Special Liaisons

VREME has learned in Washington that the story started that the State Department is pressuring Milosevic to finalize his relations with Sarajevo. Milosevic said he will but he also asked about the special relations with the RS which he has a right under the Dayton agreement. The US said that’s OK but the whole thing has to be speeded up to an exchange of ambassadors with Sarajevo. Milosevic stuck to his priorities and embraced Momcilo Krajisnik since Biljana Plavsic didn’t show up for the signing. The US was silent again and then mildly rebuked him over the sequence of steps.

That version seems credible with a few details from Belgrade and Pale. The text of the agreement was very carefully worded with obvious care taken not to disrupt the spirit or the letter of the Dayton agreement. The list of areas in which comprehensive cooperation will be developed seems eloquent but the part of the agreement that says it will take effect only once the Bosnia-Herzegovina parliament ratifies it is short and clear. Belgrade does not want to antagonize Washington, Paris or London needlessly. Krajisnik told Pale TV that he is personally convinced that the ratification of the agreement by the Bosnian parliament is needed only by Belgrade: that article was included on the insisting of the FRY to prevent interpretations that the agreement is aimed against the sovereignty of Bosnia. Krajisnik said he doesn’t care whether the Bosnian parliament will approve or not.

Washington kept quiet for a while before speaking up. There are a lot of things that aren’t clear and the public has been left in the dark about the only thing that matters: to what extent is Milosevic working with Washington, i.e. how much and for how long is Washington still counting on him?

Milosevic is far more obvious; his decision to sign an agreement with the RS was the start of the election campaign in Serbia. Some news agencies reported that the campaign actually started four days later, on Tuesday March 4, with a joint SPS-JUL statement on the unity of the left. That was a program statement in which the left announced its determination to stick together to the end and promised the people it would protect the dignity of kindergartens, schools, universities and theaters and dismiss officials who can’t achieve the dignity of those institutions.

Informed sources believe the real sign for the start of the campaign came on Friday, February 28 at a reception after the signing of the FRY-RS agreement. The Belgrade authorities took care not to irritate Washington but that was just political caution. The agreement is aimed primarily at the domestic political field. Milosevic gave out of the defensive stance the Zajedno coalition forced him into for a moment. This is his first offensive step and he managed to kick the ball into a field which he feels is better for him. He chose the field (Serb national interests), the discipline (helping brethren across the Drina) and the rules of the game (statesmanship). He was always the winner in that game in the past.

One of his close associates said that, at least in the initial stage, Milosevic achieved his goal completely, bringing political confusion into his opponents’ ranks. He first wanted to remind the public of the "treasonous" behavior of the non-national political parties and their leaders and then wants to create rifts between them. He assessed that the agreement with the RS is the kind of step the opposition leaders can counter only by inflicting damage on themselves.

If that’s true, the Zajedno leaders have given him everything he wants. Vesna Pesic and Vuk Draskovic reacted immediately. SPO leader Draskovic called the signing ceremony a senseless parade and the agreement empty words. He added that he wants normal, not special, relations with the RS. GSS leader Pesic stressed her unconvincing care for the statesman’s authority and political dignity of RS President Biljana Plavsic. The third Zajedno leader, Zoran Djindjic, took an obviously different stand saying the agreement is positive in general.

A Serbian state TV (RTS) comment on March 1 said parts of the opposition had grown apart from the people and added that the agreement can’t be a problem to anyone reasonable and with good intentions. The mild and delayed reaction from Washington made it seem that the agreement bothered Zajedno more than Washington. An American journalist in Belgrade noted: If Milosevic proved he could walk on water the opposition would probably criticize him for not being able to swim.

Things were the same on the other side of the Drina in the RS. The RS opposition criticized Krajisnik for producing political fog. Slavko Zupljanin of the Serb Patriotic Party said Krajisnik is incompetent and added that the agreement promotes Bosnia as a united state. Serb Radical Party (SRS) in the RS leader Nikola Poplasen identified the political, not the national, motives behind the agreement and "Milosevic’s need to preserve his authorities in Serbia with a new patriotic declaration". JUL in the RS has broken away from the RS Socialist Party and JUL leader Mico Carevic said the agreement is about a political document more than it is about relations between two states.

The heated debate, however understandable, creates the impression that Milosevic and Krajisnik are endangered in similar ways and are standing up together. That analogy is not quite right. Krajisnik isn’t facing any important elections soon and his clash with Plavsic is nowhere near the kind of challenge Zajedno presents to Milosevic. Plavsic did stay away from the signing ceremony but that was due to a conceptual difference of interpretation between her and Krajisnik. No one can say that Plavsic hates Milosevic more than Krajisnik does. Krajisnik is the more pragmatic of the two and he thought he could use the enemy’s current weakness to win another step in drawing the RS closer to the FRY.

Don’t expect either of them to sacrifice the interests of the RS to their personal interests. Krajisnik’s position is stronger and Plavsic still can’t play an all or nothing game.

In all the political bickering in Serbia and the RS, few people really care about the agreement itself. The best measure of the agreement came from Washington which assessed that the document doesn’t merit too many words. Milosevic did nothing against Dayton and all in all he did very, very little.