Croatian President Franjo Tudjman is another darling of the U.S.
government. He has received considerable backing from the Pentagon and State Department.
When he spoke at the opening of the Holocaust Museum in Washington as a Clinton-invited
guest of honor, many in the audience walked out. This is the man who once declared,
"Thank god my wife is neither a Serb nor a Jew."
Tudjman is a Croatian nationalist and anti-communist. His government has adopted the
flag and currency of the fascist Ustashe regime during World War II.
His book "Wastelands: Historical Truths" asserts that "only"
900,000 Jews died in the Holocaust, not 6 million. He also asserts that no more than
70,000 Serbs were killed in the Ustashe death camps.
According to Alfred Lipson, a senior researcher at the Holocaust Resource Center and
Archives at Queensborough Community College in New York, "more than 60,000 Jews
died" at the death camp in Jasenovac, Croatia, "along with 27,000 Gypsies; the
Serbs, the most anti-Nazi ethnic group in Yugoslavia, suffered the greatest losses--1.2
million." (Forward, Nov. 11, 1994)
Although the U.S. has brokered a Croatian-Bosnian federation between Tudjman and
Izetbegovic, it is a shaky alliance at best. Tudjman is violently anti-Muslim, to the
point of even denying the Muslims legitimacy. In an interview in the Sept. 25 French daily
Le Figaro, Tudjman said that the Muslims are really Croatians who should eventually be
incorporated into Croatia.
Tudjman says in the Le Figaro interview that he sees his task in the Croatian-Bosnian
federation as "Europeanizing" the Muslims and "bringing them into European
civilization."
In his racist ravings, Tudjman sounds like Los Angeles cop Mark Fuhrman. Except Tudjman
heads up a country. According to an Aug. 19 New York Times profile, Tudjman came to power
"helped by financing from anti-communist Croatian emigres in the United States and
Canada." What the Times doesn't mention is that these groups are ultimately financed
by the CIA. It was this U.S.-based support that put Tudjman at the head of the Croatian
government.
