One-on-One Plan

Should we expect the beginning of Serbian-Albanian dialogue soon? It has long been announced, there were a lot of unsuccessful or sham initiatives and rumors of mediating missions and secret negotiations conducted in diplomatic quarters or in some other neutral place. But, in recent weeks and days, rumors coming from official places indicate that the question of Kosovo is ready for the negotiating table. Two important, officially unconfirmed, but also undenied, pieces of information have arrived from Geneva. According to the first, Co-Chairmen of the Peace Conference on the Former Yugoslavia, Lord David Owen and Thorwald Stoltenberg, during their recent meeting with ethnic Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova, presented the latter with a Draft of a project for the resolution of the Kosovo issue, which had been prepared in the Geneva Conference offices and with the so-called Contact Group for Bosnia. The same project had previously been dispatched to Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. The second news item is perhaps even more attractive. The Pristina Albanian-language weekly "Koha", referring to sources in Geneva, wrote that Milosevic, via Owen and Stoltenberg, had sent Rugova a message in which he expressed his readiness to meet behind closed doors. Milosevic believes that the meeting should be held somewhere near Belgrade and without mediators. Rugova is currently touring Europe and has not made any statements which would confirm or deny that he has received such an offer, so we do not know if he has answered it or asked for time to think it over and consult with his associates. It has been learned unofficially at the Pristina headquarters of the Democratic Alliance of Kosovo that Rugova was very happy about the talks with Lord Owen and Stoltenberg. "We got more than we expected", he is alleged to have said on the telephone. He was obviously thinking of the project and not Milosevic's offer to meet.

The contents of the Geneva offer have not yet been disclosed in either Pristina or Belgrade, so it remains a mystery as to which of its elements made Rugova happier than he expected to be. In principle, this document should not contain any big surprises. It probably contains the compromise ideas which have been in circulation, as some kind of a first step in the implementation of the Washington Agreement reached in May 1993, an agreement which leaves Kosovo within the framework of the present Yugoslavia/Serbia, but demands a renewal of the ethnic Albanians' human and political rights in Kosovo, which was understood as ensuring a special status, i.e. widespread autonomy. Is Rugova happy simply because the documents leave an open door for different options and the entire specter of solutions usually offered as compensation for the basic concession of Kosovo remaining part of Yugoslavia/Serbia (strong international guarantees)? Elements of statehood for Kosovo, full cultural and educational autonomy, open borders with neighboring countries, and even confederal links with Albania in the event that such a model is applied to other hotspots in the Balkans, meaning the status of Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia.

It is difficult to assume that there isn't a very strong correlation between the projects for the Serb Krajinas in Croatia (which are said to have been drawn up by the mini-contact group for Croatia and seem to be the basis of the current Zagreb-Knin and Zagreb-Belgrade negotiations) and the Geneva project for Kosovo. It is possible that the first drafts of these projects were drawn up by the same team of experts or that their work was closely coordinated, because the matter concerns problems and solutions which, from the international point of view, are symmetrical. At the same time, the presentation of compromise solutions for Kosovo and Krajina, and basically for Bosnia, are the international community's most efficient political instrument to limit Serbian aspirations, which are obviously at odds with their principles. The Serbs began the chaos in the Balkans and restraining them is the most efficient means for ending this chaos. Therefore, if the Serbs are made to accept the same arrangement for Kosovo and ethnic Albanians as they demand for territories controlled by Serbs across the Drina River, the international mediating forums will have done more than half the job of resolving the Balkan crisis. The other half lies in persuading Croats and ethnic Albanians to accept a compromise solution, which should be much easier because the Croats and ethnic Albanians have objectively weaker negotiating positions and cannot blackmail the international community with threats of prolonging the war, as the Serbs are doing.

But, even if the Geneva plan for Kosovo can ensure the necessary compromise for negotiations to start, something that has been missing until now, it still isn't clear if all political conditions have been met to get them going, especially for a meeting between Milosevic and Rugova. Milosevic's offer can be attractive because it recognizes Rugova as the only legitimate ethnic Albanian representative, but it contains conditions which could force a wary Rugova to wait a while before reaching a decision. Namely, Milosevic wants the meeting to take place behind closed doors, meaning without the presence of a third party and supposedly as close to Belgrade as possible. The exclusion of a "third party" and the insistence upon "proximity" to Belgrade seem to stipulate the internal character of the talks, while Rugova has always insisted upon talks in the presence of international observers (thus implying the internationalization of the Kosovo question at the very beginning and guaranteeing that the agreed solution will have full international guarantees). Rugova would also wish to meet with Milosevic on neutral ground if possible, thus avoiding the risk of prejudicing the sensitive question of territorial sovereignty. In setting such conditions, the procedural difficulties encountered at the beginning of the Zagreb-Knin negotiations are being repeated - when the meeting's location took on strong symbolical connotations - for one side, it was "submission" and for the other a tacit acceptance of "secession". This is probably the reason why Rugova will not accept Milosevic's offer immediately. But, he won't reject it outright either, demanding that the meeting be held in some other place and in the presence of international guarantors.

Both Rugova and Milosevic fear reactions at home. Resistance to eventual negotiations and compromises are very strong in Serb extremist circles. Part of the Serbian opposition, including former Yugoslav President Dobrica Cosic and the Serbian Orthodox Church, have already launched a strong campaign in Kosovo with the hope of weakening Milosevic's position and discouraging him from new "acts of submission" and concessions to the international community. The "Serbian movement", headed by Kosta Bulatovic, Solevic, and other leaders who brought Milosevic to power (but who appear to have worked according to Cosic's instructions), is active in Kosovo again. The Kosovo Serbs fear that Milosevic will turn his back on them in the end. Kosta Bulatovic said in an interview to the Belgrade weekly "NIN": "If Milosevic abandoned the Bosnian Serb Republic, in which he has people and territory, overnight, what is going to happen to this part of Serbia (Kosovo), in which he doesn't have people or territory". Serbian Orthodox Church ideologue Bishop Atanasije feared the same outcome when he said: "I foresaw a long time ago, and I pray to God that this prophecy does not come true, that the third treacherous act of the present Serbian President will be linked to Kosovo." Serb extremists in Kosovo and their sympathizers in Serbia have offered the Serbian public a new, sharply-worded petition in which they urge the immediate implementation of measures for the mass colonization of Kosovo and the expulsion of ethnic Albanians, with the idea of achieving a quicker change in Kosovo's ethnic structure, in favor of the Serbs before it is too late. Basically, the petition is a call to a new war and new mass ethnic cleansing and genocide, this time against ethnic Albanians.

That Milosevic is not indifferent to the strengthening of Serb extremism in Kosovo was proved by the speedy reaction of the Socialist Party of Serbia's (SPS) propaganda sector and other state and so-called humanitarian institutions in the service of the regime. Milosevic's regime has always had its fingers in different pies at the same time and played with several options. It does not wish to cede the resolution of the Kosovo issue to radical parties, Cosic and the Church. Milosevic's number one policeman, Radmilo Bogdanovic, has offered ethnic Albanians a harsh alternative: either they agree to negotiate over Kosovo as a problem of Serbia's internal organization in a state governed by law, or they will be expelled as separatists. Bratislava "Buba" Morina, president of the Serbian High Commissioner for Refugees, was even more specific when she announced the building of 100,000 houses in Kosovo for Serb refugees from Croatia and Bosnia, and urged that around 120,000 ethnic Albanian refugees whom Western European countries threaten to repatriate to Yugoslavia be prevented from returning. Analysts believe that this is just an empty threat, because Serbia does not have enough money to finance the construction of 100,000 houses and it is hard to believe that Serb refugees, mostly women, children and the elderly who have suffered so much already, will agree to be settled in an unstable area such as Kosovo at a time when the Serbian authorities have decided to transplant entire factories from the region and the Church is moving its treasures into Serbia proper. With regard to the opening of the Serbian-Albanian negotiating process, there is a dilemma of principle - is it better to hurry and risk uncontrolled reactions or to put off the beginning of negotiations for some time in order to be better prepared and prevent the risk of uncontrolled reactions. Serbian-Albanian relations have long been in a stalemate. Even though the situation in Kosovo is still very bad and tense, both sides have managed to maintain peace due to a balance of fear. Under present circumstances neither side needs war: the Serbs are already involved in a long and exhausting war, which has not brought a definite outcome after three years, and the opening of a new front would be a great risk; the ethnic Albanians because they are militarily and organizationally inferior, and strategically and psychologically unprepared for an armed rebellion in Kosovo and an all-out Serbian-ethnic Albanian war, one only Albania would step into.

On the other hand, it is clear to all that the peace in Kosovo is just an illusion, a fragile state in which both sides have just postponed war. To this very day, nothing has been done to create conditions for a peaceful solution of the Kosovo question. On the contrary, the conflict has been exacerbated to the point of exploding, after which there is no going back. Kosovo was and is a powder keg, an infernal machine which could explode at any moment and create chaos in the Balkans. And wider.

How to act under such circumstances? Some say that Kosovo is a time bomb and that the clock is ticking off the minutes before the explosion. Apart from the Serbian and ethnic Albanian countdowns, which luckily are still measured in weeks and months and not days and hours, third powers potentially interested in causing even greater chaos in the Balkans could become activated. If the time before the explosion is running out, then they should be speedily de-activated, before it's too late.

The second point of view is more sophisticated and calls for patience in opening the Kosovo question and for a cautious approach. It takes as its point of departure the fact that Kosovo is an infernal machine of the type activated by pulling the wire. The current balance of fear serves as a thin wire linking the fuse and the detonators and all pulling or pushing could tip the balance to one or the other side and result in an explosion. According to this theory, Kosovo will in fact explode when it is opened as an issue and concrete solutions start being sought. This could happen in ten years or in the next month.

One of the reasons why the international project for the resolution of the Kosovo question is being kept secret is probably that its announcement at this moment, among the Serbian and ethnic Albanian public, could have the effect of a bomb. International diplomacy has probably drawn a lesson from its earlier mediating actions in the Balkans that not only did not stop the war, but speeded it up and intensified it. And even where the best intentions are concerned, diplomatic moves can be premature and do more harm than good.