Strict But Just

Here in Belgrade a small miracle occurred which occasionally happens in politics: irreconcilable opponents meet, clash and part without truly harming each other, and both achieve tangible political benefits from it.

GOOD OLD ENEMIES: Last Saturday, Albright and Milosevic have, to the complete satisfaction of both parties, strengthened their previous unfriendliness and non-comprehension, confirmed that their stands haven't drawn closer one iota, concluded that they lacked agreement, and certified the impossibility of a concession and compromise.

Then, in front of the journalists, they took the stands which suited their respective parties best. Hardly managing to hide his enormous satisfaction which Mrs. Albright's visit induced, the President of Serbia publicly expressed his pleasure at having had the chance to conduct bilateral talks "on the highest level" with the only remaining global super-power. All present immediately believed him, realizing that Mrs. Albright had made it possible for him to emerge from the total diplomatic isolation in which he had found himself as of last November, at the same time publicly maintaining the pose of a champion of national interests who protects the constitution and dignity of a country against outside attacks.

Madeleine Albright, on the other hand, secure in the residence of the U.S. Ambassador, politically cut her host down with harsh words, pretending not to have even guessed that she had done him an invaluable favor by appearing in Belgrade.

SMIRKING OVER TUDJMAN: Two days later in Washington, headline news in the American papers awaited her, commending her harsh tone, uncompromising stand and moral lesson with which she overwhelmed the disobedient leaders of Serbia and Croatia. She was, to the satisfaction of the national columnists, strict yet just in the Balkans.

Although she herself stated that she was stricter towards Milosevic then she ever was towards any world leader, a far stronger impression was made on her entourage during her meeting with the President of Croatia Franjo Tudjman. She openly contradicted him in front of world TV cameras, and she publicly called his Minister of Restoration and Development, Juro Radic, a liar. Naturally, America expects more from their friend and ally Croatia than from the denounced and renegade Serbia. A day after Madeleine Albright's visit, Franjo Tudjman set off to appease the U.S. Secretary of State. He held a reconciliatory speech about Serbs (God only knows how difficult that must have been for him), and he also pressed criminal charges against the perpetrators of the newest atrocity against the Serbian refugees.

Milosevic also did something in Albright's honor which cost him nothing. As usual, he promised that he would force the Bosnian Serbs to implement the Dayton agreement with more fervor. The Americans now especially want an increased number of Muslim refugees to return to the Serbian Republic (RS) in the near future. Their goal is for one to two thousand Muslim families to return to the Serbian entity in the next year, and they are willing to co-finance it. VREME's sources claim that Pale has already decided, as a goodwill gesture, to allow a certain number of Muslims to return to RS, although not to strategically vital cities (Brcko is an exception which only confirms the rule).

However, when all is added up and underlined, Madeleine Albright possibly hasn`t achieved much for Bosnia and Dayton on this trip, though she has cemented her position in Washington. She left her adversary inside the administration, William Coen, at least two miles behind. In their internal political and ideological conflict over Bosnia and the interpretation of American national interests, Albright has captured, fortified and enclosed her precious terrain with barbed wire. She proclaimed in a tone loud enough for the whole world to hear that "America shall not allow another war to break out in Bosnia". The Pentagon chief in her administration, as those familiar with the circumstance in Washington know all too well, is of the opposite philosophical belief, that America has done more than enough in Bosnia and that it isn't nor should it be responsible for war or peace in the Balkans. On the American domestic political market, Mrs. Albright's shares have significantly gone up. Chances that the American soldiers will return from Bosnia by the end of June 1988 have drastically dropped, whether Coen likes it or not.

BITTER CAKE: As far as the Serbian opposition goes, it had nothing to thank Mrs. Albright for last Saturday in Belgrade. Her generous announcement that American aid for all free media and democratic powers in Serbia in the following (budget) year shall double to five million dollars caused instant chaos, envy and suspicion among those who hope for a part of that cake, not to mention the humiliation (it appears that today all would rather break a leg than have to publicly admit that they had seen a single cent). This time the opposition didn't dare to publicly condemn America for knocking on Slobodan Milosevic‘s door, while the unfortunate American chief of mission Richard Miles had to walk through flames last winter for having visited nearby Smederevo prior to the elections. An American flag was burned in Belgrade because of that incident. This time only Nenad Canak publicly criticized the appearance of Albright in Belgrade and the cessation of Slobodan Milosevic's diplomatic isolation. This time the coalition Zajedno took care not to allow Albright to ask them why they were improving the election chances for Milosevic's Socialists.

Mrs. Albright came to Belgrade on American state business, and the American media and the American President seem to be satisfied with her performance, regardless of whether she had helped or made things worse for Slobodan Milosevic, Vuk Draskovic or Zoran Djindjic in their mutual clashes. Serbs could learn a lot from Mrs. Albright, regardless of whether she likes them or hates them.

See You in The Hague

Four Circles Around Karadzic

by Ljiljana Smajlovic

Madeleine Albright came and left, and not a single hair is missing from Radovan Karadzic's head. In short, that is the report from that part of the Dayton front which the local human rights champions are closely monitoring (by logic, as long as Karadzic is close to The Hague, Milosevic can't be too far from The Hague tribunal either).

As any child in Yugoslavia knows, Madeleine Albright gets most of the credit for the establishment of The Hague tribunal by the United Nations for war crimes committed during the war in former Yugoslavia. At the time she had laid down all her authority as the US Ambassador to the UN to procure The Hague tribunal with rather large financial means. Today, in the role of State Secretary, she doesn't even try to hide her incredible annoyance with Dayton‘s current interpretation by which NATO soldiers are only allowed to arrest the suspect war criminals when and if the latter accidentally find themselves in their way while they are conducting their regular military operations. She is one of the authors of the thesis that Radovan Karadzic's freedom of movement presents the main obstacle in the implementation of the Dayton agreement. Some can't stop wondering how she still hasn't managed to put him behind bars yet.

CONTAINED FURY: Last Saturday in Belgrade, Madeleine Albright was markedly reserved on this issue, although her contained fury carries more warning chills than someone else's loud threats ("we are looking into a few options", "we are in favor of a more aggressive support to the Tribunal", was all she was willing to say following CNN's Christiane Amanpour's repeated questions). She was somewhat more explicit in Brcko ("criminals will have to pay, and until they start paying for their crimes, those who are protecting them shall have to pay"); however, no amount of rhetoric can hide the fact that the NATO pact, as far as anyone knows, has not issued any new instructions to their troops in Bosnia regarding the arrest of suspected war criminals, even after the meeting in Portugal.

However, for the last two months Mrs. Albright has been regarded with far more seriousness in Pale than before. Radovan Karadzic's armed bodyguards have become far more serious and more numerous, since he is The Hague's main suspect who until recently had carelessly strolled throughout Pale as though strolling in his own back yard while NATO soldiers dutifully turned their heads. Karadzic is now acting like an American crime movie hero. VREME's Pale sources claim that for the past few weeks he hasn't slept in the same house two nights in a row, that he is hiding behind four circles of heavily armed troops and that he is surrounded with mines. Naturally, that doesn‘t mean that he couldn't be taken if NATO were to give the green light. However, it's similar to when you protect your house or car from thieves - the thief can still break in, yet he will calculate beforehand whether the risk and effort are worth it. NATO shies away from possible human casualties in the action of capturing Radovan Karadzic, not because the American public couldn't stand the fact that their soldiers are being killed in Bosnia, but because that action would greatly increase the level of danger for all of the American soldiers in Bosnia, whether they had taken part in the arrest or not.

In the meantime, Radovan Karadzic has broken his oath of silence given to Richard Holbrooke, and when he spoke, he spoke in some ten sequences in Belgrade's Vecernje Novosti daily. Pale authorities claim that he did not break his agreement with Holbrooke, as that agreement had a strict deadline (until last year's parliamentary elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina). Apparently Karadzic will no longer stand the slander and the lies and has decided to answer those who are falsely accusing him, which probably means that he will never stop talking.

Otherwise, rumors in the Belgrade press that Karadzic is preparing to go to The Hague of his own free will were normal stupidity. The only truth, as VREME's sources claim, is that Radovan Karadzic had dispatched documents to The Hague last year which, as he believes, clearly show that all of his written commands demanded that his subordinates, in both the military and state administration, act towards the POW‘s and civilians in keeping with international regulations and conventions. As things now stand, the international community will continue to apply pressure on the Dayton participants to deliver their suspected criminals themselves. That worked in Croatia a short while ago (Zlatko Aleksovski has been "exchanged" for almost one hundred million dollars of IMF aid), to the great joy (and boasting) of American spokesmen. However, Darjo Kordic has a much higher price, while Slobodan Milosevic is still acting as though Mladic and Sljivancanin don't have a price.

Otherwise, occasional rumors are leaking from The Hague that even the Dayton guarantor himself, Slobodan Milosevic, is not immune to criminal charges. That is how the interest of the international public (and financiers) is maintained for the tribunal‘s operation which had thus far spent millions of dollars on Dusko Tadic. Rumors also occasionally leak out that certain lower- ranking protagonists of the Bosnian war are secretly being offered immunity from criminal charges in case they consent to volunteer and cooperate in investigating crimes of the larger fish. These tactics employed by The Hague have still not produced significant results, neither public nor secret ones. The Montenegrin prosecutor has been shown Slobodan Milosevic's file at The Hague tribunal, which will most probably encourage Susovic's political mentor in Podgorica.

Childhood in Belgrade

Old Flames Die Hard

by Ljiljana Smajlovic

"I am very pleased with the manner in which the people in Serbia have welcomed me", announced Madeleine Albright to Belgrade journalists towards the end of her visit. During a short briefing organized in the residency of the chief of the American mission in no. 44 Uzicka St., Albright stated that people had waved and hugged her in Belgrade.

"My stay here has revived my feeling of love which I had felt towards the Serbian nation as a girl", said the U.S. Secretary of State who had encountered insults and stones in Vukovar last year as a proven "Serb-hater". Her six-day-long visit to the FRY capital included a tour of the Czech embassy (following her meeting with the president of Serbia, and prior to her courtesy visit to the Patriarch Pavle), and during her conversation with the journalists Albright insisted upon a sentimental note on the Belgrade leg of her Balkan tour, speaking of the "bitter-sweet" emotions which her childhood images had induced.

LITTLE MADELEINE'S REPENTANCE: Actually, Madeleine Albright didn't spend too much time in Belgrade during her childhood days. It is highly improbable that she remembers that she had lived in our capital city prior to World War II, as she was only two at the time when her parents fled to London in 1939. When her father Jozef Corbell once again entered into diplomatic service in Belgrade in the autumn of 1945, this time in the position of the Czech ambassador, Madeleine was sent to a Switzerland boarding school where she was to continue her studies instead of in Belgrade. She came here mostly during holidays, until the Corbells left for America in 1948, this time not running away from fascism but from communism.

Sources in the Czech embassy claim that, according to what she herself had stated during her short tour of her former home in the stately building on Bulevar Revolucije, Mrs. Albright best remembered the bathroom. When she was a small girl, her strict father, whom she adored, had disciplined her by sending her off to kneel on the cold bathroom tiles for half an hour.

During his time, John Kornblum, according to the testimony of his famous fellow countrywoman and good acquaintance Jara Ribnikar, was very popular in Belgrade's pre-war high society circles. Both he and his wife spoke Serbo-Croat fluently for a full decade after they left Yugoslavia, using our language in their correspondence with their friends from Belgrade. When the leaders of the coalition Zajedno visited Washington this winter, Mrs. Albright gave them an exceptionally warm welcome. Her then publicly expressed sympathies towards the Serbian opposition were partially definitely of a (daily) political nature; however, the meeting with Zajedno presented her with an opportunity to pay tribute to her father. As she herself had told Vesna Pesic, Zoran Djindjic and Vuk Draskovic then, John Kornblum often said: If I hadn't been born a Czech, I would like to have been born a Serb.

DOUBTS IN CROATIA: People here are still not convinced that the friendly sentiments thus expressed by Madeleine Albright towards the Serbian people are sincere,though numerous Croatian neighbors don't seem to have a single doubt. American colleagues who traveled with Mrs. Albright during her European tour told the Yugoslav journalists that the local population of the Prevrsac village in the vicinity of Kostajnica (where Mrs. Albright, during her visit to Croatia, stopped by to express her solidarity with the Serbian refugees who had towards the middle of May been beaten there while trying to return to their homes), loudly protested due to her anti-Croatian policies. Asked why Albright would have anti-Croatian sentiments, the villagers stated that it was on account of her love for the Serbs, which they again confirmed by the fact that she had grown up in Belgrade.