CROWN - Croatian World Network

NATO would-be members reaffirm commitment in fight against global terror
Tue Mar 26,10:10 AM ET
By ALISON MUTLER, Associated Press Writer

BUCHAREST, Romania - Leaders of 10 former communist countries seeking to join NATO (news - web sites) pledged Tuesday to continue to fight global terrorism, saying stability in their East European region enhanced their chances of becoming members of the alliance.


In remarks closing a two-day conference gathering NATO hopefuls, Romanian Prime Minister Adrian Nastase said the region and NATO could cooperate to make Eastern Europe "a stronghold against the threats of the new century, terrorism, trans-border and organized crime, intolerance and extremism."

The meeting brought together government leaders from 10 countries that are candidates for NATO membership: Romania, Slovakia, Macedonia, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Albania, Croatia, Bulgaria and Slovenia.

The Bucharest gathering was one of a series ahead of a November NATO summit in Prague, the Czech capital. The alliance is then expected to announce new members, though it hasn't yet said which countries it will admit.

Czech Prime Minister Milos Zeman, whose country became a NATO member in 1999, told the leaders the alliance was more than just a military group.

"There are two necessary conditions (for membership): Sharing common values not just common weapons and participating in the common fight against terrorism not just by words, but by deeds," he said.

The Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary were the first former communist countries to join the alliance.

Focusing on their geographical advantages, on the eastern rim of Europe, the 10 aspiring members meeting here said they could preserve stability in the region.

"The global war on terrorism has not only spurred us to complete the job of building a Europe whole and free, but it has also underscored the urgent need to consolidate stability in Southeastern Europe," the 10 said in a joint statement summing up the conference.

Poland Tells Europe to Ease Up on US
Mon Mar 25, 3:41 PM ET
By GEORGE JAHN, Associated Press Writer

BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) - Poland's president urged Europe to mute its criticism of Washington's war on terror, telling a summit of prospective NATO (news - web sites) members Monday that American lives were the first ones lost in the fight against "the evil" threatening the world.


Aleksander Kwasniewski's comments reflected a main topic of concern at the opening of the two-day summit the changing threat facing NATO and its allies more than a decade after the collapse of the Soviet bloc removed the menace of large-scale conventional ground war in Europe.

The meeting brought together leaders from the 10 candidate countries Romania, Slovakia, Macedonia, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Albania, Croatia, Bulgaria and Slovenia as well as guests from NATO member states, like Kwasniewski, and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.

The meeting is one of a series being held before a NATO summit in November in Prague, where the U.S.-led alliance will decide which countries to admit.

Armitage, delivering a message from President Bush (news - web sites), said that while the threats facing NATO have changed, its role should not be diminished in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks and solidarity among its members should be strong.

"As all civilized nations seek to address the threats of global terror, the bonds uniting NATO members are more important than ever," he said.

Kwasniewski, alluding to growing European opposition to any major expansion of Washington's war on terror beyond Afghanistan (news - web sites), urged U.S. allies to support the campaign against terrorism while also appealing to the United States to listen to European concerns.

"Let us not forget that it is the American soldiers that were the first to stand up to the evil" exhibited in the Sept. 11 attacks, he said. "They often paid the price of life they continue to pay."

Romanian Prime Minister Adrian Nastase said the region's countries were ready to join the alliance and were already contributing as full NATO members in the war against terror.

"We have opened our air spaces, airfields and port facilities to Allied forces," Nastase said. "And we're now taking part in the (peacekeeping) mission in Afghanistan."

Bulent Ecevit, the prime minister of NATO-member Turkey, said the alliance was in the process of adapting to post-Cold War realities by focusing on new security threats and collaborating with former foes such as Russia.

"Military threats of a conventional and nuclear nature have diminished," Ecevit said. "But threats such as terrorism, nationalism, organized crime, drug trafficking and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction" are moving across borders.

He added that these new threats will be better tackled by an enlarged alliance and urged NATO to expedite the admission of southeastern European countries. "This dimension of enlargement will contribute to the extension of security and stability to this most sensitive area," Ecevit said.

Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Bulgaria, are regarded as candidates that stand a good chance of receiving invitations to join NATO at the November summit.

Albania, Macedonia and Croatia are considered less likely to be admitted because of lagging economic or political reforms or the legacy of Balkan warfare.

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On Sunday March 24th, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (NY), PBS President Pat Mitchell, and V-Day Founder Eve Ensler spoke and responded to questions on the subject of Women and Peace following the 3:00 PM matinee performance of Eve Ensler's new play "Necessary Targets" at the Variety Arts Theatre located 110 3rd Avenue at 14th Street in New York City.

This panel discussion is part of a series of NECESSARY TALKS sponsored by V-Day www.vday.org at selected Sunday matinees of "Necessary Targets."

The play, "Necessary Targets" necessary@vday.org is based on interviews with numerous people who survived torture, killings and rape during the Serbian attack on Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The "Necessary Targets" provides a timely reminder of the effects of war and the need to arrest war criminals Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic.

For discount tickets please call (212) 239-6200 and mention promotion code NTVL317 or call (212) 947-8844 with promotion code NTTPL64.

Our Croatian community was represented by Nenad Bach, Katarina Deletis, Maria Ivanac, Visnja Brdar, Sime Brdar and Katarina Tepesh. Ms. Deletis asked Senator Clinton about war criminals Mladic and Karadzic, as well as why Croatia received only $35 million US aid while others received substantially more.

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http://www.ci.chi.il.us/WorldMusic/

Department of Cultural Affairs
Chicago Cultural Center
78 E. Washington Street
Chicago, IL 60602
Attention: World Music Festival: Chicago 2002

World Music Festival hotline: 312-742-1938

Chicago Cultural Center hotline: 312-744-6630

To email festival organizers: WorldMusic@cityofchicago.org
For email regarding this website, please include "website" in the subject line.

For information about educational programs, email Melissa Bauer,
Education Coordinator: melbauer@rcnchicago.com

For sponsorship information, call
Eileen Friestad, Development Director:
312-744-5905

Op-ed
We should be present on such festivals, not just in the audience but ON THE STAGE.
nb

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NEW WAYS OF CROATIAN TOURISM PROMOTION - MULTIMEDIA SIGHTS AND SOUNDS
multimedia CD ROM presents Split in a unique way, combining music, photos, videos, and much more,

Split, CROATIA March 26th, 2002 A new multimedia CD ROM "Split where the time stood still" (www.gideon.hr/split) was presented this week in Split, Croatia. Developed by Gideon Multimedia, this CD ROM uses a rare combination of multimedia CD ROM and audio CD, all in one, in promotion of the ancient Croatian city of Split. It provides all the potential visitors, tourists and guests with an insightful look of city's sights and sounds, past and the present.

As the recent studies have shown, people remember 20% of what they hear, 40% of what they see and hear, but 70% of what they see, hear, and do. Accordingly, interactive and multimedia presentations tend to be more effective in tourism promotional efforts.
Multimedia CD ROM "Split where the time stood still" uses interactive, user-friendly interface to present an authentic story of the city of Split, which starts over 1700 years ago. This multimedia story is outlined through the interactive sequence of panoramic photos with a view of 360°, video clips, drawings and more than 250 photographs combined with the authentic music from Split. Interactive map of the city with comprehensive presentation of its most famous sights is an integral part of this multi-lingual (in Croatian, English, German and Italian) multimedia CD ROM. It doesn't require any additional installation to the hard disk, when placed in the CD ROM drive it is activated automatically.

This CD ROM is both a multimedia CD ROM and the audio CD at the same time. In order to hear the 12 traditional songs from Split, CD just needs to be placed in the standard audio CD player.

Multimedia CD ROM "Split where the time stood still" was developed by Gideon Multimedia, a privately owned Croatian-American enterprise specializing in CD-based multimedia presentations and Internet website development. Although active in all industries, Gideon Multimedia has particular expertise in tourism and in industrial presentations. Since its founding, in the April of 2000 it has designed multimedia and Internet presentations for hundreds of clients.

For individual and wholesale orders or further information please contact:

Vedran Prazen
vedran@gideon.hr
Telephone: +385 21 260 204
Fax: +385 21 260 205

Gideon LLC - www.gideon.hr
Dubrovacka 33
HR - 21000 Split, CROATIA

Who observes the observers?
Article by Laughland, relevant to Croatia.

The west's condemnation of Zimbabwe's election process is a breathtaking case of double standards

John Laughland
Monday March 18, 2002
The Guardian

The chasm that opened up between the various teams of observers at the Zimbabwean elections shows the urgency of reformulating one of the oldest questions of political philosophy: who observes the observers? For over the last decade, election observing has become little more than a tool for powerful states to interfere in the internal affairs of weak ones. Monitors delegitimise elections which elect a candidate the west does not like, while turning a blind eye to the deficiencies of polls that produce the desired outcome.
The hypocrisy is breathtaking - and not least because we in Britain do not allow observers at our own elections. For instance, British TV viewers may have been surprised to see Nigeria's Abdulsalam Abubakar reading out the Commonwealth's condemnation of the democratic process in Zimbabwe. But Nigerians will have been even more surprised. General Abubakar was military dictator of Nigeria from 1998-99. Now facing accusations of stealing more than $2bn from Nigeria's foreign reserves, Abubakar shares responsibility, as a member of Nigeria's top brass, for the cancellation by the military of the elections there in 1993. The man who won those elections died in prison while Abubakar was president.
Less well known is the record of Kare Vollan, the head of the Norwegian observers, who denounced the Zimbabwean poll as unfair because of pre-election violence. This same Kare Vollan found that the Ukrainian parliamentary elections in 1998 "were managed with professionalism" while his team "did not call into question the results" - despite what he described as the "violence, intimidation and harassment during the run-up to the election". Maybe it was because Ukraine was then the west's favourite former Soviet state that the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, for which Vollan works, was happy, unlike in Zimbabwe, to trust the Ukrainian authorities to investigate these allegations.
Another charge levelled at Zimbabwe is government control of the media. But this did not bother the OSCE at the Montenegrin parliamentary elections in 1998. There, the local Mr Big, Milo Djukanovic, has received tens of millions of dollars in western aid - not bad for a country with half the population of Birmingham. Apart from using the money for his gigantic police force of 30,000, and for ensuring to tal state control of the media, Djukanovic habitually ensures that he is the only candidate with any election posters. For the west, though, he was a useful thorn in the side of Slobodan Milosevic.
But even this cannot compare with the stifling of democracy in Russia with which the west wholeheartedly cooperated throughout the 1990s and in 2000. Having welcomed the shelling of the Russian parliament to put down recalcitrant backbenchers in 1993 the west and the OSCE turned a blind eye to the massive fraud in the subsequent constitutional referendum, which reduced the power of the Russian parliament to that of a library reading room. One observer, the Tory minister Kenneth Baker, declared that poll a resounding success - even before it had closed. It later turned out that millions of votes had been added to the turnout to render the vote valid.
All through the 1990s, western observers turned a blind eye to the government's grip on the broadcast media. At the 1995 elections, the OSCE and Council of Europe even managed to ignore the fact that 17 people were killed in campaigning. And at Putin's election in 2000, the west ignored reports that millions of votes had been added to achieve the desired result.
In Slovakia in 1998, the west - via the OSCE - was determined to unseat the incumbent prime minister, Vladimir Meciar, even though (or maybe because) he is the most popular politician in the country. The main charge against him was bias in the state TV. When I asked the OSCE chief (Vollan again) why no one mentioned the greater bias in favour of the opposition of a far more popular foreign-funded private TV station, he promised "scientific proof". When it came, in the form of a statistical survey by an Italian media-monitoring organisation, the figures actually showed the state channel to be a model of neutrality and the private channel to be grossly partisan. But facts would not move Vollan. He just said icily: "You have the figures. Maybe your interpretation is different."
The Zimbabweans were vil ified for the queues at polling stations in Harare. But at the Italian parliamentary elections last May, the socialist government reduced the number of polling stations by 30%. The chaos was so severe that the last Italian to cast his vote did so at 5am. So why were Francesco Rutelli's friends not accused of trying to stop Italians voting for Silvio Berlusconi?
Western election monitoring has become the political equivalent of an Arthur Andersen audit. This supposedly technical process is now so corrupted by political bias that it would be better to abandon it. Only then will other countries be able to elect their leaders freely.

ˇ John Laughland is a trustee of the British Helsinki Human Rights Group: www.bhhrg.org
jlaughland@aol.com

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VISION IN AMERICA AWARD PRESENTATION

    The Croatian World Congress' representatives to the United Nations Mario Viscovich and Sanja Crnkovic joined about 200 members of the diplomatic corps, elected officials, media, corporate executives and distinguished community leaders in the International Channel Networks' Vision in America Award presentation to Edward Juarez-Pagliocco, president of the International Immigrants Foundation, held at the UN Delegates Dining Room on Thursday, March 7, 2002.

    Under Mr. Pagliocco's leadership, the Foundation has provided assistance in over two million instances to individuals, families, organizations, and cultural groups of every nationality, race and religion. Because of his merits and contribution to the mission of promoting positive intercultural relations, Mr. Viscovich was also invited to participate in the ceremony as one of the co-recipients of this prestigious award.

    Amongst 60 diplomats from around the world, on hand were also H.E. Phillip Sanchez, former US Ambassador, as well as Ms. Peggy Kerry, representing the US Mission to the UN.

    Vision in America (VIA) awards honor immigrants across the United States who are local community and/or business leaders, and who actively support others in the process of becoming U.S. citizens. In addition, International Channel Networks makes donations to local community organizations on behalf of the VIA Award recipients.


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Glas Koncila presents a new stamp of Cardinal FranjoKuharic

Danis Tanovic Wins Oscar !

The lead roles were played by Branko Djuric, a native Sarajevan, and Rene Bitorajac, who was born in Zagreb, Croatia.

'No Man's Land' Claims Foreign Oscar
Mon Mar 25,12:09 AM ET
By ANTHONY BREZNICAN, AP Entertainment Writer

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Bosnia-Herzegovina's violent war satire "No Man's Land" claimed the Academy Award for best foreign language film Sunday, an artistic triumph for a nation still recovering from its devastating ethnic civil war of the 1990s.

The movie, about enemy soldiers one Bosnian and one Serb trapped together in a battlefield trench was the only film produced by that country last year. It upset France's feel-good "Amelie," which was considered the favorite with five Oscar nominations, but won none.

"Wow," said writer-director Danis Tanovic, who trained on the front lines of the 1992-95 war as a documentary filmmaker. "This is for my country. To Bosnia."

Tanovic has said he wanted to highlight the absurdity of the war, the cruelty of ethnic hatred and the ineffectiveness of United Nations (news - web sites) forces during the conflict.

The movie was shot over six weeks in Slovenia because filming in Bosnia was too risky. The lead roles were played by Branko Djuric, who was born in Sarajevo, Bosnia, and Rene Bitorajac, who was born in Zagreb, Croatia.

Yugoslavia began to unravel along ethnic lines during the reign of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic (news - web sites).

Bosnia-Herzegovina voted for independence from the former Yugoslavia in March 1992, but Serb and Croat militias fought Muslims to contest the vote; on Nov. 21, 1995, the Dayton accords ended the war. The new state is made up of two statelets the Croat-Muslim federation and a small Serb republic.

Other foreign film nominees were Argentina's "Son of the Bride," Norway's "Elling" and India's "Lagaan."

Bosnians Exult in Oscar Win
Mon Mar 25, 8:13 AM ET
By AIDA CERKEZ-ROBINSON, Associated Press Writer

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) - Like most Sarajevans, retired electrician Zijo Sahovic went to bed long before the Academy Awards (news - web sites) ceremony was over.

"Nothing nice ever happens to us," Sahovic, 64, said fatalistically.

But Monday dawned with big news for Bosnia: Writer-director Danis Tanovic won the Oscar and the admiration of a nation for best foreign-language film for "No Man's Land," a satire of the 1992-95 war that devastated the country.

"I knew it! I knew it!" an exultant Sahovic told his neighbors as they headed to work in a heavy spring snowfall.
"No, you didn't. You just hoped, like everybody else," came the reply.

Tanovic was the talk of the town on the streets of Sarajevo, where people seemed eager for some good news in a city still struggling to recover from years of bloody conflict.

"I'm so happy, as if I received the Oscar," said Dzemal Kovac, 40, who sells vegetables at one of the city's open markets. "It's time for the world to see that not all Bosnians who go west are refugees, but that there are some good and successful people here."

Tanovic's violent war satire is about enemy soldiers one Bosnian and one Serb trapped together in a battlefield trench. It captures the absurdity of the war, the cruelty of ethnic hatred and the ineffectiveness of United Nations (news - web sites) forces during the conflict.

His father, Mevludin Tanovic, and mother, Hatidza, watched the Oscar ceremony live on Bosnian state television, and reporters massed outside their home in the morning.

"Danis fulfilled all of our expectations," Mevludin Tanovic said. "We invested everything we had into his education. That education, along with an empty suitcase, is all Danis took with him when he left Bosnia. I think Danis achieved a global idea which everybody could recognize, from Cannes to Berlin to Los Angeles."

"Your anti-war movie ... represents a message for all of us living here," Bosnia's three-member presidency said in a statement congratulating Tanovic for "the biggest success in the history of our filmmaking."

Bosnian Foreign Minister Zlatko Lagumdzija sent a letter to the filmmaker, who got his start making documentary films on the front lines of the war, expressing Bosnians' pride that "No Man's Land" has won international acclaim.

"The crown came with the Oscar, and Tanovic is an example of talent and determination never having lost a battle," Lagumdzija said.

Tanovic, who left Bosnia in 1994 and now lives in Paris, made the film on a budget of $1 million, tiny by Hollywood standards. It was shot over six weeks in Slovenia because filming in Bosnia was too risky. The lead roles were played by Branko Djuric, a native Sarajevan, and Rene Bitorajac, who was born in Zagreb, Croatia.