Letters to the Editor
28 January 2001
In “Not Happening” (column, Jan. 23), Thomas L. Friedman suggests a soft partition of Bosnia: the Serbian sector under Serbia, the Croatian sector under Croatia, and the Muslim sector as an independent mini-state. This would only allow the nationalists who threw the Balkans into a brutal war to wave the banner of victory.
“Ethnic cleansing” has taken its toll, but the three groups live intermingled. Who would draw the partition lines? Where would the 30,000 Serbs and 20,000 Croats who live in Sarajevo go? The Muslims would live squeezed in a mini-state, a Gaza Strip in the middle of Europe.
The international community committed itself to securing the rights of the victims of ethnic cleansing, including the right to regain stolen property, to return to their homes and to see the war’s perpetrators prosecuted.
A multiethnic Bosnia is not an illusion designed by ambitious do- gooders. It is the very answer to the war itself.
WOLFGANG PETRITSCH
Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina