TUZLA EVENTS POINT TO GROWING FUNDAMENTALISM
IN BOSNIAN FEDERATION - SERB LEADER
SRNA - June 27, 2004
Banja Luka, 27 June: (Bosnian) Serb Republic (RS) President Dragan Cavic said
today in Banja Luka that there was no-one in the Bosniak (Bosnian Muslims)
political scene who was willing to accept that representatives of all peoples in
Bosnia-Hercegovina had committed war crimes during the war in Bosnia-Hercegovina.
In his reaction to yesterday's events in Tuzla when around 100 Bosniaks
prevented a wreath laying ceremony and lighting of candles for the fallen in the
"Tuzla column", Cavic pointed out that the brutality of trampling on the wreath
was a disgrace for democratic Bosnia-Hercegovina, authorities in the Bosnia-Hercegovina
Federation (FBIH), and particularly in the Tuzla Canton.
"Radicalism of this type does not come as a surprise to me, because there is a
cult of shehids (martyrs), who are suicide bombers in Israel and members of the
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, who are terrorists that kill innocent civilians in the
name of religion," Cavic pointed out.
He added that radical religious and fundamentalist ideologies were spreading
through the Wahhabi movement in the Bosnia-Hercegovina Federation which did not
leave room for optimism.
Cavic stressed that the Serb Republic was different and that it was ready to
settle score with the dark side of the past in a democratic and civilized way,
while certain politicians in the Bosnia-Hercegovina Federation had a vision of a
unitary Bosnia-Hercegovina which could one day become a country of Shariat
(Islamic law).
"Wahhabism and the cult of martyrdom can never bring anything good to this
country, but rather radicalise the political atmosphere and lead to kicking of
wreaths which in effect is the same as laying into the dead," Cavic said.
He pointed out that the existence of Al-Qa'idah in Bosnia-Hercegovina opened the
question of how it got here.
"Looking back at the period between 1992 and 1995 another question arises in
connection with the emergence of "freedom fighters" from Afghanistan, Saudi
Arabia, Iran and Pakistan," Cavic said.
He emphasized that there was no will in Bosnia-Hercegovina to initiate this
question because it would change the stereotype of the war in Bosnia-Hercegovina
and crush the illusion of "the victim and aggression" and bring everything back
to a realistic framework that an internal, civilian, inter-ethnic and
inter-religious war had been waged in Bosnia-Hercegovina.
Source: SRNA news agency, Bijeljina, in
Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian 1230 gmt 27 Jun 04
Copyright 2004 Financial Times Information
All rights reserved
Global News Wire - Asia Africa Intelligence Wire
Copyright 2004 BBC Monitoring/BBC
BBC Monitoring International Reports
Posted for Fair Use only.