Colum de Sales Murphy - Sarajevo, 1st April, 1997 Press Conference

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Sarajevo, 1st April, 1997 Press Conference

Good Morning,

On the subject of gas. Here is the text of a fax to the Russian gas suppliers I prepared this morning. Let me read it to you:

"To: Gas Export
Moscow
• On the occasion of April fool's day 1997 may we congrat¬ulate you on your fine sense of humor in considering reductions of gas, and therefore vital heating, to Bosnia and Herzegovina. The sick, the elderly and the war-wounded find it particularly hilarious, as it snows again in Sarajevo. The OHR and the people of this extraordinary city send you their admiration for your subtle and fine sense of irony. Such a humorous and merry approach to life is much needed and warms our hearts,—probably the only parts of us that are heated at the moment."

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Reviewing "Aza Beast" in Foreign Affairs (Jan/Feb. 2005), Harvard's Stanley Hoffmann wrote: "This memoir is valuable both as a portrait of a deeply moral man in an awful situation and as an account of the sufferings of the Bosnians ... Murphy's sense of right and wrong, his distaste for "realist" justifications of inaction, and his concern for the victims of war gives this volume its glow and its emotional power"