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From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com
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Subject: Time is running out for Milan Panic
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 92 17:01:12 EST
Message-ID: <comment21.1992Nov5.170113@AmeriCast.com>

\SE G;COMMENTARY;EDITORIAL
\HD Time is running out for Milan Panic

Enough, already.  That's the message issuing from the quarters of
Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic this week.  His straw man, Yugoslavian
Prime Minister Milan Panic, clearly has had his uses.  But straw men are
not supposed to think and act for themselves, and Mr.  Panic was beginning
to do just that.  Most recently, his coalition with Yugoslavian President
and nationalist Dobrica Cosic has proved rather inconvenient for Mr.
Milosevic.  And so he seems to have decided to rid himself of this
meddlesome American businessman whom he himself imported in July.

On Monday, Mr.  Panic suffered a crushing defeat in the Yugoslavian
parliament's lower house.  On Tuesday, he just barely hung on to his post
in an 18-17 vote in the upper house, where his Montenegran allies saved his
skin.  Mr.  Milosevic's Serbian Socialist Party has accused Mr.  Panic of
treason for wanting to negotiate peace with Bosnia and Croatia.  He has
been called a madman, a spy for the U.S.  State Department and an inciter
of civil war.  It seems only a matter of time before Mr.  Milosevic gets
his way.

Those who would like to see an end to the horrors taking place in
Bosnia should regard Mr.  Panic's likely departure as no great loss.  He
has served mainly as a smokescreen behind which the Serbs of Bosnia and of
Yugoslavia have been able to carry out their gruesome campaign of ethnic
cleansing with a minimum of outside interference.

In Geneva, U.N.  negotiators David Owen and Cyrus Vance hastened to
denounce the no-confidence motions against Mr.  Panic.  No wonder they are
upset.  With Mr.  Panic gone, they would have had no one to negotiate with,
especially since the representatives of the Bosnian Serbs walked out of the
talks Monday.

Mr.  Panic might not have been able to deliver quite what the Serbian
leader had hoped for - credibility for the rump state of Yugoslavia and an
end to international sanctions.  But he has had his uses.  Mr.  Panic made
a lot of promises in Geneva.  He promised the Serbs would turn over their
artillery and ground their planes.  He promised cooperation and cease-fires
and negotiations.  He promised an end to ethnic cleansing.  In short, he
promised such things as all reasonable and civilized people are hoping for.

There's no reason to doubt that Mr.  Panic has meant what he said when
he said it.  But he is a general without an army.  The Serbian-dominated
Yugoslav army is loyal to only one man.  That man is Mr.  Milosevic.  And
Mr.  Panic has no clout whatsoever with the Serbian warlords in Bosnia.
What he has done is to allow the West to persist in the delusion that in
talking to him, something is being done to stop the bloodshed, when only
military action can stop the bloody rampage of the Serbs.

Last week provided new evidence of the consequences of that inaction,
as tens of thousands of disheveled and freezing civilians fled the town of
Jajce, a Muslim stronghold that fell to the Serbs on Oct.  30. As they
left, city leaders were being pulled from their ranks and executed.  Mortar
fire continued to rain down on the refugees as they fled to the town of
Travnik 25 miles away.

"I wish the Americans would just bomb us and get it over with," Haso
Ribo, commander of the Bosnian army in Travnik, told reporters.  That's a
terrible indictment of inaction.  It is time for the West to look reality
in the eye.


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