Yugoslavia: A History of its Demise - Indymedia

162 IRRECONCILABLE POSITIONS
made statements such as “I shall build such a Croatia as has never before
existed.” A second meeting between Tudjman and Milošević at the end of April
1991 in Tikves failed to produce any concrete result.
The basic plan and progress of the meeting at Karadjordjevo, as well as the
conclusions which Tudjman drew from it, stirred early doubts about the political
abilities of the Croatian president. In essence, many of the political errors which
Tudjman committed later could be traced back to the “spirit of Karadjordjevo”.
Tudjman visibly believed Milošević’s assurance that Serbia had “no interests” in
the Croatian Krajina or in eastern Slavonia; this belief caused him to
underestimate the threat to Croatia. Even after the conflict in Slovenia, Tudjman
was saying that there would be at most a short war on Croatian territory.
Karadjordjevo also laid the groundwork for Tudjman’s unsuccessful policy in
Bosnia. To this very day, Tudjman has not relinquished the idea of a division of
Bosnia; hence, instead of allying Croatia with the Muslims, he turned against
them. Of the Croats of Bosnia-Herzegovina, he accepted only the
Herzegovinans, who were in fact interested neither in a unified Bosnian state nor
in cooperation with the Muslims. Tudjman’s opinion that at Karadjordjevo he
had solved not only the problem of the integrity of Croatia but also the problem
of the 750,000 Croats living in Bosnia-Herzegovina is a piece of arrant
nonsense.
As concerns Marković, it should have been clear in Western capitals by this
point at the latest that the Prime Minister was for all practical purposes merely
being tolerated now. But as has been shown, the Western and especially the
American reaction was precisely inverted. Since autumn 1990 the subventions
from the republics to the federal treasury were becoming steadily more meager.
Not only Slovenia but also Serbia refused any further payments. This affected
also returns from the turnover tax, which, on the basis of constitutional changes
in 1988, were supposed to flow directly into the army’s purse. In order to
prevent his prestige with the generals from sinking to the point of nullity,
Marković financed the army on a makeshift basis by simply printing the money
he needed. That automatically meant inflation, since the army budget comprised
90 per cent of the federal budget at the time. In order to upset Marković, Jović
formed a special expert group for economic questions, reporting to the state
presidency, in October 1990, which presented its report for the first time in
December, making it public at the end of March 1991. 115 In this report there was
nothing which Marković could not have endorsed; and besides, on many
questions, the experts were themselves divided. Even so, this maneuver of
Jović’s constituted an affront to Marković and, de facto, a Serbian vote of “no
confidence” in the Prime Minister.
In spite of his precarious position Marković registered the demand, in his
“minimal program”, for a revision of certain constitutional articles, in a centralist
spirit. His plans were abruptly aborted. The Serbian “theft” in the monetary
system did not admit of a correction. Croatia raised the demand for placing the
National Bank under the control of the IMF, while Slovenia wanted to move it