Cultural Identity Politics in the (Post-)Transitional Societies

Cultural Identity Politics in the (Post-)Transitional Societies
One should remember that at that time even Slovenia had not declared its independence
yet. German Hans-Dietrich Genscher would not have had the diplomatic possibility to
go as far as Austrian Alois Mock.
At the real beginning of the Bosnian crisis, it was again Alois Mock who this time
travelled to George H.W. Bush in Washington to ask for military intervention against
Belgrade. In an interview for the state-TV ORF in July 1992 he announced a possible
plan to send Austrian volunteers to fight the “Serb army”. The last time this happened,
it was Austrians in German uniform, such as the later UN Secretary-General Kurt
Waldheim “doing their duty” in the Balkans.
The direct involvement of prominent Austrian politicians and diplomats can be
seen right from the beginning of Tudjman’s Croatia in 1990. It was the Austrian Janko
Vranyczany, a member of the old nobility and former leader of the Austrian tourism
agency in Brussels, who became the first Croat minister of tourism after HDZ (Croatian
Democratic Community), won the election in 1990. It was also the former high ranked
Austrian diplomat Johann Dengler, former ambassador in Budapest and Helsinki and
Austrian consul in Zagreb during the “Croat spring” in the early 1970s, who was adviser to
Franjo Tudjman in questions of foreign affairs.
The list of Austrian involvement in the process of dissolving Yugoslavia and creating
separate national states is too long to name all of the proponents (see Hofbauer, 2001).
Only some important historic moments shall be remembered. All these involvements
were aimed at Belgrade and supported the nationalist elites in Croatia and Bosnia.
Thus it was an Austrian diplomat, Peter Hohenfellner, who smoothed the path for
the UN embargo against Yugoslavia in 1992. In his function as representative of one
of the members of the UN Security Council, in which Austria took part at the time,
Ambassador Hohenfellner was blamed by other officials for holding back information
for UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali concerning the possible author of a
horrible attack on a line of people queuing in front of a bakery in the middle of Sarajevo.
This attack took place on the 27 May 1992, was transmitted on television and left 16
people dead on the street. Bosnian officials immediately accused the Serbian side, which
only three days later led to UN Resolution 757 setting Belgrade under a crude regime of
international embargo which lasted for almost a whole decade. A UN report – like other
reports – questioned Serbian responsibility by noting the lack of shell-craters. The live
TV transmission on the spot by Bosnian television could also have been part of a planned
covert operation by Bosnian Muslim forces to provoke international interference, which
is in fact what happened. Austrian Ambassador Hohenfellner was blamed by some of his
colleagues for blocking this inside-information from the Secretary-General. With no
doubt as to Serbian responsibility for the attack, the UN Resolution could pass quickly.
As the economic and cultural embargo against Belgrade was realized with Austrian
help, the military bombing of Yugoslavia five years later was also at least moderated by
an Austrian diplomat. This time his name was Wolfgang Petritsch, delegated by the
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