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The strength of Croat<br />

resistance forced a revision<br />

of Ram. The idea of keeping<br />

the whole of Croatia<br />

under Serbian control was<br />

abandoned and the leadership<br />

of rump Yugoslavia<br />

decided that the creation<br />

of the Republic of Serbian<br />

Krajina (rsk) in the east<br />

of Croatia was the optimal<br />

objective. According to the<br />

revised version of Ram, the<br />

western boundary of Serbia would run along a line connecting Virovitica,<br />

Karlovac, and Karlobag, which coincided with Šešelj’s proclaimed<br />

war objectives. The ypa was given the task of “protecting the<br />

Serb people in Croatia by freeing all areas with a majority Serb population<br />

of any Croatian army and Croatian government presence.” 267<br />

In Milošević’s opinion, the plan to cleave Croatia in two would “still<br />

leave a Yugoslav state with some seventeen million inhabitants,<br />

which is quite enough as far as European states go.” 268<br />

Because the Serbs were in power in the Krajina, 269 Belgrade’s<br />

leaders shrewdly decided to ask the United Nations to protect the<br />

Serbs with a peacekeeping force pending a political solution of<br />

the Yugoslav crisis. 270 The rump sfry Presidency wrote a letter on<br />

November 9, 1991, to the un secretary-general, reasoning thus:<br />

267 Veljko Kadijević, Moje viđenje raspada, p . 134 .<br />

268 Ibid ., p . 152 .<br />

269 The RSK was a self-proclaimed Serbian-dominated entity within Croatia, founded in 1991 .<br />

It covered areas that bordered Serbia and where Serbs are a significant minority (Baranja<br />

and Vukovar), a large section of the historical “Military Frontier,” parts of northern Dalmatia,<br />

the area centred around the city of Bjelovar, and central and south-eastern Slavonia .<br />

270 Borisav Jović, Poslednji dani SFRJ, p . 407 .<br />

173<br />

ChApter 2

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