Going Back To the Pirate Ship

While Milan Panic was waiting at the beginning of July for permission from the Bush Administration to accept the post of prime minister of Yugoslavia, he tried to see top level officials at the White House, the State Department and in Congress. In vain.

"I couldn't get a foot in the door", Panic said here at the end of his weird week. "They told me not even to leave my fingerprints on their doors". All he got was a notice from the Treasury Department saying that in his case, the American sanctions already leveled against Serbia-Montenegro would be waived so that he could go to Belgrade and work for Yugoslavia. In other words, no blessing from Bush, or Baker or Eagleburger or anybody else in the capital.

This time in the United States, to be sure, there was unpleasantness: the United Nations Security Council resolution to deny new Yugoslavia the old Yugoslavia's seat in the General Assembly, followed by the overwhelming vote in the General Assembly to approve that resolution. Then, as an added kick to the prostrate body of Yugoslavia, a vote by the House of Representatives to deny most favored nation treatment in trade with Yugoslavia. (That action must still be approved by the Senate before it can be signed into law by President Bush.)

But by their words and deeds, both UN Security Council members and United States officials made it very clear that their punitive actions were not directed against Prime Minister Panic or his program. Rather the penalties were assessed for the actions and behavior of Slobodan Milosevic and his friends and lovers.

Instead, for Panic and for Yugoslavia's future, the week also brought some pleasant changes.

He was received not only by the five permanent member governments of the Security Council for more that an hour, but also publicly praised by individual members, including Britain's Foreign Secretary Hurd, Russia's Foreign Minister Kozyrev and the US Secretary of State Eagleburger. Moreover, they promised Panic to consider readmission of Yugoslavia in 90 days conditioned on further contributions to peace in the Balkans. "Mine is the first government ever to have accepted sanctions by the UN and to try to change to get the sanctions lifted", he said.

As if to single out Panic's personal contribution, the five arranged for him to address the General Assembly just before the expulsion vote. To top that off, Secretary General Boutros Ghali received the prime minister and promised to try to obtain humanitarian relief for Serbia and Montenegro to assist their 500,000 war refugees and perhaps to alleviate shortages of pharmaceuticals and heating oil.

While still in New York, Panic was sought out both by ABC-TV and CNN for interviews, and he was able to schedule meetings with newspaper editors who had previously shunned him.

Then in Washington, previously locked doors were opened to Panic in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He encountered sympathy, even some warmth. A Senate staffer described the change: :Some senators saw him last summer in Vienna and were not impressed. He seemed to be all bluster. They take him more seriously now."

In short, for the first time in more than a year, Serbia is being considered here in terms of somebody besides Slobodan Milosevic. In public perceptions, this is an enormous change, although it has not translated into concrete steps to ease sanctions, much less to treat Serbia-Montenegro like any other Yugoslav successor state. For that to happen, the new Yugoslavia has to take concrete steps first.

To meet UN requirements, Serbia-Montenegro must take up diplomatic relations with Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia. It must provide bonafides that the Yugoslav Army is not aiding the Bosnian Serbs. It must provide guarantees against ethnic cleansing in Sanjak, Vojvodina and Kosovo.

Then there are the American requirements, which go further. While not stated directly, the chief requirement is the removal, preferably by ballot, of Milosevic, although the current Administration and the one to follow, whether of Clinton or the incumbent Bush, would surely accept his removal by other means. The US would undoubtedly also insist on very stringent curbs of repression of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.

The prime minister understandably did not want to talk about Milosevic. But from his career as the founder-executive of ICN Pharmaceuticals in Costa Mesa, Calif., he retains a measure of boardroom bluster, American style. "I am hope and Milosevic is fear", he boasted, paraphrasing a Belgrade magazine picture caption, which he displayed. But his confrontation with political realties in Belgrade, still dominated by the habits of 46 years of Communist rule, has cooled his expectations. "I am going back to the pirate ship with no guns", he said of his return to Belgrade next week.

Mr. Panic and Mr. Milosevic have met several times and traded insults, he said, but the prime minister now wants nothing more to do with the president of Serbia. "I think I am through with him", Mr. Panic said. "We are on a collision course."

However, in conversation with Milan Panic, I had the impression that as American as he is, he has not yet fathomed the depth of revulsion against Milosevic here or its exclusiveness. As symbolic as it may seem, Americans and Europeans, too, seem to have decided that Milosevic is the sole evil leader in the Yugoslav conflict. They can even pronounce his name. They know no others.

Rather that discuss Milosevic, Panic complained rather bitterly and perhaps justifiably against Alia Izetbegovic here in press interviews, saying he has now come to represent "only Muslims". With a sardonic smile, he compared his situation to that of the Bosnian President: "Izetbegovic has no country but he has a seat in the UN, while my country is not at war and I have a reasonable amount of control, but no seat in the UN."

But in the US, Izetbegovic still enjoys the reputation of a totally innocent victim of Milosevic's genocidal instincts. So, curiously, does Franjo Tudjman.

Panic broke new ground here, traveling with a 13-member press entourage, and flying in a JAT 727 with, one guesses, another Treasury Department waiver. It was probably the first JAT flight to New York since the US prohibition last May.

But it is not entirely clear that the prime minister understands that his most important challenges lie in the space between Prevlaka and Pozarevac rather than in the space between Beijing and Costa Mesa.

He does have an agenda in Yugoslavia. He said he intends to challenge the Milosevic monopoly on television again, seeking the first channel for his government, leaving the second to the Serbian president, and the third to commercial television. He said he wants a constitutional amendment to meld the offices of president and prime minister of Yugoslavia and make the new post subject to direct election. Then he would run for that office. That change would surely be difficult if not impossible to push through Milosevic's parliament.

"You have to be in life an optimist", Mr. Panic said in his Serbo-American vernacular. "Show me a good loser and I'll show you a real loser. My concept is to resolve a problem. I worked in the American system. It should work in the Yugoslav system. Yugoslavs don't know where they are. I am trying to sober them up."

Hoarse from too much talk and dog tired, Panic summed up this week: "I got more that I dreamed, considering where we started 70 days ago."