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From notes@igc.apc.org Tue Aug 8 06:48:30 1995 Received: from cdp.igc.apc.org (192.82.108.1) by MediaFilter.org with SMTP (MailShare 1.0b10); Tue, 8 Aug 1995 06:48:31 -0500 Received: (from notes) by cdp.igc.apc.org (8.6.12/Revision: 1.203 ) id CAA22439 for "conf-zamir.chat"; Tue, 8 Aug 1995 02:45:37 -0700 Date: 08 Aug 1995 01:58:23 Reply-To: Conference "zamir.chat"From: jbennett@eikon.e-technik.tu-muenchen.de Subject: Re: Longer than World War One To: Recipients of zamir-chat-l Message-ID: In-Reply-To: X-Gateway: conf2mail@igc.apc.org Errors-To: owner-zamir-chat-l@igc.apc.org Precedence: bulk Lines: 56 From: Robert John Bennett Dear President Clinton: "The war in the Balkans," said a journalist yesterday on German state television, "has now gone on longer than World War One." When Slovenia declared independence in June 1991, and Yugoslavia attacked in retaliation, the rest of the world believed that outside armed intervention would only make the situation worse. For over four years many of the world's politicians have continued to cling to that belief, despite every indication to the contrary. And the result? The situation in the Balkans has gotten worse. Not only that, the situation has now reached a point that would have been inconceivable in June 1991. Yesterday, however, Boris Yeltsin made one of the most intelligent statements that any world leader has made about the Balkans in the last four years. He said that if his proposed negotiations in Moscow with Tudjman and Milosevic lead to nothing, the war and conflict in the Balkans should simply be stopped. "By force." That would mean putting together a coalition of the major European and North American powers strong enough to achieve that aim. First stop the war, then begin negotiations. Trying it the other way around hasn't worked. Difficult? Yes, but similar coalitions crushed the Nazis, rebuilt Europe, ended Iraqi aggression in Kuwait, and made tremendous progress in space. The undesirable alternative scenarios to a continuation of the war are practically endless: the Moslem nations enter the war, hundreds of thousands of refugees stream toward Germany and France, a new center of Moslem fundamentalism is established in Europe. The problem of the Balkans will only grow larger and more intractable if it isn't resolved immediately, and because everything else has failed, the only way to resolve it seems to be by forming a coalition and doing what Yeltsin suggested. Otherwise, the storm of war and all its frightful consequences will only increase. Sincerely yours, Robert J. Bennett Munich