On November 21, 1995, Slobodan Milosevic, Franjo Tudjman and Alija Izetbegovic signed the Dayton Agreement, ending the bloodshed that led to 200,000 deaths, the displacement of a million people and the dissolution of Yugoslavia.
Years later, people fear that removing the international community's administration in Bosnia could disrupt the precarious balance there.
Croatia's President Stipe Mesic (below) and Serbian President Boris Tadic spoke to Kathimerini about the issues.
Dayton needs update
Do you think that the Dayton Accords were fair or are there still ethnic issues that need settling?
The Dayton Accords put an end to the war. Unfortunately, the agreement made official what had taken place during the war. The war caused ethnic populations to form groups and this is precisely what the Dayton Accords legitimized, preventing refugees and displaced persons from returning.
The accords maintained three armies with three different sources of funding, three administrative regimes and two entities, the Serb Republic and Muslim Croat Federation, that act as states. Bosnia-Herzegovina must function as any other European state, however. This is why the Dayton Accords need an update.
What do you think should be done? Is it time for the international community to withdraw and leave Bosnia to proceed on its own?
On the contrary, this is when it must not leave. State mechanisms must be created now, as in other European states. A part of these mechanisms are being created but very slowly.
The army is being formed and decisions have been made to create a police force. But Bosnia-Herzegovina must acquire a government, a parliament and a president to be elected every four to five years. Bosnia needs a responsible government with all its functions and this is where the international community must help.
We must reach an agreement that will update the Dayton Accords.
Nevertheless, outgoing UN High Representative Paddy Ashdown maintains that Bosnia has powerful institutions and the country can proceed on its own.
It is difficult for someone to imagine this when the high representative has the last word on everything. Now institutions must be created that can function without him. To resolve the issue of Bosnia's operation, one has to know the history of the country's birth in the last war.
Tell us your opinion on this, as you were the last president of united Yugoslavia.
The people of Bosnia and Herzegovina did not group together because of religious or ethnic issues. The problem was created in Bosnia-Herzegovina because Milosevic could not reach an agreement on the independence of the Yugoslav republics.
The Yugoslav Constitution of 1974 established the republics inside Yugoslavia as states with the right to decide on their independence if they so wished.
Yugoslavia collapsed because it lost the key factors that held it united. These were Tito, the army and the multiethnic Communist Party. Tito died, the Union of Yugoslav Communists was dissolved and the Yugoslav army became Serb. Milosevic needed the army to create a Greater Serbia upon the ruins of Yugoslavia at the price of the Croats and Bosnians.
Some say Yugoslavia would not have dissolved had Tito lived.
Of course, but Tito was not immortal.
You have given us your version of the breakup. But there are other theories, of which the following two are the most common. One claims Yugoslavia collapsed because it never functioned as a democracy and a sense of Yugoslav nationhood was never created; the other attributes the collapse to the West.
The answer lies somewhere in the middle. Yugoslavia was created at the behest of the powers who won World War I. The Yugoslav regime was created from parts that had never been together. From the first it was plagued by conflict. The union was formed as a result of pressure and not because its politicians wanted it. It was a country without cohesion under the aegis of the Karageorgevic family.
The state of Yugoslavia after World War I was a federation that could only be sustained as such for as long as Tito was alive. When Tito was gone, everyone sought a new model.
We proposed a federation but Milosevic did not want a federation nor a confederation. He wanted a Greater Serbia. He deceived the people and made them think he was fighting for Yugoslavia as the people were emotionally tied to the state.
Milosevic therefore appeared to be pro-Yugoslavia but was in fact undermining its existence. He deceived the Serbs by telling them that they would all live in one state, he gave them weapons and told them that the weapons they held in their hands would be the Serbia of tomorrow.
This was the basic problem that led to the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Milosevic's efforts to create a Greater Serbia were to the detriment of the others.
What was the role of your predecessor Franjo Tudjman on this issue?
Tudjman was impressed by Milosevic's successes in taking over a large part of Bosnia-Herzegovina and believed that the people approved of the partitioning of the republic. He wanted Croatia to annex part of Bosnia-Herzegovina as he believed that with the creation of an independent Croatia, a Herceg-Bosna in Bosnia-Herzegovina would stand up for the interests of Croatia. All of this was fantasy as Bosnia-Herzegovina could not be partitioned. We found ourselves facing an unbelievable situation: Tudjman and Milosevic fighting in Croatia but planning the partitioning of Bosnia-Herzegovina each for their own interests. That was the problem.
What happened in the end that caused the plan to fail?
The plan could not have succeeded because Europe and the international community realized, albeit rather late in the day, what was happening. They saw that if the Serbs took a part of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Croats another smaller part, a third part would be left where a small Islamic state would form in the center of Europe, a new Palestine, a center of terrorism for the next 50 years. They could not consent to such a thing.
Personalizing blame
With so much hate accumulated, is there a danger of a new war breaking out if the international community withdraws?
The war in Bosnia did not take place due to hate. The hate was a product of the war. It is important for the court in The Hague to convict the guilty so that the guilt is personalized. Specific individuals must be condemned for the crimes committed and not all the Serbs, Croats or Bosnians of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Blame has been attributed by prosecutor Carla Del Ponte, but you have not helped to get Ante Godovina arrested, nor have the Serbs helped arrest Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic.
No one will get away because once guilt is personalized the collective accusations will cease. I am not Godovina's lawyer, and I favor his appearance before the international court as soon as possible. He can only defend himself in the court and, sooner or later, he will have to appear in court. No one can be compared to Mladic, who is the worst criminal in the area — including those of WWII. There is no precedent in history of the arrest and execution of 8,000 people, something that Mladic did in Srebrenica. He is a separate case.
After the Dayton Accords do you think the Yugoslav issue has been resolved for good?
Yes, Yugoslavia does not exist anymore. Even if we wanted to create a new Yugoslavia, the people wouldn't allow it. The only solution for all of us is the EU. We must respond as quickly as possible to the requirements... to enter the family which the Croats, Serbs and Bosnians want to become a member of.
You do not fear the outbreak of a new war in Yugoslavia?
War? Not in the least.
http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_ell_3788701_01/12/2005_63617
Kosovo is a running sore. How do you see developments there?
When we talked to Milosevic, the negotiations went nowhere because he did not have stable criteria. He employed different criteria in each case to suit himself.
For instance, in Kosovo the Albanians were the overwhelming majority of the population, but the Serbs held power, so, in his view, Kosovo was Serbian, [or] in Vojvodina, which historically belonged to the Croatian axis and earlier to Austria.
Milosevic used different criteria. There his criterion was the majority who, after the departure of the Austrians, Germans and many Hungarians, were the Serbs. So he claimed that since the Serbs were in the majority, Vojvodina was Serbian. It was a double standard.
The Albanian Kosovars had no power, no school, no language, no stature as a nation. During World War II the Italians occupied Kosovo and gave the Albanians the right to their ethnicity and language.
In the beginning, the Albanians didn't take part in the resistance that had spread throughout Yugoslavia, because they got something they hadn't had before.
Later, Tito and Hoxha reached an agreement for the Albanian Kosovars to join the resistance, and they postponed a final settlement of the status quo to a referendum after the war. But then came the clash between Tito and Stalin. Hoxha sided with Stalin and the referendum never took place. The Albanians got autonomy but Kosovo did not become a republic and was designated a province.
They eventually created their own universities and an intelligentsia and a sense of nationhood. But along came Milosevic and [he] took it all away from them, dismissed them from their jobs, closed down their schools and with the war he decided to drive them out into FYROM and Albania. He believed that by destabilizing FYROM and Albania he would remain the most powerful in the region and people would ask him to stabilize it again. We know that history is written by the victors and he thought he was the victor.
Delusion
He needed an ethnically cleansed Kosovo where he could send the Serbs of Croatia, and in that way he would make an ethnically cleansed Greater Serbia the leading power in the region.
But NATO put paid to that delusion. The Albanians returned and built a state and Belgrade was forced to negotiate.
What do you think is the best solution for Kosovo - independence, as the Albanians want, or autonomy, as the Serbs do?
I think it will take time to solve the problem of the regime definitively, because the Albanians want independence immediately and the Serbs don't want to lose Kosovo. It will take time to solve the problem within the European framework. Negotiations may start but I think the solution will come through postponement.
Do you think that �independence here and now� would calm the region?
No, because we would have objections from the other side, the Serbs. I think a definitive solution will take time.
http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_ell_3790797_01/12/2005_63618
Tadic: Change only by consensus
In a written statement to Kathimerini on the 10th anniversary of the Dayton Accords, Serbia-Montenegro President Boric Tadic commented as follows:
"The objective of the Dayton Accords was first of all to bring peace to Bosnia-Herzegovina. This objective was fully achieved. A multiethnic society has been built up on the framework of Bosnia-Herzegovina, in which three ethnic communities — Serb, Bosniac and Croatian — are open not only to political but also to economic cooperation."
As for talk of revising the accords, Tadic insisted on the need for consensus: "Belgrade and Zagreb must support whatever agreement the three peoples of Bosnia-Herzegovina arrive at. I emphasize that — only if the three peoples agree. Any solution which is imposed and is not the fruit of discussion could have a negative effect on the political situation in the region and destabilize it."
As president of a country which has signed the accords, Tadic said he would oppose any unilateral decisions to change the structure of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and in particular the position of the Serb Republic within it. The president concluded by repeating that he was in favor of all existing states retaining their present borders.
