Heads They Win, Tails We Lose

If they could, Sali Berisha and Dzohar Dudayev would send Slobodan Milosevic a telegram of support and a warning not to bite the latest carrot being offered by the West.

If the Serbian president accepts the offer the hopes of creating a Greater Albania and independent Checnya will be dashed in the long term. And vice versa: as long as Milosevic persists in including as many Serbs as he can in one state, every lover of redrawn borders will keep hoping their intentions can be achieved.

The Gordian knot is held together by a corset of logic into which international power centers are trying to cram the destructive ethnic chauvinist power centers which were born out of the final stages of the communist systems in eastern Europe. You need to recall that to understand why the West is offering Milosevic something he can't, but should, accept with everyone aware that the proposal was made just for the sake of making it. If he recognizes Croatia and Bosnia in exchange for a temporary suspension of the sanctions then, as the Washington press concluded, he would be "giving up on Greater Serbia". The Washington press added that that would further isolate the separatist Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia which would mean that they would have to relent and submit to the authorities in Zagreb and Sarajevo.

But he has to accept the offer if he wants to end the death throes of Serbia and Montenegro. Economic thinking was never the decisive element in the decisions taken by Tito's heirs, including Milosevic which he showed when he called for a boycott of Slovenian goods in his early political work on dismantling Yugoslavia. The logic of the fight for the former Yugoslavia's heritage forces him to reject the proposal.

"Milosevic has again been offered something he can't accept," Jens Reuter, an analyst at the Munich Institute for South East Europe told VREME. He added that the latest Contact Group offer reflected the lowest common denominator and the stands of its members (Russia, the US, Great Britain, France and Germany).

Reuter said the West was panicking again, fearing an outbreak of the real Balkan war which was avoided over the past three years and that is why the Contact Group had to come up with something. "If Milosevic refuses, he's left with his hand in the cookie jar again," he said and added that Western pressure on Croatian president Franjo Tudjman will remove the threat of a new war. "Croatia isn't well economically and even the shadow of a new war would kill its tourist trade which brought in a billion dollars last year, along with all other trade."

As if in support of that theory, US secretary of state Warren Christopher said Tudjman "will be sorry" if he doesn't change his decision to end the UNPROFOR mandate. Christopher told a senate foreign relations committee that Tudjman is probably hoping to reach some kind of agreement with Milosevic. "We aren't at all sure he can do that."

German weekly Der Spiegel revealed a political intrigue which, although only a shaky rumor, reflects the change of mood towards Alija Izetbegovic as well. The weekly said the US are pressuring its NATO partner Turkey to diplomatically support Izetbegovic's replacement because it fears he could fall under the influence of Moslem fundamentalists. The weekly quoted Turkish daily Sabah which accused Izetbegovic of embezzling funds earmarked for aid to Bosnia. Spiegel added that Turkish prime minister Tansu Ciler is using that pretext to humiliate Izetbegovic's friend and her political opponent, Islamic Prosperity party leader Nejmedin Erbakan who was allegedly involved in the embezzlement. All that coincided with a visit by an Iranian ayatollah to Sarajevo who promised all Bosnians "of all faiths" a happy future in an Islamic state.

It's inconceivable that US republican senator Robert Dole (the most likely candidate to run for president on the republican ticket) would want to be seen in the company of an Iranian ayatollah supplying arms to the Sarajevo government. Still, the war in Bosnia has become an important element in US political infighting which means a solution will be increasingly harder to reach as next year's presidential elections approach. Clinton would like to see the conflict resolved as soon as possible, the republicans see it as a tool to accuse the president of impotence with. In that context, every proposal to end the war in former Yugoslavia is inspected to see possible repercussions at home.

The West isn't offering Milosevic a choice of stick and carrot but a choice of a big and small stick: bombing and abandoning everything he has grabbed. The lucky thing for the people he rules is that there is no real reason for him to choose yet and everything remains only a threat. Their misfortune is that the longer they wait for his decision the worse their lives get.