Good Morning, Columbus

The weather got very, very cold in Belgrade in the last week of November. So did relations between the Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, and the US authorities.
Milovan Bojic, the Serbian vice premier and a ranking JUL official drew first blood when he called the Hill document on Kosovo shortsighted and perfidious, in a statement broadcast on RTS prime time news. Bojic rejected the document as "an attempt to pierce Serbia" and warned that a new war would break out if the major powers continued to impose it on the Belgrade authorities.

"Hill's plan would only add fuel to the fire rather than put an end to the conflict in these parts", Bojis said. "If we accepted it, the other 26 nationalities living here would ask for independence too", he explained. Bojic was so overwhelmed by his cold war rhetoric that he used the term "nationalities" instead of national minorities. It is also very interesting that he included Serbs and Montenegrins in the 26 nationalities that would seek independence if Christopher Hill's document were adopted.

Bojic got massive and instantaneous support from Tomislav Nikolic, the other Serbian vice-premier and the vice-president of the Serbian Radical Party. Having qualified the Hill document as a blow to Serbia's territorial integrity, Nikolic called it "atrocious" and promised that the Serbian government would reject it. He added that the Belgrade authorities would soon "thank Mr. Hill and the OSCE verifiers for their kind services and tell them to go home". Nikolic said that the Serbian government would publish the Hill plan and the declaration signed in Pristina by Serbian president Milan Milutinovic and the representatives of all Kosovo's ethnic communities except the ethnic Albanians.
"Serbia's citizens will then see what the US wants us to do and what this government has offered its national minorities", Milutinovic said. The declaration actually resembles the 1948 crisis when the daily Borba published the Informbureau Resolution demanding Yugoslavia's obedience to the USSR and the reply by the Yugoslav Communist Party. Nikolic did not say whether Yugoslavia's citizens would be asked to declare themselves for one of the two documents, just like in 1948. In it, Bojic somehow drifted back to the 1974 Constitution in his speech, Nikolic went half a century back.

Milutinovic also criticized the Hill document even before Bojic and Nikolic did. The Serbian foreign ministry drew up a memorandum last Tuesday and sent it to the OSCE chairman Branislav Geremek as well as all OSCE countries. The memorandum does not explicitly mention the United States or the Hill plan, but is full of praise for Milutinovic's declaration. It also sharply criticizes "the contacts maintained by some countries and certain organizations with terrorists, murderers and kidnappers who call themselves the KLA".

The statement clearly concerns a series of meetings between Hill and the EU envoy Wolfgang Petric with KLA commanders in Dragobilj last month, when the two officials presented the Hill document to the KLA. They were told that the KLA had "10 fundamental objections to the plan", but the contents of those objections are still unknown.
Meanwhile, the US authorities sent a clear message to Milosevic himself. On 29 November, the London daily Observer published a story headlined "Clinton asks the CIA to topple Milosevic", saying that the US president Bill Clinton and his associates decided during a recent meeting to allow a campaign to "destroy Milosevic and what is left of Yugoslavia". The CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post joined the party very quickly. US officials who preferred to stay anonymous said that the CIA had reinforced and set up new "analytic structures in the former and present Yugoslavia". They said that the CIA had been joined by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). "The Americans have stopped counting on Milosevic as a stability factor in the Balkans because he keeps causing fresh conflicts in this part of the world", the Observer said. "There is fear that the US presence in the region could acquire unlimited proportions if he remains in power", said a Washington source. It is worth noting that the two reporters of the daily Observer who wrote the story, Paul Beaver and Ed Vulliamy, are experts on Balkan affairs.

The very same day, which is incidentally the former Yugoslavia's Independence Day, the CNN quoted some US officials as saying that Milosevic is a problem rather than a solution. They added that the US should look for ways of lending support to Serbia's democratic opposition. The New York Times came up with a story headlined "Milosevic's purges could mean violent end of the regime." This particular story dwells on the possibility of Milosevic ending up as a victim of conspiracy or a "popular uprising" like the one in Romania when the Ceausescu regime went down. The story says that Milosevic had alienated the population by himself, without any help from abroad, by allowing his unpopular wife to take control of the state, party and military institutions.

An article written by US senator Richard Lugar, published by the Washington Post on 30 November, requires special attention. Lugar, who has been a very important figure in determining America's foreign policy for some time, explained the new US policy on Milosevic. He pointed out that Milosevic always managed to "outmaneuver" the major powers and that the US "can't work with Milosevic and against him at the same time to keep him in power". Lugar maintains that the US authorities should stop treating Milosevic as a partner and turn to Serbia's democratic opposition.

"It is very clear that a solution to the Balkan crisis can't be found without fundamental changes in Serbia and the Yugoslav leadership", Lugar said. "Otherwise, the fate of the Balkans is a permanent crisis and consecutive interventions by the major powers", Lugar said. He underscored that democratic forces in Serbia and independent media were an alternative to Milosevic, and called on US officials to visit Belgrade and meet with the representatives of Serbia's democratic opposition.
The articles we mentioned faithfully reflect the nature of relations between Washington and Belgrade up to now. However, not a single one of them elaborated on why the US has had to accept Milosevic as a kind of partner in the past ten years or so. It was Milosevic's power and influence rather than his democratic and humanitarian principles that propelled him to the position to act as a US partner in Balkan matters. The Western media are generally speaking about "democratic alternatives" and the "opposition", but it is still uncertain who exactly the US should support so that "a new, democratic Serbia could join the European family".

Mentioning Milosevic's sacked comrades Stanisic, Perisic and Vucelic as the possible spearheads of resistance only show how far US expectations are from reality.
The US might be in doubt over Milosevic's alternative, but local opposition leaders certainly aren't. "I'm the alternative", screamed each and every one of them, but the Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO) leader Vuk Draskovic was the quickest. Even the editors of some non-government media joined the contest. They are all convinced that they are natural US allies in the campaign to bring down Milosevic. The rest, they felt, is a matter of resources and technology to be provided by their Washington sponsors.
They would be well advised to come back down to earth and consider the level of their own responsibility for Serbia's position. The US authorities had doubts over doing business with Milosevic since the very first days of his rise to power. There isn't s a shadow of a doubt any more, but the dilemma of how to resolve the situation remains. In any case, the US message to Milosevic is to control his "hawks" rather than to step down. The US authorities still need Milosevic, for Kosovo and for the Bosnian Serb Republic as it turned out that the Yugoslav president is still more than influential there. Democratic changes in Serbia depend on Serbia's population more than they do on the United States, although it appears that Serbia's citizens are still uncertain how tired they are of Milosevic. Once they figure that out, it will be a huge relief for them and the Americans.