The Balkans. Who’s in charge

Date: 04/01/03

Despite a political impasse in Serbia, the Balkans are still a lot calmer than before

DOES it matter that Serbs and Montenegrins, reluctant partners in what is left of Yugoslavia, seem unable to elect a president for either of their two states? On December 8th, for the third time in a row, Serbs failed to fill their top spot, on this occasion because too few of them turned out to vote. A fortnight later the Montenegrins followed suit. Both states are plainly in for a bout of instability. Yet it would be wrong to herald a return to permanent gloom in 2003 and beyond. Across the Balkans, things are still a lot better than before. On most fronts - economic and political - progress is steady. The region remains calmer than at any time since Yugoslavia, once six republics strong, started to break up a dozen years ago.

For sure, ordinary Serbs and Montenegrins will suffer as their governments find it harder to press ahead with reform. Corruption and organised crime are too prevalent. But this does not mean that the Balkans are in for new bloodshed. Serbia and Montenegro, whatever their own political problems, have been getting on better with each other. Serbia's relations with Kosovo, its breakaway southern province, now under the United Nations' administration, have improved. And elsewhere in the usually troubled and still fragile Balkans - in Macedonia, Albania, Croatia and Bosnia - the political and economic outlook has perked up considerably.

The latest hiccup in Serbia arose from the fact that two of the men who came together in late 2000 to topple the country's tyrant, Slobodan Milosevic, had little in common bar wanting to topple him. Ever since, Vojislav Kostunica, who took over as president of the rump of Yugoslavia (and who has been trying in vain to become president of Serbia too), and Zoran Djindjic, who became Serbia's prime minister, have been at loggerheads.

Their relentless infighting has slowed change and left most Serbs feeling barely better off since Mr Milosevic fell. A recent poll in a Belgrade newspaper, Politika, found that just over half of Serbs thought their standard of living worse or no better than a year ago; less than one-third thinks it has improved. The turmoil discourages foreign investors. Hardly surprising, then, that more than half of Serbs could not be bothered to turn out last month to vote.

Mr Kostunica cried foul, claiming that Mr Djindjic's people added some 400,000 non-existent voters to the roll to ensure that the presidential poll would be invalid. Mr Djindjic, whose government was not up for election, is heaving a sigh of relief. So he is left in charge of Serbia, at least for the time being, while Natasa Micic, the Serbian parliament's speaker, took over as the country's acting president on December 30th. A glamorous political nobody known as “the Serbian Nicole Kidman”, she must now, after consultations, decide when to call yet another presidential election. Meanwhile the political waters are being further muddied by proceedings in Belgrade to send Milan Milutinovic, Ms Micic's predecessor as Serbia's president, to the UN's war-crimes tribunal at The Hague, for crimes alleged to have been committed several years ago by Serbian forces in Kosovo.

Messrs Djindjic and Kostunica are still struggling to prove who is in charge. Mr Djindjic is unpopular. His critics say he is too friendly with gangsters and unsavoury types in the security apparatus who now serve him as loyally as they served Mr Milosevic. For his part, he would like in the coming months to change the Serbian constitution to make the presidency irrelevant. And he wants to prevent Mr Kostunica from persuading enough MPs to call a Serbian general election, because Mr Djindjic would probably lose it.

Nice Serbs don't often win

Mr Kostunica is still plainly Serbia's most popular politician. But, if the impasse continues, he could be out of a job soon, because the country he presides over - Yugoslavia - may cease to exist. After months of wrangling, Serbia and Montenegro have finally agreed, under pressure from Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign-policy chief, on almost all the details of a deal to abolish Yugoslavia and create, early this year, a new and looser union to be called simply Serbia and Montenegro (or “Solania”, as the region's humorists have it). Mr Kostunica's job as Yugoslav president would then go. Mr Djindjic, hanging on as Serbia's prime minister, however unpopular, would mark that down as a victory for himself.

The compromise over Montenegro is sensible. Serbia and Montenegro will each have wide autonomy, while preserving some joint policies, for instance in defence and foreign affairs. How the couple will co-ordinate their economies is fuzzier. Mladjan Dinkic, governor of the National Bank of Yugoslavia, which may become the Serbian National Bank, predicts chaos. The agreement is for three years, after which, assuming it lasts that long, either side can opt for independence or renew the deal.

While most Serbs and Montenegrins are probably happy with it, Kosovo's ethnic Albanians feel distinctly uncomfortable. Though their province is still nominally part of Yugoslavia and of its coming successor state, the UN has run it since June 1999. It has made steady progress, and now has its own parliament, government and president, though the UN's proconsul still has the last say on anything big.

Kosovo's jumpy Albanians

But the leaders of Kosovo's 1.8m Albanians are twitchy because they fear that the Americans and Europeans, both of whom are reducing their military presence there, want to start talks on the region's “final status” in an effort to force the Kosovars to give up their dream of independence. The Americans in particular, who are trying to concentrate their political and military focus on Iraq and the war against terror, want the Serbs in Belgrade and Kosovo's Albanians to open a dialogue.

Talks on final status are unlikely to begin for a year or so. At a recent conference run by a Washington think-tank, the US Institute of Peace, American policymakers were plainly keener on independence for Kosovo and in much more of a hurry to leave the place than the Europeans. But on both sides of the Atlantic it is agreed that Serbs and Albanians should start talking soon, at least about things like electricity and transport. Pressure on them to do so may be bearing fruit. Nebojsa Covic, Serbia's deputy prime minister, recently met Kosovo's prime minister, Bajram Rexhepi.

So far this year, ethnic violence in Kosovo between Serbs and Albanians has claimed less than a handful of deaths. More than three years after its arrival, the NATO-led peacekeeping force known as KFOR, still some 30,000-strong and drawn from dozens of countries, has too little to do and is steadily shrinking. The reductions worry Kosovo's 90,000 remaining Serbs, many of whom still live in KFOR-protected enclaves. Occasional ethnic-Albanian attacks on parties of Kosovo Serbs trying to come back home from outside the province, where some 230,000 are still taking refuge, keep most of them out. Kosovo's UN administrators recently tried, with some success, to reassert their authority over the Serbs living north of the ethnically-divided city of Mitrovica, who had been running their own security system.

Fingers crossed in Macedonia

Tension is higher across the border in ethnically-divided Macedonia, once also part of Yugoslavia. But things are better there too. In 2001, government forces loyal to Macedonia's Slav majority repeatedly clashed with wilier Albanian rebels demanding constitutional changes and autonomy. But peace seems to be holding up fairly well, thanks in part to the formation, after a general election four months ago, of a coalition of moderate nationalists from both communities. Only 470 NATO troops are now expected to stay on as observers. A military team under the European Union's aegis is expected to take over the running of the peacekeeping mission.

Similar signs of hope are spreading across the rest of the region. In Bosnia, despite recent gains by nationalist groups (Serbs, Croats and Muslims) in local elections, more refugees have come home this year than at any time since the war ended in 1995. On January 1st, the EU took over the UN's police mission there. The foreign ministers of Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Macedonia recently posed for a family photo where their borders all meet, to inaugurate a peaceful new demarcation of frontiers. Last month, Croatian and Yugoslav ministers settled a festering territorial dispute and signed a free-trade agreement. Flights have restarted between Belgrade and Ljubljana, the Slovene capital, after a break of 11 years and between Belgrade and Tirana, Albania's capital, after a break of 21 years. Both the Albanian and Slovene foreign ministers have recently been in Serbia.

Five Balkan countries - Albania, Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia and Yugoslavia - have asked the EU to look kindly on their requests to open negotiation for membership of the club. Lord Robertson, NATO's secretary-general, has again told Macedonia and Albania that they are welcome to apply to join the alliance. In the United States an analysis by the Council on Foreign Relations argues that an international military and administrative presence in the Balkans could end by 2010, if a number of conditions are met, including a curb on organised crime, the ability of refugees to return safely home, and co-operation with the UN's war-crimes tribunal.

At the Washington conference several European and American policymakers talked hopefully about Cyprus, where a settlement at last looks feasible, partly due to the carrot of EU membership. A model for Serbia and Kosovo? That such a notion is being seriously mooted is hopeful.

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