Memorandum submitted by the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office
FUTURE STRATEGY FOR KOSOVO AND THE BALKANS
INTRODUCTION
1. NATO's action to halt Serbian repression
in Kosovo in Spring 1999 was a serious reverse for the policies
of violent ethnic extremism which have poisoned the Balkans region
for the last ten years. As requested by the Committee, this Memorandum
explores what can be learned from the experience of Kosovo in
framing practical policies to promote peace and stability in the
Western Balkans in the next century.
THE VISION
2. The model for the future of the Western
Balkans is the example of Western Europe. Post-war reconciliation
there was an evolutionary process, leading from political commitments
through cooperation in trade to agreement that prosperity and
security could be guaranteed in the long term only through promoting
political and economic inter-dependence.
3. The challenge for the international community
is to provide all the countries of the Western Balkans with a
pathway towards integration into Euro-Atlantic structures, and
to help them make the changes this will require, which are in
any event in their own interests. The reciprocal challenge for
the countries of the region is to break decisively with the politics
and economics of the past. This process is under way in some countries,
but much remains to be done. The potential of the region to produce
crises is not exhausted.
THE PROBLEM
4. Yugoslavia's reputation at the end of
the Cold War had been that of a comparatively open, liberal state.
Perhaps because it was less overtly authoritarian than other Warsaw
pact countries there was not the same public pressure for democratic
change. As a result, across much of the Western Balkans, albeit
to varying degrees, successor states of Tito's Yugoslavia have
failed to match the real reforms undertaken by other former Communist
countries. The former Communist elites have largely perpetuated
themselves in mono-ethnic structures, the worst of which are hostile
to the values of tolerance and pluralism and indifferent to public
opinion, indeed to human suffering. Systematised ethnic hatred,
political gangsterism and mismanged economies continue to breed
insecurity and instability. Far too much money is spent on defence
and "security": far too little on education, investment
and technology. Enterprise and free expression are stifled. This
has fomented tensions within states and between states which have
been at the heart of the conflicts of the last eight years and
underlie the problems which remain.
THE OPPORTUNITY
5. Whatever their disagreements with each
other, the countries of the Western Balkans share one aspiration:
to move closer to, and ultimately to join "European structures",
mainly the European Union, but also other international "clubs"
(NATO, international financial institutions (IFIs), etc). This
gives the international community leverage.
6. The success of Operation Allied Force
in Kosovo has opened up a new opportunity. The international community
broadly backed NATO's action, in response to a ruthless regime's
attempt ethnically to cleanse part of its own country and to destabilise
its neighbours. Milosevic rose to power a decade ago, proclaiming
his ambitions for a "Greater Serbia". The end of the
crisis in Croatia, the Dayton agreements for Bosnia and Herzegovina
and now the establishment of the international presences in Kosovo
has shown how Belgrade's policies have led only to isolation and
impoverishment for the Serb people. His replacement by a more
reasonable, democratic government in Belgrade is essential to
transforming the wider region.
7. Change in Belgrade is a necessary, but
not a sufficient condition. Across the region, our goal must be
to promote and help empower moderate democratic forces committed
to viable, tolerant, multi-ethnic politics.
THE APPROACH
8. Many international organisations are
working to build a better future in the Balkans. We need to maximise
the effectiveness of those efforts and to minimise wasteful duplication
by ensuring an overall coherence of approach. The Government sees
this as a central function of the Stability Pact for South-Eastern
Europe, launched in June 1999 in the aftermath of the Kosovo crisis.
The Pact under the auspices of the OSCE, brings together the EU,
NATO, G8, IFIs and, crucially, the countries of the region. It
aims to promote stability and security by fostering policies which
reduce tension, and promote good governance and economic development.
Implementation is for the organisations and countries concerned.
The government of the FRY cannot take part until it shows that
it subscribes to the pact's values and objectives. But Montenegro
does take part in the Pact's work, itself a message to the people
of Serbia that we have no wish to exclude them from their share
of a European future: it is their present leadership which imposes
that exclusion.
9. The Prime Minister made clear at the
Stability Pact Summit in Sarajevo in July that the Pact needs
to deliver real change, not just become another bureaucratic process.
10. The Government has put forward two important
initiatives. We have proposed an investment charter, setting out
principles for a positive climate for inward investment in Pact
countries, a motor for further reform. We are also working towards
a declaration on free media, establishing modern legislative principles
for the independence of the media sector. The Pact will develop
further initiatives on strengthening civil society and the role
of non-governmental organisations, and on the crucial areas of
education and training. We want the Pact to put pressure on the
countries of the region to end their unsustainable overspending
on defence and internal security budgets, and to introduce normal
standards of transparency and accountability.
11. The Kosovo crisis marked a decisive
moment in the European Union's relationship with the Balkan states.
The obligations of EU membership, not least the legal acquis,
are heavy: membership is not an immediate prospect for most countries
of the region. The European Union is therefore working up strategies
to create a pathway towards membership that requires the countries
concerned both to reform themselves and to transform their relations
with their neighbours as they move towards the European mainstream.
12. The European Union has devised a new
type of association agreement for Albania, Macedonia, Bosnia and
Herzegovina, Croatia and the FRY. These Stabilisation and Association
Agreements (SAAs) will be more comprehensive than the existing
Trade and Cooperation Agreements which the Union has with Albania
and Macedonia. They will provide for increased trade liberalisation
(with the aim of a free trade area within 10 years), additional
technical assistance and participation in certain EU programmes.
Most important, they will offer the perspective of membership
once key criteria (including stable democratic institutions, rule
of law, human rights and a market economy) have been met.
13. Eligibility for SAAs will depend on
a range of conditions: respect for human rights and democratic
principles; electoral and media reform; commitment to regional
cooperation. By October 1999, the European Union had decided that
Macedonia was eligible. A feasibility study is being prepared
on the prospects for Albania. Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia
and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) in particular need
to make a further progress before preparations for an SAA can
start.
14. Even before SAAs are concluded, the
Government want to see the European Union promoting trade and
economic activity across the Balkans. Free access to EU markets,
assistance with improving intra-regional commerce and support
for building the infrastrucure to underpin it would all help the
countries concerned focus on their common interests, not on what
divides them.
15. Political and economic development depends
on enhanced security. Experience in Bosnia and Herzegovina and
Kosovo shows that NATO engagement in the region remains essential,
while the conditions for eventual self-sustaining stability are
being created. UK troops continue to play a leading role in SFOR
and KFOR, the NATO-led presences in Bosnia and Kosovo. NATO forces
in Albania and Macedonia, essentially in support of KFOR, contribute
to those countries' security.
16. During the crisis, NATO Heads of State
and Government launched a South-East Europe initiative. This involves
intensified dialogues on security issues with states in the region,
including Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina in a new consultive
forum, which met for the first time during NATO's Washington Summit
in April 1999. The Alliance's Partnership for Peace activities
in the region are focussed on working to develop Membership Action
Plans and co-operation on defence planning and budgets, democratic
control of the armed forces, and co-operation between the armed
forces of regional states and with NATO on peacekeeping and other
confidence-building initiatives.
17. The stability and health of the region
will grow only as the countries and peoples involved embrace core
democratic values, respect for human rights and the rule of law.
This is the mission of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation
in Europe (OSCE) and of the Council of Europe. The OSCE's strength
is that its members sign up to commitments, which its missions
and institutions, such as the High Commissioner for National Minorities
and the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, help
participants to realise. In the Balkans this is especially valuable
in the field of elections monitoring. The Council of Europe, through
its core Conventions on Human Rights, Minority Rights and the
Prevention of Torture, sets binding standards for its member states.
It monitors compliance with these obligations and provides practical
assistance in law-making to the new democracies of central and
eastern Europe.
18. Democratic and economic reform go hand
in hand, as the EU's membership criteria recognise. The international
financial institutions will help promote change with advice and
support on macro-economic reform and longer-term reconstruction.
In offering such support to the region the IFIs need clear commitments
from the governments involved to economic reform and openness.
19. Peace can flourish only when justice
is done and seen to be done. The UK remains a staunch supporter
of the work of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former
Yugoslavia (ICTY). The ICTY has jurisdiction throughout the former
Yugoslavia. Its work is an essential moral but also practical
underpinning to the wider international effort to rebuild the
Balkans. In Bosnia and Herzegovina the indictment and arrest of
numerous prominent extremists has made a considerable and positive
difference to the political climate and encouraged the emergence
of more moderate forces, particularly in Republika Srpska. The
Tribunal's decision to indict Milosevic and other leaders of the
FRY and of Serbia for war crimes means that Belgrade will remain
outside the process of positive change in the Western Balkans
so long as these leaders remain in public life.
WIDER LESSONS
OF KOSOVO
20. The events of the last two years hold
lessons for the international community in its general approach
to conflict preventation, crisis management and conflict resolution,
and have wider policy implications.
21. Conflict prevention is crucial but complex:
it is hard to identify when the policy has succeeded, but all
too easy to tell when it has failed. The FCO's Memorandum 020/99
set out the repeated diplomatic efforts over several years by
the international community to engage Milosevic and the Kosovo
Albanians in the search for a political solution. Milosevic was
offered the prospect of normalisation of the FRY's relations with
the wider world, particularly the European Union, if progress
on Kosovo and other issues relating to the succession to the former
state of Yugoslavia could be achieved. Milosevic chose to exclude
any serious international involvement in Kosovo in the years leading
up to 1998. Faced with NATO's determination to act to avert a
humanitarian catastrophe he conceded an international presence
in the form of the Kosovo Verification Mission. But his forces
persistently violated the undertakings given in the KVM agreement.
With the Racak massacre they showed their contemp for basic international
norms. During the peace negotiations at Rambouillet and in Paris,
FRY/Serbian forces were preparing a massive offensive against
the UCK, which they had started before the Paris talks had ended.
22. Kosovo show that the international community
needs to use all its diplomatic efforts, as we did in 1998-99,
to bring parties to a dispute to agreement, or at least to negotiations.
This should involve, as it did over Kosovo, even-handed diplomacy
featuring the prospect of economic and other rewards as well as
the threat and/or use of economic and other penalties. We put
pressure on the Kosovo Albanians, who were slow to recognise the
imperative to negotiate and the requirement to set to one side
their goal of independence. But with Milosevic all forms of incentives
and peaceful pressure failed.
23. In crisis management, there were paralled
tracks: the diplomatic efforts, led by the Contact Group to promote
a political solution; and the NATO track of preparations for,
and conduct of, offensive military operations and deployments
to support a negotiated settlement.
24. Kosovo showed that both tracks were
needed; that they needed to reinforce each other; that the military
tract had to be ready when it was clear that the political tract
had failed; and that the political track had to be ready again
once it was clear the military track was succeeding. NATO and
the European Union shared this view throughout the crisis. The
cohesion and determination of the 19 governments of NATO and the
15 governments of the EU was fundamental. British Ministers invested
much time and effort in promoting this. It was an important lesson
from the Bosnian experience, where, at times, trans-Atlantic divisions
had bedevilled Contact Group policy. Extensive, direct diplomatic
coordination was invaluable, throughout the year leading up to
the conflict, during the 11 weeks of the airstrikes and thereafter.
25. Russia took a different view about the
military track. But that did not prevent full Russian participation
in the diplomatic activity throughout 1998, which climaxed with
the peace negotiations in France in February/March 1999. Russia's
opposition to NATO airstrikes did not prevent Russia playing a
leading role in the diplomatic end-game in May/June 1999, first
through Foreign Minister Ivanov's contribution to the G8 diplomacy
which provided a framework for the resolution of the crisis and
also through the efforts of President Yeltsin's special envoy,
Mr Chernomyrdin, with his EU and US counterparts, to secure Milosevic's
agreement to the stated objectives of the international community.
Kosovo reminds us that when the West and Russia work together
their collective diplomatic weight can greatly enhance the prospects
for progress, in the Balkans as elsewhere.
26. Kosovo showed the importance of a rapid,
but balanced, response and clear, shared goals. As EU Presidency,
the UK was well placed to orchestrate this when the crisis erupted
in Spring 1998. The Foreign Secretary confronted Milosevic in
Belgrade within days of the violence breaking out in Kosovo. His
message was firm but balanced: it set out our demands of Milosevic,
but also made clear that we condemned terrorism and provocation
from the Kosovo Liberation Army. On 9 March 1998, the UK convened
a meeting of Contact Group Foreign Ministers to agree a common
strategy for handling the crisis, calling an end to violence,
terroism and repression and for the urgent opening of a political
process on Kosovo's future.
27. Some commentators criticised the alleged
side-lining of the United Nations over Kosovo. Nothing could have
been further from the wishes of this Government. We led much of
the work in New York and in capitals to prepare and pass the three
Security Council resolutions on Kosovo in 1998. These set out
the international community's demands on the parties and expressed
its legitimate interest in resolving the crisis.
28. Given the consistent opposition of two
of the five permanent members it would have been impossible to
secure a resolution authorising the use of force against the FRY.
But the 12-3 vote in the council against a Russian draft resolution
condemning the airstrikes reflected the convincing balance of
international opinion in favour of the action NATO had been driven
by Milosevic to take. As our previous Memorandum explained, this
action was consistent with international law.
29. We sought throughout to maximise the
involvement of the UN Security Council, particularly in conflict
resolution. We strongly welcomed the Secretary-General's statement
on 9 April 1999 setting out the requirements on Belgrade to resolve
the crisis. We played a leading role in achieving SCR 1244, which
established the post-conflict presences, including the United
Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). but, however keenly we all
wanted to involve the United Nations, no NATO ally was prepared
to accept that failure to agree in the Security Council should
allow the return of the practices of 1940s fascism to late 1990s
Europe. This determination was supported by many other UN member
states.
30. As the Prime Minister noted in his speech
in Chicago on 22 April 1999, Kosovo throws up fundamental questions
about the balance between states' rights and individual human
rights as regards international intervention. Kofi Annan and other
world leaders have made the same point. This debate will take
time to answer the fundamental questions which it raised. Britain
is already making a leading contribution.
31. Overall, NATO's crisis management was
a success. The Alliance achieved its objectives over Kosovo. It
also played a significant part in maintaining stability in the
states around the FRY. The governments of NATO recognised early
in the campaign the importance of countering the Milosevic regime's
propaganda. The UK and others contributed to strengthening NATO's
media operations. The Alliance and individual governments are
undertaking extensive exercises to review the lessons learned
in terms of military operations and internation crisis management.
The Ministry of Defence's October 1999 Memorandum to the House
of Commons Defence committee deals in more detail with this. One
aspect underlined by the air campaign was the Europeans' heavy
reliance on US military capability. US forces deployed 80 per
cent of NATO aircraft and delivered 85 per cent of NATO precision-guided
munitions. European Allies need to rethink their defence needs
and improve the quality and flexibility of their forces. This
is being addressed through the NATO Defence Capabilities Initiative
and in the European Union by the initiative launched by the Prime
Minister to strengthen the effectiveness of the EU's Common Foreign
and Security Policy, including by strengthening European defence
capabilities. The appointments of Lord Robertson, Javier Solana
and Chris Patten are welcome reinforcements at a crucial time.
32. The experience of Kosovo has shown the
need for rapid civilian deployments to match those of which the
military are capable. This was an important lesson of the humanitarian
crisis provoked by the mass explusion of the Kosovo Albanians
into neighbouring states. The need has also been particularly
acute in the deployment of international police and administrators
for the UN Mission in Kosovo. The UK has responded to the UN Secretary-General's
request that standby arrangements, where states declare military
forces potentially available for UN missions, should be extended
to civilian and police personnel. We signed such an agreement
with the United nations in June 1999 and plan to follow up with
a further agreement increasing the number of UK police officers
available for UN operations. The UK is working within the OSCE
and EU to ensure that both organisations are able to respond more
effectively in future to civilian aspects of crisis management.
33. A central lesson of Kosovo is the importance
of encouraging modern and moderate civic societies and political
movements. The international presences in Kosovo have been set
clear goals for reconstruction and refugee return, institution-building,
democratisation and economic reform. The people of Kosovo have
to play their part. A parallel process is needed in the rest of
the FRY, particularly in Serbia. International involvement there
is necessarily less direct, but through our support for Montenegro
and for the democratic opposition in Serbia we are seeking to
empower moderate opinion in the FRY. Without empowering moderates,
there will be no reasonable government in Belgrade. Without such
a government, no lasting, self-sustaining setlement in Kosovo
will be possible. The Government has established a £3 million
fund to support projects to help the democratic opposition and
civil society in Serbia.
CONCLUSION
34. The further interdependency of Western
Europe over the last 10 years has been accompanied by an extreme
"Balkanisation" of the Western Balkans, the tendency
of selfish ethnic elites to use violence to promote mono-ethnic
statelets. The lesson, not just of Kosovo, but of Bosnia, and
the wider experience of former Yugoslavia, is that such a reactionary
emphasis on division, exclusion and repression can acheive nothing
but human suffering and backward-looking policies. The only way
forward is to follow the modern European example of reconciliation,
progress and co-operation. That is the path ahead for the Western
Balkans that the British government and its partners are seeking
to create.
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