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CROATIAFOCUS COMMENT

CRIME DOES PAY!

by Brian Gallagher - 30 December 2002

International Justice has been discredited with the treatment of the odious former Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic. The spectacle of people such as Madeline Albright praising this self-confessed war criminal is an obscenity. The international community - despite her known record - ensured Plavsic obtained high office in Bosnia-Herzegovina after the war. British troops helped her to take control at one point. This plea bargain has nothing to do with 'reconciliation', as is being claimed, and everything to do with rewarding someone who, when the fighting stopped, swiftly made herself useful to cynical Western leaders in carrying out their policies.

Indeed, former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook had many 'friendly meetings' with this known war criminal. Mr Cook, of course, was the one who informed the Great British public that the Blair government would pursue an "ethical" foreign policy. Perhaps the ethical Mr Cook could explain why he had friendly meetings with a war criminal?

The outrageous spin regarding 'reconciliation' and 'courage' has more to do with covering up the international community's role in supporting Plavsic then anything else. No one in the region is fooled; the spin is for western audiences.

And it has led to the most outrageous moral relativism. Various British luminaries gave their "Heroes and Villains" of 2002 to the Independent. Writer Margaret Cook informed us that her hero was... Biljana Plavsic! Why? For her "immeasurable" courage in admitting her crimes. And her villain? One Julie Patterson, convicted for smuggling cocaine. Of Patterson she said "I wonder if she has ever seen the end result of her way of life. Is she totally indifferent to young men and women, out of their minds with mental agony, trembling and sick, confused, hallucinating, terrified? A living hell for the have-nots and their carers, while she swanned to and fro in luxury across the Atlantic". One wonders whether Cook has considered the victims of Plavsic in such a manner. Apparently not; being involved in the mass murder of 200,000 people and the ethnic cleansing of far more is a lesser crime than, appalling though it is, cocaine smuggling. Truly sickening.

In return for her services Plavsic is now being treated leniently by prosecutors, who dropped all charges - including genocide - bar one. Plavsic will not be receiving a 45 year sentence like Croat General Blaskic, convicted of crimes far less than hers. One wonders how Croats must feel when their Generals that had to fight the kind of ethnic cleansing Plavsic was involved in are now having the book thrown at them whilst Plavsic is treated like a hero?

The important issue of why the international community ensured a Serbian war criminal obtained a high position in Bosnia-Herzegovina has been obscured. And that is the real reason behind Plavsic's plea bargain.