The difference now is that the military option has suddenly become far more plausible.The ruling HDZ faces parliamentary elections next year, and, before the offensive, was thought likely to lose its majority. It has certainly sharpened the dilemma facing contributors to the UN peace-keeping effort.Croatian forces are now mopping up die-hards who have taken to the hills, and processing 1,200 Serb men taken prisoner in Pakrac (in violation of a UN-brokered ceasefire).In Okucani and Pakrac, Croatian soldiers sat around outside Serb homes brewing coffee, their orderly behaviour at variance with the usual victorious brutality of organised looting and violent reprisals.Croatia, long overshadowed by its Serbian neighbour, seems to have gained a bit of confidence. “This is the first significant loss of land for the Serbs since the war began,” said a Western diplomat, “and I think it comes in the context of a reversal of fortunes.” The Croatian blitzkrieg on western Slavonia has an importance far beyond the recapture of a small, thinly populated area of farms and orchards.
The question is whether it will lead to the defeat of secessionist Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia, in battle or diplomacy, or whether it will force Serbia’s President Slobodan Milosevic to embrace his former clients in the Serb statelets and opt for all-out war in the Balkans. For Croats it was a new and glorious chapter; for Bosnians an encouraging sign; for Serbs a disastrous and shocking loss, not just of land but of belief in Serb brotherhood. FOR REPORTERS it was a replay of 1991 – driving at breakneck speed down winding rural roads in eastern Croatia to the tune of gunfire – with one enormous difference: the Croatian army has become a disciplined, effective and well-armed fighting force. It is likely that weapons sent to the Bosnian Muslim forces are paid for by well-wishers in the Middle East.The Bosnian Serbs inherited most of the heavy weaponry from the former Yugoslav Army and until last year received constant support from Serbia.. It is widely believed the MiGs were brought in on trucks in pieces from Eastern Europe.Croatia is also the principal conduit for arms supplies to the Croat and Muslim forces allied against the Serbs in Bosnia.

The main acquisitions have been old MiG-21 fighter jets, which cost about $1m each, and Mi-24 attack helicopters. In that time the 100,000- strong Croatian forces have been reorganised and equipped with refurbished weapons. Local industry has been maintaining old weapons, and new weaponry has been getting in from former Warsaw Pact countries, and the Middle East.
Last week’s pincer movement to cut off Serbs in western Slavonia was the Croatian Army’s biggest operation for nearly four years. I have no idea what any of this is about.” MacArthur shot him a telling glance and said, “That’s the way to play it, Ike.”. LAST week’s rocket attacks on Zagreb showed again that despite the arms embargo on all countries of former Yugoslavia, there is no shortage of weapons – some highly sophisticated, writes Christopher Bellamy. Most of the weaponry in use in the Bosnian civil war and in the recent fighting in Croatia was inherited from the Yugoslav army and air force, including the 12-barrelled Orkan rocket launchers that hit Zagreb from Serb positions 30 miles away. “What is it, Ike, I hear about this business of your running for president?” his friend General Douglas MacArthur asked him during the period when Mr Kelly and others were still trying to woo him into politics “Oh, general, I am completely non-plussed.

The conventional wisdom in Washington is that General Powell will make a presidential bid only if this time next year both the chosen Republican candidate and Mr Clinton appear weak.The one certain thing, his friends say, is that if he runs for office he will apply the lesson learnt in a lifetime of military service: if you go in, do so with conviction and overwhelming power; employ the methods not of Vietnam but of the Gulf war.For the moment he is following in Eisenhower’s footsteps. There is no shortage of backers willing to provide him with the necessary campaign money and the general’s tantalising asides in recent months have left no doubt that the idea appeals to him.The critical judgement he will have to make is whether the conditions are right to launch a strike. That is one option frequently discussed in Washington, not least because Mr Dole is 71 now and it is considered unlikely that he would seek a second presidential term.Another option would be to run as an independent, as a Ross Perot with gravitas. On affirmative action and abortion, likely to be the two hottest election issues, he is closer to President Clinton than to leading Republicans.Yet General Powell could seek to cool Republican fires by running for the vice-presidency alongside, say, Bob Dole, the favourite to win the Republican nomination. Mr Kelly, a retired investment banker who was instrumental in persuading Dwight Eisenhower to run for office in the Fifties, believes his best bet is to throw his hat into the Republican ring.The problem there is that he is not a member of the Republican Party and while, according to his friends, he served happily under President Bush he is not convinced by the radical turn the Republicans have taken in the Gingrich era. He’s an immensely charismatic figure.”If there is no doubt that General Powell, with his Mandela-like capacity to transcend race and rise above the political fray, is presidential material, it remains unclear how he would plot his path to the White House.

“Other senior Washington politicians were there but the only man whom the crowd rose to applaud when we arrived at the VIP box was Powell. Sir Robin Renwick, the British ambassador, said he had been to a few Washington Redskins football games with General Powell. Newsweek has called him “the most respected figure in American public life”. But the word associated with Powell is trust.”The opinion polls back up Mr Kelly’s judgement Two-thirds of the population view him in a positive light. “I speak to many people and the one thing that emerges most profoundly is the distrust, the corrosive cynicism on the part of the American public towards politics and politicians. The movement’s founder, Charles Kelly, believes General Powell is the only man on the political horizon with the stature and experience successfully to define America’s role in the new world order and, at home, to address the troubling sense of moral decline.”The political process in this country has become ugly to the point of obscenity,” Mr Kelly said. The idea of being America’s first black President appeals to him immensely.