govic famously remarked that having to choose between Slobodan Milosevic and Franjo Tudjman was like making a choice between leukaemia and a brain tumour.
The Serbs of Republika Srpska are faced with a similar 'choice' -Biljana Plavsic or Radovan Karadzic.
Karadzic's record is well known: that of Plavsic, the West's current favourite Bosnian Serb, rather less so. She is as much a war criminal as Karadzic and General Ratko Mladic. While the latter organised genocide against Bosnia's Muslims, Plavsic provided the ideological justification.
According to Plavsic the Serbs were oppressed as a nation under Tito. Moreover, she also claims to have consistently opposed the Tito regime, arguing that the worst crime of Tito's Yugoslavia was that everyone had to think as the party did.
Such 'national oppression' and 'opposition to the League of Communists' did not, however, prevent her becoming dean of the Faculty of Natural Science and Mathematics at the university of Sarajevo.
Moreover, this supposed champion of the 'oppressed' Serbs, chose to do her degree at the University of 'The Tenth Circle of Hell' by Zagreb in Croatia. Logic and consistency - let alone respect for facts - are not Plavsic's strong points.
Plavsic is a geneticist by profession: her politics reflect this trainShe argues that Bosnia's Muslims were originally Serbs, but Serbs of 'genetically deformed material' who embraced Islam. Intermarriage between Muslims and Serbs led to further deterioration in the Serbs' genetic material - a process which has led to a 'deSerbianisation' of Bosnia's Serbs.
Yet, when 'pedigree' Serbs like Karadzic and Plavsic came to power the supposedly 'degenerate' Bosnian Serbs suddenly regained national consciousness.
Absurd
Such absurdities would be laughable if they had not had such serious consequences.
Plavsic takes her socio-genetic nonsense further. Whilst berating the Bosnian Serbs for their genetic deficiencies she also argues that the Serbs of Bosnia are, at the same time, politically and racially superior to the Serbs of Serbia.
Living in frontier regions supposedly led the Bosnian Serbs to develop a special ability to sense danger to the Serb nation and develop mechanisms for self protection.
One can only wonder why Plavsic was in favour of the unity of In this account he is also describing (right) all Serbs within a single state. Her biological determinism should surely mean that the 'pure' genes of the Bosnian Serbs would be diluted by contact with the 'inferior' genes of the Serbs of Serbia.
Plavsic is known in Bosnia as the 'Iron Lady', the 'Serb Empress' and even the 'Goddess Biljana'. Mirjana Markovic, however, has called her by a rather different - and more appropriate - name: Dr. Mengele.
Markovic's husband, Slobodan Milosevic, claimed that Plavsic should be detained in a psychiatric institution after a bizarre speech in which she virtually welcomed NATO bombs. 'Even if six million Serbs perish', she said, 'the other 6 million will live decently'.
Today Robin Cook and Madeleine Albright try to portray this champion of biologically determined racism as a 'moderate'. S-For troops have intervened on her side in the battle she and her supporters Two faces of ethnic cleansing: new western favourite Plavsic (left) and arch villain Karadzic are waging against Karadzic. Western leaders clearly hope Plavsic will win September's elections. An electoral victory for Plavsic, however, would not mean an end to the division of Bosnia. Indeed the elections (including those in the so-called Muslim Croat Federation) will take place in conditions where people will be able to vote in the area where they now reside - ie where the original inhabitants have been 'ethnically cleansed'. This is expressly against the provisions of the Dayton Accord yet is being sanctioned by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. The electoral procedures agreed by the OCSE legalise 'ethnic cleansing' and can only encourage an intensification of ethnically based politics in Bosnia. These manoeuvres by the OCSE led to the resignation from the Provisional Electoral Commission of Kasim Begic, the representative of Bosnia-Hercegovina.
But just because the West is backing Plavsic - including with military force - this does not mean socialists should support Karadzic. We do not take sides in a conflict between two gangsters.
Neither Plavsic nor Karadzic have anything to offer Bosnia's Serbs, let alone the non-Serb population.
Certainly we are in favour of the arrest and trial of Karadzic - by the people of Bosnia. And when Karadzic and Mladic do find themselves in the dock they should be joined by Biljana Plavsic, their accomplice in crime.