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Anyone out there interested in Macedonia?

Here’s an interview I did over the weekend for Slobodanka Jovanovska of Utrinski Vesnik, a Skopje paper:

Q. Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski soon will travel in U.S. to have a meeting with the high officials in the State Department. It will be his first official visit after five years on power, motivated by political crisis in Macedonia. How do you see American-Macedonian relations and do you agree that, after the NATO summit, Macedonia is going in opposite [a negative] direction?

A. My sense is that Prime Minister Gruevski has not made a lot of friends in Washington, mainly because of his brandishing of Macedonian nationalism and his failure to come to terms with the Greeks on the name issue. I don’t say this is entirely fair, only that he is seen as more a problem than part of the solution in influential circles.

Q. Do you see potential for “Tunisian scenario” in Macedonia after almost all of the opposition parties left the Parliament, and after the instability in Albania? How do you comment the critics here that there is not democracy in the country and that the freedom of expression is threatened by ruling party?

A. I don’t think Macedonia is even close to Tunisia: Skopje may not be a perfect democracy, but it is a nascent democracy that is far ahead of Tunis. What the opposition lacks is not freedom, but votes. It would certainly be a mistake for Macedonia to follow Albania’s lead—it takes a long time for a country’s reputation to recover from that sort of instability. As for the threat to freedom of expression, that concerns me, but how do I know the accusations are unfounded?

Q. There is [the] impression in Macedonia that Obama’s administration is not interested about the Balkans as much as the previous one and is not doing enough about the name issue, which is blocking Macedonian membership in NATO and EU negotiations. What is your opinion on that?

A. Anyone can see that the Obama Administration has its hands full with many problems that come ahead of the Balkans: Egypt, Afghanistan, Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Sudan just to name a few. And I think there is a feeling here that it is up to the Greeks and Macedonians to settle the name issue, not up to Washington, which tried for many years.

Q. Macedonia was one of the countries which supported Bolivia about the controversial coca leaf, contrary to U.S. which supported the ban. The Prime Minister had a meeting with Robert Mugabe and got as a favor recognition of the constitutional name of Macedonia. The president Gjorgji Ivanov is sending messages for better relations with Russia…Do you think that this is wise policy instead of NATO and EU membership?

A. If it is instead of NATO and EU membership, I think it is not wise. But many Macedonians feel strongly about the name issue and I can’t blame them for that. It seems to me Gruevski may have decided he doesn’t want a solution (other than “Republic of Macedonia”). That is his right, but then EU and NATO membership are not possible, so long as Greece remains opposed.

Q. Do you personally believe that there is solution about the name dispute with Greece and where do you find, if any, optimism?

A. Optimism, no. But I am sure there is a solution. The question is how much more damage will be done before they come to it.

Q. Generally, do you think that the Balkan countries are going in right direction and are there any threats left?

The big threat in the Balkans today is lack of progress: on the Macedonia name issue, on Bosnia’s constitutional reforms, on Pristina/Belgrade dialogue. These are long-standing irritants that are being allowed to remain unresolved and are blocking progress towards NATO and the EU. This is a mistake—Brussels and the Balkans capitals need to find a way of moving forward, even if only slowly. Washington will help, but it doesn’t want to play the primary mover role any longer.

Dodik’s next move: squeezing Brcko dry

Matthew Parish, who now practices law in Geneva with Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, has kindly given me permission to publish this interesting analysis, which has already appeared in the Bosnian newspaper Oslobodjenje. From 2005 to 2007, Matthew lived in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where he worked for the Office of the High Representative of Bosnia and Herzegovina (OHR) as the Chief Legal Adviser to the International Supervisor of Brčko.

While I think Matthew is overly harsh in his description of OHR officials, the careful dissection of what Dodik is up to merits attention, including from the OHR and other concerned internationals.  As it is significantly longer than the usual blog posts, I’ve put the piece in the “From the field” section, where Geneva (and Brcko) are located from my DC perspective.

Pristina and Belgrade need to move ahead

The Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly has adopted a vigorous but reasonable resolution calling for a serious investigation of organ trafficking and inhuman treatment in the aftermath of the NATO/Serbia war.  While I had concerns about the uncaveated and incautious way in which Council of Europe rapporteur Dick Marty presented his allegations, it seems to me appropriate that EULEX, the European Rule of Law mission in Kosovo, be charged with determining the facts, bringing any charges that may be appropriate in Kosovo, and ensuring the protection of witnesses.

At the same time, the re-run of elections in some Kosovo municipalities has apparently confirmed Hashim Thaci, accused in Marty’s report of directing the organ trafficking operation, as the winner of Kosovo’s parliamentary poll.  To govern, he will need to form a majority governing coalition that includes Serbs and other minorities as well as at least one other Albanian political party. Kosovo Albanian voters appear disinclined to block Thaci from a new mandate because of the organ trafficking allegations, though his political rivals may well try to unseat him by forming an alternative majority.

In some societies, Thaci would be expected to resign while being investigated, but the more usual practice in my experience is to continue in office unless an indictment (a formal charge) is brought to court. I imagine that is what Thaci will do, though I hasten to add that I have not been in touch with him and believe that the decision on this issue belongs entirely to Kosovars, whose interests are most immediately at stake, not internationals.

The question is whether Thaci’s remaining in office will weaken Kosovo’s negotiating position vis-a-vis Serbia in the talks on practical issues that the General Assembly has called for, and that the EU is prepared to facilitate.  Belgrade has said it is still prepared to meet with Thaci, but that doesn’t mean it is a good idea from the Kosovar perspective.

If the talks were best held at a political level, I would have doubts.  But that is not the case.  Pristina and Belgrade need to focus in the first instance on issues that are likely to be best dealt with below the political level.  Looming in the background there will always be the issue of status, which the Kosovars regard as resolved in favor of independence and sovereignty but the Serbs would like to re-open, at least for the northern municipalities that they control.

The distance between a practical issue and a status issue is rarely more than a sentence or two. It would of course resolve a lot of things if Belgrade were to accept the facts and recognize Kosovo as an independent and sovereign state, albeit one in which Serbs have legitimate interests.  But Belgrade is not going to do that, so the best we can hope for is some confidence-building progress on other issues.  That can be achieved at the technical level, often between officials in the respective administrations.

Of course some might argue that miscreants may be present at that level as well, but that is true for both sides.  It seems to me that if Albanian Kosovars are prepared to meet with Serbian officials, Serbian officials should be prepared to meet with Kosovan officials, whatever their ethnic group.  It is time to get things moving, before Belgrade begins to get distracted by its own electoral cycle.

Let’s be clear

“Europe may have reacted hastily” by recognizing Kosovo, a Member of the European Parliament is quoted as saying on Serbia’s B92 website.  This sentiment has appeared regularly in recent weeks, based on unsubstantiated allegations by a Council of Europe rapporteur who opposed Kosovo’s February 2008 declaration of independence.

While the allegations require serious investigation, the efforts to call into question Kosovo’s independence are unjustified.  Kosovo became independent because Serbia stopped treating its majority population as citizens.  This was clearest in Milosevic’s attempt to remove Albanians from Kosovo in 1999, but it was no less damaging to Serbia’s claims of sovereignty when the post-Milosevic Serbian state did not count the Kosovo Albanians on the voter rolls for the 2006 referendum on its new constitution, thus denying them their right under the then existing constitution to block the adoption of a new one by not voting (the then existing constitution required that 50 per cent of registered voters participate in the referendum, a percentage that would not have been reached had the Albanians been counted).

Members of the Kosovo Liberation Army that fought for independence in the late 1990s now stand accused at the Council of Europe of heinous crimes.  These allegations have been circulated for a long time:  they are stock in trade in Belgrade, where officials have investigated them and spread rumors about them for 10 years.  This does not mean they aren’t true–they clearly need to be investigated more objectively and professionally. It does mean we should suspend judgment and treat those individuals allegedly involved, including Prime Minister Thaci, as innocent until proven guilty in a properly constituted court with jurisdiction over the case.  If the allegations are eventually found to be true, a possibility that cannot be excluded, that would still not bear on Kosovo’s independence any more than accusations of corruption against Croatia’s former prime minister bear on Zagreb’s bid for EU membership.

Much more immediately damaging to Kosovo than the unsubstantiated allegations are the claims, reported not only by B92 from EU sources but also by Albanian sources, that threats and fraud plagued not only the December elections in Kosovo but also the January 9 rerun in several municipalities.  These elections were an ideal opportunity for Kosovo to demonstrate unequivocally its democratic credentials.  Whoever has tampered with the voters and the votes has done his country serious harm.