By Ilija Djukic

The Dayton reaffirmation of Yugoslavia's disappearance as a state, the end to war, restoration of peace and agreement to live next to each other (since we couldn't live with each other) is interpreted by official Belgrade as the triumph of the Serbian ruling party's continuous peace policy.

There is no doubt, of course, that our negotiators in Dayton should take the credit for the peace agreement. However, along with the other pyromaniacs in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, they are also credited with the war, much more than with the peace. The triumph with which the defeat of the policy is being transformed into a victory, is crushing in itself. It is aimed at preventing the actual and complete sobering up of the citizens, the people, the nation in whose name all this had been done. There is no victory! There are no grounds for triumph! Everyone is a loser! Besides accepting the peace accords, the world has already voiced its expectations. The FRY and the other signatories are expected to: implement the peace accords and maintain peace, respect the human rights of refugees and displaced persons, respect human and national rights, promote open market economy and privatization, respect property, develop regional cooperation in the former Yugoslavia.

Clearly, no-one will be able to join in European political and economic structures by themselves, leaving behind a suitcase full of unresolved problems - either with their neighbors or at home. Barring the category called implementing peace accords and maintaining peace, pressure and force will not be applied. The world, Europe, the key international factors which were bothered by our chaos and tragedy unfolding before everyone's eyes, were provoked into redefining their own mutual relationships and goals, and have imposed peace and shown they are determined to maintain it.

Everything else now is up to all of us living in the states created from the former Yugoslavia. We have been left to sober up. They will be satisfied with peace and stability and in the Balkans. The actual, true, full reintegration into the international community and keeping in step with the world, will depend on us and it would be best if we did that, found ourselves and our place again, before they call us to order once again.

The sanctions have been suspended. Partially, as expected. What remains is the "outer wall" of the sanctions - international political, economic and financial organizations and structures (even participation at an International Red Cross conference was denied recently).

And, just as there is an outer wall of sanctions, there is also an "internal wall". It is composed of the exhaustion of our people and economy. At the same time, people's hopes and expectations about what would come after the sanctions were lifted were unwisely raised, instilling hope that the country would easily and rapidly recuperate.

We have parliaments without parliamentarianism, democracy without free media, an opposition in the majority but unable to influence decision-making, authorities in the minority but with developed habits and methods of "executing power" and using the state, the society, the citizens, the nation to its ends. We have an incomplete state with constitutions mutually exclusive in many points...

For all these reasons, the FRY's reintegration into the international community and its full affirmation will be long and difficult. It does not end but rather begins with the peace accord and suspension of the embargo. We face not only the mutual recognition of the states created from the former Yugoslavia, but also the actual regulation of relations with them, restoration of trust, credibility, the development of relations with old neighbors. We face the normalization of relations with other countries, with Europe, its leading countries. Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy.... Then there is Russia, which will objectively be repressed because of its problems, but nevertheless remains a partner, particularly if we rely on its democratic forces, on its forces of change, not on the ones pulling it back. There is also the long and difficult road of restoring trust and cooperation with the USA.

Peace is a chance for a new beginning, real, radical changes. This implies actual and full political and economic democratization, it implies parliamentarianism, the freedom of the press, human rights, a dialogue with the national minorities and resolution of their problems, introduction of a market economy and privatization together with a state welfare program. It also implies the construction and adoption of a democratic political national program. The Different behavior of others must not and cannot be used as an excuse. In general, it implies the construction of a state which will serve the citizens, not vice versa.

The question remains whether we can do this, can the current regime in Serbia do that, is it able to step over its own shadow, will the opposition, which already has too many leaders, be able to find a common denominator and fall into one line.

There is a need for radical changes, there is energy to make them and it should be unleashed. All of this calls for sobering up from everything that has happened and that "happened" to us, not for the triumph we have been exposed to day and night. That is what blurs the sobering up.

(The author is a diplomat who served as FRY Foreign Minister in Milan Panic's Government)