LONDON -- The death of former Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic brings back bitter memories. Here was a man shaped in the mold of a 20th century European dictator, obsessed by dreams of racial superiority, unconcerned about the methods his subordinates might use to fulfill his will, oblivious to the hideous suffering his policies were causing.
At my only meeting with him, in 1991, these characteristics were obvious. It was during the shelling of Dubrovnik, that jewel of 17th- and 18th-century architecture on the Adriatic coast, by Serb forces. Why, we asked Milosevic, was he allowing such desecration to happen, day after day? Did he not appreciate that Dubrovnik was almost as priceless in terms of architectural heritage?
But Milosevic was blind to these arguments. For him it was all a question of crushing the Bosnian Muslims, who, he claimed, were entrenched in Dubrovnik with massive stores of weapons and munitions, and who should be blasted out before they increased their toehold on the mainland. Did we not understand, he shouted after us as we left the room, that "the Muslis," as he called them, were once again invading Europe, that the Bosnian Muslims (mostly converted by Turkish occupiers centuries earlier) were being supported by cohorts of reinforcements from the Islamic world?