[balkanhr] IWPR'S BALKAN CRISIS REPORT, NO. 46, 14 June 1999 Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit source - Greek Helsinki Monitor WELCOME TO IWPR'S BALKAN CRISIS REPORT, NO. 46, 14 June 1999 LEAVING IN FLAMES AND TEARS. Serbs in Kosovo are facing the hardest choice. With a final blaze, many are deciding to pack up and head "home" to Serbia. RACING HOME. Kosovo's rival Albanian leaders are hurrying home, each hoping to be viewed as the people's undisputed chief. Fron Nazi reports. CLAMP-DOWN IN SOUTHERN SERBIA. Journalists, human rights activists and opposition politicians in southern Serbia have been jailed or mobilised during NATO's bombing campaign--and the repression seems likely to continue. COMMENT: BUILDING A NEW VISION IN THE BALKANS. The end of the war should mark the beginning of a decisive new policy for building democracy, development and real peace throughout the region. Anthony Borden and Christopher Bennett outline a fresh approach. ***************************************************** IWPR's network of leading correspondents in the region provide inside analysis of the events and issues driving crises in the Balkans. The reports are available on the Web in English, Serbian and Albanian; English-language reports are also available via e-mail. For syndication information, contact Anthony Borden . Balkan Crisis Report is supported by the Department for International Development, European Commission, Swedish International Development and Cooperation Agency, MacArthur Foundation, Press Now and the Carnegie Corporation. IWPR also acknowledges general support from the Ford Foundation. *** VISIT IWPR ON-LINE: www.iwpr.net *** To subscribe to this service, send an e-mail to ; in the body of the email write the message . To unsubscribe, write , Alternatively, contact Duncan Furey for subscription assistance at . For further details on this project and other information services and media programmes, visit IWPR's Website: . Editor: Anthony Borden. Assistant Editing: Christopher Bennett, Alan Davis. Internet Editor: Rohan Jayasekera. Translation by Alban Mitrushi. "Balkan Crisis Report" is produced under IWPR's Balkan Crisis Information Project. The project seeks to contribute to regional and international understanding of the regional crisis and prospects for resolution. The Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR) is a London-based independent non-profit organisation supporting regional media and democratic change. Lancaster House, 33 Islington High Street, London N1 9LH, United Kingdom Tel: (44 171) 713 7130; Fax: (44 171) 713 7140 E-mail:info@iwpr.org.uk; Web: www.iwpr.net The opinions expressed in "Balkan Crisis Report" are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the publication or of IWPR. Copyright (C) 1999 The Institute for War & Peace Reporting . ***************************************************** LEAVING IN FLAMES AND TEARS Serbs in Kosovo are facing the hardest choice. With a final blaze, many are deciding to pack up and head "home" to Serbia. By an IWPR correspondent in Pristina The flames flickered high last night in Kosovo Polje. A few kilometres outside of Pristina, this is the heart of the heartland, almost totally Serb inhabited. It is also the scene of the infamous 1389 battle in which--according to national mythology--Serbs were defeated by the Ottomans. Ten years ago, it was the rallying point for the launch of the Greater Serbia project of Slobodan Milosevic, who addressed a gathering there of one million Serbs on the 600 anniversary of the battle. But the fire now was hardly celebration. A huge Serb-owned house was burning away, watched by a small crowd of locals. This, they explained, was "revenge". "We have decided not to leave, at least for now," one Serb man said. "But for those who have decided to go, they are burning their own houses as revenge against the Albanians." Residents explained that local Serbs are trying to organise some unarmed self-defence. Frightened that NATO will try to bring Albanians into their town, they are setting up what seems to be a "neighbourhood watch" scheme, positioning people on street corners as monitors. In other areas, where Albanians and Serbs lived together, Serbs are taking a more direct response. In Pristina, apartments are being set on fire during the day. Yesterday afternoon, one large house with four apartments was set ablaze, reportedly by Serbian police. According to neighbours, the reason is that two of the dwellings were Serb, but two were Albanian. Since the Serbs were leaving, they did not want the Albanians to be able to take them. And the best way to ensure this was to burn the entire building. Nothing could better illustrate the sense of confusion and loss among Kosovo Serbs than the scene of Serbs destroying their own property as a final attack against their ethnic rivals. With the policy of Belgrade in shambles, NATO troops pouring into the province, and even Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) soldiers discretely appearing in various locations, the Kosovo Serbs feel that no one can help them, so they have turned to simple destruction, even self-destruction. Serbs in Kosovo are themselves victims of the Yugoslav regime media, which has drummed into them for years the dangers of the Albanian "terrorists" and, for the past several months of bombing, the horrors of the "NATO fascist aggressor rapist killers". They are truly scared of the international troops arriving, and of the Albanians returning. As with Serbs who fled Croatian Krajina in 1995 and Sarajevo in 1996, it seems that--along with legitimate security concerns--their own propaganda is contributing to their flight. In the southern part of the province, families have loaded up cars and fled. They have packed their vehicles with not only clothes and personal effects but dishwashers, kitchenware and children's bicycles--suggesting that they expect an extended leave. They say that they plan to go to Serbia for a while, and then will decide what to do. But especially in such areas, in the south and southeast, which are heavily Albanian, it seems unlikely that they will ever return. A convoy of Serbs in private cars assembled in Stemlje, a large village near Prizren, to journey via Pristina to Serbia. En route, passing through an area held by the KLA, fire was exchanged a few times. Reports from Serb eye-witnesses suggest that members of the convoy may have fired first. But one child was reportedly killed, and several people injured. Within Pristina, Serbs have witnessed first hand the firm approach of the NATO soldiers. NATO tanks roll through the streets, and British troops patrol with their machine guns in hand, and the implication is clear. In the centre, 300 metres from the Grand Hotel, Veselin Jovovic, a reserve Serbian police officer was shot and killed by KFOR. NATO claimed that he was drunk and armed, and refused to lower his weapon. Also in Pristina, a group of uniformed Serbs engaged British soldiers in a scuffle and were promptly--and quite roughly--subdued and arrested. Other violent incidents, between Serbs and NATO forces and between Serbs and Albanians, have been reported elsewhere throughout the province--including the shooting Sunday of a Serb policeman, two soldiers and a civilian near Vranovac, according to Yugoslav officials. No one has been arrested in connection with the shooting. But noting that international forces disarmed around 70 KLA soldiers, NATO spokespersons have stressed the neutrality of their mission. Yet even if true, it would be hard for Serbs to believe this, or to see the NATO show of force as anything but a clear signal, if not an outright threat, to them. "Those killers and violators," spat one old Serb man in the outskirts of Pristina, referring to the incoming NATO troops. "What are they doing here?" Some Serbs, especially in Pristina, realise that for the time being, if they are going to stay around, they might as well cash in. Short-term rents on apartments for the internationals, especially journalists, are commanding astronomical sums--up to 3,000 German Marks ($1,615) per week for a modest flat. With water short, some lucky individuals in areas where it is running have even charged for use of their showers and bathrooms. In this, too, however, many Albanians suddenly also have an upper hand, occupying larger houses for their extended families, and therefore commanding even higher sums. The biggest problem facing Serbs, however, is how to live with their neighbours. Only those Serbs who are quite sure that they did not support the regime believe that--despite the risks--they can live together again with the returning Albanians. Others will be concerned that they are marked by Albanians for retribution. Such are the difficult calculations Serbs must make in these chaotic days. But the predominant feeling for the moment, at least among Serbs, is confusion. Serbs in administration and the public sector have not received any instructions about whether to stay and try to restore some semblance of normality--or to drop everything and flee. In response to questions from journalists about the situation, they reply with a question themselves: "Should we stay or should we go?" Soldiers from the Yugoslav forces, meantime, face no such dilemma. Many of them had their tours of duty extended because of the NATO campaign, forcing them to endure the brunt of the NATO offensive in Kosovo. The pull-out seems, so far, to be under way, with a precise timetable for an organised withdrawal. But for some soldiers, even that is not enough. The territory they had pledged to defend to the death, they now wish to leave immediately. "I could change my clothes and get on a bus and leave right now," says one soldier from Belgrade. "But I will not go without my friends." He and four other soldiers formed close bonds as a result of the experiences they endured under the bombing, and have pledged to return home together according to the agreed timetable. Another soldier, from Cacak, in Serbia, asked to borrow a mobile telephone from a journalist so that he could call home. Reaching his mother and wife, he was overhead promising to be back within three or four days. "Mother, I will be home soon," he said, his eyes welling up with tears. "This situation makes me sick." The author is an IWPR Belgrade correspondent in Pristina, whose name has been withheld. RACING HOME Kosovo's rival Albanian leaders are scurrying back to Pristina, each hoping to be viewed as the people's undisputed chief. By Fron Nazi As Western troops vied with the Russian Army to be the first international forces to enter Kosovo, another race--lower profile yet ultimately likely to be more significant--was taking place among rival Albanian leaders. Divided and dispersed across Europe, the various Kosovo Albanian leaders have effectively been bystanders in the events which have led to the Serb withdrawal from, and UN deployment in, Kosovo. Now, however, they are racing back to Kosovo, each hoping to be the first to reach "liberated" Pristina and to be viewed as his people's undisputed chief. Various proposals for forging a unified front have fallen by the wayside. The two most well-known rival leaders Ibrahim Rugova of the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) and Hashim Thaci of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) were both abroad, in Italy and Austria respectively, as NATO troops entered the province's capital. Now both are returning to Kosovo. Rugova, the 54-year-old self-proclaimed president of Kosovo and long-time undisputed Kosovo Albanian leader, is expected to travel to Macedonia this week, from where he will make his way back to Pristina with the assistance of NATO troops. His 29-year-old rival, Thaci, is expected to arrive earlier, flanked by KLA troops who have already moved into Pristina. Animosity between the generation of Albanian leaders who led the passive resistance to Serb rule in Kosovo for the best part of a decade from 1989, when the province's autonomy was forcefully stripped, and the younger generation of fighters has been a feature of Kosovo Albanian politics since the outbreak of fighting in the province at the end of February last year. Rugova has refused to recognise the KLA-dominated provisional government which Thaci, the prime minister designate, formed in April, since it has not been elected. By contrast, Rugova feels that he and the LDK have a democratic mandate based on two sets of underground elections, the latest in March 1998. Rugova and his associates have therefore continued to behave as if they are the Kosovo's legitimate government. Bujar Bukoshi, Rugova's ally and long Kosovo's prime minister-in-exile, remains in Germany, overseeing the funds collected during the past ten years from Kosovo Albanians abroad and shuttling between European capitals as an official envoy. The KLA, meantime, says that the provisional government derives its authority from the agreement signed in Rambouillet by Thaci, Rugova and Rexhep Qosja, chairman of the Democratic Union League, for the creation of a new government that would be headed by Thaci. In forming the provisional government, Thaci left one ministry open for an LDK member. However, he and the KLA have refused to recognise Rugova as Kosovo president. According to a representative of the provisional government: "The bottom line is that the KLA continued to resist the Serbs while many LDK representatives either fled to the West or neighbouring Macedonia and Albania." They further charge Rugova with collaboration for meeting with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic at the same time as Serbian forces were committing the greatest atrocities against Kosovo's Albanians. In an attempt to heal the rift in Kosovo Albanian politics and bring the various factions together, the Albanian government in Tirana, the KLA and the Macedonian Albanian leadership in Tetovo proposed the creation of an Albanian Security Council three weeks ago. The council was to have been comprised of the various Kosovo Albanian political leaders and prominent Kosovo Albanian intellectuals and activists. However, according to sources in both Tirana and Tetovo, the proposal was scuppered by Rugova's refusal, since he surfaced a month ago, to visit Tirana or even to meet with Thaci. Many Kosovo Albanian analysts fear that the rift among rival factions will divert attention from more pressing issues, hamper reconstruction efforts and annoy the international community. Speaking under condition of anonymity, one leading Kosovo Albanian activist said: "The split between the Albanian political leaders is taking the focus away from serious issues that will plague Kosovo for sometime to come. "They have not paid close enough attention to the current agreement, which is good for the return of the refugees, but comes short of addressing the future status of Kosovo," he said. Sensing that its star is in the ascendant and that it will spearhead Kosovo's next administration, the KLA have begun a campaign to recruit prominent, young intellectuals to their ranks. To date, however, they have failed to win over some of the most respected Kosovo Albanians, such as Veton Surroi, publisher of Kosovo's largest pre-war daily newspaper, Koha Ditore, and Blerim Shala, editor-in-chief of the weekly Zeri. Surroi has been in hiding in Kosovo since the beginning of the NATO bombing campaign in late March and has yet to surface. Shala moved to Macedonia to relaunch his newspaper in exile, while leaving communication lines open with all sides. Both Surroi and Shala formed part of the Kosovo Albanian delegation at the Rambouillet peace talks. In the past, Rugova's adviser Fehmi Agani mediated between Kosovo's feuding factions. In his inimical way, Agani was able to build coalitions and to win concessions from all sides by reminding everyone that they shared a common goal--an independent Kosovo. However, Agani was executed by Serb forces during the NATO bombing campaign and no one has yet emerged to take on this role. Since most Kosovo Albanians are principally concerned about being able to return to their homes in security, and not who forms their province's next government, they may yet be grateful that the international forces beat all their leaders to Pristina. Fron Nazi is a senior editor with the Institute for War & Peace Reporting. CLAMP-DOWN IN SOUTHERN SERBIA Journalists, human rights activists and opposition politicians in southern Serbia have been jailed or mobilised during NATO's bombing campaign--and the repression seems likely to continue. By an independent journalist in southern Serbia. Even before NATO launched air strikes against Yugoslavia, Leskovac and Vranje, two towns in southern Serbia, were notorious for the way in which the authorities stamped out dissent. In the wake of the bombing campaign large numbers of men were mobilised and all potential opposition silenced--and it will take more than the end of the war for a more open environment to prevail. Vranje and Leskovac are two of the poorest towns in Serbia--the average salary before the war was a meagre 50 German Marks ($27) a month--and state television has always been the principal, if not the only, medium. The circulation of independent newspapers, when available, has been minimal. In such circumstances, it is hardly surprising that Slobodan Milosevic's ruling Socialist Party has won every election since 1990. Moreover, anybody daring to oppose the local authorities has risked interrogation by the secret police, dismissal from employment and even incarceration. In silencing opposition, the authorities have made the most of the peace-time law on public information as well as extraordinary war-time decrees of the Serbian government. The most prominent victims of the clamp-down have been Dobrosav Nesic, chairman of the Committee for Human Rights in Leskovac, and Vojkan Ristic, a long-time journalist of the former independent weekly Nasa Borba, and after it was closed, Vranje correspondent of the Belgrade daily Glas Javnosti. Dobrosav Nesic was released from Leskovac prison on June 7 after serving a one-month sentence that was imposed on him on January 21 in accordance with the law on public information. The editor of an independent monthly magazine called The Rights of Man, Nesic had published a text under the headline "To Write Like All Other Normal People" in which he was critical of the way in which the local media in Leskovac operated. In addition to Nesic's 30-day sentence, the Committee for Human Rights, the magazine's publisher, was fined 17,000 German Marks ($9,140). On his release, Nesic said: "Even in the prison, I continued to speak out against the regime of Slobodan Milosevic who is destroying the future of the entire people. They put me into solitary confinement and forced me to do the most difficult jobs. "Once they beat me up. I received blows to the stomach and head, and spat blood. I told them that they had taken away my freedom, but not my dignity. I won over to my views many inmates who live in cruel conditions and who are treated in a bestial manner." Independent observers view the Committee for Human Rights' fine and Nesic's prison term as punishment for their attempts to organise an Albanian-Serbian dialogue on Kosovo. The authorities interpreted such a dialogue as a "betrayal of national interests". In the wake of the fine and the imprisonment, The Rights of Man has ceased publication. Nevertheless, Nesic says that he is now preparing a new issue "in order to inform the citizens in the south of Serbia about what the authorities are doing in their name and the tragic consequences that this entails." The independent press in Vranje disappeared with the first NATO bombs. All male members in the newsroom of the weekly Novine Vranjske were immediately drafted and, despite the peace agreement, are yet to be demobilised. As a result, the paper has not been published for the past three months. The Vranje journalist, Vojkan Ristic, spent the month to May 27 in Vranje prison. His offence, which merited a custodial sentence, was failing to change the place of residence to correspond with the new one in his identity card--for six days. In sentencing Ristic, the municipal magistrate said that, in addition to the police report and war-time legislation, he had taken into consideration "the interests of the security of the country". Independent observers suspect that the real reason for Ristic's imprisonment is his year-long investigation into and reporting of the corrupt practices of the local branch of the ruling Socialist Party, headed by Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Dragomir Tomic. The most avid readers of his articles, it seems, were the secret policemen who interrogated him in February for 15 hours and "gently" advised him to "stop writing about Tomic". The prison term was presumably punishment for not heeding the advice. Upon his release, Vojkan Ristic refused to talk about his treatment in prison, but vowed to continue his investigative reporting as soon as the war-time legislation curtailing media freedom was lifted. Independent media in southern Serbia have not been the only casualties of the NATO bombing campaign. In addition to hassling and drafting journalists, the authorities have systematically mobilised leading members of opposition parties, threatening them that they would be sent to the front. Members of the Democratic Party have had most difficulties, especially after the regime media accused their leader Zoran Djindjic of being "a traitor and a foreign mercenary". A senior member of the party's executive committee in Leskovac, who wished to remain anonymous, said that he has had been receiving threatening phone calls and had been insulted by Socialist Party activists in the street. "When the war started, the regime decided to move against us. The director of the institution where I work, who is in the top leadership of the Socialist Party, gave me my notice and left me without any means to make a living. "Similar things have happened to other opposition activists and to members of our families. We are living in fear from yet more reprisals," he said.. At the end of May on a few occasions several dozen protestors gathered to demonstrate against the numbers of mobilised men of all ages from Leskovac and the surrounding area. The police broke up the demonstrations using batons and detained several of the protestors to try to find out who the organisers were. The demonstrators believe that the leading Socialist Party politician from this region, Zivojin Stefanovic, had ordered mobilisation of as many as 50,000 people from Leskovac and the surrounding area in the hope that he would be rewarded with the post of Yugoslav ambassador to Bulgaria. Stefanovic now regularly surrounds himself with bodyguards from the debt-collection agency that belongs to the notorious war crimes suspect and gangster Zeljko ("Arkan") Raznatovic. Even if the war is over, the structures of power within Serbia remain in place. The author is an independent journalist from southern Serbia whose identity has been withheld. COMMENT: BUILDING A NEW VISION IN THE BALKANS The end of the war should mark the beginning of a decisive new policy for building democracy, development and real peace throughout the region. By Anthony Borden and Christopher Bennett There were wild celebrations in Belgrade last week. But as one old friend and fellow journalist writes, "No one mentions the dead, the wounded, the disappeared. The country is destroyed. And for what? The sun is the same, the sky is still blue, but the mood is grey." The people of Serbia are certainly glad to see the bombing end, but with their homeland in tatters and the leader who has taken them through four disastrous wars still in power, there is little for them to look forward to. It is now up to the West--the victors of this latest war--to make a break with a decade of Balkan conflicts and bring lasting peace not just to Serbia but to the entire region. That means more than just an end to ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. It means putting a stop to the degrading nationalist politics, the crony administrations and the mind-numbing media propaganda. It means seeing the Kosovo accord not just as one more patched-up accommodation, but as a true turning point for the Balkans. Now is the time for a bold new vision for the entire region, so that economic growth and political integration help ensure that Balkan wars become a thing of the past. Having seen so many peace accords broken, few in the region--especially the Kosovo Albanians--place much faith in any paper signed by Belgrade. However justifiable, the latest war has led them through a practical and psychological cataclysm. Given the international attention the Balkans have received in recent months, and especially the talk of stability pacts and other reconstruction programs, the people of the region now look to the West to help them get back on their feet. The West meanwhile may be tempted to focus on Kosovo and the Albanian refugees and move on. Post-war reconstruction in itself is a daunting task. The international priority, to help Kosovo Albanians return to their homes as soon as possible and ensure that they have shelter before the onset of winter, is a crucial first step. Once Yugoslav forces have fully withdrawn from Kosovo--as they are expected to within the next week--one of the principal obstacles to returning refugees will have disappeared. With a strong mandate and some 50,000 peacekeepers, a UN administration should then be able to oversee their repatriation. As a Kosovo Albanian journalist noted, "One friend of mine says he will not go back to Kosovo unless he is received at the border by an American soldier and an Albanian policeman." That may well happen. But while Kosovo Albanians can look forward to international support in the coming years, prospects for the province's Serb minority are bleak. Fearing reprisals, many have already decided to leave Kosovo together with the Yugoslav army for Serbia proper. There they will swell the ranks of other Serb refugees, joining their ethnic kin from Croatia and Bosnia--forgotten victims of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's earlier wars. With this disillusioned population and half a dozen indicted war criminals at the helm, Serbia looks like fertile ground for future unrest. Weakened by two and a half months of bombing, Belgrade is not in a position to export conflict beyond Yugoslavia's borders. But Milosevic's way of resolving one conflict has all too often been to create another, and he still has a Pandora's box of potential conflicts to exploit within Yugoslavia--with the internal Serbian opposition, among the non-Serb minorities in the Sandzak and Vojvodina regions, as well as in Montenegro. In the short term, the Serbian opposition appears most vulnerable. Labelled fifth columnists by regime media during NATO's bombing campaign, democracy and human rights activists fear "the day after." They worry that they will bear the brunt of any domestic backlash as Milosevic attempts to reassert his authority on the home front. The Institute for War and Peace Reporting's network of independent journalists throughout the region continued contributing right through the war, but from the first day of the bombing authors within Yugoslavia--including those quoted in this article--asked us to withhold their identities: The risks were too great. As one contributor reported to us, "As long as the NATO airstrikes continue, we're fine. But God help us when they stop." Another colleague put it more bluntly: "Kosovo is now free, but we are still in prison." According to one of our contributors in Sandzak--a region straddling Serbia and Montenegro and bordering both Kosovo and Bosnia--more than 20,000 of the Slavic Muslims who form the majority in the region have fled their homes and taken refuge with their ethnic or religious kin in Bosnia since NATO launched its bombing campaign. Those who remain are nervous. In Vojvodina, Serbia's northern province, the situation is less tense. But the 350,000-strong Hungarian minority worries that, now that Hungary is a member of NATO, they may be victims of anti-NATO sentiment. Community leaders have publicly criticised the bombing campaign. But this may not be enough to assuage Milosevic's vindictiveness. In Montenegro, Serbia's junior partner in the Yugoslav federation, the Yugoslav army has been trying to undermine the pro-Western government of Milo Djukanovic. As a result, some Montenegrins compare the situation in their republic to that in Slovenia, just before it declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1991. Zeljko Ivanovic, a newspaper editor in the capital, Podgorica, wrote a few weeks ago that, "Montenegro feels on the eve of war--army checkpoints and machine-gun nests punctuate the countryside, the borders are closed, and armed men break into flats to press gang men of military age, leading them away in handcuffs." The challenges for regional peace are even wider than Yugoslavia's shrinking borders, though. Macedonia and Albania, the countries that have borne the brunt of the refugee crisis and served as staging posts for NATO troops, are economically strapped. Both countries anticipate substantial economic support, and hope for some sign from the European Union (EU) and NATO that their aspirations for membership may have been helped by their cooperation. Often forgotten in the international focus on Kosovo is the plight of the other Balkan countries, Bulgaria and Romania, which have lost substantial trade that normally moves through Yugoslavia--due to the destruction of the bridges over the Danube River and the closure of other transit routes. In Bosnia, where the three-and-a-half-year-old peace remains fragile despite the presence of 31,000 NATO-led troops, political and ethnic tensions have risen in recent weeks, as Serbs and Slavic Muslims there inevitably took different views on the bombing campaign. The new vision must be regional, then. And its centrepiece must be justice. For too long, the West has vacillated--one minute opposing nationalist leaders, the next looking to them to deliver peace settlements. This chaotic approach has been exploited by local power brokers and engendered deep cynicism among ordinary people throughout the region. "For too long the West complied with the ethnic programmes in the region, and the lesson was that the nationalists got away with it," explained Sonja Biserko, a human rights campaigner who recently left Belgrade. "So opportunism prevailed, which meant following the nationalists. People just laughed at anyone who raised moral issues." In practical terms, this means providing full and unconditional support for the war crimes tribunal in The Hague. The indictment of Milosevic and other Serbian leaders must be followed up, through further investigations and, if necessary, additional charges, both for crimes committed in Kosovo and earlier in Bosnia. Western governments must turn over all relevant evidence to the tribunal, even where, as in Bosnia, it may risk destabilising existing agreements. The strongest signal the West could send in this new policy would be the immediate arrest of indicted Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and Gen. Ratko Mladic, as well as all other indicted war criminals, who have not yet been brought to justice, including Milosevic himself if the opportunity should arise. Now that the Yugoslav leader is indicted he can no longer be accommodated as a serious negotiating partner as he was in the past. The second goal must be to give new impetus to refugee return both in Bosnia, where many still languish in temporary accommodation, and in Croatia, where lack of money, disenfranchisement and a nationalist administration in Zagreb have impeded the return of hundreds of thousands of Serbs. Third, the West must rethink the problem of ethnic nationalism and find mechanisms to resolve the tension between sovereignty and minority rights. That means revisiting those agreements, especially in Bosnia, which guarantee the position of nationalist parties, and pursuing new approaches to encourage democratic participation, from voting systems to civil society aid. Similarly, economic aid must be substantial, comprehensive and fast. There have been some economic improvements--in Bulgaria and even in Macedonia--as a result of firm economic policies and international financial support. Yet, despite talk--which began as long ago as 1994--of a Balkan stability pact that would regenerate the entire region under EU auspices, no such plan materialised. To make good on the West's declaration that the war was not directed against the Serbian people, just their leadership, Serbia should not be excluded from aid packages, despite protestations from both President Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair that the country will receive no aid while Milosevic remains in power. Humanitarian assistance should be immediate and visible. At the same time, reconstruction aid must be targeted locally and under stringent conditions to prevent its being siphoned off and abused by the regime in Belgrade. The aim of a new approach must be to jump-start region-wide development, and encourage economic integration--regionally and with Europe--even where political integration remains to come. Integration into European security and political structures should be offered with clear steps and schedules established for achieving membership. Finally, and perhaps most crucially, the West must maintain its pressure on the Belgrade regime--not just on Milosevic but on the entire establishment, which has prosecuted the deadly Greater Serbian agenda. As long as the Milosevic government remains in power, the West has only won a partial victory, which it may well come to regret. International troops have already been deployed in a half-dozen locations in the region, but not yet where most of the conflict has emanated from. A smooth passage to representative democracy seems unlikely in Belgrade. Therefore, even as NATO troops enter Kosovo, politicians, diplomats, finance ministers and military planners must be looking forward and even considering that further deployments in Yugoslavia may become necessary. The wars in the Balkans will not be over until the politics and the parties that prosecute them have been changed once and for all. Anthony Borden is executive director and Christopher Bennett a senior editor of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nyteeu-06.19.99-05:27:39-27237