[ALBSA-Info] LA Times

[Agron Alibali]

Los Angeles Times 


March 25, 2001, Sunday, Home Edition 

Opinion; Part M; Page 2; Opinion Desk 

THE WORLD / YUGOSLAVIA;  
BUSH BACKTRACKS ON HOLDING KOSTUNICA'S FEET TO THE
FIRE 

Susan Blaustein, Susan Blaustein writes frequently
about the Balkans  


DATELINE: WASHINGTON 

BODY: 
Last fall, Congress laid down three conditions in
order for the new government in Yugoslavia to receive
$ 100 million in U.S. aid and, more crucially, to be
eligible for loans from the International Monetary
Fund and the World Bank. Thus far, Yugoslavia has met
none of these conditions. Should President George W.
Bush nevertheless certify to Congress that Belgrade
has complied, he would undermine not only Serbia's
progress toward democratization but also U.S. policy
throughout the region. 

The conditions require Yugoslavia to cut off support
for Serb extremists in Bosnia's Republika Srpska,
respect minority rights and the rule of law, and
cooperate with the International Criminal Tribunal for
the Former Yugoslavia by turning over evidence and
indicted war criminals to The Hague. They were crafted
by Congress to nudge Belgrade's new leaders toward
institutionalizing democratic values and to give them
political cover for taking difficult, perhaps
unpopular steps toward purging the government of its
entrenched criminal elite, reaching out to minorities
to build a genuinely civil society and giving up all
territorial aspirations for a "Greater Serbia." 

Problem is, many of Belgrade's new democrats have been
eager to take U.S. dollars and international loans,
but not to earn them. Yet, the Bush administration
appears poised to offer Yugoslav President Vojislav
Kostunica a way out. 

Earlier this month, the U.S. Belgrade envoy, William
D. Montgomery, handed Kostunica a three-page list of
watered-down criteria that, if met, would enable the
Bush administration to certify that Yugoslavia has
made a good-faith effort to fulfill Congress'
conditions and merits U.S. aid. Specifically, he
reportedly reassured Kostunica that the arrest of
former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and the
transfer to The Hague of one other indictee would
suffice. But the law requires "the surrender and
transfer of indictees," a condition hardly met by the
recent voluntary surrender of one relatively low-level
Bosnian Serb official or by vague promises to hand
over additional non-Yugoslav indictees. 

Moreover, should Milosevic actually be arrested--which
Serb reformers have wanted to do for some time, being
held back only by Kostunica's resistance--Yugoslav
officials insist that it would be for economic crimes
committed against the Serb people and nation, for
which he would be tried domestically. While such
charges are serious and credible, only the war-crimes
tribunal has the authority to determine whether local
trials for local crimes should take precedence over an
international one for war crimes. In other words,
Milosevic must first be transferred to The Hague, a
sine qua non to which the Bush administration has not
asked the Kostunica government to commit. 

The Bush administration assented to Belgrade
officials' insistence on revising Yugoslav law to
facilitate cooperation with the tribunal, including
the extradition of Yugoslav indictees. But the
extradition issue is a red herring that has only
served to delay cooperation. Nowhere does the Yugoslav
constitution preclude the transfer of indicted
nationals to an international institution. Revising
the law could take months, during which time Milosevic
could not only exert a toxic influence on Serbian
political developments, but also could manage to get
his hands on some of his stashed assets and flee to a
third country even less likely to hand him over to The
Hague. 

The Bush administration also reportedly advised
Kostunica that Yugoslav support for Bosnia's Republika
Srpska should be made transparent. But Congress
explicitly calls upon Belgrade "to end"--not to render
transparent--"Serbian financial, political, security
and other support" for separate Bosnian Serb
institutions, which include the Bosnian Serb army and
the extreme nationalist party of the indicted former
Bosnian Serb president, Radovan Karadzic. The cutoff
has not taken place. To the contrary. As one of his
first official acts, Kostunica attended a campaign
rally in the Republika Srpska for Karadzic's party.
Three weeks ago, he signed an agreement for special
relations with the Serb republic, bolstering Bosnian
Serb aspirations to reunite with Serbia. Belgrade
still pays the salaries and pensions of officers in
the Bosnian Serb army, state security and
counterintelligence forces, many of whom are alleged
war criminals. Should the administration sign off on
Belgrade's performance to date, U.S. tax dollars may
subsidize the retirement plans of those who brought
the world the Bosnian war. 

While non-Serbs are no longer being murdered or forced
from their homes, the Serbian branch of the
International Helsinki Foundation reports that
oppression of minorities persists under Kostunica
among the largely Hungarian population in the
Vojvodina, the Muslims in the Sandzak, Albanians, Roma
and Jews. Upon assuming office, Kostunica squandered
the opportunity to release the hundreds of Albanians
illegally detained in Serbian prisons since the Kosovo
war. 

Instead, the Yugoslav president implicitly accepted
Milosevic's travesty of a criminal-justice system by
taking a legalistic approach to the prisoners' fate,
which has prolonged Kosovo's agony and exacerbated
Albanian-Serb tensions. After buying international
goodwill by releasing a few prominent prisoners,
Kostunica took months to come up with an amnesty law
that permitted the release of 150 more; he has
insisted on personally reviewing each of the remaining
cases, several hundred of which he, like Milosevic,
insists were "terrorist" acts that merit severe
punishment. 

This special treatment for Serbia has endangered the
new democratic government in Croatia, which has braved
considerable risks to win U.S. assistance and
international loans by complying with an almost
identical set of conditions. In Croatia, as in other
East European countries in transition, democrats have
welcomed such quid pro quos to justify much-needed
reform and political change. 

The opposite has been true of Yugoslavia. During and
since last summer's election campaign, Kostunica has
been backed by the same alliance of army, church and
intellectuals who first devised the "Greater Serbia"
project in the 1980s. A far more committed nationalist
than the opportunistic, power-hungry Milosevic,
Kostunica has, thus far, in his personnel and policy
choices, exhibited more continuity than disjunction
with the former regime. Should Bush join European
nations in their unconditional embrace of this
singularly unrepentant, nationalist government, his
move will likely stoke radical nationalist aspirations
in a precariously maintained Bosnia-Herzegovina and
push Albanian extremists to escalate their guerrilla
actions in Kosovo, southern Serbia and Macedonia. 

Without being too onerous, Congress' three conditions
afford Belgrade the opportunity to define its
operating standards simply by adhering to democratic
principles and the rule of law. The Hague tribunal's
chief prosecutor has found the U.S. law so helpful
that she recently asked the European Union to
replicate it. With a clear interest in starting off on
a strong foreign-policy footing, the Bush
administration would do well to applaud Congress'
caution and foresight, encourage its European allies
to follow suit and not undermine the law at this
critical juncture by giving Belgrade a pass where none
is due. 



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