MILITARY CABINET HEAD ANSWERS STATEMENTS BY EX-ARMY CHIEF OF STAFF

ZAGREB, Oct 3 (Hina) - The head of the Military Cabinet of the Office of the Croatian President, General Miljenko Crnjac, issued a statement on Friday in response to an interview by retired Croatian army general Antun Tus published in the September 27 issue of the Rijeka-based daily "Novi list". Tus said in the interview that on several occasions during the war President Franjo Tudjman "subordinated military operations to political decisions" when he had halted attacks on a number of Yugoslav army barracks in the summer of 1991 and attempts to break the Serb siege of Vukovar. Describing Tus's views as "arbitrary and unfounded", Crnjac said their ultimate objective was to challenge the strategic decisions that had led to "a brilliant victory in the Homeland War." Crnjac stressed that the events and strategic decisions referred to by Tus should not be considered "superficially and only from a military point of view". The period referred to by Tus, he explained, was late 1991 and the way the former Yugoslav army (JNA) was driven out of Croatia, and 1992 when, according to Tus, the Serb military power in Bosnia-Herzegovina could have been defeated. The war in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina must be analyzed with consideration to the goal of the aggression and the international circumstances , Crnjac said. After winning in the first part of the war, Crnjac said, "Croatia needed a break for two reasons: firstly, to avoid further destruction, reorganize the army by exchanging quantity for quality, raise the mobility of the forces and create the possibility of transferring the headquarters as a condition for successful attack operations"; and secondly, Crnjac said, "there was neither reason nor possibility for fighting on two separate fronts when the main operative routes (Zagreb-Karlovac-Rijeka, Zagreb-Karlovac-Zadar- Split-Dubrovnik and Zagreb-Nova Gradiska-Vinkovci-Osijek) were endangered". Crnjac said Croatia's uncertainty concerning strategy arose from whether to engage an insufficiently trained army in attack operations aimed at liberating occupied areas, pay a high price and fail to achieve the set goal, or to gain in time, reorganize the army while simultaneously preventing the realization of the Serb's reshaped goal, and retain the operative depth not only in western Bosnia-Herzegovina, but in southern Croatia as well. "Every deliberation on strategy leads to the conclusion on the correctness of adopting the second possibility", Crnjac said in the statement. Tus had not considered the size of the enemy force and the amount of weaponry Croats had to combat in the Homeland War, especially in the early stages when, Crnjac said, the Croatian army was being created. "Only an integral, not partial, strategy deliberation, can answer what, when and why something should have been done, because (partial analysis) undoubtedly leads into oversimplification, and the war is not and cannot be an oversimplification subordinated to one's own point of view or, worse, to current political interest", Crnjac concluded in his statement. (hina) vm ha jn 032045 MET oct 97