A Dream about the Grand Conference

The Thirty Years War ended in 1645 with the peace signed in Muenster and the application of the axiom "cuius regio, eius religio." This rule was by no means fair, but it worked perfectly. It boiled down to it that every feudal lord who had taken over the rule of a certain area actually determined the religious determination of the population in the disputed region. Thus, the seizure of territories (as well as redistribution of economic and political powers) surfaced as the essence of the allegedly religious war.

Some three hundred years later another war in Europe, but this time in its south-eastern part, could end quite soon in the very same way. The difficulty lies in the fact that the modern era will not put up with shameless recognition of supremacy of those who are stronger, but demands that it be clad in a legal solution.

However, the war for the succession of Yugoslavia is still being waged as a brutally clear series of encounters of the stronger against the weaker. The Croatian leader Franjo Tudjman is currently using the opportunity to finish off his former Muslim ally Alija Izetbegovic who is exhausted in the conflict with the Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic.

The illusion of justice could not be created if a grand peace treated was worked out at this point. This the primary reason why the proposal by the Yugoslav President Dobrica Cosic that "an international conference at the summit be held to solve the Bosni-Herzegovinian crisis" has had a fate of a stone thrown into the well.

On that occasion, the writer and president proposed that the conference gathers "the three warring sides in B-H," FR Yugoslavia and Croatia, the heads of states or governments of the five permanent member-countries of the Security Council as well as of India, Egypt, Brazil and Zimbabwe, the U.N. Secretary General and the two Co-Chairmen of the Geneva Conference on Yugoslavia. By ending the war in Bosnia, the conference would obviously have to find a solution to the Eastern question, which is open once again, as some President's advisors would refer to the Southern Slavs' wars, using the language of 19th century.

Noticing that "the signs of a new political scenery and the Balkans' recompositioning have appeared," they stress that the goal of the conference would be to explain "the reasons behind this complex civil war and refute the thesis about the Serbian aggression."

VREME has asked some Belgrade-based experts in international relations to asses this proposal. They did not hesitate in saying that Cosic's recognizable handwriting in formulating such an idea is archaic. "The impression is that the President has not reached the Peoples' Society and the United Nations in his studies of international relations. If he had, he would have realized that such conferences are, historically speaking, a matter of the past."

"The only possible way nowadays is that the U.N. engage in resolving armed conflicts through the Security Council," a political sociologist has said. He also pointed at the resurrection of "the client states": Germany as Croatia's protector, Russia as Serbia's natural ally, and the U.S. as a patron of the Bosnian Muslims.

Cosic's proposal makes one remember the Saint Stefan Congress, which ended on March 8, 1878, when Serbia and Montenegro got the worst of it compared to Bulgaria in a division of the Turkish legacy in the Balkans. From June 13 to July 13 the same year, the Berlin Congress was held under the influence of Bismarck and rectified the Saint Stefan injustice, but Bosnia-Herzegovina came under the Austria-Hungarian rule. The Versailles Conference which ended on the Saint Vitus' Day in 1919 and the gatherings after the Second World War shaped the Balkan region all until Yugoslavia's disintegration.

The most influential advisor to Cosic, Professor Svetozar Stojanovic, has for a while now advocated the state reformation of the Balkans based on "a radical implementation of the peoples' right to self-determination," with the U.S. as a contemporary "center of power" taking part. The prospects of such a move make one's head spin, since this could mean that Serbia voluntarily gives up a part of Kosovo at least, in exchange for Baranja, Krajina and other "Serbian territories." When asked to comment, one of the leading Belgrade experts in international relations assessed that "such a right to self-determination" would be "too German", while the U.S. and other international factors, who regard the preservation of the current borders their top priority, would not like it.

It is indisputable that there are reasonable proposals, as to how to solve the B-H crisis. Zagreb-based sociologist Zarko Puhovski advocates that Bosnia-Herzegovina should be protected by foreign troops, whose presence would gradually expand, starting from safety zones, set up under the auspices of the United Nations. Such a military intervention, with a clear approval that all confronting "the blue helmets" be shot at, would represent only the first step in a comprehensive "civilian intervention." It would have as its goal to establish the institutions of a civic state, which disappeared in the war, through direct and comprehensive involvement of the international community. The foreign patronage of B-H would most probably have to spread and partly cover what has been left of the former Yugoslavia so that a minimum of human and civil rights, stipulated in international conventions, is established.

A stumbling block to all future projects in the Balkans is its war-like reality, which - as it is less and less doubted - can be neutralized by large foreign military presence only.

Less intelligent ideas, such as the American military strike, obviously do exist, but there are also more reasonable ones, such as "saturating" Bosnia with the foreign army. Yet, both the willingness and money to actually realize them are lacking.

Or, as a high ranking official of the German Foreign Ministry told VREME, "If Serbia decides to solve the current crisis by peaceful means, it will soon become a respected and influential international factor.

In short, a discrete political and legal form for a long term recognition of the factual state will be found.