The US is threatening to come down hard on the Yugoslav Federation as the story of their military cooperation with Baghdad unfolds. Adisa Busuladzic reports from Belgrade Click to view caption When NATO peace-keepers in Republika Srpska, the Serb-dominated part of Bosnia and Herzegovina, raided the Orao aircraft factory last month, the incident sent reverberations throughout the Balkans. Documents seized in the raid have indicated that Orao had been cooperating with Yugoimport, a Yugoslav, government-run, arms trading company, to repair Iraqi MiG aircraft. Both the Yugoslav and Republika Srpska governments responded by sacking the heads of these companies, and a few officials in their respective Defence Ministries. It was hoped that this would stop the scandal from developing further. It did not. A couple of weeks later, United States officials sent a request to their Croatian counterparts to intercept a tanker in the Adriatic Sea, which had just sailed from Tivat, heading for the Middle East. Tivat is a large air and naval base on the Adriatic coast. The intercepted vessel, BokaStar, carrying 14 containers of solid rocket fuel bound for Iraq, is currently under investigation at the Croatian port of Rijeka. Both incidents turned out to be merely the tip of the iceberg, exposing a military relationship between Yugoslavia (now a confederation of Serbia and Montenegro) and Iraq that has spanned several decades. Arms dealing to Iraq commenced during the rule of Marshal Tito (1945-1980), continuing through the Milosevic era of the 1990s. Although Milosevic's regime collapsed following street protests two years ago, the new Western-backed government in Belgrade continued trading with Iraq, in clear violation of a UN ban. The Montenegrin daily Vijesti reported this Saturday that a seized copy of the vessel's bill of lading showed that a Montenegrin company, Mbalic, was a vendor, while the Egyptian company, Setic Cairo, was named as consignee of the intercepted freight. Alexandria was its port of destination. Additionally, the newspaper claimed that ongoing Interpol investigations are about to establish whether Setic Cairo is indeed registered in Egypt and if it is involved in the illegal transfer of solid rocket fuel to Iraq. At first, the Yugoslav government tried to play down the incidents, claiming that they merely involved the overhauling of older- generation aircraft engines in Iraq. However, after being presented with the evidence gathered in a special US intelligence report, the government acknowledged illegal military sales, promising to clamp down on them immediately. The resulting scandals not only highlight Saddam Hussein's ability to evade the UN ban on the import of military goods and expertise, but also showed the complete lack of any substantial change in the Yugoslav regime since Milosevic left. The new Yuglosav president, Kostunica, has refused to remove Milosevic era cronies from top positions in the Yugoslav army and has defied cooperation with the International War Crimes Tribunal (IWCT) for former Yugoslavia, at the Hague. While making its $135 million worth of annual aid to Belgrade somewhat conditional on cooperation with the IWCT, Washington has avoided open confrontation with the new Yugoslav government over its continued military cooperation with Libya and Iraq, citing a lack of conclusive evidence. The change of heart finally came in mid- October, when the US Embassy in Belgrade sent a protest note to the Yugoslav government, complaining about missile technology transfers to Iraq and Libya. The US accused the Yugoslavs of giving scientific assistance to those two countries and helping Iraq develop long-range cruise missiles capable of carrying chemical, biological and nuclear warheads. The aforementioned intelligence report allegedly accuses Dr Djordje Blagojevic and Dr Milan Kovacevic, co-owners of a Yugoslavian company, Infinity, of helping Iraq develop missile technology. In this endeavour, the company closely cooperated with Yugoimport, Interdeal, Brunner, GVS, and Temex, all of which appear to be associated with either active duty or retired Yugoslav army generals. In addition, Brunner and Infinity are alleged to have helped build a Libyan plant for the manufacture of solid propellants for rockets. While the impact of this scandal on the Yugoslavian government is still uncertain, in Bosnia, things have started to unravel at high speed. The international high representative in Bosnia, Lord Paddy Ashdown, has ordered a long-term inquiry into the deal between Orao and Yugoimport, while the US ambassador to Bosnia, Clifford Bond has accused the Bosnian Serb leadership of obstructing previous Western attempts to thoroughly investigate Orao a month ago. The Orao incident has showed the inadequacy of the current military set-up in Bosnia, which allows for the existence of two armies, one in Serb-dominated Republika Srpska, the other in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, dominated by Bosnian Muslims and Croats. There is still no joint command of these two armies, by the central government in Sarajevo, nor a joint Ministry of Defence. This military set-up was first outlined by the US-backed Dayton Peace Accords that put an end to the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It seems that these scandals, involving the Bosnian Serb establishment, show that Bosnia-Herzegovina cannot function as a normal state in the international arena as long as the Dayton Accords allows for a lack of centralised control over the two militaries. As for the involvement of the Yugoslav government in this scandal, this all comes as no surprise. The Yugoslavs have had a long history of violating the norms of the international community, while the international community, for its part, has had a long history of giving the Yugoslavs the benefit of the doubt, falling victim to its own credulity.
