Racing Through The Fog

All that traffic, and no results! Negotiations between the Croats and the Serbs have been conducted on three levels these last few days: Zagreb-Knin, Zagreb-Belgrade, and, indirectly, within the mini Contact-Group, but no side has let on that some kind of progress has been made.

The stumbling block is obviously too big: Knin gives priority to the economy and traffic, but Zagreb considers this irrelevant until resolutions on Croatia's political reintegration are carried through; Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic would like to continue with the "normalization" started last winter, but Croatian President Franjo Tudjman now thinks that it is not enough and wants bilateral recognition, and all of this is present in the mini Contact Group's rhetoric, whose mysterious plan is warmly supported only by Croatia. Belgrade is polite and restrained, while Knin is definitely opposed. All three negotiating positions are full of vagueness, tactical and behind-the-scenes moves, even though things are much clearer than they wish to admit. It can be said that there are no longer any dilemmas over the most important issue, or rather, that Croatia's reintegration is now a definite thing.

It would be more appropriate to say "some kind of reintegration", because it is impossible to forecast how long it will last, what degree of autonomy it will bring to the Croatian Serbs, and most important, will Croatia have to pay for it by giving up its peripheral territories bordering with Serbia and Montenegro. And this is enough to leave the current negotiations floating about in a triangle made up of three different speeds in resolving the problem: fast (Croatia), slow (Serbia) and never (Knin). Croatia's emphasis on speed last week has led to the setting of deadlines: Upon returning from Topusko (site of negotiations), Croatian Prime Minister Hrvoje Sarinic said that Croatia demanded that the agreement with Knin be signed by November 21, or it would be abandoned. Tudjman stepped up the threat by saying that UNPROFOR's mandate would be terminated.

This ritual venting of anger on the peace-keeping forces is linked to a not-very-firm promise given to Croatia, but which its diplomacy, for want of anything better, considers important. This summer, for the first time, the formulation on bilateral recognition within Yugoslavia's and Croatia's borders was entered into documents drawn up by the Contact Group and subsequently UN Resolution 947, so that the normalization agreed upon last winter by Yugoslav Foreign Minister Vladislav Jovanovic and Croatian Foreign Minister Mate Granic, received some kind of a framework to be used. No deadlines were set down, but it was obvious that the international mediators, occupied wholly with Bosnia until then, had started moving the center of their activities in the direction of Croatia. Zagreb obviously wished to take advantage of this new trend. This is why the stand adopted this spring, that there would be no announcement of a Tudjman-Milosevic meeting until Yugoslavia recognized Croatia, has been turned into a cornerstone of Croatian foreign policy and is being insisted upon to this very day. The only concession was the agreement to renew contacts between Zagreb and Belgrade at the level of foreign ministers, which began on Friday with a repetition of the warning that they might be discontinued if they do not lead to bilateral recognition.

There is no satisfactory explanation for Zagreb's hurry. The prevailing belief is that, with regard to reintegration, time is on Zagreb's side rather than Knin's, considering that economic, and increasingly political and military (though least of all) advantages are on its side. The bloc of "Serbian lands" is no longer compact, so that a quarrel with one does not automatically entail a fight with all the others. Tudjman, however, insists that the lifting of sanctions against Yugoslavia be linked to the tidying up of the situation in Croatia. He probably fears that Belgrade might give him the slip, i.e. that once sanctions have been lifted, Yugoslavia could become an even tougher negotiator.

But, Croatia does not have all the time in the world, most of all because of the refugees' impatience. For the time being, they are loyal, but only because the authorities inundate them with daily promises of returning home soon and don't shrink from channeling their dissatisfaction against live targets among other endangered categories of the population (the eviction of civilians from former Yugoslav Peoples' Army flats is coldly justified with the fact that the families living in them are "aggressors", while their victims are living in makeshift huts). But once the refugees notice that they have been dropped from everyday politics, they could run amok and then the whole construction of lies and manipulation will come crashing down on the authorities.

A second and no lesser reason for haste is the insistence of international mediators, especially the US and Germany, that the Croatian-Muslim Federation be raised to level of a "grumpy" alliance, something they seem to have achieved, albeit after a lot of hard work. The military cooperation of Bosnian Croat and Muslim units in battles for Kupres indicates that more progress has been achieved in this field than has reached the public. The involvement of regular Croatian forces in these battles confirms that Zagreb is prepared to invest in the new-old alliance more than was thought. The only unknown factor is how this will affect Croatia's relations with the Serbs. This question is raised now with less histrionics than before, because while Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Croats are fighting, Serbian representatives are coming to Zagreb - which could be taken as a message to Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic that Belgrade is no longer interested in his fate. For the time being, Belgrade has not transferred this neglect to Knin and the citizens of Knin are not indifferent to the fact that Muslim-Croat forces are pressing their right flank, threatening to cut them off from their links with their Serb brethren.

It follows that Serbia cannot say publicly that it is not interested in what is happening in Bosnia. This again means that Croat-Serb relations are slowly returning to the Bosnian matrix, and the idea of resolving them at the same time, or first in Croatia and then in Bosnia, explains the furor of diplomatic activities in Zagreb, and is proving illusory. This is borne out by the persistent and noisy opposition of the greater part of the political opposition in Croatia, and discreetly, by a part of the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), to negotiations with Belgrade and Knin, especially now when it looks like the Bosnian Serb army is showing signs of fatigue for the first time. Pressure in Zagreb is growing for a final break of the two-year concubinage with Belgrade and a return to marital bliss with Sarajevo, which to a certain extent has already taken place. But, regardless of whether this is just a short-term manoeuver, it has become clear that Bosnia-Herzegovina is no longer going to be used for a settling of accounts between Serbs and Croats, and that it has entered the game as a relatively strong third player, whom it is better to have on one's side than against one. Bosnia-Herzegovina's advantage lies in the fact that it has the least trouble in raising support for its actions on the world diplomatic scene, including military ones (the Muslims are the only ones who have been recognized as fighting a war for "liberation"). In this way, the above-mentioned triangle of interests is turning into a quadrangle, prolonging the reaching of a political solution in these regions, including the resolution of Croat-Serb relations.

Zagreb's attempts at directing pressure towards Milosevic in an effort to bring about a speedy recognition do not have much chance of success, because it has obviously been assessed that Milosevic has made sufficient concessions on the Drina River, and that it would be too much to expect him to do the same on the Danube immediately. This is why Croatia cannot expect much more from international mediators, or more than it already has. Tudjman's statement last week that what the papers were saying about the mini Contact-Group plan didn't suit Croatia means that hope in finding a solution this way is fading.

It turns out that the only thing which could jolt matters from the present deadlock would be deep political changes in Croatia itself. But, if this were a realistic option, then this story wouldn't be so painful and complex, but more likely irrelevant.