Posted on 05/08/2008 1:08:33 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
BELGRADE, Serbia - The head of an ultranationalist party leading the polls going into Serbia's elections doesn't like to be compared to Slobodan Milosevic. He says the late leader wasn't hard enough during the Balkan wars and paved the way for losing Kosovo.
"Milosevic was a communist, then a socialist, but he was never a nationalist," Tomislav Nikolic, the leader of Serbia's far-right Radicals, said during an interview Tuesday with The Associated Press.
Two years after Milosevic died while on trial by a U.N. tribunal on genocide charges tied to the bloody breakup of former Yugoslavia, Nikolic's party could use Sunday's parliamentary elections to regain the power it shared with Milosevic in the late 1990s.
Opinion polls give the Radicals a slight lead over a pro-Western coalition led by President Boris Tadic heading into an election that will determine whether Serbia moves toward the European Union and the U.S. or seeks closer ties with Russia.
Milosevic was widely vilified in the West for the actions of Serb forces and was pressured into signing peace deals. But nationalists at home denounced him for what they considered weak wartime tactics that lost Serb-populated territories in former Yugoslavia.
"I was very critical of Milosevic. He had stopped short all Serbian actions, which benefited our enemies," Nikolic said, referring to the ethnic wars in Slovenia, Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo. "I would have done many things differently. I would have gone all the way."
He also blames Milosevic for the loss of Serbia's Kosovo province, a territory with an ethnic Albanian majority that declared independence Feb. 17 with backing from the U.S. and other Western powers.
After a relentless NATO air war campaign, Milosevic ended his crackdown on Albanian separatists in Kosovo in 1999 by signing a peace accord that put the territory under U.N. administration.
"Milosevic handed Kosovo to the United Nations, but he knew that that was a road to Kosovo's independence," Nikolic said.
If he does win power, Nikolic said he would never hand over the most-wanted Bosnian Serb war crimes fugitives -- former political leader Radovan Karadzic and Gen. Ratko Mladic -- to the U.N. war crimes tribunal for former Yugoslavia.
Interesting that they call an ultranationalist a “far-right” candidate.
I think I like this Tomislav Nikolic.
GO SERBS!
Note the exact words.. the guy is saying being a communist and or a socialist is a good thing. He's a leftist.
He actually makes a very good point. Milosevic was not that effective in dealing with Serbia’s enemies. He didn’t intervene militarily in Bosnia - which would have easily given the Serbs the victory. He pretty much betrayed the Serbs in Krajina. And he pulled his forces out of Kosovo when Russia began pressuring him to make nice with the United States.
I have never seen much of a difference between statist facism and statist socialism - they are both oppressive totalitarian political ideologies.
I think you are misinterpreting his statement. He is just describing Milosevic’s political journey. Milosevic started out as a communist then after the fall of the Soviet Union he defined himself as a socialist. However, while he fought to protect Kosovo he never was a strong nationalist who was willing to use the full might of Serbia’s army to win the Yugoslav wars.
I won’t slam you. I think you’re right.
I agree, but then again, I think Franco was ahead of his time for dealing with the commies.
OK perhaps.. thanks.
Thanks. I was getting worried there for a minute. I thought maybe my evil side was posting. lol
I think Franco was ahead of his time for dealing with the commies.
I agree.
Thank you. I’m glad I’m not alone in thinking that.
And just think, if McCain had gotten his way, we’d have gone into Kosovo with ground troops and done even more damage.
Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who spent more than five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, insists the United States should be preparing its troops for a ground war in case that option became necessary. McCain was one of a number of members of Congress traveling to Brussels and Aviano, Italy with Defense Secretary William Cohen in the next three days to meet top NATO leaders and visit U.S. forces involved in the operations.
http://www.alb-net.com/kcc/index24-1.htm
March 25, 1999
‘’These bombs are not going to do the job,’’ said Senator John McCain of Arizona, a Republican who was a naval pilot in the Vietnam War. ‘’It’s almost pathetic. You’re just going to solidify the determination of the Serbs to resist a peace agreement.
‘’You’d have to drop the bridges and turn off the lights in Belgrade to have even a remote chance of changing Milosevic’s mind,’’ he said. ‘’What you’ll get is all the old Vietnam stuff, bombing pauses, escalation, negotiations, trouble.’’
Mr. McCain, who is expected to announce his candidacy for President next month, said the Administration was caught with unpalatable alternatives — bombing, which he said ‘’has never worked without ground forces,’’ and the use of ground forces, which he said had little support on Capitol Hill or in the nation as a whole.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B05E6DB1F38F930A25757C0A96F958260
Wow, thanks, AuntB, we narrowly missed a bullet on that.
Chalk up another reason why we won't be voting in this presidential election.
I'm so damned disgusted with our his being the GOP nominee. Makes me just want to vomit.
Just pinging you to this article as I think you and the rest of the Balkan ping group would find it of interest.
I think guys like us are a dying breed.
And gals. ;)
I'm glad I'm in my mid 50's. More of my life is behind me than in front. My pop fought in two wars to pass to me a great country. I've come up very short compared to him when passing it to my kids and grandkids.
I agree, a dying breed.
And don’t they both require the complicity of the press?
Yes, absolutely, otherwise the 'press' is just replaced - see current policies in Russia and Venezuela - one 'nationalist' the other 'socialist', both silencing the media that refuses to support their agneda's.
"the exact words.. the guy is saying being a communist and or a socialist is a good thing. He's a leftist."
Actually, in a vacuum, you'd be right. But context is everything.
What I think that he was referring to was that Milosevic was "a communist and socialist", but he was not the racist "Hitler" that he was made out to be. Milosevic was into getting and keeping power over all the ethnicities, not killing them all off or turning them into slaves so that they would revolt because there were too many of them.
Serbia has a Right and a Left, but it slightly different than our context for it. Those on the Left are labeled by our Western press as "pro-Western", "pro-European", even "pro-American" -- in short, the Liberal Left is who we are supposed to root for, as exemplified by Boris Tadic & his group. Tadic was IRI trained and he is as close to being our perfect stooge as he can, and still be elected by the Serbs.
Those in the middle, who just want to a normal life, balancing East & West based on where they sit geographically and politically, and who want some basic pride in their country, are called "Nationalists". Vojislav Kostunica is an example of this. He's a guy who under communist Yugoslavia put his life and career on the line to translate the Federalist Papers into the Serbian language, but the Western press still sees him as "not pro-EU enough", "not pro-Western" enough. Kostunica is an idealist, who won't be a Western puppet or play nice with those who do. He wants the "America" for his country that doesn't even exist here in the US anymore.
And then there is Nikolic. He is further Right than an American Republican, but he's not a communist or a fascist. He's more like a further Right George Bush of Serbia, chosen for the same reasons we picked Bush the second time, post 9/11-- because we saw him as "tough on terrorists". But as it was pointed out, Nikolic is a pragmatist, but he doesn't pussyfoot around.
All I can say is thank God I am here and not there, because the choices the Serbian voters have to make are far tougher than ours, in that they are constantly walking a tightrope between East & West and between their past and future, with no one letting them settle their own affairs.
We told the Serbs in Croatia that Belgrade would sell them out. They didn’t listen.
Well Tailgunner, according to the map proposed by this party, Serbia will have to invade the following countries: Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia, and Croatia. They will also have to face NATO troops in Kosovo. That’s five wars.
Could you post the map - I actually haven’t seen it. Do, they want to reclaim all of the majority Serb areas like many Serbs wanted at the start of the Yugoslav wars?
Here’s an interview with Nikolic from January, 2008. Judge for yourself whether he is a kook or a patriot of his country. (Do you think that the author used the word “hardline nationalist” enough?):
Interview with presidential front-runner Tomislav Nikolic
Nikolic is acting leader of the hard-line nationalist Serbian Radical Party.
By Andrew Wander
from the January 18, 2008 edition
Belgrade - Serbian presidential front-runner Tomislav Nikolic, the acting leader of the hard-line nationalist Serbian Radical Party, spoke to the Monitor this week (see related story).
How would a Serbia under Nikolic respond to a declaration of independence by Kosovo?
I’m expecting Kosovo to declare independence. If they declare, we’ll stop Kosovo Albanians coming to Serbia. We’ll stop them traveling through Serbia. We won’t recognize their passports ... we’ll cut off the supply of goods to Kosovo.
What if the European Union deploys a mission in Kosovo?
[T]hat would be unacceptable. We’re members of the UN. We’re not members of the EU. Only the UN can make decisions on borders. The EU can’t decide an issue outside of its own borders The situation is that in the UN Security Council we have members who will veto any change to Serbia’s borders.
What about countries that recognize Kosovo’s independence?
[That] will place a burden on their relationship with Serbia. The independence of Kosovo has no base in international law. We won’t take diplomatic action against any country that supports and respects the UN Security Council.
Will you cooperate with The Hague war-crimes tribunal?
I think at present Serbia’s co-operation with the Hague tribunal is at its lowest level yet. The current government does not respond [to The Hague] ... yet everybody asks if I will cooperate if I win. Everything in respect to The Hague will stay the same.
Are people like Ratko Mladic criminals in your view?
It’s not for me to decide whether he’s a criminal or not – only a court can decide that. I am certain Ratko Mladic is not in Serbia – if he was, he would be in the Hague by now. There’s nowhere in Serbia that someone could hide for that long. Maybe he’s dead. I don’t know. If we wait 80 years, we can be sure he’s dead.
Would you aim to lead Serbia into the European Union?
For seven years, we have been under the influence of Western Europe. We have done all that was asked of us by the West. That was our mistake. But the EU also made a mistake. They should have given us full membership straight away. Now we have a situation where the Russian Federation is recovering very well, and the EU is depending on Russia for gas. I think Serbia should be the place where Russian and Western power is balanced....
Good post, thanks.
Most excellent post, B
You were right on that. But then again, Tudjman pretty much sold out the Bosnian Croats, too.
The images of what these mujahadin did are far too graphic to post on FR, but for those with a strong stomach, they are here And this happened BEFORE Srebrenica.
So, in all honesty TJ, if General Mladic was all that had stood between me and these imported jihadist animals, I'd probably be "kissing his picture", too.
It's much, much more than just Serbian majority areas from the 1991 census.
Considering that Tudjman is to this day more popular in Hercegovina and Central Bosnia than anywhere in the world, that's not actually correct. He got us the best deal he could at Dayton. The only ones in BiH not happy with him are those that sided with the Bosnian Muslims (either communists or HOS holdouts) or those in Bosanska Posavina who were upset that the HV pulled out of that area in 1992 out of fear of sanctions against Croatia.
Your post suggests that Nikolic is betraying Seselj’s positions. Do you think this to be the case? Recall that Seselj is still the party’s leader and he has called for the ethnic cleansing of non-Serbs within the Greater Serbian borders, such as saying that Muslims should be “sent to Anatolia”.
Yeah, you are right because it includes all of Bosnia. And it looks like it extends further North into Croatia than the Krajina region.
I’d doubt they’d do that. Especially since i suspect that Serbs are tired of war.
Seselj’s only "position" ought to be in a straight jacket in an insane asylum. He's a brilliant lunatic, who was tortured into insanity and never fully recovered.
Seselj was yelling "Take me, take me, take me to the Hague" for years, until they finally indicted him. He then the flew there of his own accord, not even under arrest or accompanied by any law enforcement, eager to turn the court upside down.
Seselj thinks that it is his job to show the Hague for the kangaroo court that it is, and he is doing a pretty good job of it -- hunger strikes when he couldn't choose his own defense attorney, outbursts against the judges, writing a book, "Felon and War Criminal Javier Solana" that he is publicizing . This is Seselj's chance at the world spotlight and he is using it to put on better theater than the court is.
Whatever Nikolic is or isn't, he's not nuts and he's not stupid. And unless you've got more than "a 1991 census map", this "it's much, much more" breathless nonsense, is just that, nonsense. Nikolic isn't stupid and starting 5 wars, with NATO troops in the backyard, would be the act of a complete moron.
On the question of Serbian territorial expansion, Nikolic recently explained that it would be one thru politics rather than warfare. I’m hoping to see him expand on this comment.
Most people don't know that Serbia has the largest number of refugees of any country in Europe There are around 500,000 Serbs and some others (including Albanians and Gypsies) still in Serbia from the wars in Croatia, from Bosnia, from Kosovo -- all of them driven into Serbia proper back in the 1990's. Many of these people came to Serbia with nothing more than the clothes on their backs and many still haven't recovered from losing everything -- their lives, their homes, their family members. And there isn't a single Serbian politician who can avoid addressing the issues of these refugees in some way.
I suspect that Nikolic's way of dealing with the refugees is to tell them that he will work politically to get them back to their homes. If so, that isn't "Serbian military expansionism". It is simply giving hope to people who lost all hope, along with their homes and their old lives. Is it false hope? Well, Nikolic is a politician, and I don't trust the promises of our politicians, so why should I believe the promises of any of theirs?
Fair enough.
You're right about that in terms of BiH...the Muslim-Croat federation got 51% of the territory and the Bosnian-Serb republic received 49% of the territory.
:-)
This still leaves the Hercegovi holding the unwanted Muslim baggage so to speak, hence Dodik’s popularity among the Croats.
wasn’t it divided in Muslim, Croat and Serb (all separate I mean?)
No, BiH was recognized as a sovereign state consisting of two entities (that I mentioned above).
potential time bomb, unless economy moves on and they join EU /NATO.
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