sentence,

decided to defend itself.

But then it encountered a new absurdity. It found its

hands tied. In short, before the war broke out against

Bosnia and Herzegovina the United Nations imposed a

notorious resolution that banned any import of weapons

into the territory of former Yugoslavia. Everything

changed: the war began, the aggressor and the victim

were clearly discernable, but the arms embargo has

remained in place as if nothing had happened in the

interim. Justice was turned into injustice because the

aggressor had weapons - weapons that had been

stockpiled over the course of 40 years - while the victim

was unarmed and its hands were kept tied.

The resolution on the arms embargo became its own

contradiction. By maintaining the imbalance in

weaponry, it has prolonged the war and turned the peace

negotiations into diktat by the better-armed aggressor.

We said to the world, "You do not have to come to

defend us, but do at least untie our hands and allow us to

defend ourselves. While they kill our children, rape our

women and destroy all our relics, do recognize our right

to self-defence."

So far, however, the arms embargo has remained in

place. With only guns and rifles in their hands, our

defenders have faced artillery and tanks. We have lost

many people, and reports indicate that more than 90 per

cent of them have been killed by grenades and artillery

shells. Our cities and villages have been left at the mercy

of the powerful military technology in the hands of the

murderers. In the capital city of Sarajevo alone, more

than 10,000 people have been killed and more than

50,000 wounded. Not a single family is without

casualties, either killed or wounded.

To all this, the world has sent us one message:

negotiate. In the belief that the only right path was to

continue to defend our land and that in this just struggle

the peace-loving and freedom-loving peoples of the world

would support us, we refused for a very long time to

negotiate with war criminals.

Finally, faced with the unbearable plight of our

people and the world’s indifference, without any choice

we accepted negotiations. It turned out that the aggressor

had only been using negotiations as a way to bargain for

time and to cover up its continuation of the aggression.

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In March 1993, after long and painful negotiations and with

many concessions from our side, we signed the so-called

Vance-Owen plan. The aggressor rejected it.

The next bloody round in the war ensued, to be

followed by another round of negotiations that resulted, on

5 July 1994, in a peace plan drawn up by the Contact

Group consisting of five great Powers: the United States of

America, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and the

Russian Federation. Again, we chose peace and the

attackers, once again, opted for a continuation of the war.

We accepted the unjust peace offer in order to halt the

war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. We did so in the hope

that the injustice of the peace plan could still be corrected

in the years of peace. Knowing the Bosnian soul, we

believed - and we still believe - that peace can save - but

that war will destroy - all that we call Bosnia.

What we call "Bosnia" is not merely a small piece of

land in the Balkans. For many of us, Bosnia and

Herzegovina is not only a homeland: it is an idea; it is a

belief that peoples of different religions, different

nationalities and different cultural traditions can live

together. Were this dream to be forever buried, were this

idea of tolerance among the peoples of the area to be

irretrievably lost, the guilt would lie not only with those

who have been relentlessly killing Bosnia with their mortars

for over 30 months now but also with many of the

powerful elsewhere in the world who could have helped yet

have chosen to do otherwise.

Two days ago, I left Sarajevo. I did not leave by

plane because the airport was closed. I had to take land

routes through woods that are constantly exposed to fire

and where many people are killed daily. For days there is

no electricity, water and gas in the city. The capital is

completely blocked and is virtually dying.

Yesterday, after I had arrived at United Nations

Headquarters, I received a letter from Srebrenica, a small

town on the river Drina. The letter was supposed to be a

report, but it was also a cry from a real human hell. I

could not find the strength to read it a second time.

Over three months ago "ethnic cleansing" was

reignited, and there is now a new wave. Thousands of

civilians whose only fault is that they are not Serbs have

been expelled from their homes in Banja Luka, Bijeljina,

Janja and other towns under the control of Karadzic’s army.

Once again, nothing has been done. The world seems to

have grown gradually accustomed to unpunished violations

of the basic norms of international law. This is a sorry

situation, and one that concerns every man and every

woman in the world, no matter how near or far from

Bosnia they may be.

For a very long time I rejected - indeed, I still

reject - any so-called conspiracy theory, the theory that all

that has happened to Bosnia has happened because its

majority nation is Muslim and there are dark powers that

consciously impel the Serbs towards the extermination of

Bosnian Muslims.

Those who support this theory have their arguments,

and I believe they have been heard here before. They

maintain that overt aggression, followed by genocide,

concentration camps and other forms of the darkest

fascism, is at work in Bosnia and Herzegovina and that

the world must be blind not to see it. Is the world blind?

Does it consciously condone all these evils? It cannot be

blind, and there is thus only the other alternative. This is

the argument that has gained an increasing number of

supporters. It will not be a good thing if the world’s

billion Muslims come to accept it.

The latest events surrounding the plan of the Contact

Group have given the supporters of the so-called

conspiracy theory an additional argument, namely, that

Bosnia and Herzegovina has been offered a proposal

backed by five major Powers and, therefore, by the

majority of the international community, and it has been

clearly stated that the side that rejected the plan would be

punished while the side that accepted it would be

protected. Yet the opposite has happened. The Serbs

rejected the plan, and they have been rewarded by the

suspension of sanctions. We have accepted the plan, and

we have been punished by a complete blockade of

Sarajevo. Both processes have occurred simultaneously,

in parallel.

Today, the highest civilian and military United

Nations authorities are warning us: If you demand and

succeed in achieving the lifting of the arms embargo, the

United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) will pull

out of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and so

on.

I have certainly not undertaken this long and arduous

journey from Bosnia to America solely to convey facts

that may be known to the majority of those here. We in

Bosnia believe that, despite the hardships, good and

justice cannot be defeated. We do not abandon our faith

7

that the world can be better and that we should all work

and strive continually to make it better.

In this conviction, and despite all our disappointments

and frustrations, I have come to speak here before the

Assembly and to present some of our proposals. From the

General Assembly and the Security Council, we are asking

the following: first, that all resolutions on Bosnia and

Herzegovina adopted by the Security Council and the

General Assembly be implemented; secondly, that measures

be taken effectively to monitor the border between Serbia

and Montenegro, on the one side, and Bosnia and

Herzegovina, on the other, so that any transport of troops,

weapons and military equipment across that border may be

prevented or detected in timely fashion; thirdly, that should

this transport occur, the decision on the suspension of some

of the sanctions against Serbia and Montenegro - Security

Council resolution 943 (1994) - be immediately revoked

and that tightened sanction measures be imposed in

accordance with the plan of the Contact Group of July

1994; fourthly, that there be no further easing of the

sanctions towards Serbia and Montenegro until they

recognize Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia within

internationally recognized borders; fifthly, that a resolution

be adopted, without delay, to strengthen the protection and

mandate the extension of the safe areas provided for in

Security Council resolutions 824 (1993) and 836 (1993),

and in accordance with provisions of Article 6 of the

Contact Group plan; and, sixthly, that decisions be taken to

ensure an immediate end to the strangulation of Sarajevo

and to prevent a recurrence of such a situation.

The last-mentioned of these measures should envisage,

as an integral element, the opening of the city along the

north communication route - road and highway - through

the creation of a demilitarized belt 2.5 kilometres wide on

both sides of the thoroughfares. In this demilitarized belt,

only United Nations troops and police might remain. The

potential use of force against the strangulation of Sarajevo

is envisaged under Article 4 of the North Atlantic Treaty

Organization’s decision of 9 February 1994.

Provided that the above conditions were fulfilled, and

on condition that UNPROFOR continued to carry out its

mission, the Government of the Republic of Bosnia and

Herzegovina would be willing to accept a new, modified

formula to deal with the problem of the arms embargo.

Under this formula we would limit our demand for the

lifting of the arms embargo to the adoption of a formal

decision, and the application or consequences of that

decision would be deferred for six months. In this case

UNPROFOR troops could remain in Bosnia and

Herzegovina, the Contact Group would fulfil its promise,

and a clear message would be conveyed to Karadzic’s

Serbs.

I should like, in conclusion, to state our two

commitments.

First, our irrevocable objective is a democratic

Bosnia and Herzegovina within internationally recognized

borders, and with full ethnic, religious and political rights

for all its citizens. In such a Bosnia and Herzegovina the

Serbs will have all rights, up to the highest level of

autonomy, but they cannot have a state within a state.

Secondly, we consider that, like all other nations, we

have an inalienable right to self-defence. Therefore, if

our compromise proposal on the arms embargo is rejected

for any reason, we shall ask our friends to secure the

immediate, and even unilateral, lifting of the embargo.

Unfortunately, I have to inform representatives that, just

today, I learned that this compromise proposal is meeting

resistance, and even rejection, from some Contact Group

countries.

Finally, I take this opportunity to express our sincere

gratitude to all friends of Bosnia and Herzegovina who

have supported its struggle for survival and freedom.