used without permission, for "fair use" only

Messenger Called Amanpour

by Dunja Ujevic

Vecernji List, Zagreb, Croatia, July 15 1999

Wherever Christian Amanpour shows up, either something has happened, or it will happen soon. At least, that is how it has been since the beginning of the war until today. When in 1997, after a meeting between Slobodan Milosevic and Madeleine Albright, CNN's journalistic superstar Christian Amanpour in the center of Belgrade asked the president of Serbia "Are you responsible for war crimes on the territory of the former Yugoslavia?", politicians who read between the lines realized that the elements for the indictment against Milosevic by the Hague Tribunal had been prepared a long time ago and that it was only the matter of a political decision when they would be used.

Or, let us take Srebrenica as an example of the cruelest massacre of people during the war in Bosnia-Hercegovina. Did Srebrenica have to happen? According to the interpretations of some respectable analysts, the Bosnian government did not do enough to save the local population calculating that the horrendous nature of that incident will force NATO to intervene in Bosnia-Hercegovina. Whatever the case, it is undeniable that the international troops, which were supposed to protect that safe zone, did nothing for its protection. And they must have known what was to happen. As early as a day before the start of the massacre, when Christian Amanpour showed up in Srebrenica. Actually, when she was sent to Srebrenica. A few nights ago, CNN broadcast a program about Croatia. The program focused on the spreading of fascism in Croatia with the blessing of the Croatian authorities. The author of the program: Christian Amanpour. Why was that program made, and why now?

If we consider the political events in Croatia and its surroundings this is what we see: George Soros has stated in Vienna that, after the successful overthrow of the Meciar regime in Slovakia, the next goal of the Open Society is to destroy the dictatorship of Franjo Tudman in Croatia (and is there a better example of dictatorship than fascism?). Then, representatives of the International Community sent a protest note to minister of foreign affairs Mate Granic in connection with the "voting rights of the citizens who happen to be outside Croatia at the time of elections", in which they demand that at the upcoming elections Croatian authorities make it possible for all Serbs who had escaped from Croatia to vote. Therefore, to all the Serbs, not only those who have the Croatian citizenship.

And finally, today in the castle of Bezanec, in the organization of the American International Republican Institute (IRI) begins a three-day seminar on the topic of establishment and maintenance of pre and post-electoral coalitions. The lecturers are people who participated in similar electoral processes in Bulgaria, Poland and Slovakia, led by the American ambassador in Slovakia Lyndsey Lloyd. On the eve of the last elections in Slovakia, ambassador Lloyd connected five oppositions parties in that country in a winning coalition. The participants of the seminar, besides some important apolitical personalities, are supposed to be representatives of the six opposition parties. Representatives of HDZ [the ruling party in Croatia] and opposition Christian Democratic parties have not been invited. So far only SDP has declined to participate in the seminar, citing problems with scheduling as the reason.

Therefore, what is the connection between all these events, from Soros, over CNN's propaganda program, the International Community's protest note about the right of all Serbs to vote in Croatian elections, all the way to the mentioned seminar? They are connected by the intent to create the atmosphere whose goal is not to influence the electoral procedure, but its outcome.

In that sense, the American International Republican Institute has a specialty related to the feeding of the media with its surveys of the popularity of certain parties with in advance determined results which depend on which party the Institute wants to support, and which to eliminate. Some of these IRI's surveys which predict overwhelming victory of the leftist opposition parties in the forthcoming elections have been repeatedly published in the Croatian leftist newspapers. That specialty of IRI has not gone unnoticed in the USA and the respected American CATO institute for sociological research calls it "disguised meddling in internal matters of other countries".

It appears that SDP as the opposition party with the most political intelligence has realized how harmful a participation in IRI's seminar could be for its image. However, perhaps they could have fared even better, had they had enough courage to tell IRI that SDP refuses to participate in such soiling of the reputation of Croatia.


Translated on 8/25/99


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