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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Jan.18, 1996
issue of Workers World newspaper
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The Clinton administration's Dec. 28 announcement of a partial suspension of sanctions on Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) is carefully worded to hide its full meaning.
The sanctions, of course, have been devastating. So much so that some have contended they were the reason the United States could dictate the terms of the Dayton agreement in November.
Before the sanctions, writes Tomislav Kresovic in the book "Chronicle of a Punishment," Yugoslavia had one of the best medical services in Europe. "Thirteen months later, people are dying from the most benign diseases and epidemics have appeared--measles, for example. Mortality from easily curable infectious diseases increased five times due to a shortage of medicine." Excerpts from the book are available in English on the World Wide Web.
There has been an increase in polio, tuberculosis, infectious hepatitis and childhood anemia. Most infectious diseases are associated with malnutrition caused by the sanctions. Caloric intake for children is down 28 percent from what it was in 1990.
As has been seen repeatedly over the decades, sanctions are a form of warfare. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson said in Versailles in 1919: "The one who chooses this economic, peaceful, quiet, lethal remedy will not have to resort to force. It is not such a painful remedy. It doesn't take a single human life outside the country exposed to boycott, but instead subjects that country to a pressure that, in my view, no modern nation can withstand."
The key word here is lethal.
Presidential Determination No. 96-7, released Dec. 28, 1995, says, "I hereby authorize the Secretary of State to take appropriate action to suspend the application of the sanctions imposed pursuant to Department of State Public Notice 1427 of July 11, 1991."
The statement adds, however, that "the property and interests in property previously blocked remain blocked." Also, "the national emergency declared in Executive Order No. 12808 and expanded in Executive Order No. 12934 shall continue in effect."
What "national emergency" is never explained.
An attached "memorandum of justification" explains that this is only a suspension and threatens that "sanctions may again go into effect against the Serbs. Accordingly, we plan to leave the Sanctions Assistance Mission infrastructure and monitors in place."
What may be missed in the legalese of the president's statement is the meaning of the date when sanctions first went into effect--July 1991.
This was before the breakup of Yugoslavia. This was at a time when the official U.S. policy was supposedly to support a unified Yugoslavia.
The reality is that this was a time when the United States and the Western European imperialist powers--Britain, France, Germany and Italy--were putting what's been described as a "full-court press" on socialist Yugoslavia meant to destroy it.
Here are some important dates leading up to the dismemberment of Yugoslavia:
NOV. 5, 1990: Congress passes Foreign Operations Appropriations Law 101-513. This law says that within six months of its enactment all aid, trade, credit and loans from the United States to Yugoslavia would be cut off. It could only be restored to the individual republics of Yugoslavia if they had elected governments approved by the U.S. State Department. This is a clear demand for the breakup of Yugoslavia.
JULY 5, 1991: The European Economic Community freezes all economic aid to Yugoslavia.
JULY 11, 1991: United States imposes sanctions on Yugoslavia. This means that not only is all aid and credit blocked, but all economic trade is blockaded. A lethal stranglehold, to use Woodrow Wilson's term, is put on the country's economy.
OCT. 29, 1991: The EEC imposes sanctions on Serbia and Montenegro only.
DEC. 19, 1991: The EEC foreign ministers decide to recognize breakaway Yugoslav republics if they meet certain demands.
DEC. 23, 1991: Germany recognizes Croatia and Slovenia as independent countries. The open dismemberment of Yugoslavia begins.
MAY 30, 1992: United States imposes additional sanctions on Serbia and Montenegro only.
JULY 4, 1992: The EEC declares that the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia "exists no longer."
The role of the imperialist powers--the United States, Britain, France, Germany and Italy--in destroying Yugoslavia's socialist economy has never been closely examined. The biggest lie that's repeated in all the capitalist media is that the breakup was the result of internal conflicts. The real criminals behind the destruction of Yugoslavia and the civil war that's been so devastating can be found in Washington, London, Bonn, Paris and Rome.
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