Balkan Babel by Ramet Sabrina Petra;

Author:Ramet, Sabrina Petra;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Westview Press
Published: 2011-04-26T04:00:00+00:00

With the Vance-Owen Plan, the EC began its slide away from uti possidetis and opened the door to the partial recognition of conquests.

On 6 April 1993, the foreign ministers of the EC states adopted a “Declaration on Former Yugoslavia,” indicating that in the event that the Bosnian Serbs failed to sign the Vance-Owen Plan, both they and the Serb-Montenegrin federation would be subjected to long-term international isolation, branded as a pariah state.50

On 17 April 1993, the U.N. Security Council approved a resolution (with thirteen votes in favor and only Russia abstaining) calling for a toughening of the hitherto largely ineffectual economic sanctions against Serbia.51 Lord Owen met with Karadžić on 23 April and offered to press for further concessions to the Serbs, but the following day Karadžić reiterated his earlier rejection of the plan. The West also began, for the first time, to consider a military option against the FRY and the Bosnian Serbs. It was at this point that the United States became actively, albeit only briefly, involved in the efforts to stop the fighting. U.S. President Clinton met with various members of Congress on 27 April to sound them out about air strikes against Bosnian Serbs, and the Pentagon began to collect intelligence on Bosnia, specifically identifying appropriate targets for aerial strikes.52

By then, Milošević had endorsed the Vance-Owen Peace Plan, for all of the uncertainty associated with it. Milošević then pressed Karadžić to accept it, but when Karadžić raised some objections to the plan, Milošević shouted insults at him. This was the beginning of a falling out between the two men. Shortly thereafter, Miloševic and Karadžić came to Athens, as the guests of Prime Minister Konstantin Mitsotakis. Karadžić was given to understand that he would not be free to leave Athens until he had signed on the dotted line. So, on 2 May, Karadžic duly signed the Vance-Owen Plan, but indicated that the Bosnian Serb assembly would have to ratify it. Lord Owen expressed optimism that his and Cyrus Vance’s efforts on behalf of peace were now about to bear fruit. But on 6 May, in spite of fierce pressure from Milošević, who attended the session, the Bosnian Serb assembly rejected the plan. Milošević issued a strongly worded condemnation of the Bosnian Serbs now and promised to cease supplying them with arms and other equipment (finally conceding what he had denied up to then, i.e., that arms and other war materiel from Serbia had been crucial to the Bosnian Serb war effort). But Belgrade continued to supply the Bosnian Serbs with food and medicine, and to pay the salaries of Bosnian Serb officers, including Ratko Mladić, and arms supplies were later resumed. But for the moment, Milošević seemed to have changed his image, indeed to have convinced the world that he was a man of peace.53

The United States now backed off, declaring that it had no vital interests at stake in Bosnia;54 the EC dropped the Vance-Owen Plan and advised Lord Owen to resume negotiations with the three warring parties.

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