Belgrade in Jahorinska Jaruga

Robert Frasure, the US man in the Contact Group, came to Belgrade again on Wednesday, May 31 to finally get "recognition of Bosnia" and a "full distancing of Belgrade from the Bosnian Serb leaders" "on behalf of the entire Contact Group" from Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic.

When Frasure was last in Belgrade, Milosevic felt a certain psychological advantage because he showed restraint when Tudjman "liberated Jasenovac", and now he feels it because he's been asked to mediate in liberating the UN observers and troops turned into hostages by Karadzic.

If he read the foreign press, Milosevic knew the confusion among the Western governments and he could see the image of UNPROFOR which recalled the former Yugoslav army (JNA) which he believed could end the war in just 15 days; an army without a supreme command, goals, seemingly neutral, whose men become hostages, get surrounded in barracks with the water cut off, which is being pushed by interventionists, Western housewives, pacifists and intellectuals into air strikes, at least one punitive bombardment which TV presents as a video game. He can easily assess the people who believed the clean war myth after Desert Storm are now concluding that a dangerous Somalia virus is plaguing the software.

Milosevic should not get too happy about it now since he has to conclude that most of the actors have only one option: getting some semblance of success ("diplomatic breakthrough") while the wrangling over the hostages is underway.

Great Britain Chargé D'Affaires in Belgrade, Ivor Roberts, was seen in Zvornik warmly meeting with Nikola Koljevic who he met, BETA news agency reported, to voice a "direct warning" in regard to the safety of the UN prisoners and to "clearly make known how serious the situation they created is".

The Serbian president's position is even more difficult since it seems he'll be forced to subdue Radovan who has just declared the rest of the world a warring side, annulled all agreements with the UN and stopped showing respect for Security Council resolutions and considerations and Serb military honor, as the Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO) said in a reaction.

Zarko Korac (GSS) said Karadzic took pictures of the hostages in chains and took Belgrade hostage - which might be true.

Belgrade officials issued fiercely worded condemnations of the hostage taking but there were words of understanding from Serbia as well.

Serbian Democratic Party (DSS) leader, Vojislav Kostunica, said the bombings "diplomatically put a message from the international community to the Bosnian Serbs and they understood the message and returned it in kind".

Milosevic would prefer the message to go back to its sender, in other words break another of Karadzic's teeth and leave him to save the Serbs with some political agreement in the autumn, but Dragoljub Micunovic (Democratic Center) who recently had contacts with British diplomats, believes the West is running out of time and doesn't want to miss an opportunity.

Besides Federal Deputy Prime Minister Jovan Zebic, Micunovic was the most categorical in predicting the arrangement would be completed in June. Zebic naturally called it the lifting of the sanctions.

Milosevic is now being pressured into renouncing, as the West, Bosniacs and Croats like to put it, the Idea of a Greater Serbia. That is now being repeated by nationalists and pacifists in Belgrade.

Milosevic, who never personally called it that, is now indicating that he hasn't been part of that story since Geneva where he screamed his head off at Karadzic ("Fuck you and the constitutive nation!").

On the other hand, he wants to show that he was the first to realize (before Karadzic) that neither Tudjman nor Izetbegovic (who can't get America to wage war for a sovereign Bosnia despite the bloodthirsty help from Karadzic) have the strength to politically integrate the territory between the Drava and the Adriatic without Serb approval even if the Serbs were to flee in fear. That territory now includes two Croat, two Moslem and three Serb state structures, internationally recognized, self-proclaimed and otherwise.

The behavior of the Serbian authorities towards Western Slavonia refugees perhaps testifies that the Belgrade regime understands that the Serbs across the Drina have lost the war demographically, that 400,000 refugees from Bosnia and Croatia won't go home and that Serbia does not have the strength to absorb new migrants. The direction of the Serb migration in this war is nothing new, old roads were reinforced and Belgrade has grown considerably for example while new adventures would only increase the numbers.

Among all the people who criticized Milosevic's negotiations, Seselj was the loudest in terms of both extremist logic and brazenness. Once he announced Milosevic's steps, now he does the same for Karadzic: he was the first to announce the union of the RS and RSK as the "only logical answer to the Z-4 plan". On May 15 in Pale he said all of Serbia would be thrilled with the union of the western Serb lands and added that the eastern Serbs, after the Milosevic regime falls, will start the creation of a single Serb state.

In mid-April the Socialists stepped up their attacks on the "war-mongering trio of Seselj, Kostunica and Djindjic", but after the rally to defend the media was called off last winter the trio has not appeared together. Democratic Party (DS) leader Djindjic openly withdrew from Seselj's embrace and said the DS would not turn out for the June rally. Kostunica seems to be following that lead.

Djindjic, Kostunica, Nikola Milosevic of the Serbian Liberal party (SL) and Slobodan Rakitic of the Sabor National Party (SNS) persistently attacked the recognition of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

It's not clear how Milosevic will react to the fierce attacks by the Episcopal assembly of the Serbian Orthodox Church which said on May 27 that the recognition of Bosnia-Herzegovina "would automatically make the just, defensive war of the Serb people into an aggression: and that "the most painful thing is that those solutions will inevitably become the future source of conflicts and bloodshed". The bishops accused "spiritual and party leaders among the former communists" of turning themselves into peacemakers in the eyes of the world although they decided about the war.

Last week, Yugoslav Foreign Minister Vladislav Jovanovic first said the FRY "never disregarded the recognition of the former Yugoslav republics" and added that "the door has been open to recognition for the past two years". He added that "that includes the resolving of political problems first created by the violent departure of the former Yugoslav republics from former Yugoslavia".

He said that the "Serb people in the RS have gotten the right to self-determination under the Contact Group plan and other statements and assurances from all sides", that "the RS as a state entity can achieve its statehood within the future loose union of Bosnia-Herzegovina and achieve all forms of close links with the FRY through the confederation" which he said should not be disregarded since "war is not necessary or inevitable".

A day later when he was asked if conditions were right to recognize Bosnia, Jovanovic said: "they might be getting there".