Tough love, and in love Sep 2nd 2010, 8:45 by T.J. | BLED
MOST conferences are interesting less for what people have to say on panels and rather more for what goes on in the corridors. For anyone who follows Balkan affairs, the Bled Strategic Forum <http://www.bledstrategicforum.org/index.php?lang=en> in Slovenia was the place to be this week. Outside, a mysterious mist rose from Bled’s picture-postcard lake; inside, pressing issues were being quietly demystified. Macedonia. Surprisingly, a current flurry of meetings aimed at ending the 19-year-old "name dispute" between Greece and Macedonia is being taken seriously by diplomats. There is a “new quality” to the discussions, says Stefan Lehne, an Austrian diplomat who has been party to more complex Balkan wrangles than most people have had hot dinners. Bosnia. A proposal doing the rounds in Bled is for (yet) another international effort to break the chronic political paralysis in the country. This mostly pits Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) and Croatian leaders against one another, and Milorad Dodik, the leader of the Republika Srpska, the Serb part of the country, against the Bosniaks. The idea runs as follows. Once October’s election is over and new governments have been formed in Bosnia’s parts, a new type of international involvement should be tried. Last winter’s "Butmir process", an embarrassing failure, saw Bosnian leaders brawling and swapping lewd jokes and insults like schoolboys, while Carl Bildt (the Swedish foreign minister) and Jim Steinberg (the US deputy secretary of state) failed to establish order in class. This time the idea is to bring in Russian and Turkish teachers too. But there's more. The idea is that the process should be presided over by a "headmaster", a figure of similar stature to Martii Ahtisaari, the former Finnish president, who led the 2006 Kosovo talks. The theory is that the three sides could then make painful concessions to him, rather than to one another. The idea has yet to gain traction. Samuel Zbogar, Slovenia’s foreign minister, reacts coolly when I ask him. He is worried about a dilution of the EU's role in Bosnia. However, a "corridor" source tells me that there is “huge frustration” in the EU about Bosnia, and says “we can’t allow things to stagnate.” Serbia and Kosovo. All eyes are focused on what Serbia does next. In the wake of the International Court of Justice's recent opinion <http://www.economist.com/blogs/easternapproaches/2010/07/icj_ruling_kosovo> that Kosovo’s declaration of independence was not contrary to international law, Serbia has tabled a resolution at the UN General Assembly for September 9th, calling for fresh talks on the issue. Several EU states have taken umbrage to its wording. In the last week or so both the German and British foreign ministers have visited Belgrade and warned it to back off and find a solution with the "EU-22"—the 27 EU member states minus the five that do not recognise Kosovo's independence, which have been marginalised on this issue. The general feeling is that Serbia has cleverly managed to manoeuvre itself somewhere between a rock and hard place. Serbia applied for EU membership in December; the application is languishing in a drawer somewhere in Brussels. It can have its UN resolution, but that will simply present further difficulties for its EU case. “It is time for what we call ‘tough love,’” snarls Daniel Serwer, of the US Institute of Peace. Croatia. Not tough love, but in love. Last November Slovenia and Croatia struck a deal to put their maritime border dispute to international arbitration; in June it was approved by a Slovene referendum. This seems to have unleashed a wave of gooey feeling. In these straightened times, one idea discussed between Mr Zbogar and Gordan Jandrokovic, his Croatian counterpart, was that in the future the two countries could save money by sharing embassy buildings and receptionists. The atmosphere in the room when the pair are together nowadays, sighs Mr Zbogar, happily, “is amazing”. Whatever next? Readers' comments Wim Roffel <http://www.economist.com/user/Wim%2BRoffel/comments> wrote: Sep 2nd 2010 11:23 GMT The Economist is very respectful of mr. Ahtisaari and even calls him a "headmaster". I don't share this adulation. I think the way mr. Ahtisaari handled the Kosovo negotiations was deeply embarrassing. He started his "negotiations" with so many "principles" (no border changes, Kosovo no more under control of Belgrade, etc) that real negotiations were impossible. His final recommendations gave Kosovo everything it wanted while offering Kosovo's minorities only some weak minority rights. Given the weak rule of law in Kosovo these rights aren't worth very much and much of the legislation desired by Ahtisaari even hasn't been implemented yet. Given this background I think the appointment of Ahtisaari to negotiate Bosnia would be an act of dishonesty from the international community and would make a real solution impossible. The solution for Bosnia has been clear from the beginning: it should start with the creation of a separate Croatian entity. It could them transform its laws so that minority rights are no longer coupled to people but to territorial units. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
