UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 1121-iii
House of COMMONS
MINUTES OF EVIDENCE
TAKEN BEFORE
FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE
Western
Balkans
Tuesday 26 October 2004
DR ORTHON ANASTASAKIS and MR
NICHOLAS WHYTE
MR MISHA
GLENNY
Evidence heard in Public Questions 99 - 164
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Oral Evidence
Taken before the Foreign Affairs Committee
on Tuesday 26 October 2004
Members present
Donald Anderson, in the Chair
Mr David Chidgey
Mr Eric Illsley
Mr Andrew Mackay
Andrew Mackinlay
Mr John Maples
Mr Bill Olner
Mr Greg Pope
Ms Gisela Stuart
________________
Memorandum submitted by Dr Othon Anastasakis
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Dr Orthon
Anastasakis, Head, South East Europe Programme, St Antony's College,
University of Oxford, and Mr Nicholas
Whyte, Head, Europe Programme, International Crisis Group, examined.
Q99 Chairman: The Committee is continuing its inquiry into the Western
Balkans. Today, for the first group of
witnesses, we have Dr Orthon Anastasakis, Head of the South East Europe
Programme at St Antony's College, Oxford.
We also have Mr Nicholas Whyte, who is Head of the Europe Programme in
the International Crisis Group. Mr
Whyte, we do draw frequently on the work of your group and find it very
relevant indeed in a wide range of areas.
Gentlemen, just to give a general setting of the scene, it would be
helpful if both of you were to comment on the strategic significance of the
Western Balkans, both in itself and as a source of international contention. It is a relatively small group of countries,
containable. How would you put it its strategic
significance?
Mr Whyte: The two important factors about the Western Balkans both stem from
the geography of the region. First, it
is across a main transport route by land from Western Europe to the Middle
East, and that is something we cannot get away from. All of the main roads, the famous Corridor 10, of the pan-European
corridors go through Belgrade, either south to Thessaloniki or south and east
to Istanbul. That is just a plain fact
of where it happens to be. The second
point from the more political side is that the Western Balkans are right inside
the enlarged European Union, once Bulgaria and Romania join, as they are
programmed to do in 2007. Then you have
an island of territory completely surrounded by EU Member States with which the
EU is going to have to come to significant terms sooner rather than later,
whose stability is crucial. It now
becomes an internal rather than external issue for the European Union.
Dr Anastasakis: Thank you for inviting me here.
I intend to make the most of the experience in discussion with you. I am also very glad that you are so
interested in the Western Balkan region because, as happens right now, international
attention, especially EU attention, is diverting towards Bulgaria and Romania
where is a commitment for 2007. There
is also a lot of discussion about Turkey now which is dominating the
picture. There is a risk that the
Western Balkans, which is becoming smaller and smaller as we see now it is
minus Croatia, will become an island of instability. I would agree with Nicholas Whyte on his presentation of
this as an island of stability. I think
it is of great strategic significance to the European Union because, as we know
from the 1990s, whatever happens in the region affects directly or indirectly
the rest of Europe. In that sense, the
EU has to learn some of the examples of the 1990s and is own failures and try
to incorporate the region. I am happy
that you are putting forward the question on the Western Balkans today and that
there is an increasing interest in this region.
Q100 Chairman: Gentlemen, in
all the key hotspots of this small but significant area both the United States
and the European Union are involved. We
see it particularly dramatically when EUFOR will take over in Bosnia in a
couple of months' time. What
differences of strategic perception are there, in your judgment, between the
United States and Europe in this area?
Mr Whyte: It is very simple. None of
these countries in the Western Balkans is likely to become the 51st
through 55th state of the United States - it is going to stay pretty
much where it is at 50 - whereas the European Union has actually made the
promise of future membership to every single one of the territories in the
Western Balkans. From that point of
view, the quality of engagement is very different. For the United States, it can only ever be a security issue with
a certain nod towards economic stabilisation, but that too is in the security
context. For the European Union it is
much more than a security issue. This
is a question of ensuring the economic stability as well as the military
stability of a territory that actually borders on the EU itself.
Q101 Chairman: Given the
long-term implications for Europe of stability or instability in that area, and
perhaps the other pressures on the United States in terms of over-stretch, do
you see, over time, the commitment of the US to the area diminishing and that
of the European Union increasing?
Dr Anastasakis: I think we are already seeing that. There has been a decreasing commitment since the beginning of
this new century. If should also
consider that during the 1990s there was very reluctant involvement by the
United States, due to the inability of the European Union basically to deal
with this kind of security question. We
realise now that this is going to be a big issue for the European Union. It has to prove that it is able to bring
about stability and security in that area and also economic prosperity. In that sense, I think this is the big
gamble for the European Union. It has
to prove to itself and to the region that it has commitment and that it can
also stabilise the situation. As I
write in the paper which I distributed yesterday, I think that the EU is
the only game in town for them and in that sense it is particularly important.
Q102 Chairman: But it is not
the only game in town because the US is there and the US has a substantial
commitment of troops. We are told, for
example, that the US has far great clout in a key area like Kosovo. To what extent is it imperative for us as
Europeans that the US commitment is maintained to that area and at what level?
Dr Anastasakis: To follow up, I think it is important that those two co-operate as
smoothly as possible in that region, and I think they have done so. In the Western Balkan area, the way the
United States and the EU have worked together has proved that they can do it
without any major problems. The region
is very significant for the United States in terms of terrorism and also as a
transit route for terrorist traffic and organised crime. In that sense, I think it is of strategic
significance for the United States, and it will continue to be, but there is
commitment on the part of the United States elsewhere in other parts of the
globe. In that sense, it is decreasing,
and the fact that the EU is now becoming the major force in terms of a police
mission and military mission, that proves it has to take the upper hand in
that.
Q103 Chairman: And why we
should beware of the precipitated US withdrawal from the area?
Mr Whyte: As Orthon has already said, we are seeing that to a certain extent;
we will never see it happen completely.
At one point the catch phrase of the trans-Atlanticists in this debate was
"In together, out together". There is
on out for the European Union in the Western Balkans. There potential is for the United States, at least in military
terms. However, it is impossible to see
the United States as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, as a member
of the Six Nation Contact Group. The
United States will remain politically engaged, I think, whatever happens on 2
November. Certainly it will remain
sufficiently politically engaged to be playing the key role in the resolution
of the Kosovo final status, which is going to be the big question that comes up
in the next 12 months.
Q104 Chairman: As we have seen
in Bosnia, are we likely to see the US increasingly seeking to disengage?
Mr Whyte: Absolutely, and that is my understanding from conversations in
Washington, that the Pentagon basically has other priorities at the
moment. We can see that by watching the
news. There is no great desire in the
United States to keep troops in the Balkans any longer than they feel is
necessary. Who defines what is
"necessary" is a different question.
Q105 Mr Illsley: Following
along that theme, you mentioned that the European Union surrounds the Western
Balkans. We are looking at Bulgaria and
Romania in terms of accession countries.
The European Union throughout the Nineties did not exactly give a united
front towards the Western Balkans. What
can be done to re-engage the European Union in this and take a more immediate
and more urgent view of the area?
Mr Whyte: The first thing that happened was the very failure of the EU in the
1990s caused a great deal of sober reflection among heads of government. It is often said that Slobodan Milosevic
did more to build the European common foreign security policy than any other individual
because he demonstrated the failures of the previous system. We do now have things we did not have in the
EU. We do now have Javier Solana. We have a whole set of structures within the
European Council Secretariat which simply did not exist before. Now the EU can actually put several thousand
troops on the ground in Bosnia. That
was unthinkable even two years ago, let alone ten. Things have progressed in the last ten years.
Dr Anastasakis: I agree that there has been, in the last four years, an increasing
and growing engagement and commitment on the part of the European Union, but
there is also a difficulty in that disengagement has to be successful in the
end, not just engagement and a growing one; it has to be effective and
successful. This is a real test area
for the European Union because it is engaged in many ways in the Western Balkan
region. It is engaged in military
terms. It is engaged in reconstruction
efforts, in co-operation and reconciliation efforts, and also in transition. This is the major difference with central and
eastern European countries, and this is also the major innovation for the
European Union that it has to deal in multiple ways in that particular part of
Europe.
Q106 Mr Illsley: Is the
Stability and Association process model working effectively within the
Balkans? Does that need to be
altered? Does it need to be
bolstered? Is there anything the
British Government could do to try and encourage our European Union partners to
improve the SAp process?
Mr Whyte: The SAp process works well where you have well-functioning state on
the other end to work with, and that clearly applies to Croatia and I would
argue that most of the time it applies to Macedonia as well. It has run into real problems in Albania,
due really to the failure and unwillingness of the Albanian Government to undertake
the necessary reforms. I think it
has clearly had a beneficial effect in Bosnia along with all the rest of the
international efforts. It has certainly
increased the credibility of the Bosnian state. But I think it has shown almost no tangible results in the case of Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo because
that state is not really a state, it is three different states, which happen to
be bunched together internationally, and the SAp has almost had a negative
effect rather than a positive effect over the last three or four years there.
Dr Anastasakis: To continue, and I agree with it, the EU has been used to dealing
with the central authorities. In that
way, that particular area of Serbia, Kosovo and Montenegro is a new territory
for it because of the unclear borders and the non legitimate authorities
basically. The SAp process has been a
good step in the right direction. It is
just that the priorities have to be adjusted to the specificities and the needs
of the particular countries. I think
that has been acknowledged by the EU, especially lately, and they are trying to
be as specific as possible, focusing on the particularities of each
country. There is the wider discussion
about how technical the understanding of the EU is and how technical it should
be because there are other developmental needs for instance in the region that
are not adequately addressed by the European Union through the Stabilisation
Association process in particular.
Mr Whyte: Could I add two points? You
asked for improvements that could be made and the two that I would suggest are,
first of all, that the process needs to include a better perspective for
economic development. At the moment, it
is aimed very much towards institution‑building. It is all very well to have a
well-functioning parliament built in Sarajevo but it still takes three hours to
drive there from anywhere else. If that
corridor 5C were to be improved, then Bosnia would be opened up much better to
the world. The second thing, and
I think this may be a bit more controversial, is the question of the visa
policy. The mean spiritedness of
Western Europe in its approach to the Western Balkans is exemplified best by
the restrictive visa policy that exists.
The current policy empowers people traffickers and penalises honest
travellers. If we want to send a real
signal to these people that they are considered as Europeans, we have to allow
them to travel here.
Q107 Mr Illsley: Is there
anything in the idea that maybe some countries within the region are looking at
European Union accession and the SAp process as the be all and end all and that
they are representing to their own countries that they have done enough because
they have got within that process?
Mr Whyte: You would have to bracket that also with NATO accession, which, as
we know, on the ground is of less dramatic effect but symbolically is of
equally dramatic effect. Certainly, in
terms of national goals, I think one could do worse than have that.
Q108 Chairman: On that, would
it be fair to say that although all the countries want to join the
Euro-Atlantic structures, NATO would just be seen by them as a first step on
the route?
Dr Anastasakis: I think we do tend to put those two together but they are very
different. The aim of NATO is different
from the aim of the EU. NATO is a
security organisation and in that respect it is much easier for NATO to commit
and to engage those countries within its own ranks. For the EU it is a much more complex organisation and it has its
economic dimension and also it has a growing political dimension as well. In that respect, the process which brings
those countries closer together is much more complicated. I think there is a differentiation
between the two and how easily the countries can become members of the
organisations.
Q109 Mr Olner: On the EU
accession point, and I can understand all the choreography of the dance to join
the EU, I just wonder whether we are going to be faced with the same difficulty
that we have with Cyprus joining the EU where there was a promise of an
amalgamation and a joining and the reality, at the end of the day, is that they
are not joining now. I would hope that
the EU is not going to face the same problem in the Western Balkans.
Dr Anastasakis: This is a very interesting comparison. I have been thinking a lot about Cyprus lately and why the EU, in
the end, has not been so effective or maybe it has been effective in some ways
that we do not see and we might see in the future in that it is now gradually
engaging with the north of the island.
That seems to be an unavoidable pathway for the north to be integrated
into the EU. Maybe there are
differences because the EU did make mistakes with Cyprus in that it never held
out any stick to Cyprus. It only gave
the carrot of membership without doing its conditionality. It also left the Turkish Cypriots completely
outside the game. In that respect,
there was a different kind of situation there when we compare it with the
Balkans where all the different parts are really engaged in the process, but in
a different way.
Q110 Mr Pope: I certainly agree
with that analysis on Cyprus where the Committee is going in a couple of
weeks. I wanted to ask, though, about
the European Union's reconstruction and development funds. The EU has allocated over €4 billion to
2006. It struck me that that did not
seem a great deal of money, given the scale of the problem. If economic stability and political stability
go hand-in-hand, it seems to me that there is at least a case to be made for
saying that the EU is trying to do this on the cheap and that it should
allocate some more money. I wonder what
your view is?
Mr Whyte: I would agree with that in terms of development. As I said earlier, I think there is a lack
of an economic development aspect to the SAp, indeed to the EU's whole approach
to the region. On reconstruction, on
the other hand, I would give the EU quite good marks for the last few
years. The European Agency for Reconstruction
has been a good model of how to do it - a decentralised agency accountable to
Brussels eventually but set up very much based in the region. I think it has a very good rate of
disbursement of funds. If you look at
€4 billion as a reconstruction budget, that is probably about right,
considering the absorptive capacity of the region, but, on development, you are
quite right.
Dr Anastasakis: I agree with you that there should be more money but there is one
qualification: what do you do with this
money? There can be too much money. I come from a country, Greece namely, where
there was too much money coming from the European Union and basically we did
not know how to spend it. The issue
about absorptive capacity is very significant in the Western Balkan
countries. There definitely has to be
money directed towards developmental aims but there is one problem, I
understand, from the regional side in that where the money can be spent on
projects is always decided by the European Union. There is very little consultation with local actors, those really
involved in that business.
Q111 Andrew Mackinlay: You
mentioned the meanness of the European Union states with regard to the visa
regime. Are you saying there should be
a relaxation in the visas, and perhaps not a visa required, or are you saying
there should be full mobility of labour extended to this region by the European
Union before they come in?
Mr Whyte: I think you could certainly look at the latter alternative. I would be very surprised if the costs
outweighed the benefits. If that is
considered too radical a move, as I suppose it probably would be, let us
consider what the consequences of the current policies are. Currently, Croatia and Bulgaria both
actually enjoy visa-free access to the EU.
It is very easy for most Bosnian citizens also to get Croatian
citizenship; this undermines Bosnian statehood. It is very easy for Macedonian citizens to get Bulgarian
citizenship; this undermines Macedonian statehood. The existing policy is actually making things worse.
Q112 Andrew Mackinlay: As we
know from experience, despite what the newspapers have said, the whole of
central Europe did not move here on 2 May, did they?
Mr Whyte: Certainly I did not see them coming.
Q113 Mr Mackay: Can I move you
on to the International Tribunal? We
note and are perhaps slightly puzzled that the European Union and NATO seem to
set slightly different standards in respect of the various Western Balkan
states complying with the Tribunal.
Would you like to comment on that and, in commenting, which end of the
scale should we be on: the rather more
relaxed view that the EU seems to take or the more stringent NATO view probably
backed by American pressure?
Mr Whyte: It is perhaps not fair to characterise it in precisely that
way. First, I would say the view that
should be taken is the hard line that is taken by the British Government inside
both organisations, inside both NATO and the EU, and that tough line consisting
of full compliance with the internationally mandated tribunal is the right one
to take. What the EU has done is to
promise a feasibility study on whether or not further integration is possible
with the EU to Serbia and Montenegro.
It seems, on present form, that that feasibility study will be negative
because there is no co-operation from Serbia with the War Crimes Tribunal,
apart from cosmetic things like the arrest of somebody from Srebrenica who
nobody much had heard of. That simply
is cosmetic. Until that happens,
ultimately the answer from both is gong to be the same. Of course NATO's cut-off point comes a
little bit sooner because of Partnership for Peace specifically dealing with
the army of Serbia and Montenegro, and you cannot have a situation where you
have indicted war criminals participating in joint exercises with NATO
troops. Obviously, the wall has been
hit a little bit sooner in that case but I think it is in the same place in
both cases.
Dr Anastasakis: I agree, and I think everybody agrees, that there has to be a hard
line. One also has to be careful,
especially in the case of Serbia because the people there really feel that they
are discriminated against on that particular aspect, that there is a lot of
punishment addressed to them, that everything revolves around that, and that
their sensitivities are not taken so much into account. As far as linking feasibility studies is concerned,
and that is a technical process leading towards the start of the
Stabilisation Association process, whether they are sending a war crime
criminal to The Hague or not does not tell us much about how able they are to
adopt and implement standards. There is
this kind of discrepancy. It is, of
course, part of the political conditionality but there are other conditions
that have to be looked as well here.
Q114 Mr Mackay: Are they high profile
alleged war criminals, and obviously there are Karadzic and Mladic? Are they just symbols and are they very
important or should it run deeper?
Presumably, Mr Whyte, when you are trying somebody fairly obscure, and
this is Beara who was picked up recently, and this is a question for both of you: is this all just symbolic - let us get one
or two big fish, and then all will be well - or should it run much deeper? What is realistic and practical?
Mr Whyte: This is a part of the world where nothing is just symbolic, where
symbols are of extreme importance, and there is an operational security issue
as well in that as long as Karadzic and Mladic continue to be at liberty, then
we cannot say that the security mission in Bosnia has been completed. That is an operational question but the
symbolism is very important as well, the symbolism of coming to terms with what
was done in the name of the Serbian people during the entire period of the
1990s. Does it matter? Yes, I think it does. Whether or not you then repatriate some of
the war crimes trials to Serbia or not, that is a decision that is up to
the Tribunal and it is fairly clear that the Tribunal will increasingly want to
repatriate trials to Croatia, to Serbia and to Bosnia, but it must go through
them first. I do not think there should
be a short-cut to that.
Dr Anastasakis: I think that apart from the issue of punishment, which is a fair
thing to do, if done in the right way - and what I am saying is very vague -
the Serbian people have to come to terms with their own past and in fact during
the 1990s many of them were really unaware of what was going on outside their
own country. I think that process of
bringing those people to justice will also help them in some ways to come to
terms with the past and acknowledge mistakes.
Q115 Mr Mackay: Finally, the
repatriation of some of these trials is clearly, at least in theory, a good
idea because The Hague is a very long way away and we have seen elsewhere in
the world that it is often better to have such trials on site, so to speak. It seems to me that there might be very real
difficulties about intimidating witnesses and putting pressure on witnesses
actually in Serbia or Kosovo, Bosnia as well, that there would not be at
The Hague. Can that be
overcome? There is a balance I am
trying to weigh, is there not, between keeping it local, which I am in favour
of, and not pressurising and intimidating witnesses, which obviously I am
against, and how should the balance sway?
Mr Whyte: This of course is why the Tribunal was set up in The Hague in the first
place because it was feared that local judicial structures were not up to
it. I think it is a developing process
and it should be the Tribunal's call as to whether or not local conditions have
matured to the point where repatriation of such trials is possible.
Q116 Chairman: Gentlemen, I am
turning to Kosovo. We now have the
result of the elections of last Saturday.
It is very difficult to put any positive gloss or spin on them. So far as the Serbs are concerned, there was
a massive boycott of those elections.
Of the 108,000 possible Serb electors, both in Kosovo itself and the
refugees in Serbia proper, only just over 500 actually voted. That seemed to be a response of the Serb
community, as it were, denying the legitimacy of the institutions which are
currently in Kosovo, and I suppose also responding to the appeal of Premier
Kostunica, ignoring the appeal of the more moderate President, and really
casting a question mark over the effectiveness of the work of the United
Nations over the past four years or so in putting a massive block on any move
towards a multi-ethnic community, which is the declared aim. Can you give me any glimmer of hope which
arises from the elections last Saturday?
Dr Anastasakis: I think the only glimmer of hope, because I do share your
pessimism, is that they were done in a peaceful way; there were not any
conflicts or riots, or worse than that.
I do agree with you that that shows us how much Serbia proper is
divided on the issue when there are those main political factions advising on
different directions. I would also add
to what you have said the fact that there was a very low turnout from the
Kosovo Albanian community as well.
Q117 Chairman: It was 53 per
cent of the total, which is not disastrous in Western European terms. We only had 59 per cent in our last general
election in the UK.
Dr Anastasakis: If you look at it that way, it is just over 50 per cent. What I meant to say by that is that the legitimacy
of those electors in the eyes of the Albanian community is something that has
to be looked at, and not just the Kosovo people; this kind of political apathy is
a general trend in the Western Balkans in general. There are regular elections everywhere, more elections than
anyone can imagine basically, but people fail to go because they are not
interested and there is a certain point of political apathy in that process.
Q118 Chairman: Mr Whyte, does
it signal a failure of the UN effort over the past four years, in spite of all
the expenditure of money and a disastrous blow to prospects of a multiethnic
community?
Mr Whyte: You asked for a glimmer of hope, Mr Chairman. I think I would like to depress you still
further just for a moment. I would say
within the Albanian community, look at what happened to the one Albanian
politician who had started from a very hard line position and had consistently
tried to moderate his line, particularly by making overtures towards the Serb
community. Hashim Thaçi, the leader of
the PDK, saw some of his vote fragmenting off to the new party led by Veton
Surroi; he saw other parts of his vote splintering off to the more hard line
political realities of President Rugova.
The Kosovo Albanian results were in fact even more depressing than you
have portrayed them. My glimmer of hope
is that I think this clarifies the issue.
We have got two very hard line positions. Yes, the UN was unable, through five years of enlightened
government, to persuade passions to cool and more moderate alternatives to
emerge, but anybody who believed that was going to be the case in 1999 was
engaging in very wishful thinking indeed, given the history of the region, and
indeed given the history of UN interventions.
If the UN was supposed to deliver liberal politicians in Kosovo, it
obviously failed, but I do not think it was ever going to achieve that. I would say that we have now got a situation
where the Kosovo Alabamians have supported a very firm and robust line on
independence and where the Kosovo Serbs have clearly placed their faith in
Belgrade rather than in their local representatives. That is simply the situation we must deal with. It is going to require serious and sustained
engagement by the international community to bring about a settlement. They cannot just get on with it on their
own.
Q119 Chairman: The policy of
Belgrade is clear, that there was the vote in July in the Serbian Parliament in
favour of this so-called decentralisation proposal, rather Bantustan like, of having
a list or group of dots on the map grouping together the various Serb
communities on an ethnic basis. Is this
the end of the attempt to form a multiethnic society?
Dr Anastasakis: Relating to what you are asking and on the previous comment, I was
just wondering to what extent the involvement of the international community is
really geared toward creating multiethnic, multicultural societies. This is a question that can be
discussed both politically and practically.
Q120 Chairman: It is the
declared aim.
Dr Anastasakis: It seems to me that the way things are going is not creating a
multicultural or multiethnic society but rather trying to divide them. I definitely think, particularly in Kosovo,
it had to do with the fact that the international community was not able to
deal with the creation of this kind of multiethnic society and it also turned
the Kosovo population against it. That
was a very different development. In
the end, people turned against the international community.
Q121 Chairman: Should the
result of the election lead to a fundamental re-think by the international
community? Is the plan put forward by
the Secretary General of the UN Special Representative, Ambassador Kai Eide,
now no longer relevant in the light of these elections?
Mr Whyte: No, I think it is even more relevant. I think Ambassador Eide identified very skilfully a number of key
problems facing Kosovo at the moment.
The fact is that while the final status question remains unresolved, all
the other issues are going to be held hostage to that, including particularly
the issue of interethnic relations.
Basically, any concession to Serbs as citizens of Kosovo is seen by
Albanians as a concession against their own future independence and vice versa
as well. At the moment it is purely a
zero sum game. Until you have a
credible process that his going to resolve the final status of Kosovo, you
cannot expect ethnic tensions to become calmer.
Q122 Chairman: The Serbs are
just not going to participate in such a process?
Mr Whyte: Which Serbs?
Q123 Chairman: Only 500 odd
people of the total Serb community bothered to vote. Even with possibly some intimidation, that does suggest a massive
lack of legitimacy of the institutions in the eyes of the local Serbs?
Mr Whyte: That is absolutely right but it means, as I read it, that local
Serbs have effectively given the mandate to Belgrade to negotiate on their
behalf rather than to their own locally‑elected officials. That is how I see it. The Serbs will be involved but it will be
Belgrade rather than the local representative.
Dr Anastasakis: What seems clear is that Belgrade is guiding the whole game
here. As far as discussions on the
status are concerned, as you pointed out, the only unhappy thing is that the
policy standard before status is basically a failure because there is going to
be a discussion on status without having made any progress on standards
basically. In that respect, I find this
even more pessimistic than anything else.
Q124 Chairman: Before turning
to Mr Illsley and Bosnia, a few questions in respect of Macedonia: I concede that because the result of the
referendum is not now known, it is very difficult to speculate, but how
significant do you believe is the referendum and the prospect of a "yes" vote,
which some claim would undermine the Ohrid framework agreement?
Mr Whyte: First of all, one lesson that comes out of this is that when you
are writing peace agreements, look out for loopholes that can be exploited by
other people, and that is what has happened in this case. It was not foreseen that a referendum could
actually overrun minority guarantees that were inserted into the Ohrid peace
agreements, but that nonetheless is what happened. Yes, the referendum is very significant. It is effectively a poll on one part of the
peace agreement rather than the entire package, and this of course is very
dangerous. If it is passed, at the very
best it will mean a delay of at least a year in implementing the reform of
local government, which was a key part of the peace agreement. That is the best possible result, without
which further progress into EU and NATO integration for Macedonia is not
possible. It will also, of course,
result in a certain increase of internal tensions within Macedonia. That goes without saying, whatever the
result of the referendum.
Q125
Chairman: How significant is it?
Dr Anastasakis: One aspect is that there will be a lot of internal tension, which is
something which can go to unpredictable levels. The second is that EU integration will also be delayed. Macedonia in particular is an interesting
case in that it would act as a model for the other countries where you do have
two different ethnic communities and there is an overall consensus as far as
the EU goal is concerned. In that
respect, I think especially the Macedonian case would be particularly critical to
what happens with other divided societies as in the Western Balkans.
Q126 Chairman: The US Ambassador
in Skopje has warned, and perhaps an interesting intervention in the domestic
affairs of Macedonia, that if there were to be a "yes" vote, that would put
back the prospects of Macedonia joining NATO beyond the next possible opening
of the door in 2007, possibly for many more years. Is that a message which, in your judgment, is getting through to
the electorate in Macedonia?
Mr Whyte: As far as I can tell, yes.
There is still another two weeks to go in this campaign but it is very
interesting to follow the comments in the Macedonian press. The Ambassador's statement I think is
absolutely unchallengeable. If
Macedonia has to wait another year, then they basically miss the window that is
currently opening for them, Albania and Croatia to join NATO.
Q127 Chairman: In 2007?
Mr Whyte: Precisely, and if they are not ready to join by the middle of next
year, which they will not be if the referendum passes, then they do miss that opportunity. It is a straight statement of fact.
Dr Anastasakis: I would say yes in principle, but in reality I would look
differently at this and to what extent a factor such as NATO or the EU can be a
gear, not just for people voting in a certain direction but also for
reform. I think this is much more
complicated, especially when one is inside this kind of society which is going
through unemployment and poverty. Those
issues are really important to the people.
NATO and the EU are there as a long-term goal, and that means prosperity
and strength and all that for them, but I think when people are in a referendum
frame of kind, that kind of blackmail can have an adverse effect. If you blackmail them and say "you are not
going to get into the EU or into NATO", that can have the opposite effect, as
the case of Cyprus teaches us.
Chairman: I think President Mitterrand said the French always answer the
wrong question in a referendum. That
may be the same.
Q128 Mr Illsley: I have a
couple of questions relating to Bosnia and the hand-over from the NATO
stabilisation force to the European Union force in December. There is a suggestion that because of the
situation in 1992-95 the Bosnian perception is that the European Union will not
act militarily or does not wish to act militarily. What implications does that have for the hand-over in December?
Mr Whyte: The clear implication is that there will be a trial of strength at
quite an early date, I would anticipate.
Of course, things are very different in Bosnia now from ten years
ago. This is no longer a country at
war. This is a country that has at
least a sullen peace for the last nine years.
On the other hand, if the EU does come into it, despite the improvements
that we have both referred to earlier, with this very unfortunate legacy of
failure, we can expect that people will be putting it to the test, so it has to
be ready to face those tests and to pass them.
Q129 Mr Illsley: What exactly
does it have to do to face them?
Mr Whyte: What form it takes we cannot precisely predict right now but I
would have thought that there will certainly be challenges to the EU military
authority of some kind, whether that is through rioting - rioting is a strong
term - or through some other form, we cannot quite tell yet.
Dr Anastasakis: I think when the EU takes over militarily it has to do that with
a different frame of mind this time because it is not an immediate
post-war situation; the security threats are different now from what they were
in the 1990s. It is not just about the
ethnic conflict and trying to keep those communities apart so that they do not slaughter
each other; there are also issues of organised crime. There are issues of security but the agenda is much wider and
I think that the EU will have to adjust to this new type of environment. The other thing that I would also
suggest is that it is not just for the EU to prove that it can act militarily
in a similarly satisfactory way as the United States or to prove to itself
that it can do the job; it also has to know what the situation is on the ground
basically and be able to help and act in synergy with other organisations
involved in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Mr Whyte: Can I raise a slight technical point on this? I do not know whether this committee has
considered this in the past but the EU force will not just be an EU force; it
will include at least I think 11 other countries that I have seen listed as
likely participants. I am a bit
concerned about the lines of command and control in this case when you have
Moroccan or Canadian or Turkish soldiers under EU command in an operation that
is run by the Political and Security Committee in Brussels on which there are
no Canadian, Moroccan or Turkish representatives, but there are indeed
representatives of Denmark and Luxembourg, two counties which will not be
participating. I think there is an
issue of accountability there which I hope does not become a political crisis
point but I can see that is likely as a possibility.
Q130 Mr Illsley: Are there
likely to be difficulties within the EU as well between EU members and is there
any likelihood - and this all depends on how smooth the transition is - of any
conflict between NATO and the EU in terms of the hand-over?
Mr Whyte: I think people are bending over backwards to try and prevent any such
conflict, and this is why the two main military officers in charge of it are
British. This is clearly an attempt to
finesse the differences between the EU and NATO. There were problems in Macedonia when a similar situation was
applied, with a much smaller force, specifically to do with what exactly the
role of the NATO AF South in Naples was to be within the command
structure. I understand that they are
working on that as we speak in Brussels to make sure it does not happen
again. There will always be unforeseen
problems.
Q131 Mr Illsley: Given that the
two forces are likely to have different mandates, would that make it easier for
EUFOR? Does the fact that the European
Union has development assistance as well as a military force, the carrot and
the stick approach, make it any easier for EUFOR or does it not have that effect?
Mr Whyte: Provided that there is joined-up thinking and I think the prospects
for joined-up thinking are fairly good in this particular case. As a general point, I think it is a bit
unfortunate to separate civilian and military lines of command, as has been
done in the Bosnian case. In general
for an intervention, I would have thought it would make more sense to have
parallel and converging liens of command in a particular country.
Q132 Chairman: Before Ms
Stuart, Dr Anastasakis, you made the point that we are in a very different
security environment now than we were four years or so ago. Is it therefore important that the European
Union is able to bring together a whole wider range of instruments to bear on
the problem in Bosnia and Herzegovina?
Is it appropriate therefore, in terms of its possibilities of the
instruments, that the EU is there now rather than with a narrower focus of
NATO?
Dr Anastasakis: Yes, and the EU is involved in a broader way in Bosnia and
Herzegovina through its feasibility report and on all the particular points it
has been advising the government to work on.
Of course, the problem with Bosnia is that because of its protector
situation, it is difficult to expect the government to act in a very active and
passionate way on the demands by the European Union. I think it is high time for the EU to act in a much more broad
way and deal not just with reconstruction or reconciliation, because I would
say that has evolved in quite a satisfactory way, but also with development
issues, which are particularly acute in that part of the Western Balkans.
Mr Whyte: One specific security issue that we are facing in Bosnia in the
next few months is the question of police reform. You may be aware that Lord Ashdown has set up a special
commission to look at this. I would not
be surprised, in fact I would welcome it, if his recommendation turns out to be
a kind of nationalising of the Bosnian Police, removing security
responsibilities from the entities; in other words, a greater incentive---
Q133 Chairman: On the precedent
of the Ministry of Defence, on a statement?
Mr Whyte: Precisely, yes. One does
find other countries where the main police force is national rather than local,
particularly if, as there is in Bosnia, there is a problem with local competence,
local corruption of the police force that happened to be on the ground. I think that could be a very interesting development
and that could well be the crisis point where we see the EU's courage being put
to the test.
Q134 Ms Stuart: I would like to
take you back to Serbia and Montenegro in particular and turn to something
which you started to address in your answer earlier to my colleague Mr Illsley
and also to Mr Mackay and that is around the whole Stability and Association
Agreement and the divergence between the progress the two countries are
making. Do you think the new twin-track
approach will actually help that or is there simply just such a big gap to be
caught up on that it just leaves them behind?
Mr Whyte: That is a really good question.
I think that the twin-track approach recognised the reality that the
attempts to make Serbia and Montenegro integrate with each other before joining
the EU simply was not working and, in a sense, the EU thus avoided making one
of the several Cyprus mistakes that my colleague referred to earlier. I think you are quite right to say that the
interests of Serbia and Montenegro remain very divergent. I understand that the Montenegrins now plan
to make the best go they can of proving their European credentials within the
framework of the new proposed feasibility study, and they hope to be in a
position to be able to turn around to their own voters and say, "Look Serbia is
holding us back from our European integration" and that will then be used as an
argument for separation. Doubts are
sometimes expressed about the capacity of the Montenegrin Government to deliver
on this strategy but it is certainly an interesting approach for them to take.
Dr Anastasakis: I also think this is an interesting development because it shows a
genuine attempt by Chris Patten and the Commission to understand what exactly
the problem is. My deep conviction is
that the understanding on Serbia is still a bit underdeveloped. The centrality of Serbia in the Western Balkans
is really crucial. I think one has
really to try and approach this country in the right way in order to be able to
have positive side effects in the other parts also. In that respect, I think maybe they recognise that this kind of
(Solana) state was a kind of failure and they had to make up for it. Showing this kind of flexibility will
definitely create this kind of competition between the two and end the
antagonism in trying to approach the standards of the EU. We all know of course that in Serbia there
is still this kind of polarisation and we do have a more clear distinction
between the reform forces on the one hand and the more nationalistic forces on
the other. There is a real battle going
on between those two sides in Serbia.
Q135 Ms Stuart: We have talked
a lot about outside players and whether they have failed or succeeded. Something which struck me through the whole evidence
session was that you talk about what the US does, what NATO does and what the
EU does. Is there not an argument made
that the people on the ground need to take a bit more responsibility? There is another outside player, which no-one
has mentioned so far in particular in relation to Serbia, and it strikes me
that could play more of a role and that is actually Russia?
Dr Anastasakis: I agree with you. The
international factor is always the easiest target to which to address criticism
and to attack, but, by being critical towards local actors, and even sometimes
being very critical towards them, one also shows them respect because that is how
they should be treated. It is
definitely the case, and that is why I tried to indicate this in my previous
remark, that there is this kind of polarisation between the Serbian forces
themselves. This is a country with a
background and with human capital and really able people who can deal with the
international environment. If the
international community wants to work with people in Belgrade, they can find
people who are really interesting and who know their way about. In that sense, the Serbian people, yes, and
from my contact with them, do have a strong victim attitude and it is sometimes
over-emphasised because that explains for them why their situation is not
better. There is definitely a lot of
work that needs to be done within the local actors themselves.
Mr Whyte: I would just like to make two points in addition. One of them is that engagement by Western
political figures with the local actors on a continued and sustained basis is
the only thing that will work. For
instance, Mr Chairman, it would be great if this Committee's report, when it is
finalised, were to be launched in the Western Balkans as well as published
here. I think it would be very
interesting for the local media to pick up on that. It would certainly be a sign that you were taking them seriously,
and they will take you very seriously, whatever you say. It will be a sign of respect in the other
direction. My second point on Russia,
Ms Stuart: the Russian attitude, I am
afraid, is, frankly, irresponsible at the moment. On the one hand, they call for the United Nations to crack down
more heavily on Kosovo. On the other
hand, they have withdrawn their own troops, so fighting is the last drop of
somebody else's blood, in other words.
On the one hand, the Russians describe the Kosovo authorities, dubious
as they may be but legitimately elected by UN mandate and structures, as
terrorists and thugs; on the other hand, Russia continues to support separatist
regimes, which have much less legitimacy in South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Nagorno-Karabakh
and Transnistria. There is a real
problem there. It will take sustained
attention from the Kremlin, not from the Russian Foreign Ministry, and at the
moment the Kremlin has other things to think about.
Dr Anastasakis: It goes further. Russia is
going through an interim period because of its own problems within its own
country. I think the importance of the
Balkans for Russia is decreasing and will now be seen to be decreasing.
Chairman: Gentlemen, you have contributed much to our own study of this
fascinating area. We thank you both for
giving us of your expertise.
Witness:
Mr Misha Glenny, Balkans analyst, examined.
Q136 Chairman: Mr Glenny, we welcome you back as a young,
old friend of the Committee! We have read your many commentaries with great interest
and we now look forward to hearing from you with your perspective on the
Western Balkans, the subject of our inquiry.
Perhaps we can begin, as we began our last session, if you could give
some indication of the strategic importance which you think the area has? We will then turn to Mr Maples.
Mr Glenny: I have always considered it
to have considerable strategic importance, firstly for the reason that Nicholas
Whyte mentioned - its geography and its position. It is the main overland transit route between Western Europe and
the Middle East. I would say that it
has another strategic importance, and that is in terms of the European Union's
identity and the European Union's capacity to deal with a region that is
distressed and traumatised but is, as Othon said, soon to be surrounded by the
EU. It is not, in terms of population,
a very large region. To my mind it
would actually be quite simple to sort things out in the Western Balkans, but
it requires an imagination which I have not yet identified on the part,
regrettably, of the European Union and some of the local actors.
Q137 Mr Maples: Inevitably I will cover some of the same
ground that we have covered already, but we are interested to know your views
on some of these things too. In that
context, the role of Russia in the West Balkans; what is your view there? Do you think they are troublesome and
irresponsible?
Mr Glenny: I do not think that Russia
has political ambitions in south-eastern Europe. It has considerable economic ambitions in the region. Just as a pointer, Bulgaria's single most
important contributor to its revenue earning annually in terms of taxes is
Lukoil, and you will find Lukoil and Gascom with a very significant presence
all over the region. But in political
terms Russia's only interest in the Balkans that I can identify is Kosovo, and
that pretty much as a bargaining chip which it uses in a similar but less
intense fashion as it does the regime in Transmistria; and it will continue to
hold those chips, particularly if it feels aggrieved about the United States'
influence in Georgia and places like that, until it feels it has a political
incentive to do something about it. I
have just spent some time in Russia discussing these issues, amongst others,
and there is no popular sentiment of any particular significance in support of
Serbia, and inside Serbia itself there is a realism that Russia is not somehow
going to come to its rescue under any circumstances; but also the Serbs do understand
that in terms of Kosovo Russia will not give it away for nothing, if push comes
to shove, on the issue of independence.
Q138 Mr Maples: You and our previous witnesses mentioned in
the context of, is this region of strategic importance to us and the United
States - and let us talk about Europe in this context because your view is
probably similar on the United States, but it is to a degree removed from them
- you all mentioned this question of this line of main road surface transport
links from Europe to the Middle East. I
can see that is important, but does it really matter to Western Europe if these
problems go on? Are they likely to
spill over to us in an uncontainable way?
Mr Glenny: My answer is very clearly
yes. What we are looking at at the
moment is a problem in Kosovo, which is extremely severe. If the problem in Kosovo were to get out of
control it would impact on the stability of Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia and
Herzegovina, Montenegro and possibly the Republic of Albania as well. We have seen in March the capacity for very
serious civil unrest in Kosovo. We have
also seen in March the incapacity of KFOR to deal with very serious civil
unrest in Kosovo. If - and as far as I
can see that is the trajectory we are heading at the moment, but I may
elaborate on that later - there were a social explosion, the like of which we
saw in March, again in Kosovo, it would be much harder to contain on this
occasion, and at the moment I am not sure if Western Europe and/or the American
states has the military capacity to deal with something like this.
Q139 Chairman: You do not think that the military
authorities in Kosovo have learnt the lessons in terms of smaller, more
deployable, more flexible units, so that if a March situation were to recur
that they would be better prepared?
Mr Glenny: The proof of the pudding
will be in the eating, regrettably, but I accompanied Denis MacShane to Kosovo
just after the March events and we both saw the video of the Irish Battalion
making a very good job of trying to contain an extremely large and unruly
crowd. The Irish battalion, who we
spoke to, said very clearly, "We do not have the equipment, we do not have the
capacity for crowd control and riot control and this is what we are dealing
with. We have effectively been deployed
here in order to prevent the Army of Serbia and Montenegro from invading; we
have not been deployed to deal with these types of social situations." They did a very good job. There were other battalions of KFOR who did
a lamentable job in March, and who were actually caught on film running away
from the mob. As far as I understand,
we have not had a major reorganisation of the capacity and the nature of
deployment and the equipping of KFOR in the meanwhile.
Q140 Mr Maples: If something like what happened in March
flared up again, are you saying that you think that Forces from Serbia and
Montenegro would intervene and, if so, how far would they go?
Mr Glenny: No, it would depend on how
it would develop, but I am extremely concerned that the international
community, both as it is deployed politically and militarily, will find it very
hard to deal with a return match of March, and that certainly if you had large
numbers of Serbs being killed then in that event there would be tremendous
pressure from Serbia and Montenegro to respond militarily.
Q141 Mr Maples: Might they act militarily themselves? Do they
have the capability to do so, and would that just involve the northern and
Mitrovica part?
Mr Glenny: I think it would just
involve the northern part. One of the
things that the Serbs do not fully understand, have not taken in about Kosovo -
and indeed it needs to be stressed - is that a majority of the Serbs in Kosovo
live south of the Ibar River, i.e. south of North Mitrovica, and a majority of
those Serbs living south of the Ibar River live in mixed communities with
Albanians. They are actually relatively
well integrated, and this is something that is little understood; that there
are large areas of Kosovo where Serbs and Albanians are integrating rather
successfully. The idea of enclaves and
also the prospect of the military intervention from Serbia and Montenegro would
leave these Serbs, in my opinion, extremely vulnerable to revenge attacks.
Q142 Chairman: Before I come on to the recent elections, a
question about the Russian motives and the Russian background. To what extent do you think Russian
authorities are constrained by public opinion in Russia itself and also of the
ramifications of any settlement in Kosovo and Chechnya?
Mr Glenny: The first issue, I do not
think that they are constrained at all by this. Really my sense in Russia, talking to politicians, diplomats,
journalists and ordinary folk was that Kosovo is a very far away place, of
which they know nothing, and in which they are little interested. The same, incidentally, would go for Serbia
as well. But in terms of its strategic
importance vis-à-vis Chechnya, I think you may have a more serious
point, that it sets a poor precedent as precedent for Putin. On the other hand, I do not think that Putin
always sees precedents from other parts of the world as necessarily applicable
to the Russian Federation. My strong
sense is that Kosovo is a chip which they may decide to use, they may play
with, they may not, but they are not desperately wedded to it.
Q143 Andrew Mackinlay: Mr Glenny, with Serbia and Montenegro, it
seems to me, it might be more sensible for us at least not to be in any way
trying to bolster what I deem to be a wholly artificial federation; that
Montenegrin independence not only has some justice but also you could offer
advance into the European Union for Montenegro - it could be absorbed, it is
twice the population of the London Borough of Wandsworth, and it also might
make it easier to deal with an independent Serbia and also perhaps even the
final status of Kosovo if this rump of the Yugoslav Federation was broken and
you start from scratch. I really wanted
to bounce that off you.
Mr Glenny: It is difficult for me to
reply without looking at the totality of Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo, but
essentially my assessment has been for a long time that there are two regional
motors of growth and stability in the entire region, which are Croatia and
Serbia, and that the dispute between Serbia and Croatia in the early 90s was
what provoked the war. In order to
reintroduce stability you have to guarantee the stability of those two
territories. For Serbia it is more
complicated because Croatia was only involved with Bosnia and Herzegovina as
another territory. With Serbia there is
the relationship with Montenegro and there is the relationship with Kosovo. I feel very strongly that the key
relationship for the European Union in this region now is Serbia; that because
Montenegro is so small that absorbing it into the European Union actually would
not make much difference. It would probably
be very easy to do it, although it is still a pretty highly criminalized state,
and so on and so forth, and there are problems in association with it.
Q144 Andrew Mackinlay: Which I accept.
Mr Glenny: Rather than concentrating on
a swift way to get Montenegro into the EU I would be looking very much at what
is the quickest way to get Serbia moving towards the European Union. So it is looking at a different point of
view. That may well mean jettisoning
the relationship with Montenegro and it might mean jettisoning a relationship
with Kosovo - for Serbia, that is. What
Serbia needs in order to do that is a system of incentives and at the moment
there are no incentives.
Q145 Andrew Mackinlay: You said that the trajectory which we are now
on - and I noticed you said those words - is not going to provide a solution,
and you also said, "I think it could be resolved but I do not see any players
who can resolve it." It tantalisingly
invites me to pick up from where you left off because I think it would be very
useful if you did see the present precipice we are heading for - which is
probably slightly out of line - but also if you were given a free hand today
how you would be steering things?
Mr Glenny: I will get to the core of
the matter and I will address the Kosovo election issues. First of all, you have to look at the social
reality of Kosovo. With the exception
of Transmistria this is the only territory in Europe at the moment which
registers a negative economic growth.
The difference between Transmistria and Kosovo is that Transmistria's
economic growth is in consequence of the population having halved over the last
ten years. Kosovo has a growing and
very young population and every year 50,000 young people come on to a
non-existent job market. Another reason
why the economic growth is negative is that there is further pressure from
refugees from Western Europe being sent back to Kosovo because they no longer
want to be maintained by the host country, and that means a reduction in
remittances, which are very, very important in Kosovo's economy. What happened in March was that finally
people had had enough. With youth
unemployment running at 70 per cent, with no movement on the status issue, but
also a government (UNMIK) which, frankly, has been lamentable in its failure,
its economic record is simply unspeakable.
I could go into details but for the moment take that as read. It has alienated the population. The Serbs were the first targets in March
because they are very identifiable sitting ducks. KFOR and UNMIK police vehicles and personnel were attacked, but
also the Albanian political elite, from the PDK and the LVK, were actually
frightened by the mob because they knew that they were identified with a
government system which had brought the population absolutely nothing. That is at the heart of what we are facing,
combined with a political issue of the Albanian elite having absolutely no idea
of what is going on in Belgrade - and I can testify to that because as soon as
I visit Prishtina the political leaders I meet, all they want to know is what
is happening in Belgrade? At the same
time in Belgrade there is a complete and utter ignorance of the social reality
of Kosovo. So the only political
incentive that the elites have is to take a maximalist position because they
are frightened. The Foreign Office and
Denis MacShane came up with an idea earlier this year that when Harri Holkieri
would be replaced that there would be a second post inaugurated of an envoy who
is mandated solely to Prishtina and Belgrade so that there is some form of
communication. At the moment there is
nothing. Given the social reality in
Kosovo, given that the Serbs do not feel as though there is an incentive to
vote at the moment - although in local elections you will find it is a very
different issue - what you are going to have is a further deepening of the
crisis which led to an explosion in March.
If you want to get a short to mid-term solution you have to find a way
of persuading Serbia to give up Kosovo.
So what are the ways that one might persuade Serbia to give up Kosovo? Going there now and telling Serbian
politicians that they have to support the idea of a final status which is
likely to result in independence of Kosovo is turkeys voting for
Christmas. It is no good asking Serbian
politicians to do that. And do we want
to have another situation where a Prime Minister or President of Serbia is
pushing through, with the encouragement of Western Europe and the United
States, unpopular policies and, eventually, whoever knows which one it was, is
shot as a consequence? Because there
are very few more Zoran Djindics around.
Boris Tadic happens to be one, but Tadic is dealing with a very, very
difficult situation domestically and there is a wide recognition privately amongst
the Serbian political elite that they will have to come up with some pretty
dramatic and radical solutions. What
they need vis-à-vis Kosov are the tools to sell this to their own
population, and at the moment we are asking them to do all sorts of tough
things but we are also not giving them the necessary tools.
Q146 Andrew Mackinlay: The tools being what?
Mr Glenny: The tools, I would suggest,
being a much clearer vision of how Serbia - and not Macedonia, not Kosovo, not
Albania - moves towards the European Union.
Also, any solution that involves the possibility of independence for
Kosovo when it comes to final status, this has to be like the Austrian State
Treaty of 1955; there is no way under any circumstances that Kosovo's borders
can shift.
Q147 Chairman: But Tadic urged the minority in Kosovo to
vote. Kostunica and the church urged
them not to vote. Surely the result of
the vote, this massive boycott, was a disavowal of Tadic?
Mr Glenny: No, it is not a disavowal of
Tadic, it means that on certain issues, firstly in Northern Mitrovica - I would
refer you to a quote of Reuters in their news report from two days ago,
when a Serb was asked whether he was going to vote and his response was, "Are
you kidding, they would knee cap me?" - the local Serbs feel as they do not
have any purchase within the political process or within the Assembly in
Prishtina. Tadic spent a lot of capital
asking them to go and vote but essentially they had to made a decision between
Tadic and Kostunica, and for the moment they went for Kostunica, but that is
partly because they are dependent, remember, economically on Belgrade,
Mitrovica in particular. The entire
economy is financed by Belgrade.
Q148 Chairman: I can understand that argument in respect of
Mitrovica and the northern border areas, but you said to the Committee earlier
that the greater part of the population in the south of that - and indeed you
went further and said that they were a community of Serbs who were well
integrated and indeed integrating rather successfully. How do you square that with individuals
feeling that they would be kneecapped in this vote?
Mr Glenny: Because they are integrated
into the municipalities and the local structures. They serve on the municipalities as deputy mayors, and so on and
so forth, depending on where you go. I
run a project called GPKT, which brings together municipalities from eastern
Kosovo, southern Serbia and northern Macedonia, which all have minority issues
that have been resolved through integrating the minorities, whether Albanian,
Serb or Macedonian, into the political process. They will come out every time and vote for those local councils
because they feel they have a stake, and they feel they have absolutely no
stake in the political process in Prishtina as it is currently structured. When Western Europe and the United States
come in and say, "You must go out and vote," their response to that is,
"Why? What do we get out of this?"
because what their immediate memory of the political process inside Kosovo is,
is March; that is their immediate memory.
They do not see any tangible benefits at the moment through cooperation.
Q149 Chairman: What would be your advice to the British
government and other EU countries in seeking to get over this obstacle?
Mr Glenny: My first advice would be to
accelerate the dismantling of UNMIK, to give ---
Q150 Chairman: A transfer to the EU or local ---
Mr Glenny: No, transfer to the Kosovo
Assembly but insisting upon a real transfer of powers from Prishtina to the
municipalities and so that there is a primitive system of accountability in
that political process. At the same
time this would have to be tracked with a vigorous attempt by the international
community to establish a proper dialogue and not, frankly, the excuse for a
dialogue that we have at the moment, identifying those people in the Serbian
and the Kosovo elite who are prepared to talk and deal in terms of compromises
and move towards serious solutions. The
other thing for the Serbs is to get serious about refugee return; there is a lot
of pressure inside southern Serbia to move refugees back. This is one thing that we are doing in Gilan
in eastern Kosovo, supporting the local Albanian mayor, who is appealing for
Serbs from the Nish area to come back and integrate into Kosovo. The problem we have is not political in many
of these areas where the Serbs are considering returning, the problem is
economic because what happens is they return to Kosovo and then there are no
jobs and they no longer get the support as IDPs that they receive in southern
Serbia. So one of the things that the
people I am working with, including local mayors, what we are doing is trying
to appeal to the international community to set up programmes of economic
sustainability and refugee return, so the Serbs can see that something is
actually being done to assist their integration.
Q151 Chairman: But we have the reality of the election
result. How serious a blow, in your
judgment, was that to prospects of progress in a multi-ethnic direction?
Mr Glenny: It is a serious blow but I
cannot see at the moment how the idea of partition or the idea of creation of
enclaves is going to work, and the reason for this emerges from the population
distribution that I mentioned early on, and to which you referred again, and
that is if you want to do that you have to start this operation by moving up to
40,000, 45,000 Serbs physically from disparate parts of Kosovo into these
enclaves. It is a population transfer
which began in '23 with the Greek/Turkish Agreement with Geneva, but which I
see as a very poor precedent. We went
there in order to support multi-cultural solutions in Kosovo and south eastern
Europe, and we will be presiding over the transfer of population out of the
territory where they live into another territory. The implications for southern Serbia and the Albanian population
there are severe and the implications for Macedonia are severe.
Q152 Mr Chidgey: Mr Glenny, I was rather intrigued by your
remarks regarding accelerating Serbia's accession to the European Union in the
context of Kosovo - and you also mentioned Croatia, I believe. I rather want to know what you perceive as
the outcome of that, why is it such an important issue? Plus, of course, recognising the fact that
the acceleration of any applicant state to join the EU is something which is a
hostage to fortune. Also bearing in
mind that we are already having problems with some of the new applicant
countries because of their continuing appalling record on many of the basic
principles that any applicant must show to be subscribing to before any
application can be properly considered.
So there is the problem of meeting the criteria, and are we supposed to
drop the criteria, reduce them? Are we
supposed to change the process? Is it a
situation now in which Serbia and Kosovo are looking for employment
opportunities outside of the country through accession to the EU as a way of
resolving their economic problems? I do
not quite see why it is the panacea.
Mr Glenny: I am not suggesting that
this be done immediately. I would
reiterate what you said, that if you look at the current enlargement of ten
that there is barely a country there where we have not lowered the standards of
certain criteria. So this is not
without precedent, the way that we do this.
In terms of political perceptions inside Serbia vis-à-vis the
European Union, the Croatian case is difficult as well because of the Gotovina
issues. The fact of the matter is
Gotovina is not in The Hague. Croatia
was given a clean bill of health by Carla del Ponte, but, as I understood it
from the Foreign Office, before the clean bill of health was given the deal was
Gotovina in the Hague. Positions were
then switched - why, I do not know.
Serbia, it is basically down to Mladic and the four generals. But what they do is to look at Croatia and
they look at the Gotovina issue and they say, "Can we not do a deal on Mladic
and on Gotovina, and maybe we can deal with The Hague?" So you have different messages going through
to Serbia and the key thing about Gotovina is that the resolution of that
situation allowed EU membership. So
Serbia is very sensitive about that.
But the real reason is this issue of incentives. At the moment, basically, Serbia is told,
"You have to do this, you have to do that, you have to go into a state with
Montenegro, despite possessing two economic systems and having real
difficulties on trade issues, vis-à-vis your relationship with the
EU. You have to hand over the war
criminals and you have to start getting serious about Kosovo and final status. And, by the way, no, you cannot have better
visa access into Schengen." The issue
of labour movement here is very, very important. One does not have to open the doors of south eastern Europe to
the labour markets of the European Union.
However, there are schemes which would be welcomed in south eastern
Europe, whereby individual workers can go for six to nine months, or something,
on a sponsored workplace system whereby we need the labour in western Europe,
particularly for seasonal work, and you get remittances back there, you get
some level of training - it is a very, very fruitful area of exploration, in my
opinion. But at the moment there is
none of that and already Serbs can no longer travel to Romania and Bulgaria
unrestricted. Macedonians can barely
travel anywhere. They are told all the
time that they have to do this for Europe, this for Europe, this for Europe,
and what do they get out of it? - declining living standards, they cannot go
anywhere any more and they are seen as an habitual boil on the body politic of
Europe. With the best will in the world
we have to think of ways of explaining to them that, yes, they are part of
Europe and, yes, we do want to assist them, and the CARDS programme and
similar, unfortunately, are not things which generally penetrate the minds of
ordinary voters and it is ordinary voters that we have to think of in terms of
persuading the political actors.
Q153 Mr Chidgey: It is not just about war criminals though, is
it, the deal being done? The most
important thing, surely, for EU entrance is that you do not just pass the laws
that give you the rule of law, which give you human rights, which give you
equality and so forth, you actually implement the laws so that the population
does benefit from the same society that we cherish and protect, if I may say
so? My concern is that you sign on the
dotted line, you exchange war criminals but you do not actually - and you
cannot actually - change the type of society of the applicant country, which in
this case is Serbia, which actually does not take you any further in improving
the lot of people?
Mr Glenny: Except that if you look at
the impact and the accession on the most recent round of enlargement countries,
but also on Romania and Bulgaria - and also, I would argue, on Ireland,
Portugal, Spain and Greece - the impact has been phenomenal in terms of how
people behave. You have specific
problems in Bulgaria and Romania associated with corruption and organised
crime. Because of their key position,
because of the engagement of people like the Crown Agents in Bulgaria and the
MOD in both countries, drug liaison officers and so on and so forth, real
progress is being made there. There are
no similar programmes of that depth going on in the Western Balkans, where one
could argue that they are equally needed.
But not only that, once they are on the accession process you start to
see an increase in investors' confidence, and this is very, very important,
that people feel as though once countries are on the European accession road
they are going to shift their behaviour because there is an economic incentive
to do it, and you have seen a real change in the behaviour of how Bulgarians
and Romanians operate since accession became a reality. I think that is the case with NATO accession
as well; I do not think one sees NATO accession - well, the Americans see it as
a possibility of getting bases in Romania and Bulgaria - but NATO accession as
far as south eastern Europe is concerned and the Western Balkans is a way of
engaging with the West and de-politicising their Army; i.e. it has a real
impact on how the societies are structured and behave. The process of accession has an enormous
impact, but so long as it remains a vague, unstructured promise then you are
going to get situations like Macedonia.
Q154 Mr Illsley: Turning to Bosnia and Herzegovina, the High
Representative of Bosnia,
Lord Ashdown, came under strong criticism for his strong-handed approach,
although last week in front of this Committee he defended himself reasonably
well against allegations of dismissals of certain civil servants and his use of
the Bonn powers. Do you think that he
is tackling the job appropriately, or do you think the use of those powers is
harming the situation in Bosnia or not?
Mr Glenny: I think that Bosnia
represents a similar but not identical problem to that of Kosovo - except it
has been going on for longer - where a culture of political dependency
emerges. The lack of incentive for
Bosnian politicians to act with any accountability or responsibility remains
very high, in my opinion. Lord Ashdown
has said that his aim is to try to divest himself as soon as he can of the Bonn
powers and get out of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
I think that is a very laudable aim.
I think he is to some extent caught in the straitjacket of the office
and the way the office was established and how it has developed, and that the Ad
Hominem attacks I do not think are valuable in any respect at all. I also think that Lord Ashdown is under
certain pressures from his political seniors, particularly on the issue of
security, which are not always taken into account in terms of how he is
behaving on the economic and political level.
I am concerned when he uses these powers to dismiss either elected
officials or civil servants without any requirement to explain why, which in
certain positions it is argued that he does not have to explain why he is doing
this. I think he should have to explain
why he is doing it, and I would encourage everyone to try to ensure that local
instances take over powers wherever possible, but at the moment this does not
seem to be happening quite fast enough.
In terms of security for Bosnia and Herzegovina, the keys as to whether
there is going to be another war or not lie in Belgrade and Zagreb. If Belgrade and Zagreb are hands-off Bosnia
and Herzegovina there is not going to be a serious instability in that area in
the eventuality of troops withdrawing.
If Belgrade and Zagreb are not happy then there is a very strong chance
of there being instability when troops withdraw. By "happy" I mean whether they have indicated their intentions to
interfere or not. Zagreb I think has
pulled out and I think one of the reasons why Zagreb has pulled out and will
not do that is absolutely because of the EU accession process, and it is
another reason why I would argue that Serbia should be seen as slightly
different from the others.
Q155 Mr Illsley: You mentioned incentives on Bosnia's
politicians. Can you expand on
that? Would that be moving towards
European Union accession?
Mr Glenny: No, it means so that they
are accountable to their electorates for what they do. I am talking on that level. At the moment there is a strong element of
Bosnian politics which has most successfully got the ear of Lord Ashdown. As long as so much power is concentrated in
the centre they are not having to address the concerns of their electorate, and
this is a key problem in Bosnia and a key problem in Kosovo, because whatever
one says about Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia, all the politicians there are
actually up for election next time and are held to account for their actions,
which is one of the reasons why you see changes in government so dramatically,
because there is very little they can do about the economic situation. But it is their responsibility.
Q156 Mr Illsley: Is there anything more the international
community could do to try and get the Bosnian entities to hand over people to
the War Crimes Tribunal?
Mr Glenny: That is regrettably very
difficult. No. It is very difficult to see how to do
that. Karadzic is very effectively
hidden; nobody knows where he is; they have come close to getting him a few
times. I cannot see any way of trying
to incentivise the local population; there are already large rewards on these
people's heads. Serbia and Mladic is a
different business. I do not know if
the President or the Prime Minister in Serbia know where Mladic is, but I am
sure military intelligence knows where he is.
I think Mladic is going to be easier to get, paradoxically, because he
is more powerful than Karadzic.
Q157 Mr Illsley: Does there come a time when we have to turn
to each other and say, is there any point continuing with this search for these
people? Perhaps more Karadzic than
Mladic because of the military involvement.
Does there come a time when the civilian population do not want to give
him up, he has obviously been able to hide, to conceal himself, there are
rewards on his head, yet people do not take advantage of that, and is it not
time to say, "Let us forget it"?
Mr Glenny: I observed from an article
in the Washington Times that I read this morning, that John Bolton in
the United States has made strong indications that it is time to wind-up the
ICTY. Under the Bush administration it
was fairly obvious earlier on that if the Serbs had handed over Mladic and the
Bosnians Karadzic then the Americans would have withdrawn their support from
the ICTY as a whole. And it now looks
as if they are looking into this again with the transfer of cases to Belgrade
and to Zagreb and to the local instances.
I think that the ICTY has a function but I think that it has become too
politicised and I think it has too negative an impact on local politics. If there is some way of reaching a
compromise on this issue in terms of devolving the court's powers into local
capitals I think it should certainly be explored. There is a long list of people sitting there waiting to be tried
in The Hague. Are people going to
continue funding The Hague? I do not
know, those are issues for the international community to decide in terms of
funding. At the moment there is a huge
logjam, there is the whole minor farce around the Molosevic case and it has had
a real blocking effect on political development inside the former
Yugoslavia. What were to happen if
Carla del Ponte finally unveils her choice of indictees for Kosovo, God only
knows.
Q158 Andrew Mackinlay: Some time before the break I want to ask
about policing, but when you literally stop there you are saying that we have
to anticipate this shopping list of indictees coming up from Kosovo, and you
say that is going to be an aggravant?
Mr Glenny: Yes.
Q159 Andrew Mackinlay: The other thing I want to ask you about is,
Mr Whyte earlier drew attention to the fact that many of the citizens of Bosnia
and Herzegovina will be able to claim Croatian citizenship and if they did do
so of course that would diminish from nation building, they would not feel
Bosnian, and then presumably the people who cannot claim Croatian citizenship
would say, "You are not Bosnian."
Presumably this is something which we need to take into account, both in
terms of negotiations in accession of Croatia and, again, going back to this
whole business of mobility around Europe.
We exaggerate this business, points which both Mr Whyte and you have
made, the fact we are not going to let people into Europe, we are going to
return them, and visas and so on. Would
you flag this up fairly high for us to address this, in the sense we address
the Foreign Commonwealth Office?
Mr Glenny: When I learnt about Croatian
accession I immediately anticipated that when this gets nearer you will see the
first voluntary mass conversion of religion inside the Balkans for 150 years or
so, as a lot of people become Catholics in a short space of time. I think there will be an element of that; I
think there will be an element of selling Croatian passports inside Bosnia and
Herzegovina as well, but the dual citizenship for Serbia and for Croatia was
laid down in Dayton and that is not going to stop. Whether the EU can come up with a new formulation saying that
only Croats not living in Bosnia and Herzegovina can get in, I do not know, but
it seems to be unrealistic. As regards
access to labour markets and moving around Europe, the other thing that I am
doing at the moment is working at a book on trans-national organised crime, and
I can tell you quite categorically that keeping people out of the European
Union and keeping them in distressed economic areas is manna from heaven for
organised crime syndicates. They
provide labour, very cheap labour. The
one cultural specificity you can level at the Balkans is that people are good
at smuggling there. I do not think that
they are congenitally genocidal and I do not think that they are congenitally
criminal, but they are good at smuggling because they have been doing it for a
very long time, and every time the borders of the EU are raised, the walls go
higher, and all you are doing is maximising the profits of organised crime
syndicates, who have penetrated our capitals ten years ago. The dam burst on that one a long time
ago. So for me, particularly with the
issue of the ageing population in Western Europe, the fact that we often cannot
fill up the employment places that are there, it seems to me, if I may use the
colloquialism, a "no brainer". We have
unemployment that leads to instability in south-eastern Europe, we have
under-employment. These people have
been determined by us as European and candidates for the European Union, and it
seems to me an obvious place from where we could consider drawing labour.
Q160 Ms Stuart: Let us take this "no brainer" a little bit
further. Most of the issues which I
wanted to raise in relation to Serbia and Montenegro you have in many ways
answered those points in relation to other questions. Let us look at the FCO's approach to this. I remember when - it may have been ten years
ago - Timothy Garton Ash developed this theory, or was writing an article that
he thought a lot of what was going on in the former Yugoslavia was settling
things that in the rest of Europe were settled in 1945, when the populations
moved and re-jigged, but somehow that did not happen there. You now have the former Yugoslavia, and when
you look at the map of Europe you know that this bit in some way or another has
to come into Europe, and this is the kind of "no brainer", that, if we do not,
in terms of crime it is all there. If
you go back to the structure of the European Union and its balance between
large countries and small countries, if you really look at that whole
section and at the end process, and you may look and think that Montenegro may
be a separate unity to come in, do you realise that you completely destabilise
the basis and balance of large and small countries and what comes to countries
of membership, your Commissioner, your minimum of four or five MEPs, all that
kind of stuff? Have you thought about
that one?
Mr Glenny: On that issue, on the issue
of representation in the EU, believe you me you could do a deal with this
region very, very quickly, for them to say, "Hell's teeth, we will have one
Commissioner every five years; we do not care.
What we want is structure and cohesion first. We want our economies to have the same kind of incentives and
inputs and targeted work and data collection, all the things that happen in
Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Spain, and transformed those countries within the
space of 20, 25 years." That is what
they are looking for. So on that issue
I am sure you can do a deal; they are good at making deals, these people, as
well. That is another cultural specificity.
I agree with you that it is another thing to swallow, particularly after
the last ten, and the security arrangements are going to be difficult. Where I think Tim was right ten years ago is
what in their murky, hazy, violent way the Serbs and the Croats understood was
that the European Union on the whole - in fact almost exclusively - takes in
coherent nation states, and Yugoslavia was not a coherent nation state, so
everyone suddenly was pushing towards nation states equals early European
entry, and of course it was a very bloody experiment. Cyprus does not count because Cyprus had the Greeks threatening
to veto the whole of the enlargement if they did not come in in their unclear
unconstitutional arrangement. There is
no one who plays a similar function for the Western Balkans. Another reason why I suggest that Serbia and
Croatia are key on this is that Serbia does have a certain tradition of
statehood and a certain coherency.
Kosovo is currently a basket case; Macedonia is not a whole deal better;
Bosnia and Herzegovina also has real difficulties; and Albania has very serious
problems as well.
Q161 Ms Stuart: What about Montenegro?
Mr Glenny: It depends what
happens. My own feeling is that the Agreement
will fall apart after three years; that is my sense. Even if Montenegro does not become a member of the EU straight
away it has an economic relationship with parts of the Italian establishment,
of various varieties, which will ensure that it becomes a sustainable economy -
but not a terribly dramatic one.
Q162 Ms Stuart: One final question on nationalist feelings,
particularly in Serbia. I remember
reading an article by a Serbian journalist where he said, "My identity is about
to be stolen by a blue flag with 12 golden stars." Is he a single voice or is that a problem over there?
Mr Glenny: If you look at the
nationalist vote across Eastern Europe and south-eastern Europe the patterns in
Serbia are pretty consistent. The
radicals have two sources for their electoral strength. One is poverty and economic decline and the
other is nationalism. Personally I
think that the economic decline is a more significant percentage of that vote
and the radicals will also suffer reverses in fortunes. It looks as though we may well have early
elections in Serbia in the Spring. This
is the time when Tadic and his party organisation are really on the line and I
think this will be an absolutely crucial event. But I think you will see a fairly significant decline in Kostunica's
vote. No, I do not think the voice that
you read in the article is the defining voice of Serbian political
consciousness.
Q163 Chairman: We have not turned to Macedonia. May we have some final reflections on what
are the bases of the current instability?
Is it essentially economic? I
have heard, for example, that in the past the Macedonians had most of the jobs
in the bureaucracy; that those have been reduced. The out grouped Albanians became more entrepreneurial; they
travelled; they are bringing in money now, causing certain resentments. How do you describe to us the roots of the
instability in Macedonia and the prospects, which, since Macedonia appears to
be, certainly in respect of NATO, well placed?
Mr Glenny: I think it is partly as you
described it there, in an extremely succinct, it seems to me, summary of one of
the ESI papers, arguing exactly that.
That is part of the problem with the Macedonians and the Albanians,
there is no question. The Ochrid
Agreement has always had some detractors in the Macedonia population which see
it, (a) as selling out to the Albanians, but (b) as having been imposed from
the outside. This, given the parlous
state of the Macedonian economy, has not been helped by the way that the
government has handled the whole Referendum and the whole decentralisation
business. They have acted in a shroud
of secrecy; they have not bothered to explain to the population what is going
on. But I think one has to also
recognise that this is a people, both Albanians and Macedonians, exercising
their right to a democratic initiative on what is a very serious issue for
them. I do not think that it will
succeed and I am pleased if it does not succeed. However, I do not think one wants to be too hectoring,
particularly of your EU representative, about the need for the decentralisation
package to go through because people will respond negatively to it. I think Macedonia will get over this, but it
does point to a serious long-running problem in how the two communities
inter-relate at times of economic distress.
Q164 Chairman: So the roots being economic, social or
ethnic?
Mr Glenny: Consistently before, during
and after the civil war of 2001 opinion polls in both communities in Macedonia
put ethnic relations and ethnic tensions down at about fifth and sixth of
ordinary citizens' major concerns, after the issues of unemployment, health,
education and all those other things which we all recognise from our
lives. What happens is that when you
have a very weak economy in Macedonia, and what is culturally undoubtedly quite
a divided community, when there are political tensions and failures associated
with that then the economic tensions are very quickly translated and
manipulated into ethnic tensions. On
the ethnic issue the current Albanian and Macedonian parties in power have done
pretty well, but they are both currently very weak and one hesitates to guess
as to what might come after.
Chairman: Mr Glenny, as always, you
have been most helpful. Thank you very
much.
