“The diplomatic offensive is not too late”

“The diplomatic offensive is not too late”

B92: Serbia started a new diplomatic initiative in regards to Kosovo. You are going to the Republic of South Africa. What do you expect from this trip?

Drašković: I expect to explain Serbia’s position to head officials in South Africa, that our position is one of maximal compromise, that we cannot allow the alteration of state borders, that that action would be a most brutal attack on the UN charter and on the dignity of our people and our state. I believe that my colleagues will understand that. All of Africa is in great fear of Ahtisaari’s plan if it were to turn into a resolution under which the borders of the state of Serbia would be violently altered. Why? Well, because in Africa there is not one state whose borders would not be in danger.  In Africa there are not ethnic and national states. Borders were drawn by colonialists, and Africa is not in favor of Ahtisaari’s plan. South Africa is one of the leading countries of the black continent and is of tremendous importance for all of Africa, for countries outside of Africa, globally, and it has the honorable president Mandela.

B92: Why are you heading to South Africa, and not say to Russia, Great Britain, or the United States?

Drašković: I think that this needs to be explained to our people. In the Security Council there are 15 members – five permanent members with the right to veto and ten non-permanent members. Under the condition that no permanent member uses its right to veto, nine members are needed to be for the Resolution in order for it to pass. Therefore, of those ten non-permanent members, six members must be for the Resolution in order for it to pass. And in that procedure lies our greatest chance. I cannot see the sixth vote. I do not believe that South Africa, that the Congo, or that Ghana will vote for the forced disruption of the international borders of recognized countries. I also can’t see Indonesia voting for Ahtisaari’s plan which would forcibly change the borders of Serbia, because in Indonesia there are seven Kosovos, regions similar to Kosovo, and Indonesia would therefore not vote for self destruction. Yes, Qatar is an Islamic state, but it is also under powerful pressure from China. I don’t see Slovakia voting for it, given that its parliament is against Ahtisaari’s plan, but that the government would accept the plan could mean a different vote in the Security Council, or perhaps an abstention. There isn’t a sixth vote, even under the condition that Italy, as a non-permanent member, and Belgium truly stand on the side of the three permanent Western country members: the USA, France and Britain. Peru’s vote is not certain. Our chance lies in that. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs already sent one high delegation to Ghana. They’ve returned. Now I am going to South Africa, and another delegation will be sent to the Congo.

B92: Is it not too late for a diplomatic offensive, given that discussion in the Security Council has basically already begun?

Drašković: It is really in style now to say it is too late. Our diplomatic initiative in regards to Kosovo is working non-stop, but we were not able to start the diplomatic initiative before March 10. How could we go and speak out against Ahtisaari’s plan about voting on an independent Kosovo state on the territory of the state of Serbia before he put his plan before the UN Security Council? Therefore we had to wait for the proposal. We believed that he would not propose something like this, but he did. And we immediately began our work. I will tell you, the day after the Vienna talks, I wrote a letter to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of all the countries of the Contact Group, to the UN Security Council, to the permanent members, leaders in the EU. Prime Minister Koštunica was already in New York. I think that a delegate of the President of the Republic will head to Indonesia and Qatar soon.  A delegation will go to Peru and to Panama, having traveled here around Europe’s capitals. We are working as much as we can. It sounds a little strange, but our greatest chance lies with the non-permanent members of the UN Security Council. It is enough that if six of them abstain, neither the Russian nor the Chinese veto will be necessary.  The resolution will not pass. At this moment, special envoy Marrti Ahtisaari does not have the sixth vote among the non-permanent member states. I am not saying that there is no chance that he will find the votes.  Pressure will come from both sides and all the more so from those who are strongest, but at the same time, it will be exceptionally hard to successfully twist arms, given that all of the countries are aware that Ahtisaari’s proposal is not only a forced alteration of the state borders of Serbia and dynamite under the territorial integrity of Serbia, but that it is even greater dynamite for many others.

B92: Do you think it is too late to change the positions of countries that already responded to Ahtisaari’s proposal? You say that the diplomatic initiative wasn’t able to organize before the presentation of Ahtisaari’s proposal to the Security Council, yet, at that point many states already had clear positions on it.

Drašković: The permanent members of the Security Council had clear positions. And we are not deceived there.  The USA, France, and Britain supported Ahtisaari from the beginning. We were not in the position to break or change the position of the USA, France or Britain. Unfortunately, we did not have that chance. What can be changed in their position? The fact is that they will be faced with the reality that there is no sixth vote among the non-permanent members, and that that Resolution will not be able to pass, and that there will then be a need to find a compromised solution. Finally they will be compelled to find a compromise. Or, even if that sixth vote is supplied, then they must break Russia or China’s position to be sure that one of them, Russia before all others, will not use its veto.

B92: An additional problem is the fact that the state of Serbia does not have an ambassador in many countries that are members of the Security Council, permanent and non-permanent. Why is that and how much harm does it bring to the task of solving the Kosovo issue?

Drašković: It would be better if we had ambassadors. And really, that’s how it is.  Let’s see, of those ten non-permanent members of the Security Council, I think we have ambassadors in just two countries – South Africa and Indonesia. We don’t have one in Belgium, in Slovakia, in Italy. We have to have ambassadors there. The diplomatic network was reduced during the time of the earlier ministry. Then we didn’t have ambassadors in the Congo or Ghana, but on non-residential grounds those places are covered. At the same time, I have to say that it is never good for a country to find itself in this situation. We don’t have ambassadors in Moscow, nor in Canada. Canada is a member of the Group of 8. Certainly Kosovo was considered at the G8 summit in June in Germany. We don’t have an ambassador in Brussels.

B92: We have nowhere to go. We have Great Britain, Russia, Italy…  There, ministers of affairs resolve everything.

Drašković: I’ll tell you something. It is wrong to state that the President of the Republic was unable to sign an accreditation letter because the government named the new ambassadors in the middle of the election process. That isn’t right. Ambassadors, the majority of them, regarding those who were needed to replace Montenegrin ambassadors after the split in the state union, were proposed from my side, as the Minister of Foreign Affairs, for government approval in June. That was in no way in the middle of the election process. And there is no defending that, and that is my one comment. Today we even have a few ambassadors who cannot leave for their posts, even if they made an agreement with the host country, because the chief of state did not sign an accreditation letter. We cannot start the procedure for the second ambassadors, because again, a warning came from the highest seat in the state that it would be in vain for us to select and propose a candidate, that nothing would come of that.

B92: Why?

Drašković: I don’t know. That question should be posed to the President of the Republic. But this is not good for the country, and this is certainly not the first time in the last few decades that we’ve found ourselves in this kind of diplomatic vacuum.