NEW ANALYSIS : Yugoslavs Stir the Pot of Plot Rumors

With their jumble of peoples and politics, the Balkans have for centuries been a wellspring of intrigue. But never have the Byzantine origins been so apparent and conspiracy theories so profuse as in these dying days of the Yugoslav federation.

To hear Serbia tell it, the encroaching civil war has been instigated by Germany and Austria under a plot to reclaim Balkan territory occupied in wartime en route to establishing a “Fourth Reich.”

Slovenia, which declared itself independent more than a month ago, believes that much of the current trouble is the result of a secret army scheme to expand a creeping military occupation into an eventual coup d’etat.

In Bosnia-Herzegovina, the latest fear is that Croatia and Serbia are conspiring to carve up the republic between them, ignoring the interests of Bosnian Muslims, who are the largest ethnic group and have no other state.

Croatia and Serbia, in turn, contend that the Bosnian Muslims are clandestinely negotiating with sympathetic Muslim countries to create a Yugoslav republic of their own, giving Muslim fundamentalism a foothold in Europe and adding another volatile ingredient to the already explosive Balkan brew.

There is also the Albanian plot and a Kremlin conspiracy and various other real and imagined intrigues, many allegedly inspired from abroad.

With so little reflection on their own behavior, chances are slim that Yugoslavia’s leaders will ever settle down to the real issues and stave off the threatened cataclysm.

Negotiations on the future of Yugoslavia have been held hostage to each republic’s inflexible conditions, and European-brokered peace treaties have repeatedly been broken and cited as evidence of sinister intentions from abroad.

The allegation of German-Austrian expansionism is a variation on an old theme. Serbia has long had strained relations with the powers it fought during both world wars.

Since Slovenia and Croatia declared independence on June 25, the mistrust has ripened into outright suspicion and accusation.

“German and Austrian interests are once again behind Slovenia and Croatia’s secession,” the Belgrade daily newspaper Politika, a mouthpiece for the Serbian leadership, declared in a recent editorial.

In another Serbian publication, Ekspres Politika, a well-known Communist ideologue added his theory that the United States was backing German intrigue in order to economically divide and conquer Western Europe.

Since the Yugoslav army attacked Slovenia late last month and pressure mounted on Western European states to recognize the secessionists, a debate has arisen among the 12-nation European Community about how best to deal with the Yugoslav crisis. That division, pitting Germany, Austria and Italy against anti-secessionists in France and Spain, has lent the appearance of credibility to the Serbian arguments.

An Austrian Foreign Ministry spokesman deemed the allegations “groundless,” and a top German official in Bonn called them “ugly insinuations.” But the theory has persisted in frequent media reports, and the Yugoslav government earlier this month issued a sharp protest to Austria, charging that Austria had been selling guns to Slovenia and Croatia.

“The German conspiracy story sounds ridiculous in the West, but I’ve heard several top-ranking generals say this,” a senior Western diplomat observed.

The alleged German plot has at least momentarily pushed out of the limelight the “trilateral conspiracy” that, for decades, Serbia has seen as joining the Vatican, the CIA and the Freemasons in a union against it.

Most Serbs adhere to the Orthodox religion, whereas Slovenia and Croatia are predominantly Roman Catholic.

In Slovenia, officials claim to have intercepted documents detailing a military takeover plot, code-named “Bedam,” or “Encroachment.”

The breakaway republic’s defense minister, Janez Jansa, told reporters in Ljubljana that the army attacked Slovenia in order to have a pretext for massive military movement into Croatia and Bosnia. Bedam also reportedly envisioned a purging of all non-Serbian officers in the high command. Both moves followed the attack on Slovenia, but no military takeover has yet been declared.

Most recent to stir controversy, and likely the most genuine of the many intrigues alleged, is the fear that Croatian President Franjo Tudjman and Serbia’s Communist strongman, President Slobodan Milosevic, are secretly negotiating to feed their territorial aspirations by consuming Bosnia.

The federal daily paper Borba on July 15 reported that Tudjman had described the dismemberment of Bosnia as “the best solution” for preventing a devastating war between Serbs and Croats.

Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic, a Muslim, reacted to Tudjman’s comment by summoning an emergency session of the republic’s leadership and warning that any attempt to divide Bosnia would immediately lead to full-scale civil war.

Bosnia-Herzegovina is about 44% Muslim, 32% Serbian and 18% Croatian.

Serbian and Croatian leaders and their loyal media have made much of recent foreign contacts by the Bosnian Muslims, including trips by President Izetbegovic to Libya, Egypt and Turkey. The officials allege that the Bosnian leadership is being encouraged--politically and financially--by foreign Muslim elements to establish a base for fundamentalism in Europe.