It's no secret, for instance, that the Greeks, and this includes the Greek popular sentiment as well, sided with the Serbs. Greek irregulars were reported to have participated in Bosnia massacres, and flip over to Greek attitudes on "FYROM" (what a laugh that name) and Kosovo, and you'll see it would have been very hard for the EU to have a united front in this story, regardless of the facts (which, it turns out, were as dispensible in Western capitals as in those of the balkans), even if the core of the EU were as one.

Add to this the deep divisiveness of Germany's unilateral decision to prematurely recognize Croatia and Slovenia's independance - at loggerheads with France, the UK and George HW Bush's US- and thereby guarantee a bloodbath. When Germany recognized Tudjman's Croatia, and this beyond the historical precedence dating from WW2, it guaranteed that every Yugoslav Republic, in violent fashion, would also become independent.

Why necessarily violent? Look at the ethnic map (the sort of map, I might add, the Germans innovated themselves) of the area, and read the press accounts of the ethnic fervor at the time in the region. Hell, even little ol' me saw it first hand, witnessing more than one fight at the kiosk between folks buying Croatian-language papers and those buying Serb-language papers.

Kohl has a lot of blood in his hands. But this might not worry him much given all the money he tucked away as well.

"Understandably" then, the EU was hardly in a position to lead on this. Which is just the way one might well imagine a US government to like things. Keeps Europe weak, and accentuates their inability to build an independent and coherent foreign policy backed by a credible and independant military force (which only France today, really, has).

And if shepherded correctly, the resulting mess can be assured to be a gift that keeps on giving instability and rancor to Europeans for generations to follow.

Which is exactly what Kosovo is now.

"C'est un scandale !"

Yugoslavia's collapse became inevitable by the start of 1991, with the federal institutions completely deadlocked between pro- and anti-Milošević forces. The indictment against Milošević alleges that in a televised address on 16 March 1991 Milošević declared that Yugoslavia was finished and that Serbia would no longer be bound by decisions of the Federal Presidency.[7] This allegation was shown to be false when a transcript of the speech was exhibited at the Milošević trial on 25 January 2006.[8]

In June 1991, Slovenia and Croatia seceded from the federation, followed by the republics of Macedonia (September 1991) and Bosnia and Herzegovina (March 1992). The Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) sought unsuccessfully to prevent Slovenia's secession by the use of force; however, Slovenia's Ten-Day War ended in a disastrous defeat for the federal forces.

Demands for a greater autonomy for nations had been proposed since 1989, and Milošević had been an early opponent of such moves. Part of the reason why demands for Slovene independence were growing was the continuing authoritarian rule in Serbia. Milošević tried to organise a "Meeting of Truth" in the Slovene capital, Ljubljana, to discuss the Kosovo situation, but this proposal was rejected by Kučan. Milošević later moved towards a more pragmatic policy. He had little opposition to Slovenia leaving the country. Kučan recalled, "Milošević had said to me that we should reach some agreement on Slovenia's desire to leave Yugoslavia. He said that he would not stop us, and that the others didn't understand what the whole thing was about anyway. But he said that he cannot let Croatia go, because Croatia was bound to Serbia by blood."[9]

At this point, Milošević supported the claims of Serb populations in other states to stay in Yugoslavia, based on the ostensible premise that the large Serbian populations in Croatia (580,000) and Bosnia (1.36 million) should have the right to stay in Yugoslavia as they desired, arguing that the Yugoslav Constitution gave the right of self-determination to nations (Serbs, Croats, etc as a whole), not republics (Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, etc). His agreement with Slovenia was based on the self-determination of peoples; as Slovenia was ethnically homogeneous, he had little opposition to the country leaving.

Croatia's Serbs began campaigning for greater autonomy within Croatia from as early as 1990 after the election of the Croatian nationalist Franjo Tudjman, with Milošević's full support. From the day of Croatia's independence on June 25, 1991 until early 1992 when Croatian independence was recognised by the high profile world states, Croatia was facing resistance from the Yugoslav National Army (JNA). Following their withdrawal from Croatia in 1992 came the emergence of Serb dissidents from within Croatia's borders who engaged in a war against the Croatian government with support from Milošević. The first leader of Serbs in Croatia, Milan Babić, has stated that Milošević was responsible for this and his successor Goran Hadžić publicly bragged about how he was "the extended hand of Slobodan Milošević".

War crimes prosecutors subsequently characterised the creation of the separatist Republic of Serbian Krajina as a "joint criminal enterprise" whose goal was "the forcible removal of the majority of the Croat and other non-Serb population from the approximately one-third of the territory of the Republic of Croatia that he planned to become part of a new Serb-dominated state."[7] At the trial of Milan Babić, the ICTY found that the Serbian government was directly involved in the Croatian Serb rebellion, providing supplies, weapons, money and leadership.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slobodan_Milo%C5%A1evi%C4%87

for you not adopting the Serbian nationalist standpoint is to be uninformed and malicious.

It is true that war crimes have been committed by all parts. But it is also true that the biggest ones in THIS war have been committed by the Serbs and that the Serbs, because in control of the Army and for pure ideological reasons started the war.

They are paying for that today. Exactly as the Germans did after WWII. At least they accepted their defeat.

But fact remain that it was Milosevic's nationalism that created most of the havoc in the region. After Tito's death the unsolved problems were not solved by negotiation, and the GREATEST responsability falls on the Serbian nationalists, based on nationalistic fantasies from the historian Karadic that everybody that spoke serbocroatisk was an ethnic Serb. Milosevic wanted even to include parts of Hungary and Bulgaria in the Greater Serbia and join it in a union with Greece...

Had someone else been in charge maybe the old Yugoslavia had split into independent nations without major conflicts. But history often doesn't work the easy way.

I think I am consistent. I see a big difference between a geographical unit with a vast majority (88%) of one very different ethnical group with a completely different language (Kosovo) - and enclaves (12% of the population) of people within another community speaking the same language but using a different alphabet. I never said that the Kosovars had "the right to take to arms", I said that their historical situation was different from the Krajina Serbs.

In a way the Milosevic claims reminds of the Zionist claims on Palestine. But using some verses about a more or less unverified "treason" in a poem written 100 years after a major defeat (as only source) to define the craddle of a nation, is even more preposterous than the Zionist claim.