Croatian American Association News Release, February 20, 2002 
  
With the objective of securing justice for Croats indicted by the ICTY, The Croatian American Association has been urging Congress to have a close look at the activities of the International Crimes Tribunal for Yugoslavia at The Hague. The prosecution of Ante Gotovina in a political attempt to assuage the feelings of Serbs after Milosevic was handed over is of particular concern to us. It is the contention of the CAA that the proceedings of the ICTY do not meet minimum American judicial standards, particularly in the areas of investigation, prosecution and the rules of evidence. Congress is presently concerned about the future possibility that American armed forces personnel might have to face future politicized proceedings unless preventive legal prohibitions are adapted by the United States. A hearing of the full House International Relations Committee will be held on February 28th in Washington, DC. It is the CAA’s belief that one of the results of the hearings will be a more fair treatment of Croats by the ICTY. 
  
Subject: FULL COMMITTEE HEARING NOTICE Committee on International Relations U 
 
FULL COMMITTEE HEARING NOTICE 
Committee on International Relations 
U.S. House of Representatives 
Washington, D.C. 20515-0128 
February 14, 2002 
  
TO: MEMBERS OF THE COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 
You are respectfully requested to attend an OPEN hearing of the Committee on International Relations, to be held in Room 2172 Rayburn House Office Building: 
DATE: Thursday, February 28, 2002 
TIME: 11:00 A.M. 
SUBJECT: The U.N. Criminal Tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda: International Justice or Show of Justice? 
WITNESSES: 
The Honorable Pierre-Richard Prosper 
Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues 
U.S. Department of State 
Professor Jeremy Rabkin 
Department of Government 
Cornell University 
Larry A. Hammond 
Attorney at Law 
Osborn Maledon, P.A. 
  
Note: Additional witnesses may be added. 
                                                            By Direction of the Chairman 
  
The Committee on International Relations seeks to make its facilities accessible to persons with disabilities. If you are in need of special accommodations, please call 202/225-5021 at least four business days in advance of the event, whenever practicable. Questions with regard to special accommodations in general (including availability of Committee materials in alternative formats and assistive listening devices) may be directed to the Committee. 
 
 
Subject: Croatian American Association Alert 
-------------------------------------------------------------------- 
 
Senator Joseph Biden Jr. 
Chairman 
Senate Foreign Relations Committee 
446 Dirksen Senate Office Building 
Washington, D.C. 20515 
 
Please return petitions to: 
CAA USA 
Box 287 
Washington, D.C. 20006 
                                                                                                 
 
Representative Henry Hyde 
Chairman 
The Committee on International Relations 
2000 Pennsylvania Ave. 
2170 Rayburn House Office Building 
Washington, D.C. 20515 
 
  
Honorable Richard Armitage 
Deputy Secretary of State 
United States Department of State 
2201 “C” Street N.W. 
Washington, D.C. 20520 
(202) 647-4000 
 
We the undersigned are opposed to the U.N. confirming Paddy Ashdown to succeed Wolfgang Petritsch as United Nations High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina. The U.N. High Representative is endowed with dictatorial powers to restrict the freedom and rights of the citizens of BiH. In the past year the office of the U.N. High Representative acting with impunity has removed fairly elected Croat officials, ordered the raid on a main Croatian Bank, and defamed the Catholic Church in Bosnia and Herzegovina, its Cardinal and Bishops. On Good Friday, 2001, armed British soldiers in two armored personnel carriers were allowed to openly threaten Catholics, at Medjugorje. 
 
 
The U.N. is so insensitive about such things that it is now trying to impose Paddy Ashdown on the Catholic Croats of BiH. Many Croats still remember the treachery of some British government officials at Bleiburg, Austria 1945. Croats have not forgotten that many in the British government supported Slobodan Milosevic in 1990-95 as he murdered his way through Croatia and BiH. Ashdown, a former British Marine major, demonstrated his anti-Catholic bias when he was in Northern Ireland. He has made a career in the former Yugoslavia by being anti-Croat and pro-Serbian. Ashdown is famous for creating the fiction of Tudjman drawing a map of divided BiH on a napkin. 
 
 
Croats in BiH, and two and a half million American Croats, fear that the State Department’s quiet elimination of funding for U.S. peacekeeping in BiH, combined with the State Department’s support for Paddy Ashdown, indicates an American Abandonment of BiH. That would expose the region to dangerous instability and leave the Catholic Croats in BiH at the mercy of those who already reduced their number to a half. 
 
 
We ask you to use your good offices to oppose Paddy Ashdown’s confirmation and seek the appointment of an American citizen as U.N. High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina. 
 
 
SIGNED: 
 
 
 
Distributed by www.CroatianWorld.net. This message is intended for Croatian Associations/Institutions and their Friends in Croatia and in the World. The opinions/articles expressed on this list do not reflect personal opinions of the moderator. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, 
please delete or destroy all copies of this communication and please, let us know!