Polyparty-ism - Search for Common Ground

Victory of peace
is important for the Union
38
Svetlana Jovanovska
The international community
has had enough of Balkan wars.
Javier Solana, chief among the
fifteen European diplomats who
has been flying on the Skopje-
Brussels route for three months
now as clearly stated it. Those
who still see him as the leader of
the alliance during the bombing
of Yugoslavia two years ago are
wrong. This is a different man.
This time his political role is different
and the whole strategy has
changed direction. We could also
say it in a simpler and more cynical
way. If it is true that NATO
needed war in the Balkans two
years ago, this time it certainly
needs peace. Maybe not because
of Macedonia, which is after all a
small country with a little more
than 2 million inhabitants and
with no worldly economic
importance. But because of
NATO itself, whose European
future has been placed on the
Balkan table, and because of the
European Union. The Union puts
the credibility of its common
security and foreign politics,
which is beginning to expand, on
the same table. Regardless of all
official statements coming from
Europe and the US stating that
action in Kosovo was a success,
it won't be true until all parts of
the Balkans are finally stable.
Until that happens, NATO and
the EU still have a lot of work to
do. Efforts for preserving the territorial
integrity of Macedonia
are neither empty phrases uttered
by Robertson, Solana and all the
Euro-Atlantic leaders, nor a transient
idea that can be changed
under pressure. Preserving the
territorial integrity of Macedonia
is an investment in what is starting
to look like a well-planned,
serious international strategy,
after all the previous good and
bad initiatives offered by the
international community in the
Balkans
UNLEARNT
LESSONS FROM
KOSOVO
Some Albanian circles, and
especially the radical ones in
Kosovo and Macedonia, did
not interpret NATO's intervention
in Yugoslavia correctly.
And they did not learn any lessons
from it, unlike the international
community and other
Balkan countries. They did not
understand that NATO's aim
was, among other things, to
prevent humanitarian catastrophe
and to get the province out
of the clutches of Slobodan
Miloshevich and his cruel
repression. However, the
attempt to defeat the repression
and Serbian nationalism
should not have been interpreted
as a green light for independence
and the spread of
Albanian nationalism, based
on the dream of Greater
Albania.
NATO came to Kosovo
after the bombing, but that
happened after a difficult public
struggle between countriesmembers
of the EU-because it
was not easy to justify a 70
days of bombing of a European
country at the end of the twentieth
century. When NATO
came to Kosovo, it was aware
of two basic things. First, that
it would not leave Kosovo for
a long, long time. And second,
that they must not allow
confrontation with the
Albanians in which NATO soldiers
would be hostages and
would find themselves in the
same absurd situation as the
blue helmets in Bosnia. That is
why the international community
overlooks Albanian
extremism, illegal crossing of
What now, June 2001