ambassador rudolf v. perina - Association for Diplomatic Studies and ...

Q: I must say again, as an old hand in the area, I was surprised in later news footage
how good Kosovo looked compared to how I remembered it.
PERINA: There was a legacy of better times in Yugoslavia. It was also my impression
that the Kosovar Albanians coped with the international sanctions better than the Serbs.
The borders of Kosovo were more porous to allow imports, and the Albanians have a
reputation of being more mercantile. Even Serbs would tell me during the sanctions that
anything could be obtained at the Kosovo open-air market. I don’t know if there is any
empirical data, but many people believed that the Kosovar Albanians were better off
economically under the sanctions than the Serbs. Politically, of course, it was the reverse.
The Serbs were in charge, and any Albanian who raised his head was quickly beaten
down.
Q: You came back to the States when?
PERINA: You know how it goes. They wanted me right away in Washington. So my
deputy took over in Belgrade, and I returned in February 1996 to become the senior DAS
(Deputy Assistant Secretary) in the European Bureau. My wife got permission to stay in
Belgrade until the summer so that she could finish the school year at the International
School of Belgrade where she was teaching.
Q: And how long were you the DAS?
PERINA: For about a year and a half. Until the summer of 1997.
Q: By the time you became DAS, had NATO moved troops into Bosnia?
PERINA: Yes, we did have forces there to help the implementation. They were
international forces, including some NATO forces. Holbrooke thought it important to get
the international community in there as quickly as possible.
Q: When you came back to Washington in 1996, did you have the sense that the State
Department and the Administration understood the Balkans and were prepared to deal
with the region more effectively than in the past?
PERINA: There were not many successes that the Clinton Administration could point to
but I do think that Dayton was one of them. But I sensed that Holbrooke was very
worried whether there would be the proper follow-up on Dayton once he left. That is one
reason why he wanted me and other people who had worked on Dayton and Yugoslavia
to be in charge of the Bureau in Washington. Warren Christopher was the Secretary of
State at the time, and he had no particular experience in this part of the world. There were
really two primary issues that I dealt with during my 18 months as DAS, apart from the
day-to-day matters. The first issue was Dayton implementation, and the second issue was
NATO expansion. Those took up about 70 percent of my time.
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