RADIO FREE EUROPE/RADIO LIBERTY, PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC
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RFE/RL Balkan Report
Vol. 10, No. 6, 27 June 2006

A Weekly Review of Politics, Media, and Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty Broadcasts in the western Balkans

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HEADLINES:
* MOVING TOWARD ENDGAME IN KOSOVA
* BLACK HOLES AND WHITE ELEPHANTS IN THE BALKANS
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MOVING TOWARD ENDGAME IN KOSOVA. Denmark’s Soren Jessen-Petersen
leaves Kosova as head of the UN civilian administration (UNMIK) at
the end of June. His successor is likely to be the last person in
that post before the international community and Kosovar leaders
agree on the details of how Kosova will move toward independence.
Jessen-Petersen will probably be remembered by most Kosovar
Albanians as the best leader of UNMIK during the transition from
Serbian rule, which effectively ended with the departure of Yugoslav
President Slobodan Milosevic’s forces in June 1999, and the
declaration of Kosova’s independence, the circumstances of which
are likely to be clear before the end of 2006. The international
community has made it clear that Belgrade will not have a veto over
Kosova’s future. Most commentators agree that
Jessen-Petersen’s successor will be the last person to head
UNMIK, which began long ago to hand over some of its functions to
officials of the elected Kosovar government.
Unlike some of his predecessors, Jessen-Petersen did his
homework relating to his job and did not consider himself bound to
steer a middle course in every controversy that came along. It was
during his term in office that the UN and the major international
powers — whether they said so in public or not — came to accept
that "political limbo" could not be continued indefinitely because it
would compound the fears and frustrations of the 90 percent ethnic
Albanian majority and possibly lead to more violence like that which
shook the province in March 2004 (see "RFE/RL Balkan Report,"
September 10 and December 17, 2004). He also recognized that the only
way forward was to move toward independence, albeit with strong
guarantees for the Serbs and other minorities.
His unambiguous views and his reputed closeness to some
ethnic Albanian political leaders, such as Ramush Haradinaj of the
Alliance for the Future of Kosova (AAK), prompted some Serbian
politicians to call for his resignation, but such tactics only served
to underscore the weakness of the Serbian position. The local Serbs,
whose future will ultimately lie with their Albanian neighbors in an
independent state, by and large boycott Kosova’s growing
institutions of self-government at the behest of Belgrade and thereby
miss out on the opportunity to put their mark on the new state from
the beginning.
The Belgrade politicians, who have expected to face early
elections for well over a year, are reluctant to say or do anything
that voters might interpret as showing "weakness" regarding Kosova.
They thus waste time and energy over Kosova, which some of them
privately admit is "lost" anyway, that could be put to use in dealing
with Serbia’s real problems, which are crime, poverty,
corruption, and a democracy deficit. Some observers go one step
further and suggest that the politicians deliberately draw
voters’ attention to the Kosova issue in order to divert their
gaze away from those same politicians’ poor track record in
improving the daily lot of ordinary Serbs.
On June 20, Jessen-Petersen submitted his final report to the
UN Security Council. He made it clear that the elected Kosovar
institutions have made good progress toward implementing the
international community’s standards, particularly since Prime
Minister Agim Ceku was nominated in March. Jessen-Petersen noted that
many members of the Serbian minority have cause for complaint, but
added that he hopes that their problems will be dealt with quickly.
He also stressed that the Serbs should not consider themselves
victims of deliberate oppression, and he repeated his call for them
to take part in public life. He warned of the dangers inherent in the
prolongation of the unclear political status, which, he argued, must
be settled in keeping with the wishes of the majority while
respecting the rights of the minority.
It will be incumbent on the ethnic Albanians to offer the
Serbs fair treatment under the rule of law. If the Albanians fail to
do so, they can expect difficulties with the international community.
But the violent incidents that take place from time to time seem
sporadic rather than planned, may be rooted in personal or criminal
rather than in ethnic disputes, and could be, at least in some cases,
engineered by Serbian extremists in order to maintain tensions and
discredit the Kosovar government.
There are, however, few observers who expect many of the
Serbian refugees and displaced persons to return to their old homes.
While their numbers are uncertain, figures of around 235,000 often
surface in the media, but Kosovar officials claim that the real
number is lower.
The root of the problem is that the Albanians tend to
distrust local Serbs in general because of the active role that many
of them played in bringing Milosevic to power in the second half of
the 1980s and in keeping him there. Perhaps more important, most
Albanians believe that Milosevic’s repressive campaign of
1998-99, which culminated in the "ethnic cleansing" of the Albanians
in the spring of 1999, could not have been carried out without the
active participation of local Serbs, both as combatants and as
providers of "human intelligence" about their neighbors. Some German
Balkan experts have drawn parallels with the Czech attitude at the
end of World War II toward the Sudeten Germans, whom the Czechs
regarded as an incorrigible Fifth Column, even though Kosovar
officials are at pains to stress that local Serbs will enjoy full
protection of the law.
The local Serbs, for their part, remain fearful. Violent
incidents against Serbs have contributed to this tense climate,
particularly when those killed or injured are the very young or very
old. It should be recalled that in launching his wars in Croatia and
in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the early 1990s, Milosevic was able to
exploit the fears of local Serbs there who refused to accept that
they might possibly live safely and peacefully as a minority in a
state in which others constituted the majority. The Serbs of Kosova
today are no less worried than were the Serbs of Krajina in 1990,
even if they are not seriously planning to arm themselves or
expecting military help from Belgrade. Meanwhile, most local Serbian
politicians have displayed more skill in criticizing and complaining
that in providing leadership or offering constructive programs.
As Jessen-Petersen’s mandate comes to its end, Kosova
moves toward a clarification of its final status. Most international
commentators point out that anything short of independence, however
qualified, is simply unrealistic. As Montenegro celebrates its newly
won statehood, and Serbia finds itself in growing international
disrepute over its failure to arrest and extradite former Bosnian
Serb commander General Ratko Mladic, Kosova’s independence
probably seems even more realistic that it did at the start of 2006.
(Patrick Moore)

BLACK HOLES AND WHITE ELEPHANTS IN THE BALKANS. One truism of
postcommunist Europe is that all the countries of Eastern Europe and
the Balkans will sooner or later join the EU and NATO. It seems,
however, that the countries of the western Balkans might find
themselves in a "black hole" outside the EU for the foreseeable
future even if they are surrounded by member states (see "RFE/RL
Balkan Report," December 9, 2005).
Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosova, Macedonia,
Montenegro, and Serbia face uncertainty in their hopes to join the
EU. The Brussels-based bloc has a particular attraction for the
countries of the region for three reasons.
First, membership means a seat at the table where decisions
affecting all of Europe are made. The small Balkan states might not
wield much influence, but it is better to be inside looking out than
outside looking in, or so the argument has run.
Second, joining the EU symbolizes the end of the
continent’s division and the inclusion of former communist
countries — including war-torn states — in the "rich man’s
club." For former Yugoslavs, whose passport was once the only one in
Europe with which one could travel freely to the East or West without
a visa, it means a return to a normal situation. It also means an end
to the inconvenience and humiliation of having to go through often
long procedures for something that was once simple, such as a visit
to relatives working in Germany. The importance of visa-free travel
for ordinary people in the western Balkans should not be
underestimated.
And third, as poorer members of a wealthy organization, the
western Balkan states would be able to look forward to a cornucopia
of subsidies, as well as opportunities for more or less unrestricted
study and work abroad. In short, even if NATO membership will someday
provide for these countries’ security requirements, joining the
EU is still regarded in the region as an essential stage in its rite
of passage into the modern, prosperous, and democratic world.
For Brussels, integrating the western Balkans has long meant
that there will be no "black hole" in the middle of the EU —
especially after Bulgaria and Romania join in 2008 or so — in which
organized crime could flourish. More recently, some Western
governments have come to see EU membership for the western Balkans as
a way of keeping out of that region unwelcome but well-funded
political, criminal, or religious influences from Russia or the
Middle East.
By offering the prospect of membership, the EU has, moreover,
a powerful lever to influence precisely the kind of changes — called
"reforms" — that it wants to see implemented. Progress has been slow
in some countries, but the view from Brussels for years was that it
is better to have slow progress than to isolate a potentially
volatile region that is indisputably part of Europe and right on the
doorstep of several member states.
But then on May 29, 2005, French voters rejected the proposed
EU constitution by a clear majority, and Dutch voters did the same by
an even larger margin three days later. In both cases, objections to
further enlargement of the EU after the admission of 10 new members
in 2004 played at least some role in the vote.
One year after those two votes, the EU is none the clearer as
to its goals and how to achieve them. In June 2006, a summit took
place in Vienna, but there was no agreement on any of the key issues,
including the fate of the constitution. The only consensus seemed to
be in putting off any possible movement on thorny questions until the
German presidency in the first half of 2007, or maybe to the French
presidency in the second half of 2008.
It was perhaps telling for the newer members — and those who
would like to join — that a joint declaration by the Czech Republic,
Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, and Slovakia was "slapped down," as the
"Financial Times" put it on June 17, by Luxembourg, Germany, and
other, unnamed EU founder states. The five Central European countries
had called into question what they regard as their second-class
status within the bloc and demonstrated their willingness to work
together. Some observers recalled French President Jacques
Chirac’s remark about a 2003 declaration by a similar group of
countries, which backed the United States over Iraq. The French
leader said at that time that they had missed an opportunity to "shut
up."
Before and during the summit, several leaders of older member
states made it clear that one cannot speak of enlargement, at least
beyond Romania and Bulgaria, before the growing EU has decided at
least on how it will manage its internal affairs. That would mean
2009 at the very earliest. Consequently, many people in countries
hoping to join that body began to fear that their chances of
obtaining membership within a reasonable time frame have become much
slimmer as a result.
This was true for Croatia, which has long sought to convince
itself that its membership on the heels of Romania and Bulgaria was a
foregone conclusion. Many people in the western Balkans suspected
that the EU was keeping them at arm’s length as a pretext for
dodging the larger and more controversial question of Turkish
membership. After all, the reasoning in the Balkans went, had not the
West Europeans told them for years that integrating such small states
would not require much money and effort on Brussels’ part?
Meanwhile, antireform forces in the Balkans took heart,
blocking police and constitutional reform in Bosnia. In Serbia, they
continue to thwart the arrest and extradition to the Hague-based war
crimes tribunal of former Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic, with the
result that relations between Belgrade and Brussels are on hold.
The question then arises: if Brussels is unlikely to offer
the western Balkans a serious "European perspective" within a clear
time frame, and if some people in those countries are becoming less
enamored of a EU that does not seem to want them, might it not be
time for the people in the western Balkans to reexamine old beliefs
about the necessary postcommunist rite of passage and look for
alternatives? Has not the obsession with EU membership become
something of a white elephant, like the EU-sponsored bridge over the
Prut River from Romania to Moldova that stood unused for several
years for want of a road on the Moldovan side?
How else might the countries of the region modernize their
economies and expand their markets than with top-down efforts at
nation building and seemingly endless rules imposed from abroad?
Might it not be to their advantage to concentrate first on developing
straightforward free-trade and travel arrangements that would not
involve compromising what for most of them is newly won sovereignty
in favor of a distant and unelected bureaucracy?
Some Euroskeptics have long argued that the EU is cumbersome,
inflexible, nontransparent, and dominated by Paris and Berlin. Might
some other parts of Europe now find themselves faced with an
opportunity to develop alternative ideas to the EU model that are
simpler, more democratic, and hence more likely to produce clear
results and win popular support? After all, there is no better
incentive for learning to think outside the box than being denied
permission to enter the box. (Patrick Moore)

NOTABLE QUOTATIONS: "Accusing the European Union for the
country’s own failures is not serious. [EU Enlargement]
Commissioner [Olli] Rehn considers that it is in the hands of Serbia
and its leaders to fulfill the conditions and realize the EU
perspective." — Krisztina Nagy, Rehn’s spokeswoman. Quoted by
RFE/RL on June 21.
"We are looking for Kosova to become a normal country." —
Prime Minister Agim Ceku to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
in Washington on June 19. Quoted by RFE/RL.

(Compiled by Patrick Moore)
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Copyright (c) 2006. RFE/RL, Inc. All rights reserved.

The "RFE/RL Balkan Report" is prepared by Patrick Moore based on
sources including reporting by RFE/RL’s South Slavic and Albanian
Languages Service. It is distributed once a month.

Direct content-related comments to Patrick Moore in Prague at
moorep@rferl.org or by phone at (+4202) 2112-3631.
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