REUTERS
London, April 20, 2001

West's "No New Balkan States" Mantra Set to Fail

The international community's mantra  that there should be no more states in the Balkans may not outlive the weekend.

If Montenegro's pro-independence parties win a clear victory in Sunday's parliamentary election, then Serbia's last remaining partner in federal Yugoslavia looks set to disregard Western pleas and hold an early referendum on breaking with Belgrade.

"We'll probably see the creation of another Mickey Mouse state, a smugglers' paradise totally dependent on foreign aid," said Balkans analyst Jonathan Eyal of Britain's Royal United Services Institute think-tank.

However, if the election result is close in the coastal Adriatic republic, the next stage in the decade-old dissolution of former Yugoslavia may be postponed or even averted, Western diplomats say.

Just last week, foreign ministers of the United States, Russia, Britain, France, Germany and Italy called for Montenegro (population 650,000) to stay in Yugoslavia and threatened to deprive it of financial aid if it split away unilaterally.

But European diplomats acknowledge the threat was largely hollow, given the risk of creating another zone of instability and organized crime if aid were withheld. Anyway, Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic seems bent on ignoring such warnings.

"I don't think we can prevent independence. We are inching our way towards a more tenable position," a senior West European official said.

ANOTHER EMBASSY IN THE BALKANS?

Another said that despite his government's repeated urging, Montenegro would probably break away in the end and "we are coming to accept that maybe we are going to have to set up yet another embassy in the Balkans".

Respected independent bodies such as the International Crisis Group and the European Stability Initiative have urged the international community to drop self-defeating pressure on Montenegro to abandon its aspiration.

"If the election result favors the pro-independence parties, then the international community will have no choice but belatedly to reconcile itself to an independent Montenegro," the ICG said in a report this week.

Aid should be conditional on progress in reforms, not linked to Montenegro's status, it said.

British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook may signal the start of a Western U-turn next week when he visits the last of the Yugoslav republics still tied to Serbia, diplomats say.

Visiting Belgrade this month for the first time since the fall of president Slobodan Milosevic, Cook found that most of Serbia's new democratic political establishment regards Montenegrin independence as a foregone conclusion, they said.

Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica and Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic seemed mainly concerned to slow the process, drive a hard bargain over asset-allocation and try to avoid setting a bad precedent for Kosovo, the diplomats said.

Cook is likely to urge Montenegro to ensure its referendum law meets European standards, to crack down on corruption and smuggling and to negotiate any eventual change of status with Belgrade, they said.

Unlike Kosovo, a Serbian province under temporary UN rule since NATO bombing drove out Yugoslav troops in 1999, Montenegro has the status of a republic and hence, by European precedent, the right to secede democratically from Yugoslavia as Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Macedonia did in the early 1990s.

But the major powers, especially Russia, fear Montenegro's departure could have a "domino effect", raising destabilizing pressure to redraw other Balkan borders.

It could harden the determination of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority to seize independence, prompt the Bosnian Serbs to demand that their republic, recognized by the 1995 Dayton peace accords, merge with Serbia, and unsettle Serbia's multi-ethnic Vojvodina province, bordering on Hungary.

WEST BACKED MONTENEGRO AGAINST MILOSEVIC

Eyal said such fears were exaggerated. Each national conflict had its own logic and it was an illusion to think unstable situations could simply be frozen.

"Whatever happens in Montenegro, whether divorce or a decision to stay together in a looser federation, at least we can be optimistic it will not be followed by violence," he said.

Eyal said his main fear was that negotiating the separation would distract Belgrade's new rulers from the urgent task of domestic political and economic reform.

Ironically, the West backed Montenegro's gradual separation from Serbia as long as Milosevic was in power, cushioning the republic from the impact of sanctions and NATO bombing and abetting its adoption of the deutschemark as its currency.

NATO sources said Djukanovic not only provided a conduit for intensive contacts between the United States and the Serbian opposition during and after the Kosovo war but also supplied valuable intelligence and tied down key Yugoslav army units.

Governments from Washington to Rome rolled out the red carpet for Djukanovic while he was useful as a lever to put pressure on the Serbian strongman but cold-shouldered him once democracy triumphed in Belgrade.

When Kostunica traveled in triumph to an EU-Balkans summit in Zagreb last November, Djukanovic wore the longest face in the room, one official present said.

By that time, it was too late to bring the two estranged republics back even into a marriage of convenience, he said.