Today's mediators are still wrestling with the consequences of that mistake. As armed intervention followed secession, so Yugoslavia disintegrated. In Mr Zimmerman's assessment, democracy died with national unity.The first generation of mediators, Britain's Lord Carrington and Cyrus Vance of the US, then argued in vain that there should be no Western recognition of any Yugoslav republic unless all had agreed on their mutual relationships."If this simple principle had been maintained," observes Mr Zimmerman, "less blood would have been shed in Bosnia." But it was not. He accuses Senator Bob Dole and other US critics of failing to understand that the democratic unity of Yugoslavia worked against an ethnic demagogue like Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia.Instead it became an article of faith in some Western circles to encourage national aspirations, regardless of the quality of political leadership within each would-be state. The Slovenes said that they produced 25 per cent of the gross national product with only 8 per cent of the people. The Montenegrins gave off about land, the Macedonians claimed discrimination.
The Muslims, saddest of all, proclaimed no organised nationalist cause but, through a birthrate higher than all the other groups, set off prejudice that would be converted into an attempt at genocide."The breakup of Yugoslavia is a classic example of nationalism from the top down," writes Warren Zimmerman, the last US ambassador to Yugoslavia, "a manipulated nationalism in a region where peace has historically prevailed more than war and in which a quarter of the population were in mixed marriages."Mr Zimmerman, writing in Foreign Affairs, argues that more could and should have been done to keep Tito's edifice intact when the Communist Party collapsed in 1990. That was the paradox which Tito's federated Yugoslavia was designed to resolve."Talk to a Serb," recalled Mr Okun, "and he will say that the Serbs are the largest people and that much of Tito's policy was aimed at reducing the power of Serbia and the Serbs." The Croats complained that they suffered at the hands of a mainly Serbian Communist bureaucracy. The Catholic Habsburgs reinforced the frontiers of modern Croatia. These empires may lie in the dust, but today's Muslims, Serbs and Croats are essentially fighting over territory delineated by their old masters. The Russian Orthodox Romanovs fought for the interests of Christianity in a holy alliance with Serbia.
The Ottomans defended Islamic conquests that once lapped at the gates of Vienna. Herbert Okun, a wily American diplomat who served Cyrus Vance in his ill- fated mediation, believes that Yugoslavia was still living out "the history of the long retreat of the Ottoman Turks out of Europe back to their current boundaries".Three religions met in the Balkans and three imperial houses fought over the bleak spoils offered by the region. But the UN's failure to extend the threadbare cessation of hostilities in Bosnia means that to all practical purposes the peace-making diplomacy of the past three years is now exhausted."We have all gone at this thinking it could be solved by a rapid and sensible assessment of interests by all sides," observed a senior UN peace- keeping official. "Now we have to adapt to the fact that this is not the case."The wars of succession to former Yugoslavia, which broke out in 1991, are comparable with the civil war in Lebanon, which lasted from 1975 to 1990, the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka (from the early 1980s to the present), the war of independence in Algeria (1953-1962) and the Vietnam war (1946- 1975).The lesson grimly being drawn in the foreign ministries of Europe is that wars of grievance, fuelled by race or religious hatred and fostered by outside powers, retain a capacity for endurance beyond logic or apparent self-interest.The wars among the peoples of former Yugoslavia are anchored so deeply in history that Northern Ireland appears a juvenile squabble by comparison. A number of those who have departed have given many years of loyal service to arings."arings looks to future, page 24. As the Bosnian ceasefire expires and fighting erupts in Croatia, Michael Sheridan and Christopher Bellamy see precious few options left for the UN peace-makers The crescendo of gunfire around Sarajevo yesterday and a simultaneous armoured thrust by Croatian forces against their Serbian foes marked more than the breakdown of yet another Balkan ceasefire. These twin events may signify the transformation of the Yugoslav conflict into another of the 20th century's long wars.Diplomats from a dozen countries and an array of UN officials were at hand yesterday with their usual chorus of futility.
We now turn our attention to the future," Hessel Lindenbergh, the ING board member who now heads arings, said yesterday."It is with no pleasure that we have said goodbye to those who have left. The executives included 11 from the London headquarters, three from Singapore and seven from arings' Tokyo office."Our review has confirmed that the problem stemming from Singapore was extraordinary and not endemic It is a problem we have put behind us. Some may never work in the City again, if the ank of England, which is conducting an inquiry into the fall of arings, decides that certain individuals should be blackballed for gross incompetence or managerial negligence.The resignations included every senior executive who had had managerial responsibility, direct or indirect, for the Singapore derivatives business, where Nick Leeson racked up the nearly £900m losses that bankrupted arings in February. Together with the earlier resignations of Peter aring, the former chairman, and Andrew Tuckey, the former chief executive, the total number of departures now stands at 23. There were no special pay-offs for those judged by ING, arings' new Dutch owners, to have failed in their management responsibilities.
The departures will cost ING about £1m, the amount due on the contracts, all of which were three-months' notice or less.Yesterday's most prominent victim, Peter Norris, the 40-year-old former chief executive of arings Investment ank, will receive about £35,000. B The City saw one of its biggest disciplinary bloodbaths so far yesterday, as 21 top managers resigned from arings, accepting responsibility for the failure to control Nick Leeson's derivatives speculation that broke the merchant bank. There were a few emotional scenes - one executive fleeing arings' ishopsgate headquarters in tears, saying her life was in ruins - but most had braced themselves for the fall of the axe. Zagreb described its attack as a limited police action.UN mission at risk, page 9News Analysis, page 13. In Sector South, home to the Serb "capital", Knin, columns ofCroatian and Serb troops, tanks and artillery converged on the Medak crossing. Croatian media claimed they had control of most of the 27km of disputed motorway,which is normally patrolled by UN troops. Three Jordanians observing the road were seriously wounded yesterday by a shell.Two Croatian MiG-21s took off from Zagreb yesterday to bomb the Sava bridge, presumably to stop any re-inforcements from Serb-held Bosnia, but apparently missed their target. Serb officials told of "dozens of dead and wounded" but reports of casualties are vague as the 2,000 peace-keepers in the area are confined to camp.By dusk, the Croats had taken several Serb towns including Jasenovac, site of the Second World War concentration camp where Croatian fascists killed hundreds of thousands of Serbs and which was today to celebrate the 50th anniversary of its liberation.Last night troops were only 4km from the Serb town of Okucani.