Editor’s note: Reporter Aleksandar Pavic has been in Belgrade
covering Yugoslavia’s historic election and its dramatic aftermath for
WorldNetDaily.com.
In the wake of the U.N.-sponsored local elections held in Serbia’s
Kosovo province, and in the final days before the Nov. 11 general
elections in neighboring Bosnia and Herzegovina, rumors of new border
changes are once again muddling the region’s political scene.
Some believe borders that are more realistic would contribute to
peace. Others use their prospect as a carrot and/or stick in achieving
their own diplomatic and strategic purposes. Still others simply want
to fulfil their national or territorial appetites.
The local elections in Kosovo and Metohija were boycotted by the Serb
community with the argument that basic premises for democratic elections
had not been met: The NATO troops in charge of keeping the peace have
not been able to guarantee the Serb community basic rights such as
freedom of movement, assembly and refugee return, while the U.N.-run
civil administration has not been able to form an impartial judicial
system, run secure schools or provide a dependable, balanced police
force.
The resulting mono-ethnic elections resulted in the victory of the
Ibrahim Rugova-led Democratic Alliance of Kosovo, which is considered
the most moderate of the Albanian parties. The party of the former
leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army, Hashim Thaqi, came in a distant
second. Yet, from the most moderate to the most militant circles, the
Albanian community in Kosovo agrees on one goal — independence.
“The independence of Kosovo is the only goal,” said Rugova after it
became clear that his party had won about 60 percent of the seats in
local government.
The former political leader of the KLA, Adem Demaqi, attended a media
forum in Belgrade during the week and called for “the new Serbia to
think differently or otherwise there would be new bloodshed.”
“Different thinking” here implies that the Serbs allow the Albanians to
decide on independence by a referendum.
There are also signs that the Clinton administration is quietly
encouraging the Kosovo Albanians’ ambitions. At the beginning of the
week, several British papers quoted unnamed State Department officials
as saying that the status of Kosovo is still open and that eventual
independence could not be ruled out. These comments were met with
strong reactions on the part of the Foreign Office, which is officially
opposed to any new border changes in the Balkans.
In addition, Dimitry Simes, director of the Nixon Institute, stated
during the week that the $100 million the U.S. Congress recently voted
to send as aid to the new democratic government in Yugoslavia is
contingent upon, among other things, the Yugoslav government’s stance on
Kosovo independence.
Over in Bosnia, U.N. High Representative Wolfgang Petritsch has felt
compelled to publicly oppose an idea recently launched by former Balkan
peace negotiator Lord David Owen, by which Serbia should be compensated
for an eventual loss of Kosovo by being allowed to absorb the Bosnian
Serb entity Republika Srpska.
“Although I respect Lord Owen as an expert on the Balkans, I do not
agree with him on this question,” said Petritsch in an interview with a
Sarajevo daily. He expressed the view that border changes would not
contribute to the region’s stability, adding, “On the contrary, this
would bring more unrest, more fighting and instability, because the
various peoples would not be able to reach agreement.” At the moment,
he said, there was no such danger.
However, Petritsch also issued a cautionary note, having in mind the
upcoming elections: “In case Bosnia and Herzegovina does not achieve
significant progress during the next several years, in case its peoples
do not cooperate and the economy remains depressed, in case the citizens
continue voting for national parties and those parties continue to seek
narrow nationalist goals, this discussion could once again flame up.”
His estimate of “several years” may, however, prove to be overly
optimistic.
For example, on the day of the elections, the strongest Croat
national party, the Croat Democratic Alliance, in the face of criticism
and even threats from the “international community” — and its
representatives in Bosnia — will be holding a referendum on the
Croatian position within the Croat-Muslim entity as well as within
Bosnia as a whole. What the referendum will amount to, in the words of
Muslim officials, is the demand for a third entity within the country,
which “is an illegal act that delves deeply into the constitution
itself.”
In the Serb entity, pre-election polls show a clear lead for the
nationally oriented Serb Democratic Party, formerly led by Dr. Radovan
Karadzic, one of the most wanted on the Hague “war crimes tribunal”
list. In addition, the leader of the moderate Party of Democratic
Progress, Mladen Ivanic, said on Friday that Republika Srpska would be
forced to move toward independence if parts of the “international
community” continued to support moves that lead to Bosnia becoming a
unitary, multi-ethnic state, which is a clear violation of the Dayton
Peace Accords of December 1995.
Adding fuel to the pre-election fire are the calls of the globalist
International Crisis Group to ban the Serb Democratic Party, which is
allegedly still run and controlled by “war criminals.”
The complicated Balkan political map has started exposing
disagreements within the seemingly homogenous Western-dominated
“international community” that has shaped much of the geopolitical scene
during the past decade.
With former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic’s fall from power,
the debate will be clarified only in the sense that things will start
becoming called by their true names. And one truth can be uttered even
now: Balkan border changes were not the work of one man or just a band
of alleged “war criminals.” Rather, they have been a result of concrete
moves by great powers in the pursuit of their own goals in the region.
Many warned back in 1991 that the recognition of new states on the
soil of the former Yugoslavia would let the genie out of the bottle and
that it would later be impossible to turn the clock back. So, as one
crisis seemingly ends, others seem to pop up out of nowhere. And, as
long as outside powers have the chief influence on the peninsula’s
affairs, it will remain so.
Aleksandar Pavic [email protected] served as chief political adviser to the president of Republika Srpska, the Serb entity in Bosnia-Herzegovina and as an adviser to the late Prince Tomislav Karageorgevitch of Yugoslavia. Pavic is currently translating Prince Tomislav’s memoirs into English.
