IN RESPONSE to the Geneva negotiations we reaffirm our defence of a sovereign and multi-ethnic Bosnia-Herzegovina. Any plan that ratifies the tearing apart of the republic into territories carved out on an ethnic basis by Serb and Croat nationalists supported by the Belgrade and Zagreb governments, cannot bring peace.
The demand to lift the embargo on sending arms to the Bosnian forces is an answer to the main Great Serbian aggression; it also makes it possible to resist Great Croatian policies while mobilizing the mixed populations of the besieged towns, like Sarajevo and Tuzla, who feel themselves to be Bosnians and want to continue to live together, whatever their national origins.
A foreign military intervention would have an opposite logic, escaping any control by the Bosnian populations; it would be counterproductive, reinforcing Great Serbian nationalism instead of weakening it; it would expand the war instead of putting an end to it. We are therefore against such an intervention while being in favour of sending arms to the Bosnian forces.
This position goes together with active support to political and civic movements that are working for a dialogue among the communities and a free union of democratic and multi-ethnic states. We denounce all policies of exclusion and revenge, whatever their share of responsibility in unleashing this war: this is the political precondition for weakening Great Serb nationalism, the most violent and threatening force confronting the diverse communities of the Yugoslav region, which is using humiliation and rape to impose its "ethnic cleansing".
We support the feminist campaign to demand that rape be included among War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity. Our active solidarity with the victims of rape must rely on the independent citizens' movements struggling against the nationalisms in power, in particular Serbian women in the anti-war movement that is opposing Milosevic's policies, and the women attacked by the Croat press as "witches" because they have dared to say that Croats have also raped women.
If the map of Great Serbia is drawn up by force in the name of Serb self-determination the war will continue, and will spread to Kosovo and Macedonia. War will break out again in Croatia if the Serb question is settled there by force in the name of Croat self-determination.
If the logic of ethnic nation-states is not defeated by the logic of the systematic and simultaneous recognition of equal rights for all the peoples divided between several Balkan states, whether Albanians, Serbs or Croats, war will engulf the Balkans.