FRY and B&H

Challenges to Normalisation of Relations

AIM Belgrade, November 27, 2000

What in the symbolic sense hoisting of its flag on the East River means for the official Belgrade – the ultimate achievement of the new foreign policy, in financial – the access to the funds of the European Union, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, in the moral sense is the establishment of diplomatic relations with Sarajevo. Exactly five years have passed since Slobodan Milosevic, the then authoritarian president of Serbia, later of FRY, and much later indicted of war crimes by the Hague Tribunal, put his signature on the Dayton Peace Accords and recognition of Bosnia & Herzegovina within its “AVNOJ” (post IIWW) borders. In modern European history there has been no case of two neighbouring countries which are partly populated by the same people, with a similar language, culture, intermingled tradition, which had no diplomatic relations in peace. That is what makes the visit of the young Yugoslav foreign minister Goran Svilanovic to the capital of B&H is all the more significant

When on Wednesday, accompanied by a few associates, Svilanovic landed on Butmir airport in a lear-jet of the federal government, many sighed with relief. This was a clear sign that new winds have started to blow from Belgrade. Although the choice of the interlocutor of the head of diplomacy of FRY reminded of the old times (Svilanovic talked only with the chairman of B&H Presidency Zivko Radisic, one of the leading Milosevic's cronies from across the Drina, whose Socialist Party of Republika Srpska, at the just completed general elections, and foreign minister of B&H Jadranko Prlic, war prime minister of Herzeg-Bosnia), it could be explained by Svilanovic's busy schedule, but also by the fact that the mentioned politicians at the moment hold the highest posts in the country.

The talks lasted exactly for as long as it was planned by protocol, the language of the talks was “domestic”, and according to the pictures shot in the beginning one could say that the interlocutors avoided intimacies for the sake of business. After he had “reached the agreement on establishing diplomatic relations” with Radisic, Yugoslav minister just had to “discuss the details” with Prlic. These “details” include a whole series of questions, from the court appeal of B&H against FRY for aggression, to the rent of necessary premises. A lot of these were mentioned, but with tactically well-agreed non-persistence Sarajevo had elaborated in the past few weeks, it was concluded that exchange of embassies was the most urgent matter and that the two parties would talk about all the problems to more detail later on. Svilanovic then sat in the lear-jet and returned to Belgrade having done his job.

In FRY in was immediately agreed to form a task group which conceived during the night the draft decision of the federal government on establishing diplomatic relations with B&H, so that prime minister Zizic and his ministers could pass it at their regular session the next day. The same decision is expected to be reached by B&H. Minister Prlic is expected to visit Belgrade in the second decade of December, sign the agreement and probably open some of the premises of the embassy of B&H. There are all kinds of construction and reconstruction works going on in the Yugoslav capital, so it is impossible to find out, and they do not know in the foreign ministry either, which premises will “fall to the share” of the neighbouring state. In Sarajevo, due to constant shortage of premises (e.g. some parts of OSCE Mission are accommodated in the buildings of the university and vice versa), the search may be considerably more complex. The legations of FRY and B&H will have the highest rank – that of embassies and their heads will be ambassadors. The personnel problems that this fact implies are almost insurmountable. Who can be sent to Sarajevo and who will be received in Belgrade? The agreement for the ambassadors takes the longest time to arrive and the principle of reciprocity is strictly applied when they are sent. Therefore, if you wish to cause straining relations with a state, you send a problematic diplomat, but then you receive a person of a similar profile. In establishing diplomatic relations with Croatia in 1995, Veljko Knezevic was sent to Zagreb to represent FRY, and Zvonimir Markovic came to Belgrade. It did not matter that Knezevic was the ambassador of another country in his own, the only thing Slobodan Milosevic's and Franjo Tudjman's regimes were interested in was to have strained relations, so one of the first moves of new Croatian pro-democratic authorities in the sphere of foreign policy was to replace the ambassador in FRY. It was necessary, however, to wait for nine months for this move To make things even more ridiculous, after expiry of his four-year term in office, ambassador Knezevic was replaced by a man who is representing a foreign country in another foreign country. And since the ambassador of FRY in Croatia is a Bosnian, perhaps a Croat will be the ambassador in Bosnia, at least in the transitional period.

Diplomatic services of FRY and B&H do not have an abundance of supreme experts, personages with special qualities and capabilities. In the former the criterion for promotion was party membership, and in the latter ethnic origin. How many persons with the title of ambassadors of FRY have not signed some kind of pledge of allegiance to Milosevic, either through their political statements, or participation in this or that form of misconduct? The case of B&H is much more subtle: the ambassadors over there have obtained their titles by ethnic criterion – one Serb, one Bosniac, one Croat – and all the three parties did their best to promote absolutely the worst possible candidates for the common cause (I do not claim that they are persons without any qualities, but they have in their hearts just their own ethnic groups and not the whole state and its interests), knowing that the consensus necessary for nomination was achieved according to the following principle: “if my candidate passes, so will yours”. And while in FRY, after the change of the regime, you can sack almost all the ambassadors, in order to do that it is necessary to insure the approval of representatives of all the three ethnic groups, and the Croats have mostly supported the HDZ, the Serbs the SDS, and the Bosniacs, slightly less, the SDA.

The question remains open who will go to Sarajevo and who will come to Belgrade. In fact, in the name of FRY anybody could go. The language is “domestic” and everybody speaks it, the culture and the tradition are similar. However, it is difficult to find a candidate from among the existing personnel, because Sarajevo is not just any capital, but the capital which was held under siege and bombed for three and a half years with the blessing of official Belgrade and the capital which is not exactly enthusiastic about the pro-democratic changes in Serbia, suspicious about its rejection of nationalism. Therefore the choice of the man who will be the head of the embassy must be made with special care.

In making this choice one must also keep in mind who will be sent to Belgrade from B&H. The ambassador of Bosnia & Herzegovina in Zagreb is a Bosniac, although the foreign minister is a Croat. By analogy, one should not expect that the ambassador in Belgrade will be a Serb. The third general elections in B&H that took place on November 11 left some small doubts concerning governing of the state: extreme nationalists have achieved the same results as moderate nationalists and non-ethnic forces. Who will hand credentials to Kostunica greatly depends on what the majority coalition in the parliament will be like, if need arises for its formation, because it is increasingly mentioned that the international community, discontented with elections results, will determine the composition of the government in proportion with the representation in the assembly. Sarajevo and Belgrade have absolutely no experience in diplomatic relations. The period of time these two cities have not spent as part of a common state is marked with great conflicts, so that one can expect all kinds of surprises

The decision of B&H to support the reception of FRY in various international organisations does not mean that some quite awkward questions will not be asked as soon as the new government is formed. One can even say that Svilanovic, while representing official Belgrade in Sarajevo, was lucky to have Radisic and Prlic as his interlocutors. Because how could have either of these two mentioned the appeal because of aggression, when the former had for years been known as a puppet of the main protagonist of the aggression, Milosevic, and the latter, a technocrat by manners and conviction, was the prime minister of Herzeg-Bosnia, Tudjman's insufficiently promoted para-state which was also created by aggression. The responsibility of the leading personages of the new Serbia is in the fact that they have not made themselves heard well enough concerning all the crimes that were committed and during the war in Bosnia waged in the name of the Serb people.

Relations between the two states on the two sides of the Drina river will be transferred to the diplomatic level – they will become officially burdened by the efforts to amend the Dayton accords, and to extradite the indicted for war crimes to the Hague Tribunal. It is not difficult to reveal what party is advocating the one and the other and which is for the time being resolutely refusing to do it. Belgrade has for a long time had difficulties to accept that Bosnia & Herzegovina is actually a different state, an equal partner. Perhaps it still does. The tide of nationalism from the beginning of the nineties and the maniacal wish for changing the “AVNOJ borders” made RS be considered a Serb land, almost a part of Serbia or Greater Serbia, while the other entity was written off after Dayton. The peace agreement required mutual recognition of the states and establishment of diplomatic relations. In a special clause, because of Milosevic and Tudjman who guaranteed its implementation, it was stated that constituent peoples and entities could establish special relations with the neighbouring states.

By using the offered, Serbia decided to recognise B&H but to preserve the small nondescript Bureau of Republika Srpska which was opened in the beginning of the war with no need to open a similar office in Banja Luka. In February 1997, Milosevic called his protégé Momcilo Krajisnik who is awaiting trial in Scheveningen prison, to establish some kind of special relations, but it amounted to nothing. Policemen stood facing each other at the border on the Drina for years. On the uniforms of the ones it was written Republic of Serbia, on the uniforms of the others it said Republika Srpska. Their states had no diplomatic relations.

Bojan al Pinto-Brkic

(AIM)