Serb Official Visits U.S., Rejects Baker’s Criticism

Stung that the United States now blames his republic for Yugoslavia’s escalating bloodshed, the deputy prime minister of Serbia appealed for understanding Tuesday, telling any U.S. official who would listen that his people are victims, not aggressors.

Budimir Kosutic, a university law professor who joined the Serbian Cabinet just 40 days ago, said that he made his one-day trip to Washington to address issues raised by Secretary of State James A. Baker III.

Last week, signaling a sharp change in U.S. policy, Baker told the U.N. Security Council that Serbia and the Serbian-led Yugoslav army “bear a special and growing responsibility” for the civil war rending the nation.

“I can’t understand why Mr. Baker said those things about the Serbian people,” Kosutic said in an interview. “The Serbian people were victims of genocide in the Second World War and are again the victims of genocide.”

Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger, the highest-ranking Bush Administration official who agreed to see Kosutic, bluntly told the Serbian leader that “you can’t create a greater Serbia by force,” according to one U.S. official.

Last June, Baker visited Belgrade in a failed attempt to persuade the republics of Slovenia and Croatia to abandon plans to declare independence from the six-republic Yugoslav federation. Baker then warned that secession would produce bloodshed for which the breakaway republics would be primarily responsible. He said Washington would not recognize the independence of either Slovenia or Croatia. But in his Security Council statement less than four months later, Baker heaped blame on Serbia and the federal army for the violence.

Kosutic came to Washington armed with 70-year-old maps that show a substantial Serbian population in the area that became the Croatian republic. He asserted that Serbia does not object to Croatian self-determination, provided the Serbian residents of Croatia have the same right.

Kosutic said that ethnic Serbs are terrified that an independent Croatian government would attempt to slaughter the Serbian population. During World War II, a Nazi puppet government in Croatia was blamed after the war for killing thousands of Serbs and Jews.

Despite Serbia’s historic grievances, the republic--by far the largest and most powerful in the Yugoslav federation--has generated little sympathy since the civil war began. Serbian guerrillas, backed by elements of the federal army, have seized about one-third of Croatia in heavy fighting that has been broken occasionally by ineffective cease-fires.

Before visiting Washington, Kosutic stopped at the United Nations, where he conferred with a deputy to Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar and with Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations. He said that he was unable to arrange appointments with other U.N. diplomats.

“The only nation which has the same tragic history as the Serbian people is the Jewish people,” Kosutic said in explaining why the Israeli agreed to the talks. “We were together victims of genocide in Croatia during the Second World War.”