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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Jan. 2, 1997
issue of Workers World newspaper
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Perry promotes NATO strike force in Bosnia

By John Catalinotto

U.S. officials have raised the specter of a dangerous and illegal NATO military-police assault in Bosnia to capture Bosnian Serb political leaders.

A newly created police agency backed by the U.S.-led NATO occupation force would go into Serbian areas of Bosnia and take these political authorities by force.

Like the December 1989 Pentagon invasion of Panama that seized Panamanian leader Gen. Manuel Noriega, such an attack in Bosnia would endanger thousands of civilian lives.

U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry raised this possibility Dec. 17 after a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels. He said the ministers wanted a new international police force to hunt down what he called "indicted war criminals" in Bosnia.

The defense ministers were implementing the current plan to reduce the NATO occupation forces in Bosnia from 60,000 to 31,000.

NATO troops could fight population

At the news conference, Perry admitted that he and other NATO officials realized "that if a police force were out operating and arresting criminals, this could create a civil disturbance" and that the NATO troops in Bosnia "would have to deal with that disturbance."

In other words, the now-35,000-strong NATO occupation force could be fighting directly against the Bosnian Serb population, which is likely to support political leaders under attack from outside powers.

Also in Brussels, U.S. Gen. George Joulwan, the senior NATO military officer in Europe, said: "If trained police are empowered and have a mandate to go in and arrest war criminals, we would work with them." The same day U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Gen. John Shalikashvili suggested something similar in Sarajevo.

Danger of Pentagon intervention

As with every U.S. initiative regarding the Balkans, this one too may be delayed by the bitter rivalry between Washington, Paris, Bonn and the other imperialist governments.

However, even if the NATO occupation troops don't carry out the arrests themselves, such an assault remains a threat to the people of the region.

At this moment the threat is especially ominous since it coincides with a mobilization by the pro-Western opposition against the government led by Slobodan Milosevic in Belgrade.

This opposition's goal, with much support from U.S. and European imperialism, is to complete the privatization of the Yugoslav economy. Neverthe less, it appeals to Serb nationalism and has already attacked Milosevic for abandoning Serb interests by signing the Dayton accords that allow NATO intervention and the partitioning of Bosnia.

This opposition could exploit the arrests of alleged Serb "war criminals" in an opportunistic way to broaden the attack on Milosevic.

The de-facto war crimes tribunal that branded the Serbs "war criminals" is not a true international court of justice but a creature of the U.S. government and the United Nations Security Council. It has no moral or popular standing, and is simply a tool Washington uses against Balkan sovereignty. Specifically, it targets Bosnian Serb leaders.

In this instance the phony court provides an excuse to expand the active role of U.S. troops in Bosnia and tear down what remains of Yugoslavia.

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