No Raised Eyebrows

“Don’t you Serbs have any better airplanes” is the question posed by an airport worker in Rejkjavik who entered the Yugoslav Air Transport (JAT) Boeing 727 last week in order to pick up the trash and to perform several other choirs during the break for refilling fuel while the plane landed before continuing for Belgrade.  The airplane which elicited derision on the part of airport workers in Rejkjavik was carrying FRY President Vojislav Kostunica who was returning from his visit to the USA where, besides having met with the top people in the American Administration, he also received the award “Statesman of the Year” which is given by the American NGO East-West Institute.  The airport worker who was “full of wonder at Serbs” because they do not travel in better airplanes is Nikola, a Serb from Croatia who went to Rejkjavik three years ago with his family through the Red Cross.

There was a strange sort of symbolism in this former resident of Croatia who now works at the Rejkjavik Airport doing “everything than needs to be done” and makes “money that’s not half bad.”  The high FRY delegation (which also included Miroljub Labus, Vice-President of the Federal Executive Council and Goran Svilanovic, Federal Minister of Foreign Affairs) was returning from a visit which is supposed to signal the beginning of new relations between the US and Yugoslavia, but also the beginning of lifting of everything that in the past ten years, through policies applied toward Yugoslavia, from sanctions, wars and bombing, totally crippled this country, and which drove Nikola and hundreds of thousands like him out of their homeland.

As far as the JAT airplane is concerned, it is very descent by our standards, even though it traveled to New York a full 13 hours, instead of the usual 9.  In order to save money, a smaller airplane was used, so that a fuel stop was necessary in Rejkjavik and Gander, Canada.  In any case, travelers headed to America in order to renew their country’s membership in the World Bank, in order to get special conditions for reprogramming their national debt and convincing foreign partners that investment capital is necessary for resuscitating the FRY and getting it back on its feet – it hardly seems appropriate that such travelers should come in supersonic airplanes and travel with undue pomp and circumstance.  The vehicle of choice is the available vehicle.

DONOR’S CONFERENCE:  Official and unofficial interviews with members of the Yugoslav delegation yield the impression that everything they set out to achieve in New York and Washington last week was accomplished.  The only moot point is the Donor’s Conference which will be held at the end of June, instead of at the beginning of this year.  For the sake of recollection, at the beginning of April, the official American position was that the new Administration will not support such a conference, nor will take part in it without direct and concrete cooperation between Belgrade and the Hague Tribunal.  This time in Washington the Yugoslav side was told fairly directly that the US is not prepared to take part in such a conference with new proof of cooperation with the Hague, but that they are also not going to stand in the way of anyone who is willing to support faster recuperation of the FRY through their participation in such a conference.

Several days later it was officially stated that the Donor’s Conference is being postponed for June 29.  By that time the Yugoslav Federal Parliament will pass the Law on Cooperation With the Hague Tribunal, and the new American Administration will get sufficient arguments on the basis of which it can decide to aid a country which after decade long isolation and bombing is in need of help not only to jump start its economy, but also to build stable institutions and to continue the process of democratization which it started.  On the basis of countless meetings held in Washington and New York it could be concluded that the new Administration is showing greater understanding for arguments put forth by the new government in Belgrade than that shown by certain influential American NGO’s and by certain US senators who are still far more concerned for the fate of Slobodan Milosevic than for anything else – even the fact that a state in which over 75 percent of the population live on less than two dollars per day, economic uncertainty and insecurity could easily annul everything positive that has been achieved in the FRY since October of last year.  Two days prior to the arrival of the Yugoslav delegation, the Chief Prosecutor of the Hague Tribunal, Carla del Ponte also came to Washington, demanding from US officials (principally Colin Powel) that they remain firm as far as demands for extraditing Milosevic to the Hague are concerned.  Members of the Yugoslav delegation stated that the Hague was frequently discussed, but that no one on the American side placed any special conditions or insisted on any special deadlines.

MEETING WITH BUSH:  Prior to leaving Belgrade, it was not entirely certain whether the new American President, George Bush, will meet with FRY President Vojislav Kostunica, given that diplomatic protocol did not oblige him to meet with Kostunica because of the informal nature of his visit to the US.  After only several minutes of discussion between US Vice-President Dick Chaney and President Kostunica in the White House, George Bush showed up.  As was learned later, the discussion was fairly open and sincere, and this sincerity, without any “raised voices or eyebrows” was noted by all members of the Yugoslav delegation as the main characteristic of all meetings in New York and Washington.  This atmosphere and the avoidance of the direct question “will you deliver Milosevic to the Hague” appears also to have been present in the meeting with senators Baiden, Voinovich, Lugar and Spector, even though some of them used to be very skeptical and suspicious of everything coming from Belgrade, or at least did not conceal their fervor whenever the issue of punishing or isolating Belgrade came up.  On the first day of his visit to the US (before he accepted the award from the East-West Institute), Vojislav Kostunica appeared in New York before members of the Council for Foreign Affairs, a body with around 500 members which has unquestionable influence on those who shape American foreign policy.  Reporters were banned from this meeting, but it was known ahead of time that this will be one of the most significant “tests” on this journey.  The news that Kostunica presented convincingly Belgrade’s position and then “skillfully answered all questions and dodged all minefields” (according to statements made by some participants in this meeting) appears to have had significant influence on the further development of the outcome of this visit.  All later meetings with the Yugoslav delegation included congratulatory remarks to the effect “we heard that you faired well in your meeting with the Council for Foreign Affairs.”

SUPPORT AND RESISTANCE:  The fact that “we faired well” was also indicated by the Vice-President of the Federal Executive Council, Miroljub Labus (responsible for issues of reinstating the FRY in the World Bank), in his interview on the plane, while returning to Belgrade.  He stated that during this visit good relations were established with the President of the World Bank, James Wolferson, who stated that he is prepared to intercede personally so that in the future he could remove all problems in dealing with the World Bank.  “We nearly forgot that in the last ten years we lost personal contact with influential people, and these contacts can be very significant,” stated Miroljub Labus, at the same time stressing the issue that it is necessary to have our own lobby in Washington.  “Whether we like it or not, we also must adapt to the mechanisms which are in place in Washington.  In order to have influence on given policy, it is necessary to be constantly present there.  In discussions with our nationals there, I told them, ‘don’t give us a single cent, but if you with to help us, organize yourselves and form a lobby which will present the interests of our state, all the more so since we could find money in our budget for something like that.”

Commenting on the recent visit by the Yugoslav delegation to the USA as well as the fact that both sides suggested the turning of a new page in the history of relations between the two countries, Yugoslav Minister of Foreign Affairs Goran Svilanovic observed that “for a small state like ours, such a turnaround, if only a suggestion of it, could have fateful implications in the true sense of that word.”  In Bush’s Administration and those close to it there continue to be many supporters of the policy of continuity toward the Balkans, and especially toward Belgrade.  The people in the middle echelons of the State Department have not changed since the Clinton Administration, with many influential congressmen remaining in those positions.  Also hardly negligible is the influence of the lobby which supports the policy of continuity, whose logic is that the policy toward Belgrade should not be overly assessed, but that it is better to continue with measured pressure, combined with new deadlines.

Certainly the most frequently repeated impression of last week’s visit by FRY President Vojislav Kostunica to the USA is that the new governments on both sides inherited from their predecessors problems which they are now forced to confront.  However, the difference is that the American side, by contrast with us, can always blame someone else for all their problems and difficulties.

AID

In the announced US budget for the coming fiscal year (starting on October 2001), State Secretary Colin Powel demanded that the Congress verify its aid to the FRY in the amount of 45 million dollars, together for Serbia and for Montenegro.  In the plan for this year, the Yugoslav Federation was divided into tow parts – 100 million were intended for Serbia and 69 million for Montenegro.  This new treatment of the FRY could be connected with the attitude which American officials stated many times during recent talks in Washington and which boil down to the familiar formula “a democratic Montenegro within a democratic FRY.”