Yugoslavia at a Crossroads

Keepers of Milosevic's "Treasure"

The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia is approaching the tenth anniversary of the dissolution of the "Big" Yugoslavia with good chances of continuing its shrinkage. Paradoxically, its political scene is dominated by parties whose chief purported goal is the preservation of Yugoslavia. This is what voters had in mind when they elected them, but as soon as these parties assumed power, they seemed to have abandoned the idea.

AIM Belgrade, September 26, 2001

During last year's election campaign the approximately twenty parties that form the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) bloc pledged to preserve the joint state consisting of Serbia and Montenegro, and then presidential candidate Vojislav Kostunica announced that within a year and a half the country would have a stable and democratic constitution. Six months remain until that deadline, but the probability of serious negotiations on salvaging Yugoslavia chances is not only diminishing by the day, but the two republics have less common government than, say, France and Germany. Also paradoxically, the new authorities in Serbia formally did more to retain possession of Kosovo than it did to resolve its dispute with Montenegro. True, Podgorica strongly discouraged negotiations on the fate of the federation, hinging its future on its prior dissolution.

Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic perpetuated his political mistake of refusing to participate in federal elections that toppled Milosevic last September, by rejecting to recognize the election results and denying legitimacy to the Montenegrin representatives in the federal government and Parliament, whom he himself allowed to take office because his Democratic Party of Socialists boycotted the vote. Now, Djukanovic recognizes Vojislav Kostunica as Yugoslavia's president, but not the federal prime minister, who, according to him, represents a minority in Montenegro.

On the other hand, the strongest DOS member, Kostunica's Democratic Party of Serbia, is at odds with the Serbian government led by Zoran Djindjic, who is supported by a part of the ruling coalition. Their clash was prompted by the arrest of Slobodan Milosevic on April 1, and his subsequent extradition to the Hague tribunal on June 28, St. Vitus's Day - a major Serbian religious holiday, as well as by the still unresolved murder of a former secret police agent in August, just hours after he had contacted certain members of Kostunica staff. Meanwhile, the fierceness of their fight has reached, and even surpassed, the verbal exchanges the Milosevic regime used to discredit its political opponents.

In such circumstances Vojislav Kostunica still managed to establish direct contact with Milo Djukanovic via the somewhat obscure Supreme Defense Council, a body in charge of military security and defense. A meeting incidentally held in Podgorica on Sept. 11, the same day that terrorists ran hijacked planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in the U.S., attended by the three presidents, Kostunica, Djukanovic and Serbian President Milan Milutinovic, federal Prime Minister Dragisa Pesic, federal Defense Minister Slobodan Krapovic, and Yugoslav Army Chief of Staff Gen. Nebojsa Pavkovic. They debated security on the borders with Macedonia and Albania and the administrative border towards Kosovo, as well as transformation of the Yugoslav army. A decision on joining of the Partnership for Peace was postponed until "relations between Serbia and Montenegro are resolved in a democratic way."

At one point it seemed that serious discussion of the future of Yugoslavia had been opened by a separate meeting between Vojislav Kostunica and Milo Djukanovic held the same day. Kostunica said there were "differences in regard to the future status" of the common country, which is "the mother of all questions"... but "that the dialogue between federal bodies and representatives of Serbia and Montenegro should be more frequent in order for a solution to be found." As far as he was concerned, he believed that the best option was a common state with a minimum of joint government, but a dialogue on the platforms of Yugoslavia and Serbia on the one side, and of Montenegro's government on the other, would be very welcome. Djukanovic, among other things, said that one meeting could not help to surmount all differences related to how the common state should be structured, but that there "is agreement that the question should be resolved as soon as possible... in a democratic manner."

An encouraging reading of the above statements or of the fact that a meeting of the Supreme Defense Council had been held at all was immediately prevented by interpretations voiced by a host of official and unofficial advisors, people who in the past year have become extremely prolific in Yugoslavia. Thus, for instance, Milo Djukanovic's advisor for military issues, Blagoje Grahovac, described the meeting as "a farce," because it was attended by Milo Djukanovic (!), "who does not recognize the federal state," and Milan Milutinovic, "who is only formally called the president of Serbia."

>From Serbia, a senior official of the Movement for Democratic Serbia, Dragan Vuksic, called changes in the Yugoslav army superficial, that is, of "progressing at the pace desired by President Kostunica and Chief of Staff Gen. Pavkovic, the latter being the first who should have been sacked." These and similar statements can be understood only as proof that not one of the existing institutions in Yugoslavia is recognized. The spokesman for the Liberal Alliance of Montenegro, Slavko Perovic, did his best to further obfuscate things by stating on behalf of his party, which otherwise supports the Djukanovic minority government, that the council session was "obstructing Montenegro's efforts to become an independent state," and "a signal that certain arrangements regarding a future common country have already been made, Djukanovic being quite familiar with them."

Despite this, President Kostunica scheduled the first round of negotiations for Sept. 19. The Serbian government, prior to this, had already adopted a platform for restructuring Yugoslavia, in opposition to Djukanovic's concept, according to which Yugoslavia should first split in two internationally recognized states, and only then form some kind of alliance. Dragan Soc, president of the Montenegrin People's Party, said "there is a tacit political consensus to find a lasting solution that would not lead to further destabilization in the region," and expressed the belief that the situation would be resolved by the end of next May at the latest (which coincides with what Kostunica pledged a year ago). The Socialist People's Party, DOS's coalition partner at the federal level and Djukanovic's strongest rival in Montenegro, also insists on continuing talks and refuses to participate in an all-party government, proposed by Djukanovic in a bid to weaken the Liberal Alliance's pressure that Montenegro unconditionally secede.

Kostunica invited Yugoslav Prime Minister Dragisa Pesic, Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic, Montenegrin Premier Filip Vujanovic and Serbian Premier Zoran Djindjic to the negotiations. A day after the invitation was made public, on Sept. 15, Djukanovic's advisor Miodrag Vukovic confirmed that the Montenegrin president would attend, stressing that the meeting would be "an opportunity to finally test the two platforms," and that "all the arguments are on our side and Serbia is increasingly coming to like our offer," Yugoslavia being "a worn-out concept." The Liberals again said the announced talks "show that the Montenegrin president is getting closer to the idea of a common state, which is just a strategy confirming that Djukanovic is afraid of a referendum and an all-party government."

Two days later, an unnamed Democratic Party of Socialists official said Djukanovic would not participate in the talks in Belgrade "because Kostunica did not accept his demand that Yugoslav Prime Minister Dragisa Pesic not be present." Despite this, however, the talks were cancelled only in the afternoon of Sept. 19, when those who failed to arrive at Federation Palace in Belgrade included not only Djukanovic and Vujanovic, but Serbian Premier Djindjic as well. The following press release from Podgorica reiterated Djukanovic's old idea to negotiate only with Serbian government representatives, because Montenegro does not recognize the federal authorities. No explanation was given why the presence of the federal prime minister had been tolerated at the Supreme Defense Council meeting, and not at the talks on Yugoslavia. In Kostunica's response of the same evening this point was stressed, as well as the fact that Montenegro and/or Djukanovic did not mind the federal state and/or federal prime minister when it came to the security of Montenegrin borders and the donors' conference on Yugoslavia, but did when it came to the future of the common state.

Zoran Djindjic explained his failure to arrive at the meeting by saying: "If you have a match and one team fails to arrive does it matter if the other team is complete or not? The game is off." It did not occur to a single one of the journalists listening to his words to say that in such an event the team that did not show loses by forfeit. Regardless of his inadequate comparison, however, Djindjic, in his pragmatic manner, criticized the idea of calling a meeting without a prior consensus of all advisors and experts on what the main players will discuss; the Serbian premier's statement was even less comprehensible given that his government supports the "Yugoslav" platform for redefining relations in the country.

The same day Vojislav Kostunica said he would again invite all those who failed to appear to a new meeting, asking them to confirm attendance in writing or to give an explanation for their absence. "If they have objections to who participates in the talks, the place where the meeting should be held, or its date and time, even to weather conditions, they should put them in writing and send them in," Kostunica said, and added that if dialogue did not start, "responsibility for the failure will be on all those individual people who were unwilling to engage in this kind of talks." Rather shaken, Kostunica also said he did not mind the disregard shown towards him as the president, but that he would not allow the federal state to be disparaged.

Ostensibly unmoved by what his rival, the Socialist People's Party, which said that "it would have been a bigger surprise if he had left for the talks in Belgrade," because "this is yet another incidence of Djukanovic's political stalling," the Montenegrin president initially said Montenegro "should not be accused of unpreparedness for dialogue," and that "the Montenegrin government is sincerely and responsibly dedicated to Montenegro's statehood, seeing it as a precondition of Montenegro's future in a developed Europe, and is, therefore, in favor of public negotiations with all political factors," and with Serbia (!) only "when the elements of the dialogue are agreed in advance." Partisan analysts, experts, forecasters and all sorts of soothsayers did not deviate from the positions of their respective leaders: Kostunica's Democratic Party of Serbia accused those who failed to appear for the meeting's failure and Djindjic's Democratic Party said poor organization was to blame. Senior officials of Milosevic's Socialist Party of Serbia said without much emotion that "there is no good will among government representatives to resolve the crisis in federal relations. If the regimes in Belgrade and Podgorica properly understood national interest they would have organized the meeting properly and reached an agreement speedily." One Socialist party official said that in its election campaign DOS had said the dispute with Montenegro would be resolved once Slobodan Milosevic was removed, "but it did not happen. Further fragmentation of Yugoslavia is at work here."

On the eve of the first anniversary of the "October Revolution" (last year's change of government) it appears Yugoslavia hasn't taken a single step forward in regard to its internal status. Montenegro is much farther away than it was in the Milosevic era, DOS is split in a way its worst enemies could not have imagined, the opposition is sidelined more than ever, and the dividedness of Montenegro is more obvious than ever before. But that's not all: Djukanovic's Democratic Party of Socialists' youth branch, led by Sasa Milosevic, accused Kostunica on Sept. 21 of "bringing together, attracting, and politically promoting the forces that were the pillar of support of the overthrown dictatorship in Serbia." He added that "under the guise of jurism, but actually for the sake of preserving the mechanism of the former regime, Kostunica, essentially, is safeguarding the legacy of the past, obstructing change by formal excuses and pseudopatriotic messages." Not delving into the truthfulness of how appropriate it would be to think of the old Latin saying "De te fabula narratur" while blasting someone else, one should ask whether Yugoslav politicians are actually aware that their electorate consists of living, breathing people. At this point this seems of little relevance to any of them.

Aleksandar Ciric

(AIM)