Rethinking the Balkan question

PARIS - After two years of relative stability, the Balkans have suddenly revived as a source of concern for Europe, with Serbia, the region's troublemaker, facing the threat of renascent ultra-nationalism after the death of Slobodan Milosevic.

Milosevic's death in prison while on trial at the war crimes tribunal in The Hague has weakened Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica in his battle against Serbian fanaticism and his attempts to steer the Serbia-Montenegro federation towards the European Union.

"Those who have caused most evil have raised their heads again, expecting to come back to power," Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic, a former opposition activist who was twice targeted for assassination by Milosevic's hitmen, warned this week. "The situation is very complex and serious."

Milosevic's death has provided sustenance to Serbian nationalists, who, in their twisted interpretation of history, revere him as a warrior saint.

Pressure from two powerful ultra-nationalist parties is forcing Kostunica's fragile four-party minority coalition to make concessions on Milosevic's burial in Serbia, but many fear Milosevic's supporters could hijack the funeral to further challenge Kostunica's two-year grip on power.

Kostunica's biggest problem is Kosovo, a UN protectorate since 1999, the status of which the US and EU want resolved by this year.

Kosovans want independence, while the province is treasured by Serbs as one of the pillars of their culture and religion.

The province's newly-elected leaders, who took over after the death of pacifist Ibrahim Rugova, are despised by many Serbs as war criminals.

To Serb nationalist fury, Serbia may shrink even further in May when the tiny republic of Montenegro holds a referendum on independence.

Last weekend a baying Serbian crowd silenced a pop group that had been Montenegro's candidate in a competition to represent the federation at the Eurovision Song Contest.

The EU, meanwhile, is playing carrot-and-stick with Serbia, holding out the prospect of a better relationship provided it first settles the bloodiest chapter of its recent past.

EU foreign ministers dangled the prospect of membership last weekend, declaring stability in the Balkans is part of our own security.

But they also reiterated a warning to Serbia that it had until April to increase co-operation with the war crimes tribunal on handing over Ratko Mladic, the commander most associated with the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, in which 8000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were murdered by Serb soldiers. Mladic is widely believed to still be in Serbia.

Belgrade's failure to meet the EU demands will put the so-called "stabilisation and association agreement", a key step towards membership, on ice.

But, as Draskovic himself warned, "these moves are providing fuel for an ultra-nationalist backlash".

"Its time for Europe, the international community, to be bold and change its relations with Serbia, to help us and stop issuing conditions."

Kostunica has avoided making arrests of war crimes suspects to head off accusations of treachery, instead urging fugitives to give themselves up.

The deaths of Milosevic and Milan Babic in The Hague have had a direct impact on the public mood, said Serbian analyst Dusan Janic.

"A more self-critical reaction (by the UN court) could have helped the authorities in Belgrade. At the moment, the prospects for seeing Mladic give himself up are zero, and arresting him would bring about the fall of the Government."

Membership of the EU has had a huge stabilising benefit for small, vulnerable states such as Slovenia, Slovakia, Estonia and Latvia.

But the distant offer of membership for Serbia raises an ironic smile, and not just in Belgrade. There is already a deep enlargement fatigue among the older EU states, which look askance about opening up the union's 25-nation rollcall to other countries.

Whatever it does, Serbia can expect to remain outside the EU for many years to come, a perspective that further adds to its image of poverty and instability - and potential for mischief-making.