ZAGREB, March 9 (Hina) - The head of the Croatian Parliament's delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, Kresimir Cosic, has said in a newspaper interview that after elections four years ago all key positions in the Croatian
armed forces were filled by former Yugoslav army generals. His comments followed criticism from NATO that the Croatian armed forces looked very much like the former Yugoslav People's Army.
ZAGREB, March 9 (Hina) - The head of the Croatian Parliament's
delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, Kresimir Cosic, has
said in a newspaper interview that after elections four years ago all
key positions in the Croatian armed forces were filled by former
Yugoslav army generals. His comments followed criticism from NATO that
the Croatian armed forces looked very much like the former Yugoslav
People's Army.#L#
"Both in terms of organisation and in terms of weapons and military
equipment, the Croatian armed forces look more and more like a
stationary army from the Cold War era and are almost identical to the
Yugoslav People's Army," Cosic said in an interview with the
Zagreb-based Vecernji List daily published on Tuesday.
He said that this was the result of the fact that "after the 3 January
2000 elections, all key positions in the armed forces, from those of
chief of staff and inspector general to presidential advisers on
military issues, were occupied by generals of the former Yugoslav
People's Army."
"Their education and way of thinking, which was adopted at military
schools of the former country, simply could not be a good basis for
the reorganisation of the Croatian armed forces at the beginning of
the 21st century," Cosic said.
"They simply could not change themselves, but the so-called democratic
changes of 3 January enabled them to change the armed forces. The
negative effect of those changes was very soon and easily noticed by
NATO's independent military experts. After all, those people have seen
NATO as their chief military rival and enemy for decades," Cosic
said.
He went on to say that it was "unacceptable that over the last four
years, the institute of president of the republic and
commander-in-chief of the armed forces has served as cover for a
series of bad strategic decisions regarding the development of the
armed forces." "Well-intended analyses that have been provided by
experts from NATO and Great Britain over the past few years were
marginalised and kept away from the Croatian public," he added.
Cosic said that in order to avoid similar strategic mistakes in the
future, it was necessary to accept "certain institutionalised forms of
modern democratic defence management".
"The marginalisation of the role of the Croatian Parliament with
regard to the armed forces over the last 14 years is intolerable. We
talk about parliamentary democracy and at the same time we are afraid
of democracy. Marginalising the Sabor and giving preference to
presidential military 'advisers' is not good. Not even the former
Yugoslavia behaved like that," Cosic said.
Cosic nevertheless believes that Croatia is now much closer to NATO
than it was a few months ago. He said that the new government of Prime
Minister Ivo Sanader is aware of all the weaknesses and problems in
the reform of the armed forces and that it is "determined and ready to
rectify all the omissions and mistakes".
Cosic pointed out that Croatia needed "a small, mobile, well-equipped
and well-trained army" in order to join NATO.
Cosic, a retired general, is a member of the ruling Croatian
Democratic Union (HDZ) party. He is also a full-time professor at
Zagreb's Faculty of Electrical Engineering and a guest researcher at
the Aerospace Department of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.
(Hina) vm sb