Bosnia has become terror way station
Your voice: Stella L. Jatras

The "Your voice" column "Price of peace in Bosnia has been steep" (Dec. 5) states that the "U.S. peace plan for the Balkans seems to be succeeding, and is also backed by the European Union. This is a tribute to the efforts of both President Clinton and President Bush." I disagree.

While acknowledging some of the difficulties with the United States, European and NATO-run "solution" in Bosnia, the column presents an overly positive and inaccurate view of the situation in the Balkans while ignoring the growth of terrorist elements in the region. Furthermore, ethnic and religious separatism was achieved in Croatia and currently is being gained in Kosovo by ethnic cleansing of the Serbian population.

While the United States was supporting the Bosnian Muslim government of Alija Izetbegovic, his embassy in Vienna issued a passport to Osama bin Laden. Today, Bosnia has become al-Qaida's corridor into Europe.

The Wall Street Journal Europe reported on Nov. 1, 2001: "For the past 10 years, the most senior leaders of al-Qaida have visited the Balkans, including bin Laden himself on three occasions between 1994 and 1996. The Egyptian surgeon turned terrorist leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has operated terrorist training camps, weapons of mass destruction factories and money-laundering and drug-trading networks throughout Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Turkey and Bosnia."

Canadian Maj. Gen. Lewis Mac-Kenzie, first UNPROFOR commander to Bosnia, writes in the National Post (Canada) of April 6: "The Kosovo-Albanians have played us like a Stradivarius. We have subsidized and indirectly supported their violent campaign for an ethnically pure and independent Kosovo."

Eradication of all vestiges of more than a millennium of Serbian culture, language, society and religion from Kosovo (and 500 years in regions of Croatia), infesting the Balkans with bin Laden-trained and -financed terrorists, and making the Balkans the European center for drugs and prostitution are not signs of a plan that is succeeding.

Stella L. Jatras of Camp Hill, Pa., is a career military officer's wife who has lived and traveled extensively in Europe and worked in the Political Section of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. She has published many articles on the Balkans.

Copyright 2004, The Enquirer
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