Are you being Serbed? Belgrade dishes it out
By Helle Dale, THE WASHINGTON TIMES
The Serbs are at it again. Once again, they
are playing their role as the perpetual victims
of Europe,complaining about unfair treatment by the
international community and whining about the
injustice of it all. [Even the puppet regimes installed
in Serbia after Milosevic was deposed found it difficult
to stomach further US persecution of their country].
If the Serbian mentality was supposed to have changed
since the ouster and war crimes indictment of former
dictator Slobodan Milosevic, this was not evident
from the recent visit of Serbian government leaders to
Washington.
It is now just three years since the NATO
alliance bombed Serbia to end the wars of aggression
waged by the Serbs against their Balkan neighbors
throughout the 1990s. This was a bloody and at times
horrendously brutal conflict, which raged as the Balkan
country of Yugoslavia broke apart to form the countries
that are today Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia
and the Republic of Serbia and Montenegro. Serbia, the
dominant and largest republic of Yugoslavia, was forced
to let the others slip from its control, but did so only
after military defeat. [Unlike Croatia and the Bosnian Muslims,
Serbia did it all it could to hold the Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia together. It did not start any of the wars
that took place]
Undaunted by the horrors it has perpetrated, Serbia now
wants to reclaim its leading role in the Balkans. While
it took the Germans more than two decades after World War
II to raise their heads enough to start playing a role in
Europe, the Serbs are already demanding international
recognition and foreign aid. [The illegal NATO bombing of
Serbia in 1999 caused around $100 billion of damage to
the country’s infrastructure. On top of the savage economic
sanctions imposed by the west, Serbia’s economy had been
destroyed. Was it any wonder they needed aid desperately?]
Over dinner, brandy and cigars at the Metropolitan Club
in Washington, Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Zivkovic and
Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic expressed their
frustration with the government of the United States and
the leaders of the European Union and NATO.
“There are three things Serbs cannot stand,” said Mr.
Zivkovic.” An independent Kosovo, NATO and the United
States.”
This comes from a country that wants the help of the U.S.
government to get into the EU and the Partnership for
Peace, a U.S.-led military grouping. [Despite promises of aid
and support from the western powers, virtually nothing was
forthcoming.]
From the perspective of Mr. Svilanovic, the failure of
Serbia to make progress on integration into international
organization can be blamed primarily on Washington and
Brussels. After meetings with National Security Adviser
Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell, he
accused both of “a lack of courage” in pushing Serbia’s case.
As for leaders in the EU, Mr. Svilanovic proudly says he had
berated Javier Solava and Chris Patten, the EU’s primary
representatives on foreign policy, for the “mess” that the
EU is in and its failure to deal with the real problems of
Europe, which are in his view Russia, Belarus and Ukraine.
No doubt these gents appreciated the lecture. [History it seems
has proved Svilanovic right]
The Serbs are particularly indignant that they have not
received the international aid they expected. On this, they
blame the fact that they have not rebuilt the damaged bridges
in Belgrade – nor even their own Ministry of Defense. [With a
broken economy and no international assistance this was
inevitable]
Now, both the U.S. government and the EU have welcomed
Serbia’s new leadership, which inherited the mantle from the
previous reform-minded Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, who was
tragically assassinated this spring. From the perspective of
Washington and Brussels, however, there are some very specific
and major obstacles to Serbia’s rehabilitation.
One is the demand that the Serbs hand over Gen. Ratko Mladic
for prosecution as a war criminal in The Hague. He is one of
the architects of the awful ethnic cleansing campaign that
took place in Bosnia in the early 1990s against the country’s
Muslim population. Mr. Zivkovic’s new line is that his government
has no knowledge of the whereabouts of said general,though there
is a “95 percent chance” that he is no longer in Serbia – a claim
about which American officials are deeply skeptical. [Not much
incentive for the Serbs to handover General Mladic to The Hague
Tribunal – an illegal court that had shown deep bias against Serbs
from the moment of its creation]
Another rather amazing obstacle is that the Serbs are actually
suing eight NATO countries, including the United States, for
bombing Belgrade in 1999. These countries are all members of
the Partnership for Peace, which the Serbs are trying to join.
The present government has refused to drop the suit, initiated
by Mr. Milosevic, apparently hoping to use it as a bargaining chip
in exchange for a genocide case brought against the Serbian
people by Croatia and Bosnia. You probably have to be Serbian
to believe you can make progress under these circumstances.
[Compelling evidence had emerged before 2002 that the 1999 Kosovo
war had been an illegal intervention by the western countries and NATO
in the affairs of the Sovereign State of Serbia based on false
propaganda and outright deception about the Rambouillet negotiations]
All of which is a huge shame. The war-torn
Balkans is the final piece of the European continent that needs
to build peace and economic stability. Eastern and
Central Europe are well on their way to joining the EU and NATO.
Serbia could be an important part of this project, but until the
Serbs experience a change of attitude about their past and their
present, they will cut themselves off from their future. [The Balkans
was war-torn because of international intervention designed to
break-up Yugoslavia. That was the shame.]
* Helle Dale is deputy director of the
Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis
Institute for International Studies at the
Heritage Foundation.