(her-vuatsky glass-nick) A weekly information sheet, produced, published, and distributed in its entirety by Dubravko Kakarigi, P.O.Box 1742, Tallahassee, Florida 32302, tel. 904/877-0620, with lots of help and support by Mr. Jim Peterson, especially as an amanuensis. Thank you Jim.
	We will try to come out every Saturday. If you'd like, we can mail it to you in exchange for a donation to cover the postage. The very first edition came out on Saturday, June 13, 1992

June 27, 1992	Number 3

Breaking News: CNN reports that the EC leaders, at their meeting in Lisbon, Portugal on Saturday, 6/27, endorsed the position that a military force could be used to help reopen the Sarajevo Airport.

My Corner	hat's happening in Yugoslavia? This is what most people ask these days. It is understandably difficult to comprehend why people would start killing each other and destroying what took years and generations to build. The answer to this 64-thousand-dollar question depends on who you ask. If you ask a Croatian nationalist, you might hear: “Serbians want Greater Serbia. We are fighting for our self-determination and against domination of the Serbian Communist dictatorship” If you ask a Serbian nationalist, the answer may be: “We can not forget W.W.II when hundreds of thousands of our brothers and sisters perished at the hands of the Fascist Croatian Regime. Now Croats want independence and we can not live with them — we are afraid for our lives.” An unbiased Western observer might say: “They are just squaring off their centuries old accounts.” If you ask me, I would say: “I don't know. It is so nonsensical that it goes far beyond any reason. I listen to all sides and in isolation they all make sense, but my own experience is different.” So what really happened?, you might persist. Unfortunately, no one will ever know for sure. History just happens and all we have is a variety of interpretations of what happened. Sure, many Serbs perished in W.W.II, sure Croatia had a puppet fascist state, sure there have been plans for Greater Serbia. Sure it is the Serbs who are now committing most of the atrocities in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina (B-H) which prompted US Sec. of State Mr. Baker to speak of a humanitarian nightmare. Sure there are old accounts to balance out. But, my truth is that it does not matter at this point, “who did it”. We must stop fighting first; stop at any cost, meaning giving up whatever offensive goals the warring sides might have. It is humanity's responsibility to assure that no more lives are lost. Then we should be able to sit down and negotiate our common future. We must not forget that our future is common. Our goal must be the reconciliation and negotiating of that precious common future. The crimes that have been committed can not be forgotten, perpetrators must be punished mercilessly, but whole peoples could not be guilty. We must find the strength to extend our hand across the boundaries. However, our first responsibility is to protect life and, if it is in danger, as it is under Serbian aggression in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, we must defend it by any means necessary. In the following issue, I'll discuss some of the aspects of the claims made by all sides in this conflict. t is truly sickening to watch these “cease-fires” be declared “unilaterally and unconditionally” by Serbian irregulars in B-H. It was equally sickening to watch Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic give an interview to CNN on Friday in Strasbourg, France. In that interview he said among the other revolting nonsense: not a single Serbian soldier can be found in B-H, we are not supporting any military action in B-H, we have been against this conflict since the beginning...... Who does he think is he fooling? Maybe he is fooling the uninformed. But we should rewind the tape and see how slick and deceiving he, his regime, and the “old guard” in the old Yugoslav Army have been in the past. They have always agreed to talk. They have always agreed to cease-fires. And they have always broken them. It must be clear by now that the only outcome of these cease-fires for them is the delay during which they can regroup. It took 15 cease-fires and they are still shooting at us in Croatia (see the what's-new section). Wake up, y'all! The Serbian regime and Bosnian Serbian leaders can not be trusted! They only understand and respond to force. The most recent promise of the “unilateral and unconditional cease-fire”, the 9th one to be broken, declared by Radovan Karadzic (the leader of the Bosnian Serbs) was hailed as a step forward when it should have been laughed at. We gladly bought into it because we, the West, have no guts to do what is right. My friend Mira called me on Thursday from Dobrinja and said: They are only 200 meters [about 220 yards] away and shooting at us. There are 10 times as many of us as there are of them, but they have the tanks and the heavy guns—we have almost nothing to defend ourselves. When is the West going to realize what is going on here? Send the heroic Bosnian defenders military aid and food! Drop off food and medical supplies, establish control of the skies, and supply them with the means to defend themselves, meaning weapons, heavy weapons. It is foolish to think that anything else is going to stop the barbarism of Serbian hoodlums unfolding in front of our very eyes. The people of B-H have suffered enough.
What's New	This past week has been eventful. We have seen another quickly broken cease-fire, as well as more atrocities all over Croatia and B-H. Contrary to common beliefs, the war in Croatia has not stopped. Considerable territory of Croatia is still under occupation by Serbian irregulars from where they launch attacks (Sibenik, Karlovac). In addition, the border areas with B-H have been continuously menaced from across the B-H border. For example: Almost daily, since about 18 days ago, the city of Dubrovnik and surrounding areas are shelled from the Trebinje region (a city in B-H, 29 km NE from Dubrovnik), from the hills above The Dubrovnik River (just to the North of Dubrovnik), and from the Konavli (the region 20 km to the South) which are still under occupation. In one of next issues, I will discuss the overall situation in Dubrovnik (together with a map of the region). Slavonski Brod (an industrial city on the Sava River in the Eastern Croatia) and other areas in its neighborhood (Zupanja, Slavonski Samac) have been bombarded by Serbian forces from across the river (in B-H). The most recent attack came in the form of two surface-to-surface missiles each carrying 2000 lbs of explosives. They made craters 6-8 meters deep and 10 meters in diameter. They killed three children. In Sarajevo, General MacKenzie has called for limited air strikes against Serbian military installations. In Washington, Secretary Baker keeps giving impressions that the situation will not be tolerated any longer but stops short of any commitments. He rightfully classifies Serbian activities barbaric, but denies rumors that the US is preparing for a military strike. The Pentagon denies rumors that the 82nd Airborne is being readied and that the 6th fleet maneuvers off the Southern Italian coast are related to the Sarajevo situation, but acknowledges that the US forces in Europe have been on alert for the last 10 days to stand by for humanitarian airlifts into Sarajevo. It just seems that either some very complicated game is under way, or the West lacks the determination to intervene. On the other hand, the Russian Parliament has voiced its unhappiness with the present UN sanctions against Serbia and Montenegro and is planning to ask that they be lifted. Is the US worried about how the Russians would react to the military intervention? CROATIAN ARTILLERY TO BREAK SIEGE OF SARAJEVO? The June 24 Washington Post says that the state-of-the-art German-built howitzers that recently enabled Croatian forces to break the Serbian grip on Mostar are now being put into place around Sarajevo. The Bosnian authorities seem to welcome the development but remain uneasy about the Croats' ultimate objectives in the multiethnic republic. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung publishes a list of Croatian and Bosnian doubts about the impartiality of UN peace-keeping forces, while the New York Times suggests that the Croats would like to have the UN out of the way in many places where the Croats now feel they could otherwise consolidate their position militarily. (Patrick Moore, Daily Report No. 118, June 24, 1992) SARAJEVO, B-H - Serbian forces continued to shell the city throughout the early hours of the morning and before noon Friday. Despite their promise yesterday to UN General Lewis MacKenzie, Serb irregulars shelled the residential districts of Dobrinja 2 (this is where my friend Mira lives) &3 were also attacked. Tank shells were launched from the Sarajevo airport at residential areas nearby. Snipers seriously injured one child as well. ZAGREB - France Press reported Friday that Serbia has proposed a confederation of Serbia, Montenegro and Greece.
On a Lighter Note	How do you pronounce all these Croatian words? It seems so hard. The following should be helpful. Croatian alphabet consists of thirty sounds and there is one letter for each sound which makes it a phonetic alphabet. This means that you always use the same sound for a letter regardless of the surrounding letters (well, almost—there are a few exceptions). Here is the table of sounds: Also, the polysyllabic words are almost always accented on the first or the second syllable (quite the opposite from English). For example: it is Hérzegovina, not Herzegóvina, as it is commonly pronounced in English. I hope that this helps with your pronunciation of Croatian (or Serbian) words. Number 1, Jun 13, 1992 Number 2, Jun 20, 1992 Number 3, Jun 27, 1992 Number 4, Jul 04, 1992 Number 5, Jul 11, 1992 Number 6, Jul 18, 1992 Number 7, Jul 25, 1992 Number 8, Aug 1, 1992
A History Bit	The first Croatian ruler who assumed the title of the King was King Tomislav, crowned in 925 AD.