Lesson for aggressors

Increasingly, Muslim countries in Asia and Africa were becoming disillusioned and even angry at western inaction over the crisis in Bosnia.

The protests by Muslim and other world leaders and protests at the United Nations went unheeded as the Serbs continued to kill, torture and expel Muslim civilians in the name of ethnic cleansing which was nothing but a crude euphemism for Hitlerite racism.

Now the "Contact Group" on Yugoslavia has met with the foreign ministers of some of the member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) to discuss this seemingly intractable problem.

OIC member states, including Malaysia, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia as head of the Non-Aligned Movement, have agreed that the ongoing air strikes against the Bosnia Serbs should continue until the Serbs withdraw their heavy weapons outside the 12-mile (20-km) radius from Sarajevo.

While we deplore the need for violence and resorting to arms to solve conflicts, the Bosnian Serbs deserve to be taught the folly of aggression.

Now that the tide of war has suddenly turned against them, the Bosnian Serbs are crying unfair.

Surprisingly, Russian leader Boris Yeltsin has also joined the chorus. What is surprising is not that he is supporting the Serbs but the fact that he is innocently inquiring why the Serbs are under attack.

The whole world knows that the Bosnian Serbs, egged on by the Serbian government of rump Yugoslavia, are the aggressors in this instance. If the aggressors are not to be punished, who should be?

While a political solution based on a redrawing of the map of Bosnia might be the first step to peace in the former Yugoslavia, the immediate task is to win compliance from the Serbs. Aggressors must be made to understand the error of their ways.

-- Hongkong Standard