Pride and prejudice as Serbs look to Europe

September 20, 2007

Pride and
prejudice as Serbs look to Europe

Vuk Jeremic, the Foreign Minister of
Serbia, confirms that the status of Kosovo remains the biggest hurdle to EU
entry

Bronwen Maddox

“I personally agree that there is no Plan B,” Vuk Jeremic,
the Serbian Foreign Minister, said. “There is only one bright future for the
Balkans, and that is within Europe.”

But between Serbia and membership of the European Union lies
the hurdle of Kosovo, so far insurmountable, and others in the form of indicted
war criminals sought by The Hague tribunal.

Mr Jeremic told The Times yesterday that Serbia “is
suffering a cooling of public support for the idea of Europe”. He added: “I am
afraid that if things go wrong, if it is not handled well regarding the future
status of Kosovo, then there will be a dominant majority within Serbia that
will say, ‘This is not fair, it is humiliating, they [the EU] don’t want us. To
hell with it’.”

That is his best card. Mr Jeremic, of the Democratic Party,
part of the pro-European coalition that won a parliamentary majority in
January, cautioned that if Serbia is not given more hope by the EU, and an
acceptable deal on Kosovo, then it will turn its back on Europe.

The risk it runs is that other countries will not rate this
threat highly enough to agree to its demands. The least controversial of these
are the requests for signs of encouragement from the EU. In London this week,
Mr Jeremic asked Britain, “as a strong supporter of EU enlargement in the
Balkans”, to loosen visa restrictions, which are lengthy “and at times
humiliating”.

Only a quarter of Serbs who had voted for pro-European
parties had been able to travel to EU countries, he said. Serbia “has a lot of
people with means who would like to travel”, he said. “For a long time, we were
the most advanced, sophisticated”, and Serbs find it humiliating to see “Croats
and Romanians travelling without visas” when they cannot.

Pride and humiliation are words that thread through the
entire discussion; they lie at the heart of Serbia’s position on Kosovo. Mr
Jeremic took part in talks yesterday with the “troika” of the US, the EU and
Russia, before meetings with Kosovo representatives next week in the margins of
the United Nations General Assembly.

Kosovo, which Serbia regards as its province, and to which
it attaches huge historical romance, has been under UN administration since
1999, when Nato drove out Serb forces, accusing them of atrocities against the
ethnic Albanians who make up 90 per cent of the population. Serbia has fiercely
resisted that majority’s calls for independence.

The troika must report to Ban Ki Moon, the UN
Secretary-General, by December 10. If there has been no progress, Mr Ban will
have to decide whether to forge ahead with the plan of Martii Ahtisaari, the UN
envoy, for “supervised independence”, although this might prompt a veto from
Russia, a staunch Serb ally. Serbia has offered to grant autonomy but not
sovereign independence.

Mr Jeremic said that it was unhelpful to speculate how
Serbia might react if Kosovo unilaterally declared independence but dismissed
the suggestion that it might take military action. “We will not use force, we
will not contribute to the instability” of the Balkans, he said. But he added:
“It is only if Belgrade and Pristina agree that we will have peace.”

He argued that Scotland could afford to toy with separation
from the UK and that Belgium could split into two because they were at peace,
but that in the Balkans, “where we are still struggling to stabilise”,
indulging the nationalistic instincts of minorities was too dangerous.

If Serbia were within the EU, he added, then “borders have a
different meaning and can be discussed”, although he refused to clarify what
this might mean for Kosovo. He concluded: “I really hope that early in the next
decade Serbia will be part of the EU.”

But the question is whether Serbs are prepared to sacrifice
a European future to preserve their pride. Mr Jeremic’s warning is that many
would do just that. The EU, and the UN, have to decide how much that would
matter.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article2489762.ece

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