Americans In Kosovo

Pristina will be getting a new US information Center but Belgrade will be getting back its American Library in Cika Ljubina street. The deal was made during US State Secretary Warren Christopher's visit to Belgrade on 4 February.

Vreme's Washington source claims that the trade-off "Pristina center in exchange of Belgrade Library" took the following course: the Serbian President heard the US wanted to open an information center in Kosovo and asked why the American Library was shut down on January 1 this year. The American cited budget cuts and high rental fees. His host responded: We'll let you use the building for free.

It was an offer Christopher could not refuse. Instead, he shook hands with Milosevic and gave a short press briefing on his way to airport Surcin, listing everything he got from Milosevic.

Who fared better? As soon as Christopher's plane took off, the Serbian propaganda machinery was put into operation and represented the opening of the US Information Center in Pristina in flying colors; "Americans can open such and similar centers also in Novi Sad, Nis and other towns. It should be understood as a fast move contributing to improving contacts and understanding between our two nations. Books and movies are not proof of support to secession" (Politika).

All those who had until then claimed the US request to be officially present in Kosovo was an attack on the country's sovereignty and dignity were immediately shut up.

Many Belgraders, fans of US literature and magazines and frequent visitors of the Library have thus gained a lot from Christopher's visit. They had protested in vain against the US decision to close down of the Library last autumn.

Except for Vreme, no-one joined them in their protest, and they didn't even dream they were supported by someone so high up as the Serbian President. The regime had acted totally disinterested, but it seems it wasn't 'secretly happy', as it then seemed. Relations with the US have become a top priority, "step by step", as Milosevic and Christopher said. The Belgrade quid pro quo of 4 February represents one of such steps.

USIA has thus got an expensive gift from Belgrade - free premises in the heart of town. If only FRY could be so lucky in New York. The New York Information Center of the ex-Yugoslavia (whose successor FRY aspires to be) has been closed since June 1992. The lessor is demanding that SFRY's successor pay three million dollars in compensation for pulling out of the lease contract ahead of time. Whatever happens, the settlement will be extremely expensive, but who could have dreamt that the state would fall apart and a blockade imposed on it when the contract was being drawn up?

Kosovo Albanians, whose leader Ibrahim Rugova said he would open a Kosovo information center in Washington in March, can remain calm. They will not be forced to sign a disastrous contract, with horrible punishment ensuing in case of "Act of God". They entrusted the opening of the center and the drawing of the contract to the attested company Ruder Fin.

 

Brothers in Arms

Judging by the scant Tanjug and Slovene news agency STA reports, the exhibition of Slovene painter Andrej Ajdic opened in the Belgrade Museum of Contemporary Art on February 9, one day after the Slovene Cultural Holiday. The news item would not have been so interesting if the exhibition was not attended by a 'Slovene delegation' consisting of a group of Slovene businessmen and headed by General Director of Iskra Holding Dusan Sesok.

According to Iskra Holding Managerial Board member Joze Godec, the exhibition is the first significant sign of thawing economic relations between Slovenia and the FRY. 'When we found out about Ajdic's project, we decided to involve ourselves in the organization of the exhibition. We thought it would be an ideal chance to restore contacts with our partners in the FRY and promote our production program."

The results of Iskra's interest in art and "partners in Serbia" are already quite tangible, according to the terse reports of the Slovene media; Iskra allegedly sold the Serbian market "telephones, batteries and certain electronic elements". The whole 'catch' lies in none other than the "certain electronic elements". Ljubljana military experts are convinced that Iskra's breakthrough on the "Serbian market" is linked to military technology. The ex-Iskra-Elektrooptika, now Fotona d.d., which is still linked to Iskra by capital (as Iskra Holding is it majority share-holder) makes important electro-optical instruments which are a relevant component in tank equipment.

Not too many people have forgotten that the arms trade was one of the mainstays of the ex-Yugoslav budget. The immorality of the business and involvement of certain federal defence ministers had been frequently the topic of newspaper articles in the ex-Yugoslavia, particularly in Slovenia.

However, while the discovery of unidentified containers with weapons on the Maribor airport and other 'weapon scandals' were still rocking Slovenia, it has become clear that the ex-Yugoslav fledgling states are not immune to the old habits either. We are again witnessing yesterday's brothers not only pointing guns at each other, but happily trading them.

 

Interview: Slobodan Snajder

Drama writer Slobodan Snajder has been living in Germany over the past few years; his columns are regularly published in the Rijeka-based paper Novi list.

Do you feel like a writer in exile?

Not in the sense Dzevad Karahasan does, with a soldier with three children now living in his apartment in Sarajevo, if I understood him correctly. Not in the sense in which hundreds of thousands, maybe millions in our country were forced to exile, because I made the choice myself. When I say Germany is my chosen fatherland, I mean I chose it, it was not forced on me as it was on many others. This, however, does not mean Germany is an easy chosen fatherland. For someone who reasons critically, or at least tries to, Germany is a difficult mistress, just like Croatia.

Some believe you had at first supported Croatia's new democracy.

Can you cite one piece of evidence upon which such opinions are based?

I was left without the firm I founded, unemployed, in political revenge. I don't think that's true, as I am one of its sharpest critics. I, of course, criticise the fatal syndrome and banal dictatorship which has overrun the Serbian spirit too. I think I have the right to say some things and that these things will be better heard in Serbia from me than from other people. And I exercise this right. On the other hand, if I didn't believe in the possibility of Croatia's true democratic transformation, I would really emigrate, both physically and spiritually. In this way, I am in between two worlds. As I was in the ex-Yugoslavia, so I am now, no matter how destroyed both worlds are.

Hopefully, the war is over. Who won? It seems no-one gained.

No-one gained. This was a dirty war. It is difficult to explain theoretically what we all know: it partly resembled a real inter-state war, a civil war, a Neolithic conflict over grazing fields, water and slaves, but it was waged by state-of-the art technology. The question arises whether any war in the world has ever ended, or is it just an introduction to an endless series of conflicts? I believe in the latter version, unfortunately, particularly if some serious democratic transformations do not take place in the capitals of the war, i.e. Belgrade and Zagreb (this sounds like altruism now). If the regimes there do not change. It seems our two states, with miserable Bosnia in between, will use the so-called peace to prepare madly for an even more horrific war.

Many people are still shocked by the amount of evil and anger that erupted in the former Yugoslavia.

All of us are shocked and angry because of everything that happened to us and I wrote in the beginning that it would happen to us. You may remember a letter I sent to Belgrade actors in the autumn of 1991 which appeared simultaneously in Borba and Vjesnik. It foretold everything: destruction of great proportions, with the victims I envisaged. And everyone told me, "Mister Snajder you are a drama writer, you dramatize the biographies you chose, you dramatize history, you dramatize your own existence, and your assessments are also dramatic". Although dramatic, they actually took place. Because no-one was really prepared to determine history in the sense of the German work aufarbeiten - to do something by consuming, by completing it to face the causes of hatred and evil. The seed of evil and hatred remains covered by a thin layer. What the communists had actually tried to do had remained within a very thin foil, while they touched nothing deep down. What is erupting from Bosnia even physically resembles the turn of the century. The communists simply left things essentially untouched. A superficial heroism was developed, which Kusturica so well ridicules it in his wonderful movie called Underground. There was no readiness to count the victims, to see who was who in the slaughter of 1941-1945, to settle accounts, to reconcile the people over the graves. It rebounded, not as a farce, as Marx thought, but as an even greater tragedy. As that readiness does not exist today either, I fear things will be repeated endlessly.

With the exception of the vociferous advocates of national consciousness, many claim the intellectuals are to blame for keeping silent. Do you agree?

I am convinced that a lot of blame lies in that type of silence. I had said there were different kinds of silence. Consent is silence. At times of general euphoria, people who keep silent are considered as approving. That's the problem. I believe that many writers in Serbia are now withdrawing, having realised that such schemes lead nowhere and making up for their silence in a way.

I am not overjoyed at having been born as a Croatian intellectual, but I would now not be a Serbian one either. They have a lot to do in another hundred years. And they will have to, of course, as there is no other way to set up a civil state, but to do things and extradite to the Hague everyone the Hague thinks it needs, no matter what nationality they are.

What do you think of the ex-Yugoslavia today?

I think it's a dream of the past, but, as any dream or wish, there is no sense in demolishing it. I don't think it was such a bad state as it is now reputed to be. It was eventually incapable of functioning, which was obvious, but it deserved a better fate. A civilized divorce would have been possible, instead of the barbarian flinging of dishes. I simply want to say that we could have dreamed that dream better. And nothing will convince me now that it had to happen and that the victims were necessary. Finally, these victims brought no sense to anyone yet.

None of the issues over which the war was waged have been really resolved. If there are no democratic transformations, if public opinion institutions, like power control, do not start functioning, a new war will erupt. I fear that weariness is in question, that the war matrix has been used up, unfortunately, only in the technological and psychological senses.

 

Legal Illegal Radio Stations

Private stations are flourishing. The state tolerates them, because the people breathe more easily. Folk music and no politics - of course. Someone not so well informed about the situation here would interpret the number of private media in Serbia as a sign of the greatest freedom of information in the world. When radio stations are in question, for instance, assessments are that several hundred media are operating in the country's interior beside the state-owned ones who are members of the Association of Local Radio Stations. Only few of them have airing permits. Surprisingly, these private radio stations are independent in the sense that they are fully independent from their chief activity - informing. For, with the exception of a few, these media have a number of common denominators besides being illegal, they are insufficiently technologically equipped, they lack expert staff, their programs are dominated by folk music and absence of all current, particularly political events. Of course the more ambitious ones air local news and Tanjug news items. The state has not shown the wish to control the widespread parallel information system yet, though.

It goes without saying that there are conditions to be granted a broadcast permit by the Republican Communications and Traffic Ministry.

How relative these conditions are is best corroborated by the cases of those on whom the state decided to prove it is ruled by law. Like Radio Kosjeric. Although it was set up by the municipal authorities (which is not a mitigating circumstance as the opposition is in power there), the station received notice to cease working. As the radio continued airing its programs, because the municipal authorities decided it was their constitutional obligation to inform the citizens, the Director Ivan Jovanovic was tried and sentenced to two months in jail, one year on parole.

In Cacak, alone, there are five private stations, only one of them boasting an airing permit. The people have simply gone crazy and Radio M and Dzoker are the most popular stations. Both radios spend most of their airing time broadcasting folk music and the audience's wishes and congratulations. The citizens congratulate each other for tiling floors, slaughtering pigs, cutting wood, false teeth, etc.

One of the fledgling radio owners is Slavko Pavlovic Cava from Osecina (a town between Valjevo and Loznica). He was once the youth leader, director of the youth community for ten years, director of a catering firm... He built a house in Osecina, is finishing a motel on its outskirts and set up his radio station in the unfinished building. He begins airing his program at 2 p.m. and sometimes does not sign off until 3 a.m., until all the congratulations and messages have been read. Cava explains his concept: "Farmers want their wishes repeated twice, so it sounds festive. A man came and brought two pieces of meat and paid for ten songs, and while we were airing them, he ordered another forty. No politics, who gains from politics!", he says. We take a look at ten messages: happy anniversary, birth of a child, have a once time at work, send my love to my girlfriend and family, the most beautiful girl wishes the most handsome guy...

Cava shows us letters of his radio fans. Roses pasted on the envelopes, lipstick kisses - he puts on his earphones and reads a folk adage: Woe to a village without light and a hen without a rooster. He picks up his telephone and tells the guy at the other end to call back later with his wish because the show is over. This hour was free of charge, no more.