THE DELICACY OF THE SERBIAN-ALBANIAN DIALOGUE

Summary: The "KOHA" independent Albanian magazine in the Albanian language, in its last issue, quoting reliable UN sources, made public that the leader of the Kosovo Albanians, Ibrahim Rugova has been informed of the consent of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic to a meeting. It is stated that Milosevic demanded that the talks take place just between the two of them and "somewhere near Belgrade". Can the beginning of a dialogue between the two conflicting sides - the current Serbian authorities and the Albanians - really be expected soon? All the guesswork of the past few months cannot escape the fact that both Milosevic and Rugova are a bit afraid of reactions in their home environments. Resistance to possible negotiations is especially strong in some more radical Serbian circles and some opposition groups have launched a rather intensive campaign in Kosovo expecting that Milosevic's positions will weaken and that he will stop "bending" under the pressure of the international factor. Rugova, on the other hand, is being increasingly criticized on account of the peaceful policy he pursues, i.e. because of "marking time" as it is most frequently termed. A possible war conflict suits neither the Serbs nor the Albanians. The former because for years they have been waging an exhausting war, the outcome of which is not yet even in sight, and the latter because they are inferior in military and organizational terms, while psychologically and strategically they are not ready for an all-out Serbian - Albanian war.

One of the reasons that the international project for solving the issue of Kosovo is not being made public is because that the consquences might resemble a bomb explosion. This implies that the international factor has learned the lesson of its hitherto mediation in the Balkans, when it did not manage to prevent, let alone halt the war. A clumsy and premature approach to the resolution of the Kosovo problem might have unforeseeable consquences for the region and population and cause more harm than good.

Can the beginning of a Serbian-Albanian dialogue be expected soon? It is being announced for a long time, there were many abortive and simulated initiatives, rumours on mediation missions and secret negotiations conducted in diplomatic representation offices or other neutral places. But, in recent weeks and days, rumours coming from official places indicate that the issue of Kosovo has finally become ripe for the negotiating table. The two most important, officially unconfirmed but also undenied pieces of news, come from Geneva.

According to the first, the Co-Chairmen of the Peace Conference on the former Yugoslavia, Owen and Stoltenberg, gave the leader of the Kosovo Albanians, Ibrahim Rugova, during their recent meeting, a Draft Project for solving the Kosovo issue, drawn up in the offices of the Geneva Conference and within what is known as the Contact Group. The same project had been submitted earlier to Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. The second piece of news is perhaps even more attractive. The Pristina weekly the "Koha", citing Geneva sources, writes that Milosevic, through Owen and Stoltenberg, sent a message to Rugova, expressing readiness to meet with him tete-a-tete. Milosevic thinks that the meeting should take place near Belgrade and without mediators.

Rugova has recently been on a new tour of Europe and has given no statements confirming or denying that such an offer had reached him, so that we do not know whether he replied to it immediately or asked for time to think things over and consult with his associates. However, in the headquarters of the Democratic Union of Kosovo in Pristina we could unofficially learn that Rugova was very satisfied with the talks conducted with Owen and Stoltenberg. "We got more than we expected", he allegedly said in a brief telephone conversation.

But, it is clear that he was referring to the Project he received, and not to Milosevic's offer to meet. In any case, the contents of the Geneva offer have still not been made public either in Belgrade or Pristina, so that it is not known which elements made Rugova happier than expected. In principle, the document should not contain any great surprises. It probably contains the compromise ideas which are in circulation, as a sort of initial operationalizational formula of the Washington agreements of the five in May 1993, which left Kosovo within the former Yugoslavia/Serbia, but demanded the renewal of human and political rights of Albanians in Kosovo, which was understood as the ensuring of a special status, i.e. maximum autonomy.

Can Rugova's satisfaction be seen as a sign that the document in fact offers more than maximum autonomy? Or is Rugova simply happy because the document leaves the door open to different options and the entire array of solutions usually offered as compensation for the basic concession of Kosovo's remaining in Yugoslavia/Serbia - namely strong international guarantees, elements of statehood for Kosovo, full cultural and educational autonomy, open borders towards its neighbours, up to confederal links with Albania if such a model is applied in other hotbeds of crisis in the Balkans, primarily in respect of the status of the Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia.

Generally, it is hard to assume that there is no very close correlation between the projects for the Serbian Krajinas in Croatia, claimed to be prepared by the ambassadorial mini contact group and according to which, judging by everything, the current negotiations are being conducted between Zagreb and Knin, as well as Zagreb and Belgrade, and the Geneva project for Kosovo. It is not out of the question that the initial drafts of these projects were actually made by the same expert team or that they are very closely coordinated, since problems and solutions which are rather symmetrical from the international standpoint are in case. The simultaneous presentation of compromise solutions for Kosovo and Krajina, and in fact for Bosnia also, is the most efficient political instrument of the international community for limiting Serbian aspirations which are at an obvious principled discrepancy.

The Serbs initiated the chaos in the Balkans and their bridling is the most efficient way to end that chaos. Therefore, if the Serbs are forced to accept the same arrangement for Kosovo and the Albanians that they demand for territories under the control of the Serbs across the Drina river, international mediating fora will have finished more than half the job in solving the Balkan crisis. The other half of the job - convincing the Croats and Albanians to accept the comprimise solutions will be much easier because the Croats and Albanians objectively have weaker negotiating positions and cannot blackmail the international community with threats to prolong the war, like the Serbs are doing. But, although the Geneva plan on Kosovo can ensure the necessary compromise basis for the beginning of the negotiations which was lacking so far, it is still not clear whether all political conditions have matured for their commencement, primarily for the Milosevic - Rugova meeting.

Milosevic's offer may be attractive, because it makes official Rugova's position as the only legitimate representative of the Albanians, but it contains conditions which could force the cautious Rugova to stall a while with his decision. Namely, Milosevic wants a meeting in private, without representatives of the third side, and it is said, near Belgrade. The exclusion of the "third side" and insistence on the "proximity" of Belgrade,in a way conditions the internal nature of the talks, because so far Rugova always insisted on talks in the presence of the international factor ( this implying the internationalization of the Kosovo issue at the very beginning as well as assurance that the solutions arrived at will have full international guarantees).

Rugova would also like the meeting with Milosevic, if possible, to take place on neutral ground, so as not to prejudice the delicate questions of territorial sovereignty. The imposition of such conditions is actually the repetition of the procedural difficulties recorded in the initiation of the Zagreb-Knin negotiations, when the place of holding the meeting got strong symbolical connotations for both sides, namely of "subjugation" for one side and of tacit "secession" for the other. For that reason Rugova will probably not immediately accept Milosevic's offer. But he will not openly reject it either, and will demand that the meeting take place elsewhere and with the presence of international guarantors.

Both Rugova and Milosevic are afraid of reactions on their respective domestic scenes. Resistance to possible negotiations and compromise is particularly strong in Serbian extremist circles. Part of the Serbian opposition as well as the former President of Yugoslavia, Dobrica Cosic, as well as clerical circles have already initiated a rather strong Kosovo campaign hoping to weaken Milosevic's positions and prevent him from "bending" anew and making concessions under the pressure of the international community. The "Serbian resistance movement", led by Kosta Bulatovic, Solevic and other leaders who brought Milosevic to power, but who most likely worked under Dobrica Cosic's instructions, is again active in Kosovo.

The Kosovo Serbs fear that Milosevic will turn his back on them in the end. In an interview to the NIN, Kosta Bulatovic says " If Milosevic renounced the Republic of Srpska overnight, in which he has people and territory, what will happen to this part of Serbia (referring to Kosovo) where he has neither people nor territory". A church ideologue, the bishop Atanasije, is also afraid of the same outcome when he says:" I prophesied long ago, and I pray to God that it might not come true, that the third act of treason of the present president of Serbia will concern Kosovo". Extremist Serbian nationalists in Kosovo, as well as like-minded ones in Serbia, have offered the Serbian public a new, harshly intoned petition advocating the urgent mass colonization of Kosovo and the expulsion of Albanians with the aim of quickly changing the ethnic structure of Kosovo in favour of the Serbs, before it is too late.

Actually, the petition is a call to a new war and new mass ethnic cleansings and genocide, this time of the Albanians. That Milosevic is not indifferent to the strengthening of Serbian extremism in Kosovo is shown by the fast activation of the propaganda sector of the SPS (The Socialist Party of Serbia) and state and alleged humanitarian institutions in the service of the regime, on the question of Kosovo. Milosevic's regime always works on several tracks and with several options, so that he does not wish to leave the extremist variant of solving the Kosovo issue to radical parties, Cosic and the Church. His main policeman, Radmilo Bogdanovic, has offered a harsh alternative to the Kosovo Albanians: either to accept talks on Kosovo as an internal issue of regulating Serbia as a state with the rule of law, or to be banished - as separatists.

Bratislava - Buba Morina, the president of the humanitarian organization for refugee relief in Serbia was even more specific when she announced the pending construction of houses for 100,000 Serbian refugees from Croatia and Bosnia in Kosovo soon, and at the same time upheld that the return be prevented of about 120,000 Albanian refugees and asylum seekers, the number soon to be returned to Kosovo by some West European Governments. Analysts generally believe these to be empty threats because Serbia does not have sufficient funds to finance such a large construction project, and it is unlikely to expect Serbian refugees, mainly women, children and the elderly, who have gone through so much suffering to accept to be settled in the highly uncertain Kosovo and at a time, when state bodies in Serbia are deciding to dislocate whole factories and where the church authorities have decided to move church treasuries to Serbia.

Where the opening of the Serbian-Albanian negotiating process is concerned, there is a principled dilemma - whether it is better to hurry and risk uncertain reactions or delay the beginning of negotiations for some time, so that they might be better prepared and uncontrolled reactions prevented. Serbian-Albanian relations have been at a stalemate for quite some time now. Although the situation is Kosovo is still very bad and tense, both sides have managed to find a modus for maintaining peace, based on a balance of fear. In the present circumstances neither side is for war: the Serbs because they are already waging another exhausting war, which has been raging for three years and has not yet been decided, so that the opening of a new front would be highly risky; the Albanians because they are inferior in military and organizational terms, and are not yet strategically and psychologically ready for armed rebellion in Kosovo and a general Serbian-Albanian war, which would also involve Albania.

Nevertheless, on the other hand, it is clear to everyone that the peace in Kosovo is actually an illusion, a fragile situation of mutually deferred war. Nothing has been done to date to create conditions to solve the Kosovo issue peacefully. On the contrary, the conflict has been constantly declaratively exacerbated and brought almost to the boiling and explosion point, when there practically can be no going back. Kosovo was and still is a powder keg, or an explosive device which can be activated any moment and wreak chaos in the Balkans. And beyond. What to do in such a situation?

Some say that a time-bomb has already been activated in Kosovo and that its mechanism is ominously ticking away the time until it explodes. Moreover, perhaps there are several parallel time-bombs here. In addition to the Serbian and Albanian countdown, which fortunately still has weeks and months as its measurement units, rather than days and hours, perhaps there are also the bombs of some third powers potentially interested in creating an even greater chaos in the Balkans. If the time for the explosion is drawing near, say these analysts, then urgent measures are necessary to defuse them, before it is too late. The other view is more sophisticated and advocates less haste in the opening of the Kosovo issue and a cautious approach. It proceeds from the assumption that the Kosovo time bomb is of the tripping type.

The present balance of fear is a thin wire linking the fuses on the detonators and any pulling or shift of the balance to one or the other side might cause an explosion. According to this theory, Kosovo will actually explode when it is specifically opened as a question and when its solving begins. That might happen in ten years, or next month. One of the reasons why the international project for solving the Kosovo question is kept secret is probably because its publication at this moment could have the effects of a bomb both in the Albanian and in the Serbian public. International diplomacy has probably already learned the lessons of its earlier mediating operations in the Balkans, where they not only did not prevent the outbreak of the war, but accelerated and intensified it.

And even when the best of intentions are concerned, diplomatic moves may be premature and clumsy and may cause more harm than good.

Shkelzen Maliqi, AIM Pristina