Page 5259 - Week 16 - Thursday, 28 November 1991
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going into the fortress at Dubrovnik. I have seen a lot of footage on TV of some dreadful devastation in Croatia. I understand that about a third of that country has been overrun by the Yugoslavian army and that thousands of its citizens have been killed.
I do not think the nations of western Europe - or even the United States - can take much succour from what has occurred over there. They quite correctly intervened in the Gulf when Saddam Hussein, a bloodthirsty dictator, invaded another state. They threw him out. Perhaps they should have gone on for another 48 hours and made a proper job of it. At any rate, at least the United Nations, western Europe and the United States acted there. They are strangely quiet - indeed, almost obstructionist - in terms of getting off their backsides and doing something about the problems in the Balkans.
One thing that probably should have been done there, very early in the piece, was to put in a United Nations peacekeeping force - which could have been a largely western European force - to ensure that there could be a real peace for the people of Croatia, Slovenia and the other states that make up the old country of Yugoslavia which, to all intents and purposes, has ceased to exist. There have been about 14 ceasefires, none of which has had any effect. I wonder whether they have been used as a tactic simply to give the Yugoslavian army a bit of a breather every now and again, when it wants one, before it restarts its offensive.
I think that this brings out the point that the only way that you can ensure peace in the world is, on occasions, to use force. I think that the United Nations, as the appropriate body, through the Security Council, should have put in a peacekeeping force to ensure that the self-determination of the people of Croatia, Slovenia and the rest of the Balkan communities could be respected and given a chance to develop, because the numerically superior and also equipment superior Yugoslavian army is now dictating from a position of strength, and that is not going to be very good at all for peace in the Balkans. I am appalled by what has happened there, and I think the United Nations and the western European countries especially have been particularly gutless in that regard.
Mr Collaery also spoke of Timor, and we have seen a bloody massacre recently in Dili, the capital of Timor. A demonstration - and, by the sound of it, a much more peaceful demonstration than the one we saw out at Aidex - was fired upon for about eight minutes with automatic weapons by the Indonesian army, resulting in hundreds of deaths. In relation to that, Mr Collaery also spoke of the debt that we owe the Timorese people, and he is quite right, in terms of the great assistance that they gave the Australian forces during World War II.
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