FRY

Dejan Anastasijevic of the Belgrade weekly 'Vreme' looks in the December 13, 1997 issue of that magazine at the developments in Kosovo, from the angle of recently held Dayton Review Conference in Bonn.

The delegation of the Federal REpublic of Yugoslavia, headed by the political director of the Federal Foreign Ministry, Dragan Vucicevic, left in a demonstrative manner the ministerial meeting in Bonn devoted to the implementation of the Dayton agreement. As a sign of solidarity, both parts (Pale and Banja Luka) of the Republika Srpska delegation also left, although they say that Biljana Plavsic attempted to persuade the others to go back.

Finally, it seems that the three Serb delegations agreed on something. On what ? On Kosovo, of course. That is, at the insistence of the majority of participants, particularly the US and Germany, a few broadly formulated sentences were included in the final declaration, concerning the right of the Albanian population in the province, as well as a call for urgent negotiations of the Serb and Albanian representatives, so to prevent the possibility of an outbreak of an armed conflict. This was taken by the Serbs as a flagrant meddling into our internal affairs and as an attempt to cram in Kosovo into the Dayton framework. A bit earlier, the Yugoslav authorities have rejected the German-French initiative on the same subject, as well as a renewed attempt of the opening of the permanent office of the OESCE in Pristina. So, it is clear that Kosovo is the red line, that 'minimal national interest', for which our intellectual elite has been searching all these years.

Due to this, it is strange that there was no reaction of the politicians and the public to the report of the Republican Electoral Commission in which it is stated that 'due to security reasons', the voting posts were not open in the villages of the Srbica municipality, although it was said that in Serbica itself some voting did go on.

Giving up on the attempts to conduct the elections in that region, the state practically admitted two things: that it has no sovereignty on part of its territory, and that it is not able to establish it even in such symbolic situations as elections.

At the first glance, this giving up could be interpreted as a purely pragmatic move, directed towards evading possible incidents and creating room for calming of tensions. It also creates a picture of supposed tolerance of the Serb administration in relation to 'Shiptar separatism and terrorism in Kosovo'.

Similarly supposed tolerance of the Federal and Republican authorities towards the Albanians has at a previous point in time created frustrations in the Serb public opinion, which Slobodan Milosevic used ten years ago to unite Serbia 'from three parts' and to gain unlimited power in the largest republic of the former SFRY.

And what now ? It is possible to envisage that until some forthcoming elections there could come into being more of these enclaves in which the balloting places will not be open due to the same 'security reasons'. We will stick to principles, even though at some point all of us will vote in Belgrade.