ted from his book—illustrates the enormousrnrole that a committed, leftish-liberalrnpress played in the formation of policyrnin the Yugoslav crisis. As Nora Beloff,rna British journalist, remarked in her reviewrnof Balkan Odyssey (in the Times LiteraryrnSupplement last November), “Thernstory might have been very different ifrnthe Guardian man had happened to bernon the west bank of the Drina River duringrnthe same period, the summer ofrn1992, There, in the towns and villagesrnwhere the Muslims were a majority, itrnwas the Serbs who were being driven outrnand, in many cases, slaughtered.”rnKnowing that German acquiescencernwas the key to his appointment, Owenrnwas careful not to question Bonn’s Diktatrnon Yugoslavia imposed at Maastricht.rnOn the contrary, he explicitly indicatedrnto the Germans that he was not going tornmake any trouble. In what is probablyrnthe most revealing passage in his book,rnhe recalls a meeting with the Germanrnforeign minister, Kinkel, a few days afterrnbeing given Garrington’s job:rnI decided then and there that Irnwould not spend time on publicrnfinger-pointing about Germanrnsupport for premature recognitionrnof Groatia and Bosnia or the rightsrnand wrongs of EG policy hitherto.rnMy task was to keep the twelvernmember states together, and thernbest way to do that was to lookrnforward. I adopted a somewhatrnsimilar attitude in public towardrnthe causes of the wars in the formerrnYugoslavia. It was enough torndeal with present outrages and futurernpeace.rnThis is a remarkable admission. By decidingrn(“then and there”) to treat recognitionrnas an irreversible fait accompli,rnOwen had abdicated any possibility ofrnacting as a mediator in the Yugoslav conflict.rnPerceiving his role to be that of thernupholder of European unity—^which wasrnbut a misnomer for an unseemly Gleichschaltungrnon terms imposed by Germanyrn—^he assumed the mantle of a combatant.rnBy becoming a mere accomplicernin the fight to force over two millionrnSerbs west of the Drina River into submission,rnOwen accepted a role which wasrnnot only subordinate, but squalid.rnWhat makes Owen’s complicity unforgivablernis his awareness that what hernwas doing was wrong. He acknowledgesrnthat the Serbs of Groatia and Bosnia sufferedrngenocide at the hands of thernGroats m 1941-45, and that their sufferingrnwent unacknowledged in Tito’s Yugoslavia,rnyet throughout his Balkanrntenure he does not take this political factrninto consideration. Even more significantly,rnOwen concedes that Tito’s internalrnboundaries were arbitrary, and thatrntheir redrawing should have been countenancedrnat the time of Yugoslavia’s disintegration:rnIt is true that there could not havernbeen a total accommodation ofrnSerb demands; but to rule out anyrndiscussion or opportunity for compromisernin order to head off warrnwas an extraordinary decision. Myrnview has always been that to havernstuck unyieldingly to the internalrnboundaries of the six republicsrnwithin the former Yugoslavia asrnbeing the boundaries for independentrnstates, was a folly far greaterrnthan that of premature recognitionrnItself.rnOwen’s greatest failure, as a diplomatrnand as a man, was to brush aside his ownrnobjections to the blueprint imposed onrnhim. He never explains the somersault,rnand this is the most disturbing aspect ofrnhis book. Suppressing one’s own criticalrnand moral judgment in favor of an earthlyrnobjective—be it “European unity” orrnone’s personal vanity—is the hallmark ofrna bureaucrat, or of a war criminal. So wasrnhe a lickspittle or a Nero? We do notrnknow. Owen is a bit of both; his obediencernwas bureaucratic, his disregard forrnjustice was criminal.rnHaving made his choice, Owen devotedrnhis considerable energy torndevising and imposing not a “fair,” but arnblatantly anti-Serb, settlement. Thernmuch heralded Vance-Owen Plan wasrnthe result. Its key objective was to givernthe Muslims their chief war aim—arnsingle, centralized Bosnian state—and tornreduce Serb ancestral lands to a patchworkrnof semiautonomous Nagorno-rnKarabachs. In Owen’s own words, “Werncould not accept a state within a staternand therefore had to avoid as far as werncould a geographical continuity of Serbrnprovinces.” The boundaries of thosernprovinces were jointly drawn by Owen,rnTudjman, and Izetbegovic in Zagreb,rnand then brazenly presented to the Serbsrn(and the rest of us) as a proposal byrnhimself and Vance, the two internationalrnmediators!rnOwen’s conversion remains unexplained:rnhaving made the opposite casernwith some eloquence, he treats Tito’srnborders as inviolable, and their corollary,rnunitary Bosnian state and a GreaterrnGroatia encompassing the Krajina, asrnaxiomatic. But his mind is predictablyrn”rational” in that it demands that othersrnaccept his axioms. Referring to a differentrntragedy (India) and a different timern(1947), a shrewd analyst aptly capturedrnthis frame of mind: “It was as if the wolf,rnwhen presenting his argument to thernIamb for eating it was assuming that hernwas speaking only to a fellow-wolf, hisrnequal, and at the same time taking it forrngranted that if the lamb was not persuadedrnit must be a very unreasonable animal.”rn(Nirad Ghadbury, Thy Hand,rnGreat Anarch: India 1921-1952.)rnSince most Serbs were (unsurprisingly)rnloath to subscribe to Owen’s freshlyrnadopted opinions, they had to be irrational,rnor plain dishonest. He treatedrnthem as both. In either case, they werernto be denied a place in the New Europernunless they yielded, and relentlessly punishedrnuntil they did. They merited airrnstrikes, which should be “as surgical as inrnthe desert flatness of Iraq.” Towns with arnprewar Muslim plurality, such as Foca,rnVisegrad, or Prijedor, are “Muslimrntowns” to Owen, while overwhelminglyrnSerbian towns and districts are always labeledrn”Serb-held.”rnBy the same token, their enemiesrncould get away with anything. The Serbsrnwere to be punished if they violated thern”safe areas,” but the Muslims were notrnexpected to demilitarize them. The KrajinarnSerbs were to be lectured by anrn”adamant” David Owen for being inrnGroatia, but a little later we find Owenrngiving comfort to Albanian separatists inrnKosovo. Although “they are ready tornwait until they can join up with Albania,”rnand “we could never interest the Albaniansrnin any solution based on autonomy,”rnOwen refuses to exert pressure, let alonernto remind them that Kosovo was in Serbiarnafter all. On the contrary, he has “nornwish” to meet any local Serbs on his arrivalrnin Pristina.rnOnce he gets on track, Owen is unrestrained,rneven brazen, in his applicationrnof the double standard. Karadzic’s orrnMladic’s nationalism is despicable, butrnnot Tudjman’s. This holocaust revisionistrnand ethnic cleanser of half a millionrnSerbs is, to Owen, “the genuine choice ofrnhis people to be their leader.” Owen wasrn24/CHRONICLESrnrnrn