CONTENTS
KOSTUNICA'S STATEMENT CAUSES DEBATES ON UN SC RESOLUTION
1244
ORTUNO: FRY SOVEREIGNTY IN KOSOVO WOULD CAUSE TENSIONS
SHALA:
CONSTITUTION, PARLIAMENT, GOVERNMENT UNTIL SPRING 2001
ARTEMIJE LINKS
ISSUE OF ALBANIAN PRISONERS WITH MISSING SERBS
SWARTZ: THE DOWNFALL OF
A REGIME IS NOT ENOUGH
KOSTUNICA'S STATEMENT CAUSES DEBATES ON UN SC RESOLUTION 1244
The eventual dissolution of the term "FRY" causes debates on eventual changes of UN Security Council resolution 1244, while few international officials want for the time being to discuss the final status of Kosovo, reported Koha Ditore on pages one and three.
Referring to the statement of newly-installed FRY president Vojislav Kostunica during the EU summit held in Biarritz, when he said that Yugoslavia no longer exists, the paper added saying that such a statement contests several provisions of resolution 1244 on Kosovo, in which FRY is mentioned several times. "Kostunica thinks of returning Kosovo to Serbia, but the resolution does not say that Kosovo is an integral part of Serbia, but of FRY".
An official within the U.S. State Department had earlier emphasized that in case of the dissolution of Yugoslavia, resolution 1244 will continue to be in function and would be implemented and that Kosovo would remain a problem of the United Nations until the solution of its final status.
On the other hand, according to Kosovar experts with the downfall of Yugoslavia the UN SC resolution itself is questioned.
Commenting on the issue, Mahmut Bakalli, a Kosovar political experts was quoted as saying, "surprisingly, Kostunica was right that after the downfall of Tito's Yugoslavia, there is no Yugoslavia and there cannot be one. Because the name itself means a joint state of southern Slavs and since most of them have created independent states it is meaningless for only two nations of southern Slavs to keep that name".
Bakalli said that the downfall of Yugoslavia questions the part of resolution 1244 that says that Kosovo must be under its territorial sovereignty, "therefore I understand that any transformation of Yugoslavia means that we will not have international obligations towards such a state".
Blerim Reka, an expert on legal issues told the paper that in case "Yugoslavia does not exist" is a not trick of Kostunica's, his action was an recognition of truth that had to be done nine years ago.
According to Reka, Kostunica's statements opens four problems: first, the separate international recognition of Serbia and Montenegro; second, the start of the succession of former Yugoslavia; third, if Montenegro's self-determination is recognized the same should be applied in Kosovo's case; and four, moreover when resolution 1244 insisted on the so-called Yugoslav sovereignty whereas with the dissolution of this sovereignty, ipso jure the legal-international obstacle for Kosovo is overcome.
"This does not mean that Kosovo should immediately win its independence, but opens the possibility for the advancement of this process," said Reka adding however that he is suspicious regarding Kostunica's statement, which in one hand says that Yugoslavia no longer exists and on the other claims he will respect resolution 1244.
ORTUNO: FRY SOVEREIGNTY IN KOSOVO WOULD CAUSE TENSIONS
Zëri on pages one and three carried an interview with COMKFOR General Juan Ortuno, before his departure from Kosovo.
Asked how much authority does a KFOR commander have considering the
influence of all nations that have troops in Kosovo, Ortuno was reported
to have said, "the decision in the end remains with the country that
deployed the troops. In the beginning KFOR commander could not move troops
from one sector to the other. As a result of Mitrovica, General Reinhardt
even though with great difficulty could move a company from one sector to
the other but in the end he could not do everything he wanted. He could
move a company, which is small and in the end has to join in with the
others. I cannot do my best, as long there are limitations for the troops
I command, some countries give me full freedom to move their troops
wherever and whenever I need to. Some countries limit their troop movement
from one sector to the other and movement to their sector of other troops
by requesting approval of their political or military
officials".
"I have full freedom of movement at MNB Center
where the British are in command, but with others for example the
Americans I can move only after a process of approval. I do not have 100%
freedom of movement my predecessor did not either", said Ortuno.
Referring to the situation in Mitrovica, Ortuno told the paper: "With a
lesser number of soldiers that were deployed in Zveçan I could have
removed the people who were observing zones (bridge watchers). The number
of people that observe has reduced to a number of people who provide
confidence for others, they have less opportunity to do things. They felt
that international community has not taken care of this zone. Now there is
more trust among the Serbs in Mitrovica and those in northern Kosovo
because they realize that we are trying to inset there", said COMKFOR
Ortuno.
Concerning the overall situation in Kosovo, Ortuno
said that there are still confrontations between Albanian majority and
Serb minority. "In May and June there was arise in criminal activities,
some were of a terrorist kind against the Serb minority" said Ortuno
adding this was the period when there was talk that Yugoslav Army would
return to Kosovo. "Ethnic conflict has not vanished but there is
considerable progress", said Ortuno.
As for local elections in Kosovo KFOR will provide security,
communications and transportation of ballots, Gen. Ortuno said that the
issue is as how KFOR could help in internal pacification through
elections.
"We have to understand that there can be no
solution for Kosovo without a solution for the Balkans. With changes in
Serbia, the process could go forwards. They (Serbia) think that
reestablishment of sovereignty over Kosovo would help them, however
reestablishment of sovereignty over Kosovo would only create very big
tensions in Kosovo and in Serbia. Everyone should understand some
limitations…" said Ortuno and added that it will take time but tension
will drop in the region and the number of NATO troops could be reduced.
"Nevertheless NATO's engagement has to continue for the time being,"
concluded COMKFOR Juan
Ortuno.
SHALA: CONSTITUTION, PARLIAMENT, GOVERNMENT UNTIL SPRING 2001
Zëri on page three carried a commentary by Blerim Shala paper's editor, in which he wrote:
"James O'Brien, special advisor of the White House for Balkans, is the highest and most important western official that visited Kosovo after the downfall of Milosevic's regime in Belgrade.
Before coming to Prishtina, O'Brien visited Belgrade and Podgorica, where he met with FRY president Kostunica and the Montenegrin president Djukanovic. One does not have to be too smart to conclude that through this visit the official Washington wants to keep the pace with political changes in the region and to reemphasize its position regarding the process of long-term stabilization of this part of Europe and the democratization of Kosovo, Serbia, and Montenegro. The U.S. played a crucial role in pacifying the Balkans and ousting Milosevic from power. The U.S. must have the same effect by its political, military and economic presence in Kosovo and the Balkans. The solution of Kosovo's issue in its final long-term version is unimaginable and impossible without the initiative and insistence of the U.S.
This time, O'Brien's visit to Prishtina, coincided with real frustrations of Albanian political leaders, who have rational concerns regarding the process and the procedure of solving the issue of Kosovo. Some imprudent statements made by western officials, especially that by Romano Prodi chairman of the European Commission, who automatically set aside the idea of the independence of Kosovo after the eventual democratization of Serbia, as well as projects such as those of Karl Bildt, UN Special Envoy for the Balkans, in which the customs union of units of former Yugoslavia with Albania instead of Slovenia does not see Kosovo as a composing entity of this union, leads to Kosovars in general and Albanian politicians feel the least surprised and the most tricked and forgotten.
Even before, the realistic observation of the international and Kosovar actions for creating democratic authority in Kosovo, led to the conclusion that things are moving way too slowly here. But the speed of changes in Serbia shed light on the sluggishness of the process for democratic authority of Kosovo. This process is of utmost importance not only for creating Kosovar self-governance, but also to strengthen local political mechanisms, which should have the biggest and the most important share when the chapter of Kosovo's final status would be opened. Therefore, the eventual opening of the issue of Kosovo's final status would find Kosovars unprepared and would force them into taking emergent measures, which would not have the legitimacy of democratic election procedure.
Elections in Kosovo, in all levels, are necessary for making the
Kosovars genuine partners in the process of finding a solution to Kosovo's
issue. Most probably, this conclusion ruled the meetings O'Brien had with
Albanian political leaders. The dynamics of the democratization of the
Kosovar society whose key goals are 28 October local elections, the
speedup of the Interim Constitution and finally the general elections in
the six coming months, is completely in accordance with American goals and
the interim international framework for Kosovo (UN Security Council
Resolution 1244). Therefore, the current partnership of Kosovo political
parties with UNMIK administration should now be put in function in the
abovementioned direction. Next year, Kosovo should have a genuine
democratic
government".
ARTEMIJE LINKS ISSUE OF ALBANIAN PRISONERS WITH MISSING
SERBS
The chairman of the Serb National Council (SNV), Bishop Artemije said that the issue of Albanians kept in Serbian prisons could not be solved without solving the issue of missing Serbs in Kosovo, reported Koha Ditore on page two referring to an interview Artemije gave to the Belgrade-based "Danas" daily paper.
"Albanians always demand the release of all prisoners, without mentioning the fate of missing Serbs," said Artemije. He considers that the prisoners and their dossiers should be handed over to a neutral international commission that would decide based on the facts who is innocent, adding that among them there are surely criminals the same way there are Serbs who deserve to be in prison.
Commenting on the meeting he held last week with the newly-installed FRY president Vojislav Kostunica, bishop Artemije said it presented for the ignorance they experienced from the former government of Serbia and Yugoslavia. He recalled that together with Kostunica they concluded that now Kosovo's issue could be solved positively and that therefore the international community could not avoid discussions on the issue with the democratic government in Belgrade.
SWARTZ: THE DOWNFALL OF A REGIME IS NOT
ENOUGH
Dita on page seven carried a commentary by
Stephen Swartz, which was previously published in The Wall Street Journal
Europe of Brussels. Swartz wrote:
It's the morning after in the Balkans and a lot of people are asking
themselves if
the party was as good as it seemed to be. While Serbian
dictator Slobodan Milosevic has formally recognized the victory of his
opponent Vojislav Kostunica and the latter has been sworn in as president
of the so-called country of Yugoslavia,
serious issues remain to be
addressed.
Kostunica has made it unalterably clear that he will not even consider extraditing Milosevic or any of his co-indictees to the Hague tribunal on war crimes in Yugoslavia. The new president has repeatedly denounced the tribunal as a political, rather than a legal, institution.
Thanks to the deal arranged by Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, Milosevic retains a seat at the table of Yugoslav politics. Indeed, he could enjoy a good deal more than that. His front man, Milan Milutinovic, another indicted war criminal, may retain power in Serbia.
The Serbian presidency is a bigger political chip than its Yugoslav equivalent, which is in many ways a figurehead position (one which only a strongman like Milosevic could parlay into real power), and, as a fellow indictee, Milutinovic is very unlikely to desert his master. Milosevic's Socialist Party and the Radical Party of extremist Vojislav Seselj have controlled the Serbian legislature, while Milosevic's supporters, including a faction in Montenegro, have a third of the Yugoslav federal legislature.
Reports yesterday that these legislatures would dissolve and new elections for them would be held, and that Yugoslav Prime Minister Momir Bulatovic, Milosevic's Montegrin booster, had resigned, sound promising.
But the upshot is that Milosevic could block virtually any reforms Kostunica might propose, and might even form a new government that would leave the new president in the shadows. Zoran Djindjic, one of the main opposition leaders who had previously supported Milosevic's criminal adventures in Bosnia, warned over the weekend of a "stab in the back" by Milosevic.
Finally, however, one could not help reflecting on the grotesque slowness of the process that had led the Serbian nation to this apparently decisive moment. hether or not Milosevic has really fallen, the time has come for a post mortem, to be delivered not only by the Serbs but by the world at large.
Unfortunately, the Serbian people have yet to comprehend the tragedy that has befallen them, and their former fellows in ex-Yugoslavia, over the past decade. Kostunica is a financially clean politician who has gained the support of the public as an alternative to Milosevic, his deranged wife Mirjana Markovic, and their coterie of gangsters.
But Kostunica remains an extreme Serbian nationalist who waved weapons in the air in Kosovo and who blames the West, and especially the United States, for the consequences of Milosevic's policies, especially the NATO bombing of Belgrade last year.
In addition, the failure of Europe, to say nothing of the Clinton administration, to develop and impose a rational policy on the former Yugoslav states, means that even without Milosevic, enormous problems will remain unresolved. Above all, there is still the conundrum of Kosovo: the West intervened there with no plan for what to do after the war. Kosovo is more of a crisis spot than it was before the 1999 war.
Many Kosovar Albanians are extremely cynical about this. They describe the Western administration of their province as "Serbian rule without the massacres" and would have preferred that Milosevic remain in power until the international community confirmed Kosovo's independence as a country and its right to issue sovereign debt.
Kostunica's appeal to Serbs does not reside exclusively in his Serb
nationalist rhetoric but in his personal integrity. Mainly, he is sincere
in his nationalism, which Milosevic had never been. Rather, Milosevic was
the most elaborate example of the
political trend known in Russia as
the "red-brown alliance" -- the coalition of former communists with
fascists. In Serbia, Milosevic crafted a Hitlerian communism to retain
power, while in Moscow, after the disappearance of the Soviet Union,
communists adopted crude anti-Semitism in a bid to regain power.
The significance of this phenomenon is barely understood in the capitalist democracies. Yet we also see its expression in the West. In the U.S. there's the common political gobbledygook spouted by the "leftist" Ralph Nader and the "right-wing" Pat Buchanan, both of whom attack the World Trade Organization. The "anarchist" rioters from Seattle to Prague -- hardly aware of their similarities with skinheads and other proto-Nazi enemies of the "new world order" -- have been egged on by the likes of Cuban dinosaur Fidel Castro, and sadly flattered by U.S. President Bill Clinton. They march, consciously or unconsciously, to the tune played in Belgrade, where Milosevic and his wife claimed to defend "the Yugoslav workers" against "rapacious American finance capital."
So much for politics. Economically, the tragedy of Yugoslavia, and especially Serbia, had roots that are easy to discern. Yugoslavia under Marshal Josip Broz Tito had long enjoyed a false level of prosperity not known elsewhere behind the Iron Curtain, thanks to a dual system of global welfare payments, with the West subsidizing its military and the Russians paying it for technological and other economic projects. When the Berlin Wall fell, no one needed Yugoslavia anymore. The payments stopped and the country collapsed.
Milosevic and his cabal saw this coming. But they made no effort to get the Serbs off the addiction to international welfare. The Serbs still consider themselves an entitled nation for whom everything would have been fine if the rest of the world had just continued paying for their oversized army, their inefficient state industries, their pseudo-sophisticated cultural establishment, and their worldwide propaganda for "Third World" solidarity. (Remember: Tito was head of the "nonaligned" nations).
Today's Serbs need to be taught that the era of welfare dependency, both internal in the form of a socialist economy, and external in the form of international aid, has ended. There is no guarantee Mr. Kostunica can do this, and many observers believe the next step, with or without Milosevic, will be for a "democratized" Serbia to demand a renewal of international economic assistance.
It's time, however, for the West to draw back from this quagmire. Lifting sanctions quickly, or showering Serbia with cash, as the European powers seem wont to do, would be enormous mistakes. Serbia, in fact, should be told in no uncertain terms that the reforms it has to undergo would involve more than a change of regime. A wholesale transformation of its economy, and a real education of its public about out the realities of the modern world, must be imposed. And they must be imposed from within, not by a new welfare program.
It's time for Serbia to get clean and sober, on its own, with no
compromises or coddling.