Are you being Serbed?; Belgrade dishes it out
The Washington Times - August 6, 2003, Wednesday, Final Edition
By Helle Dale, THE WASHINGTON TIMES - The Serbs are at it again. Once
again, they are playing their role as the perpetual victims of Europe,
complaining about unfair treatment by the international community and whining
about the injustice of it all. If the Serbian mentality was supposed to have
changed since the ouster and war crimes indictment of former dictator Slobodan
Milosevic, this was not evident from the recent visit of Serbian government
leaders to Washington.
It is now just three years since the NATO alliance bombed Serbia to end the wars
of aggression waged by the Serbs against their Balkan neighbors throughout the
1990s. This was a bloody and at times horrendously brutal conflict, which raged
as the Balkan country of Yugoslavia broke apart to form the countries that are
today Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia and the Republic of Serbia and
Montenegro. Serbia, the dominant and largest republic of Yugoslavia, was forced
to let the others slip from its control, but did so only after military defeat.
Undaunted by the horrors it has perpetrated, Serbia now wants to reclaim its
leading role in the Balkans. While it took the Germans more than two decades
after World War II to raise their heads enough to start playing a role in
Europe, the Serbs are already demanding international recognition and foreign
aid.
Over dinner, brandy and cigars at the Metropolitan Club in Washington, Serbian
Prime Minister Zoran Zivkovic and Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic expressed
their frustration with the government of the United States and the leaders of
the European Union and NATO.
"There are three things Serbs cannot stand," said Mr. Zivkovic." An independent
Kosovo, NATO and the United States." This comes from a country that wants the
help of the U.S. government to get into the EU and the Partnership for Peace, a
U.S.-led military grouping.
From the perspective of Mr. Svilanovic, the failure of Serbia to make progress
on integration into international organization can be blamed primarily on
Washington and Brussels. After meetings with National Security Adviser
Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell, he accused both of "a lack
of courage" in pushing Serbia's case.
As for leaders in the EU, Mr. Svilanovic proudly says he had berated Javier
Solava and Chris Patten, the EU's primary representatives on foreign policy, for
the "mess" that the EU is in and its failure to deal with the real problems of
Europe, which are in his view Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. No doubt these gents
appreciated the lecture.
The Serbs are particularly indignant that they have not received the
international aid they expected. On this, they blame the fact that they have not
rebuilt the damaged bridges in Belgrade - nor even their own Ministry of
Defense.
Now, both the U.S. government and the EU have welcomed Serbia's new leadership,
which inherited the mantle from the previous reform-minded Prime Minister Zoran
Djindjic, who was tragically assassinated this spring. From the perspective of
Washington and Brussels, however, there are some very specific and major
obstacles to Serbia's rehabilitation.
One is the demand that the Serbs hand over Gen. Ratko Mladic for prosecution as
a war criminal in The Hague. He is one of the architects of the awful ethnic
cleansing campaign that took place in Bosnia in the early 1990s against the
country's Muslim population. Mr. Zivkovic's new line is that his government has
no knowledge of the whereabouts of said general, though there is a "95 percent
chance" that he is no longer in Serbia - a claim about which American officials
are deeply skeptical.
Another rather amazing obstacle is that the Serbs are actually suing eight NATO
countries, including the United States, for bombing Belgrade in 1999. These
countries are all members of the Partnership for Peace, which the Serbs are
trying to join. The present government has refused to drop the suit, initiated
by Mr. Milosevic, apparently hoping to use it as a bargaining chip in exchange
for a genocide case brought against the Serbian people by Croatia and Bosnia.
You probably have to be Serbian to believe you can make progress under these
circumstances.
All of which is a huge shame. The war-torn Balkans is the final piece of the
European continent that needs to build peace and economic stability. Eastern and
Central Europe are well on their way to joining the EU and NATO. Serbia could be
an important part of this project, but until the Serbs experience a change of
attitude about their past and their present, they will cut themselves off from
their future.
* Helle Dale is deputy director of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis
Institute for International Studies at the Heritage Foundation. E-mail:
helle.dale@heritage.org.
SECTION: OPED; Pg. A17
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