SND SYMPOSIUM part 3

Mission to Serbia

This is the third in a series of articles on The Hague Tribunal based on the report of the SNO/Liberty sponsored mission to Belgrade. Dr. Michael Stenton is a British historian and foreign affairs analyst.

By Michael Stenton

It still doesn’t seem quite right to fly directly from London to Belgrade. It is pleasant and convenient: quite a relief in fact. But it is difficult to knock out of one’s head the memory of travel sanctions, and the long, boring drive from Budapest. My imagination is still locked in that absurdly circuitous way into Serbia. I doubt whether anything will ever unlock it - no impression could be strong enough - unless they restart the Orient Express and give me a first-class ticket. As it happened, the kind JAT representative in London did give Srdja Trifkovic and me complimentary first class upgrades. We could start our mission – sponsored by the Liberty Serbian-American paper – in some style.

Can Yugoslavia really be a normal place again? The question has two meanings. Ordinary Serbs ask when the economy will revive, but the political class is disproportionately weighted towards those who are trying to recover the self-esteem that sanctions took away. They ask themselves what they must do to ensure that Yugoslavia is perceived as safe and normal again. Unfortunately, people too concerned with looking normal tend to look a bit odd. Belgrade is trying to look normal too quickly, and the result is slightly silly.

We came to Belgrade - from Chicago and from London - to speak on The Hague tribunal at a forum organized by the Serbian Writers’ Union (Udruzenje knjizevnika Srbije, UKS). That gathering was similar in format and substance to the one organized by the Serbian National Defense Council of America at Gracelake on March 24, and which proved to be a great success. We were also going to visit an old acquaintance, Dr. Vojislav Kostunica, who had become head of state since I was last in Belgrade. Everyone seems to agree that the government with the real clout in Serbia is the Government of Serbia. But at least the Presidency of Yugoslavia is honored by a man of honor; and, unlike the weak Presidents of the ‘previous period,’ he has a free voice and a rapidly growing party with a mind of its own.

At the Writers Club the atmosphere was intense and a TV camera was in position. We were joined by a French lawyer who had a client sitting at The Hague waiting month after month to be told in detail what evidence existed against him. So the four of us sat down to make our speeches: Tom Fleming to say what was wrong with ‘international justice’ in a wicked world; our French lawyer to explain what was wrong with the structure, rules and procedures of the ICTY; then Srdja Trifkovic and myself to underline the gloomy message that ‘compliance’ with the ICTY would make much more trouble for Serbia, and worse, than it would avoid in the short term.

It was good evening with a strong audience engagement that helped overleap the inevitable translation barrier. Several attendees later commented that the arguments presented by us had not been heard in Belgrade until that night: the real debate on The Hague is yet to commence in Serbia. The following day some excerpts of our presentation and a long interview with Dr. Trifkovic were shown on the Federal Government’s TV channel Yu-Info, which is one of the few stations that can be seen both in Serbia and in Montenegro.

One point I made as forcefully as possible was that handing over Bosnian Serbs to the Hague without any extradition procedures was illegal anywhere in the world, and that a federal Minister of Justice, Mr. Grubac, who claimed that ‘foreigners’ could be sent to the Hague without legal process, was betraying his office. I also made a plea that Milosevic should be arrested but tried in Serbia, and tried on all charges. If co-operation with the ICTY on this basis was refused by the ICTY it would be they, not the Yugoslavs, who were refusing co-operation. The Serbs do not need to be told by The Hague that Slobo is guilty, they want to know, to know exactly, what he did and what he did not do.

When I left for Belgrade I did not know that Milosevic was about to be arrested. It was rather flattering that all my English friends assumed, once I was back in London, that I had arranged for it personally during my Belgrade trip, but they could scarcely have been more wrong. The arrest was carried out by those who want Slobo in The Hague and who see a limited domestic prosecution as a useful preliminary to ICTY ‘full compliance.’ What counts is not the arrest, but the precise charges made: whether Serbia dares to assert its own jurisdiction or retreats in the face of the imperial claims of the ICTY. I have since learnt that Prime Minister Djindjic told a group of ‘western’ journalists that he now wishes he had handed over Milosevic to The Hague – without any legal formalities - immediately after October 5th. My American source added that Djindjic spoils his authority by agreeing with everyone he meets - perhaps he meant every ‘westerner’. In short, his pursuit of normality is too crude.

On our second day we spent an hour in the hideous Federation Palace - Tito’s bequest to Yugoslav taste - where Vojislav Kostunica exerts his authority. The President was patently quite amused to encounter faces he had seen - year after year - turning up to ask what was happening in Serbia, now appearing on his presidential doorstep trying to tell him what they thought was going on in the world. Tom Fleming was able to say - these editors! - that Chronicles had been the first journal in the world to predict his election. Kostunica listened well, and it was almost reassuring that he was, as President, still his usual understated self. It isn’t that he cannot understand optimism, but one senses that he decided long ago that Christian pessimism is appropriate for adults and essential for politicians.

At the moment, there are two concerns that seem to govern his choices. One is the union of Serbia and Montenegro of which his office is the expression, and which now appears more viable than. The other is less easy to grasp. It is the relationship of the public opinion that existed last autumn to public opinion as it is today: as if he were still trying to carry on his shoulders the hopes and compromises of October 5th after others have moved on to apply to their own agendas the advantages they acquired when DOS triumphed. This is not an obviously brilliant formula for political success, but the man remains very popular and he may yet be rewarded.

From day to day Kostunica may seem defenseless before the rapier of Zoran Djindjic and his coterie of ‘pro-Western’ technocrats and businessmen. But Kostunica knows that fencing is not the only game in politics, and that the man who meditates may find a chess move of great strength.