q4j2znm6q's Journal

With the help of our hard-nosed expert, Lynn...
With the help of our hard-nosed expert, Lynn Davis, I hung tough on export controls and rebuffed the arms control demands by referring them to our staffs for further study

The atmosphere brightened when we moved on to economicsI described the economics package as cooperation, not assistance, then asked Lloyd Bentsen to outline the proposals we would make to the G-7 in TokyoYeltsin became alarmed when he realized that we couldnt get him any money before the April 25 referendumThough I couldnt give Boris the $500 million check he wanted, at the press conference following our final session I made it plain that a lot of money was coming, because the United States supported Russias democracy, its reforms, and its leader

I left Vancouver with more confidence in Yeltsin and a better understanding of the magnitude of his challenges and his visceral determination to overcome themHe was a big bear of a man, full of apparent contradictionsHe had grown up in primitive conditions that made my childhood look like a Rockefellers, and he could be crude, but he had a fine mind capable of grasping the subtleties of a situationHe would attack one minute and embrace the nextHe seemed by turns coldly calculating and genuinely emotional, petty and generous, mad at the world and full of funOnce when we were walking through my hotel together, a Russian journalist asked him if he was happy with our meetingHe responded quickly, Happy? One cannot be happy outside the presence of a beautiful womanAs everyone knows, Yeltsin had a fondness for vodka, but, by and 2.55 chanel large, in all our dealings he was alert, well prepared, and effective in representing his countryCompared with the realistic alternatives, Russia was lucky to have him at the helmHe loved his country, loathed communism, and wanted Russia to be both great and goodWhenever anyone made a snide remark about Yeltsins drinking, I was reminded of what Lincoln allegedly said when Washington snobs made the same criticism of General Grant, by far his most aggressive and successful commander in the Civil War: Find out what he drinks, and give it to the other generals

When I got back to Washington, I increased the aid package again, proposing $2 billion for all the former Soviet states, with two-thirds going to RussiaOn April 25, a large majority of Russian voters supported Yeltsin, his policies, and his desire for a new DumaAfter a little more than one hundred days in office, we had made great strides in bolstering Yeltsin and Russian democracyUnfortunately, the same could not be said about our efforts to end the slaughter and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia

In 1989, as the Soviet Union crumbled and communisms demise in Europe accelerated, the question of what political philosophy would replace it was being answered in different ways in different countriesThe westernmost part of the former Soviet empire plainly preferred democracy, a cause championed for decades by immigrants to the United States from Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and the Baltic statesIn Russia, Yeltsin and other democrats were fighting a rear-guard action against Communists and omega seamaster replica watches ultra-nationalistsIn Yugoslavia, as the nation struggled to reconcile the competing claims of its ethnic and religious constituencies, Serbian nationalism prevailed over democracy under the leadership of the countrys dominant political figure, Slobodan Milosevic

By 1991, Yugoslavias westernmost provinces, Slovenia and Croatia, both predominantly Catholic, had declared independence from YugoslaviaFighting then broke out between Serbia and Croatia, and spilled over into Bosnia, the most ethnically diverse province of Yugoslavia, where Muslims constituted about 45 percent of the population, Serbs were just over 30 percent, and Croatians about 17 percentThe so-called ethnic differences in Bosnia were really political and religiousBosnia had been the meeting place of three imperial expansions: the Catholic Holy Roman Empire from the west, the Orthodox Christian movement from the east, and the Muslim Ottoman Empire from the southIn 1991, the Bosnians were governed by a coalition of national unity headed by the leading Muslim politician, Alija Izetbegovic, and including the militant Serbian nationalist leader Radovan Karadzic, a Sarajevo psychiatrist

At first Izetbegovic wanted Bosnia to be an autonomous multi-ethnic, multi-religious province of YugoslaviaWhen Slovenia and Croatia were recognized by the international community as independent nations, Izetbegovic decided that the only way Bosnia could escape Serbian dominance was to seek independence, tooKaradzic and his allies, who were tied closely to Milosevic, had a very different agendaThey omega seamaster fake were supportive of Milosevics desire to turn as much of Yugoslavia as he could hold on to, including Bosnia, into a Greater SerbiaOn March 1, 1992, a referendum was held on whether Bosnia should become an independent nation in which all citizens and groups would be treated equallyThe result was an almost unanimous approval of independence, but only two-thirds of the electorate votedKaradzic had ordered the Serbs to stay away from the polls and most of them didBy then, Serb paramilitary forces had begun killing unarmed Muslims, driving them from their homes in Serb-dominated areas in the hope of carving up Bosnia into ethnic enclaves, or cantons, by forceThis cruel policy came to be known by a curiously antiseptic name: ethnic cleansing

The European Community envoy, Lord Carrington, tried to get the parties to agree to peacefully divide the country into ethnic regions but failed, because there was no way to do it without leaving large numbers of one group on land controlled by another, and because many Bosnians wanted to keep their country together, with the different groups living together in peace, as they had done successfully for most of the previous five hundred years

In April 1992, the European Community recognized Bosnia as an independent state for the first time since the fifteenth centuryMeanwhile, Serbian paramilitary forces continued to terrorize Muslim communities and kill civilians, all the while using the media to convince local Serbs that it was they who were under attack from the Muslims and who had to defend themselvesOn silver chanel April 27, Milosevic announced a new state of Yugoslavia comprising Serbia and MontenegroHe then made a show of withdrawing his army from Bosnia, while leaving armaments, supplies, and Bosnian Serb soldiers under the leadership of his handpicked commander, Ratko MladicThe fighting and killing raged throughout 1992, with European Community leaders struggling to contain it and the Bush administration, uncertain of what to do and unwilling to take on another problem in an election year, content to leave the matter in Europes hands

To its credit, the Bush administration did urge the United Nations to impose economic sanctions on Serbia, a measure initially opposed by Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the French, and the British, who said they wanted to give Milosevic a chance to stop the very violence he had incitedFinally, sanctions were imposed in late May, but with little effect, as supplies continued to reach the Serbs from friendly neighborsThe United Nations also continued to maintain the arms embargo against the Bosnian government that originally had been imposed against all Yugoslavia in late 1991The problem with the embargo was that the Serbs had enough weapons and ammunition on hand to fight for years; therefore, the only consequence of maintaining the embargo was to make it virtually impossible for the Bosnians to defend themselvesSomehow they managed to hold out throughout 1992, acquiring some arms by capturing them from Serb forces, or in small shipments from Croatia that managed to evade the NATO blockade of the Croatian miu miu nappa coas