My evidence to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Dr Othon Anastasakis, Head, South East Europe Programme, St Antony's College, University of Oxford, and Mr Nicholas Whyte, examined.
Q99 Chairman: The Committee is continuing its inquiry into the Western Balkans. Today, for the first group of witnesses, we have Dr Othon Anastasakis, Head of the South East Europe Programme at St Antony's College, Oxford. We also have Mr Nicholas Whyte. Mr Whyte, we do draw frequently on the work of your group and find it very relevant indeed in a wide range of areas. Gentlemen, just to give a general setting of the scene, it would be helpful if both of you were to comment on the strategic significance of the Western Balkans, both in itself and as a source of international contention. It is a relatively small group of countries, containable. How would you put it its strategic significance?
Mr Whyte: The two important factors about the Western Balkans both stem from the geography of the region. First, it is across a main transport route by land from Western Europe to the Middle East, and that is something we cannot get away from. All of the main roads, the famous Corridor 10, of the pan-European corridors go through Belgrade, either south to Thessaloniki or south and east to Istanbul. That is just a plain fact of where it happens to be. The second point from the more political side is that the Western Balkans are right inside the enlarged European Union, once Bulgaria and Romania join, as they are programmed to do in 2007. Then you have an island of territory completely surrounded by EU Member States with which the EU is going to have to come to significant terms sooner rather than later, whose stability is crucial. It now becomes an internal rather than external issue for the European Union.
Dr Anastasakis: Thank you for inviting me here. I intend to make the most of the experience in discussion with you. I am also very glad that you are so interested in the Western Balkan region because, as happens right now, international attention, especially EU attention, is diverting towards Bulgaria and Romania where is a commitment for 2007. There is also a lot of discussion about Turkey now which is dominating the picture. There is a risk that the Western Balkans, which is becoming smaller and smaller as we see now it is minus Croatia, will become an island of instability. I would agree with Nicholas Whyte on his presentation of this as an island of stability. I think it is of great strategic significance to the European Union because, as we know from the 1990s, whatever happens in the region affects directly or indirectly the rest of Europe. In that sense, the EU has to learn some of the examples of the 1990s and is own failures and try to incorporate the region. I am happy that you are putting forward the question on the Western Balkans today and that there is an increasing interest in this region.
Q100 Chairman: Gentlemen, in all the key hotspots of this small but significant area both the United States and the European Union are involved. We see it particularly dramatically when EUFOR will take over in Bosnia in a couple of months' time. What differences of strategic perception are there, in your judgment, between the United States and Europe in this area?
Mr Whyte: It is very simple. None of these countries in the Western Balkans is likely to become the 51st through 55th state of the United States - it is going to stay pretty much where it is at 50 - whereas the European Union has actually made the promise of future membership to every single one of the territories in the Western Balkans. From that point of view, the quality of engagement is very different. For the United States, it can only ever be a security issue with a certain nod towards economic stabilisation, but that too is in the security context. For the European Union it is much more than a security issue. This is a question of ensuring the economic stability as well as the military stability of a territory that actually borders on the EU itself.
Q101 Chairman: Given the long-term implications for Europe of stability or instability in that area, and perhaps the other pressures on the United States in terms of over-stretch, do you see, over time, the commitment of the US to the area diminishing and that of the European Union increasing?
Dr Anastasakis: I think we are already seeing that. There has been a decreasing commitment since the beginning of this new century. If should also consider that during the 1990s there was very reluctant involvement by the United States, due to the inability of the European Union basically to deal with this kind of security question. We realise now that this is going to be a big issue for the European Union. It has to prove that it is able to bring about stability and security in that area and also economic prosperity. In that sense, I think this is the big gamble for the European Union. It has to prove to itself and to the region that it has commitment and that it can also stabilise the situation. As I write in the paper which I distributed yesterday, I think that the EU is the only game in town for them and in that sense it is particularly important.
Q102 Chairman: But it is not the only game in town because the US is there and the US has a substantial commitment of troops. We are told, for example, that the US has far great clout in a key area like Kosovo. To what extent is it imperative for us as Europeans that the US commitment is maintained to that area and at what level?
Dr Anastasakis: To follow up, I think it is important that those two co-operate as smoothly as possible in that region, and I think they have done so. In the Western Balkan area, the way the United States and the EU have worked together has proved that they can do it without any major problems. The region is very significant for the United States in terms of terrorism and also as a transit route for terrorist traffic and organised crime. In that sense, I think it is of strategic significance for the United States, and it will continue to be, but there is commitment on the part of the United States elsewhere in other parts of the globe. In that sense, it is decreasing, and the fact that the EU is now becoming the major force in terms of a police mission and military mission, that proves it has to take the upper hand in that.
Q103 Chairman: And why we should beware of the precipitated US withdrawal from the area?
Mr Whyte: As Othon has already said, we are seeing that to a certain extent; we will never see it happen completely. At one point the catch phrase of the trans-Atlanticists in this debate was "In together, out together". There is on out for the European Union in the Western Balkans. There potential is for the United States, at least in military terms. However, it is impossible to see the United States as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, as a member of the Six Nation Contact Group. The United States will remain politically engaged, I think, whatever happens on 2 November. Certainly it will remain sufficiently politically engaged to be playing the key role in the resolution of the Kosovo final status, which is going to be the big question that comes up in the next 12 months.
Q104 Chairman: As we have seen in Bosnia, are we likely to see the US increasingly seeking to disengage?
Mr Whyte: Absolutely, and that is my understanding from conversations in Washington, that the Pentagon basically has other priorities at the moment. We can see that by watching the news. There is no great desire in the United States to keep troops in the Balkans any longer than they feel is necessary. Who defines what is "necessary" is a different question.
Q105 Mr Illsley: Following along that theme, you mentioned that the European Union surrounds the Western Balkans. We are looking at Bulgaria and Romania in terms of accession countries. The European Union throughout the Nineties did not exactly give a united front towards the Western Balkans. What can be done to re-engage the European Union in this and take a more immediate and more urgent view of the area?
Mr Whyte: The first thing that happened was the very failure of the EU in the 1990s caused a great deal of sober reflection among heads of government. It is often said that Slobodan Milosevic did more to build the European common foreign security policy than any other individual because he demonstrated the failures of the previous system. We do now have things we did not have in the EU. We do now have Javier Solana. We have a whole set of structures within the European Council Secretariat which simply did not exist before. Now the EU can actually put several thousand troops on the ground in Bosnia. That was unthinkable even two years ago, let alone ten. Things have progressed in the last ten years.
Dr Anastasakis: I agree that there has been, in the last four years, an increasing and growing engagement and commitment on the part of the European Union, but there is also a difficulty in that disengagement has to be successful in the end, not just engagement and a growing one; it has to be effective and successful. This is a real test area for the European Union because it is engaged in many ways in the Western Balkan region. It is engaged in military terms. It is engaged in reconstruction efforts, in co-operation and reconciliation efforts, and also in transition. This is the major difference with central and eastern European countries, and this is also the major innovation for the European Union that it has to deal in multiple ways in that particular part of Europe.
Q106 Mr Illsley: Is the Stability and Association process model working effectively within the Balkans? Does that need to be altered? Does it need to be bolstered? Is there anything the British Government could do to try and encourage our European Union partners to improve the SAp process?
Mr Whyte: The SAp process works well where you have well-functioning state on the other end to work with, and that clearly applies to Croatia and I would argue that most of the time it applies to Macedonia as well. It has run into real problems in Albania, due really to the failure and unwillingness of the Albanian Government to undertake the necessary reforms. I think it has clearly had a beneficial effect in Bosnia along with all the rest of the international efforts. It has certainly increased the credibility of the Bosnian state. But I think it has shown almost no tangible results in the case of Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo because that state is not really a state, it is three different states, which happen to be bunched together internationally, and the SAp has almost had a negative effect rather than a positive effect over the last three or four years there.
Dr Anastasakis: To continue, and I agree with it, the EU has been used to dealing with the central authorities. In that way, that particular area of Serbia, Kosovo and Montenegro is a new territory for it because of the unclear borders and the non legitimate authorities basically. The SAp process has been a good step in the right direction. It is just that the priorities have to be adjusted to the specificities and the needs of the particular countries. I think that has been acknowledged by the EU, especially lately, and they are trying to be as specific as possible, focusing on the particularities of each country. There is the wider discussion about how technical the understanding of the EU is and how technical it should be because there are other developmental needs for instance in the region that are not adequately addressed by the European Union through the Stabilisation Association process in particular.
Mr Whyte: Could I add two points? You asked for improvements that could be made and the two that I would suggest are, first of all, that the process needs to include a better perspective for economic development. At the moment, it is aimed very much towards institution‑building. It is all very well to have a well-functioning parliament built in Sarajevo but it still takes three hours to drive there from anywhere else. If that corridor 5C were to be improved, then Bosnia would be opened up much better to the world. The second thing, and I think this may be a bit more controversial, is the question of the visa policy. The mean spiritedness of Western Europe in its approach to the Western Balkans is exemplified best by the restrictive visa policy that exists. The current policy empowers people traffickers and penalises honest travellers. If we want to send a real signal to these people that they are considered as Europeans, we have to allow them to travel here.
Q107 Mr Illsley: Is there anything in the idea that maybe some countries within the region are looking at European Union accession and the SAp process as the be all and end all and that they are representing to their own countries that they have done enough because they have got within that process?
Mr Whyte: You would have to bracket that also with NATO accession, which, as we know, on the ground is of less dramatic effect but symbolically is of equally dramatic effect. Certainly, in terms of national goals, I think one could do worse than have that.
Q108 Chairman: On that, would it be fair to say that although all the countries want to join the Euro-Atlantic structures, NATO would just be seen by them as a first step on the route?
Dr Anastasakis: I think we do tend to put those two together but they are very different. The aim of NATO is different from the aim of the EU. NATO is a security organisation and in that respect it is much easier for NATO to commit and to engage those countries within its own ranks. For the EU it is a much more complex organisation and it has its economic dimension and also it has a growing political dimension as well. In that respect, the process which brings those countries closer together is much more complicated. I think there is a differentiation between the two and how easily the countries can become members of the organisations.
Q109 Mr Olner: On the EU accession point, and I can understand all the choreography of the dance to join the EU, I just wonder whether we are going to be faced with the same difficulty that we have with Cyprus joining the EU where there was a promise of an amalgamation and a joining and the reality, at the end of the day, is that they are not joining now. I would hope that the EU is not going to face the same problem in the Western Balkans.
Dr Anastasakis: This is a very interesting comparison. I have been thinking a lot about Cyprus lately and why the EU, in the end, has not been so effective or maybe it has been effective in some ways that we do not see and we might see in the future in that it is now gradually engaging with the north of the island. That seems to be an unavoidable pathway for the north to be integrated into the EU. Maybe there are differences because the EU did make mistakes with Cyprus in that it never held out any stick to Cyprus. It only gave the carrot of membership without doing its conditionality. It also left the Turkish Cypriots completely outside the game. In that respect, there was a different kind of situation there when we compare it with the Balkans where all the different parts are really engaged in the process, but in a different way.
Q110 Mr Pope: I certainly agree with that analysis on Cyprus where the Committee is going in a couple of weeks. I wanted to ask, though, about the European Union's reconstruction and development funds. The EU has allocated over €4 billion to 2006. It struck me that that did not seem a great deal of money, given the scale of the problem. If economic stability and political stability go hand-in-hand, it seems to me that there is at least a case to be made for saying that the EU is trying to do this on the cheap and that it should allocate some more money. I wonder what your view is?
Mr Whyte: I would agree with that in terms of development. As I said earlier, I think there is a lack of an economic development aspect to the SAp, indeed to the EU's whole approach to the region. On reconstruction, on the other hand, I would give the EU quite good marks for the last few years. The European Agency for Reconstruction has been a good model of how to do it - a decentralised agency accountable to Brussels eventually but set up very much based in the region. I think it has a very good rate of disbursement of funds. If you look at €4 billion as a reconstruction budget, that is probably about right, considering the absorptive capacity of the region, but, on development, you are quite right.
Dr Anastasakis: I agree with you that there should be more money but there is one qualification: what do you do with this money? There can be too much money. I come from a country, Greece namely, where there was too much money coming from the European Union and basically we did not know how to spend it. The issue about absorptive capacity is very significant in the Western Balkan countries. There definitely has to be money directed towards developmental aims but there is one problem, I understand, from the regional side in that where the money can be spent on projects is always decided by the European Union. There is very little consultation with local actors, those really involved in that business.
Q111 Andrew Mackinlay: You mentioned the meanness of the European Union states with regard to the visa regime. Are you saying there should be a relaxation in the visas, and perhaps not a visa required, or are you saying there should be full mobility of labour extended to this region by the European Union before they come in?
Mr Whyte: I think you could certainly look at the latter alternative. I would be very surprised if the costs outweighed the benefits. If that is considered too radical a move, as I suppose it probably would be, let us consider what the consequences of the current policies are. Currently, Croatia and Bulgaria both actually enjoy visa-free access to the EU. It is very easy for most Bosnian citizens also to get Croatian citizenship; this undermines Bosnian statehood. It is very easy for Macedonian citizens to get Bulgarian citizenship; this undermines Macedonian statehood. The existing policy is actually making things worse.
Q112 Andrew Mackinlay: As we know from experience, despite what the newspapers have said, the whole of central Europe did not move here on 2 May, did they?
Mr Whyte: Certainly I did not see them coming.
Q113 Mr Mackay: Can I move you on to the International Tribunal? We note and are perhaps slightly puzzled that the European Union and NATO seem to set slightly different standards in respect of the various Western Balkan states complying with the Tribunal. Would you like to comment on that and, in commenting, which end of the scale should we be on: the rather more relaxed view that the EU seems to take or the more stringent NATO view probably backed by American pressure?
Mr Whyte: It is perhaps not fair to characterise it in precisely that way. First, I would say the view that should be taken is the hard line that is taken by the British Government inside both organisations, inside both NATO and the EU, and that tough line consisting of full compliance with the internationally mandated tribunal is the right one to take. What the EU has done is to promise a feasibility study on whether or not further integration is possible with the EU to Serbia and Montenegro. It seems, on present form, that that feasibility study will be negative because there is no co-operation from Serbia with the War Crimes Tribunal, apart from cosmetic things like the arrest of somebody from Srebrenica who nobody much had heard of. That simply is cosmetic. Until that happens, ultimately the answer from both is gong to be the same. Of course NATO's cut-off point comes a little bit sooner because of Partnership for Peace specifically dealing with the army of Serbia and Montenegro, and you cannot have a situation where you have indicted war criminals participating in joint exercises with NATO troops. Obviously, the wall has been hit a little bit sooner in that case but I think it is in the same place in both cases.
Dr Anastasakis: I agree, and I think everybody agrees, that there has to be a hard line. One also has to be careful, especially in the case of Serbia because the people there really feel that they are discriminated against on that particular aspect, that there is a lot of punishment addressed to them, that everything revolves around that, and that their sensitivities are not taken so much into account. As far as linking feasibility studies is concerned, and that is a technical process leading towards the start of the Stabilisation Association process, whether they are sending a war crime criminal to The Hague or not does not tell us much about how able they are to adopt and implement standards. There is this kind of discrepancy. It is, of course, part of the political conditionality but there are other conditions that have to be looked as well here.
Q114 Mr Mackay: Are they high profile alleged war criminals, and obviously there are Karadzic and Mladic? Are they just symbols and are they very important or should it run deeper? Presumably, Mr Whyte, when you are trying somebody fairly obscure, and this is Beara who was picked up recently, and this is a question for both of you: is this all just symbolic - let us get one or two big fish, and then all will be well - or should it run much deeper? What is realistic and practical?
Mr Whyte: This is a part of the world where nothing is just symbolic, where symbols are of extreme importance, and there is an operational security issue as well in that as long as Karadzic and Mladic continue to be at liberty, then we cannot say that the security mission in Bosnia has been completed. That is an operational question but the symbolism is very important as well, the symbolism of coming to terms with what was done in the name of the Serbian people during the entire period of the 1990s. Does it matter? Yes, I think it does. Whether or not you then repatriate some of the war crimes trials to Serbia or not, that is a decision that is up to the Tribunal and it is fairly clear that the Tribunal will increasingly want to repatriate trials to Croatia, to Serbia and to Bosnia, but it must go through them first. I do not think there should be a short-cut to that.
Dr Anastasakis: I think that apart from the issue of punishment, which is a fair thing to do, if done in the right way - and what I am saying is very vague - the Serbian people have to come to terms with their own past and in fact during the 1990s many of them were really unaware of what was going on outside their own country. I think that process of bringing those people to justice will also help them in some ways to come to terms with the past and acknowledge mistakes.
Q115 Mr Mackay: Finally, the repatriation of some of these trials is clearly, at least in theory, a good idea because The Hague is a very long way away and we have seen elsewhere in the world that it is often better to have such trials on site, so to speak. It seems to me that there might be very real difficulties about intimidating witnesses and putting pressure on witnesses actually in Serbia or Kosovo, Bosnia as well, that there would not be at The Hague. Can that be overcome? There is a balance I am trying to weigh, is there not, between keeping it local, which I am in favour of, and not pressurising and intimidating witnesses, which obviously I am against, and how should the balance sway?
Mr Whyte: This of course is why the Tribunal was set up in The Hague in the first place because it was feared that local judicial structures were not up to it. I think it is a developing process and it should be the Tribunal's call as to whether or not local conditions have matured to the point where repatriation of such trials is possible.
Q116 Chairman: Gentlemen, I am turning to Kosovo. We now have the result of the elections of last Saturday. It is very difficult to put any positive gloss or spin on them. So far as the Serbs are concerned, there was a massive boycott of those elections. Of the 108,000 possible Serb electors, both in Kosovo itself and the refugees in Serbia proper, only just over 500 actually voted. That seemed to be a response of the Serb community, as it were, denying the legitimacy of the institutions which are currently in Kosovo, and I suppose also responding to the appeal of Premier Kostunica, ignoring the appeal of the more moderate President, and really casting a question mark over the effectiveness of the work of the United Nations over the past four years or so in putting a massive block on any move towards a multi-ethnic community, which is the declared aim. Can you give me any glimmer of hope which arises from the elections last Saturday?
Dr Anastasakis: I think the only glimmer of hope, because I do share your pessimism, is that they were done in a peaceful way; there were not any conflicts or riots, or worse than that. I do agree with you that that shows us how much Serbia proper is divided on the issue when there are those main political factions advising on different directions. I would also add to what you have said the fact that there was a very low turnout from the Kosovo Albanian community as well.
Q117 Chairman: It was 53 per cent of the total, which is not disastrous in Western European terms. We only had 59 per cent in our last general election in the UK.
Dr Anastasakis: If you look at it that way, it is just over 50 per cent. What I meant to say by that is that the legitimacy of those electors in the eyes of the Albanian community is something that has to be looked at, and not just the Kosovo people; this kind of political apathy is a general trend in the Western Balkans in general. There are regular elections everywhere, more elections than anyone can imagine basically, but people fail to go because they are not interested and there is a certain point of political apathy in that process.
Q118 Chairman: Mr Whyte, does it signal a failure of the UN effort over the past four years, in spite of all the expenditure of money and a disastrous blow to prospects of a multiethnic community?
Mr Whyte: You asked for a glimmer of hope, Mr Chairman. I think I would like to depress you still further just for a moment. I would say within the Albanian community, look at what happened to the one Albanian politician who had started from a very hard line position and had consistently tried to moderate his line, particularly by making overtures towards the Serb community. Hashim Thaçi, the leader of the PDK, saw some of his vote fragmenting off to the new party led by Veton Surroi; he saw other parts of his vote splintering off to the more hard line political realities of President Rugova. The Kosovo Albanian results were in fact even more depressing than you have portrayed them. My glimmer of hope is that I think this clarifies the issue. We have got two very hard line positions. Yes, the UN was unable, through five years of enlightened government, to persuade passions to cool and more moderate alternatives to emerge, but anybody who believed that was going to be the case in 1999 was engaging in very wishful thinking indeed, given the history of the region, and indeed given the history of UN interventions. If the UN was supposed to deliver liberal politicians in Kosovo, it obviously failed, but I do not think it was ever going to achieve that. I would say that we have now got a situation where the Kosovo Alabamians have supported a very firm and robust line on independence and where the Kosovo Serbs have clearly placed their faith in Belgrade rather than in their local representatives. That is simply the situation we must deal with. It is going to require serious and sustained engagement by the international community to bring about a settlement. They cannot just get on with it on their own.
Q119 Chairman: The policy of Belgrade is clear, that there was the vote in July in the Serbian Parliament in favour of this so-called decentralisation proposal, rather Bantustan like, of having a list or group of dots on the map grouping together the various Serb communities on an ethnic basis. Is this the end of the attempt to form a multiethnic society?
Dr Anastasakis: Relating to what you are asking and on the previous comment, I was just wondering to what extent the involvement of the international community is really geared toward creating multiethnic, multicultural societies. This is a question that can be discussed both politically and practically.
Q120 Chairman: It is the declared aim.
Dr Anastasakis: It seems to me that the way things are going is not creating a multicultural or multiethnic society but rather trying to divide them. I definitely think, particularly in Kosovo, it had to do with the fact that the international community was not able to deal with the creation of this kind of multiethnic society and it also turned the Kosovo population against it. That was a very different development. In the end, people turned against the international community.
Q121 Chairman: Should the result of the election lead to a fundamental re-think by the international community? Is the plan put forward by the Secretary General of the UN Special Representative, Ambassador Kai Eide, now no longer relevant in the light of these elections?
Mr Whyte: No, I think it is even more relevant. I think Ambassador Eide identified very skilfully a number of key problems facing Kosovo at the moment. The fact is that while the final status question remains unresolved, all the other issues are going to be held hostage to that, including particularly the issue of interethnic relations. Basically, any concession to Serbs as citizens of Kosovo is seen by Albanians as a concession against their own future independence and vice versa as well. At the moment it is purely a zero sum game. Until you have a credible process that his going to resolve the final status of Kosovo, you cannot expect ethnic tensions to become calmer.
Q122 Chairman: The Serbs are just not going to participate in such a process?
Mr Whyte: Which Serbs?
Q123 Chairman: Only 500 odd people of the total Serb community bothered to vote. Even with possibly some intimidation, that does suggest a massive lack of legitimacy of the institutions in the eyes of the local Serbs?
Mr Whyte: That is absolutely right but it means, as I read it, that local Serbs have effectively given the mandate to Belgrade to negotiate on their behalf rather than to their own locally‑elected officials. That is how I see it. The Serbs will be involved but it will be Belgrade rather than the local representative.
Dr Anastasakis: What seems clear is that Belgrade is guiding the whole game here. As far as discussions on the status are concerned, as you pointed out, the only unhappy thing is that the policy standard before status is basically a failure because there is going to be a discussion on status without having made any progress on standards basically. In that respect, I find this even more pessimistic than anything else.
Q124 Chairman: Before turning to Mr Illsley and Bosnia, a few questions in respect of Macedonia: I concede that because the result of the referendum is not now known, it is very difficult to speculate, but how significant do you believe is the referendum and the prospect of a "yes" vote, which some claim would undermine the Ohrid framework agreement?
Mr Whyte: First of all, one lesson that comes out of this is that when you are writing peace agreements, look out for loopholes that can be exploited by other people, and that is what has happened in this case. It was not foreseen that a referendum could actually overrun minority guarantees that were inserted into the Ohrid peace agreements, but that nonetheless is what happened. Yes, the referendum is very significant. It is effectively a poll on one part of the peace agreement rather than the entire package, and this of course is very dangerous. If it is passed, at the very best it will mean a delay of at least a year in implementing the reform of local government, which was a key part of the peace agreement. That is the best possible result, without which further progress into EU and NATO integration for Macedonia is not possible. It will also, of course, result in a certain increase of internal tensions within Macedonia. That goes without saying, whatever the result of the referendum.
Q125 Chairman: How significant is it?
Dr Anastasakis: One aspect is that there will be a lot of internal tension, which is something which can go to unpredictable levels. The second is that EU integration will also be delayed. Macedonia in particular is an interesting case in that it would act as a model for the other countries where you do have two different ethnic communities and there is an overall consensus as far as the EU goal is concerned. In that respect, I think especially the Macedonian case would be particularly critical to what happens with other divided societies as in the Western Balkans.
Q126 Chairman: The US Ambassador in Skopje has warned, and perhaps an interesting intervention in the domestic affairs of Macedonia, that if there were to be a "yes" vote, that would put back the prospects of Macedonia joining NATO beyond the next possible opening of the door in 2007, possibly for many more years. Is that a message which, in your judgment, is getting through to the electorate in Macedonia?
Mr Whyte: As far as I can tell, yes. There is still another two weeks to go in this campaign but it is very interesting to follow the comments in the Macedonian press. The Ambassador's statement I think is absolutely unchallengeable. If Macedonia has to wait another year, then they basically miss the window that is currently opening for them, Albania and Croatia to join NATO.
Q127 Chairman: In 2007?
Mr Whyte: Precisely, and if they are not ready to join by the middle of next year, which they will not be if the referendum passes, then they do miss that opportunity. It is a straight statement of fact.
Dr Anastasakis: I would say yes in principle, but in reality I would look differently at this and to what extent a factor such as NATO or the EU can be a gear, not just for people voting in a certain direction but also for reform. I think this is much more complicated, especially when one is inside this kind of society which is going through unemployment and poverty. Those issues are really important to the people. NATO and the EU are there as a long-term goal, and that means prosperity and strength and all that for them, but I think when people are in a referendum frame of kind, that kind of blackmail can have an adverse effect. If you blackmail them and say "you are not going to get into the EU or into NATO", that can have the opposite effect, as the case of Cyprus teaches us.
Chairman: I think President Mitterrand said the French always answer the wrong question in a referendum. That may be the same.
Q128 Mr Illsley: I have a couple of questions relating to Bosnia and the hand-over from the NATO stabilisation force to the European Union force in December. There is a suggestion that because of the situation in 1992-95 the Bosnian perception is that the European Union will not act militarily or does not wish to act militarily. What implications does that have for the hand-over in December?
Mr Whyte: The clear implication is that there will be a trial of strength at quite an early date, I would anticipate. Of course, things are very different in Bosnia now from ten years ago. This is no longer a country at war. This is a country that has at least a sullen peace for the last nine years. On the other hand, if the EU does come into it, despite the improvements that we have both referred to earlier, with this very unfortunate legacy of failure, we can expect that people will be putting it to the test, so it has to be ready to face those tests and to pass them.
Q129 Mr Illsley: What exactly does it have to do to face them?
Mr Whyte: What form it takes we cannot precisely predict right now but I would have thought that there will certainly be challenges to the EU military authority of some kind, whether that is through rioting - rioting is a strong term - or through some other form, we cannot quite tell yet.
Dr Anastasakis: I think when the EU takes over militarily it has to do that with a different frame of mind this time because it is not an immediate post-war situation; the security threats are different now from what they were in the 1990s. It is not just about the ethnic conflict and trying to keep those communities apart so that they do not slaughter each other; there are also issues of organised crime. There are issues of security but the agenda is much wider and I think that the EU will have to adjust to this new type of environment. The other thing that I would also suggest is that it is not just for the EU to prove that it can act militarily in a similarly satisfactory way as the United States or to prove to itself that it can do the job; it also has to know what the situation is on the ground basically and be able to help and act in synergy with other organisations involved in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Mr Whyte: Can I raise a slight technical point on this? I do not know whether this committee has considered this in the past but the EU force will not just be an EU force; it will include at least I think 11 other countries that I have seen listed as likely participants. I am a bit concerned about the lines of command and control in this case when you have Moroccan or Canadian or Turkish soldiers under EU command in an operation that is run by the Political and Security Committee in Brussels on which there are no Canadian, Moroccan or Turkish representatives, but there are indeed representatives of Denmark and Luxembourg, two counties which will not be participating. I think there is an issue of accountability there which I hope does not become a political crisis point but I can see that is likely as a possibility.
Q130 Mr Illsley: Are there likely to be difficulties within the EU as well between EU members and is there any likelihood - and this all depends on how smooth the transition is - of any conflict between NATO and the EU in terms of the hand-over?
Mr Whyte: I think people are bending over backwards to try and prevent any such conflict, and this is why the two main military officers in charge of it are British. This is clearly an attempt to finesse the differences between the EU and NATO. There were problems in Macedonia when a similar situation was applied, with a much smaller force, specifically to do with what exactly the role of the NATO AF South in Naples was to be within the command structure. I understand that they are working on that as we speak in Brussels to make sure it does not happen again. There will always be unforeseen problems.
Q131 Mr Illsley: Given that the two forces are likely to have different mandates, would that make it easier for EUFOR? Does the fact that the European Union has development assistance as well as a military force, the carrot and the stick approach, make it any easier for EUFOR or does it not have that effect?
Mr Whyte: Provided that there is joined-up thinking and I think the prospects for joined-up thinking are fairly good in this particular case. As a general point, I think it is a bit unfortunate to separate civilian and military lines of command, as has been done in the Bosnian case. In general for an intervention, I would have thought it would make more sense to have parallel and converging liens of command in a particular country.
Q132 Chairman: Before Ms Stuart, Dr Anastasakis, you made the point that we are in a very different security environment now than we were four years or so ago. Is it therefore important that the European Union is able to bring together a whole wider range of instruments to bear on the problem in Bosnia and Herzegovina? Is it appropriate therefore, in terms of its possibilities of the instruments, that the EU is there now rather than with a narrower focus of NATO?
Dr Anastasakis: Yes, and the EU is involved in a broader way in Bosnia and Herzegovina through its feasibility report and on all the particular points it has been advising the government to work on. Of course, the problem with Bosnia is that because of its protector situation, it is difficult to expect the government to act in a very active and passionate way on the demands by the European Union. I think it is high time for the EU to act in a much more broad way and deal not just with reconstruction or reconciliation, because I would say that has evolved in quite a satisfactory way, but also with development issues, which are particularly acute in that part of the Western Balkans.
Mr Whyte: One specific security issue that we are facing in Bosnia in the next few months is the question of police reform. You may be aware that Lord Ashdown has set up a special commission to look at this. I would not be surprised, in fact I would welcome it, if his recommendation turns out to be a kind of nationalising of the Bosnian Police, removing security responsibilities from the entities; in other words, a greater incentive---
Q133 Chairman: On the precedent of the Ministry of Defence, on a statement?
Mr Whyte: Precisely, yes. One does find other countries where the main police force is national rather than local, particularly if, as there is in Bosnia, there is a problem with local competence, local corruption of the police force that happened to be on the ground. I think that could be a very interesting development and that could well be the crisis point where we see the EU's courage being put to the test.
Q134 Ms Stuart: I would like to take you back to Serbia and Montenegro in particular and turn to something which you started to address in your answer earlier to my colleague Mr Illsley and also to Mr Mackay and that is around the whole Stability and Association Agreement and the divergence between the progress the two countries are making. Do you think the new twin-track approach will actually help that or is there simply just such a big gap to be caught up on that it just leaves them behind?
Mr Whyte: That is a really good question. I think that the twin-track approach recognised the reality that the attempts to make Serbia and Montenegro integrate with each other before joining the EU simply was not working and, in a sense, the EU thus avoided making one of the several Cyprus mistakes that my colleague referred to earlier. I think you are quite right to say that the interests of Serbia and Montenegro remain very divergent. I understand that the Montenegrins now plan to make the best go they can of proving their European credentials within the framework of the new proposed feasibility study, and they hope to be in a position to be able to turn around to their own voters and say, "Look Serbia is holding us back from our European integration" and that will then be used as an argument for separation. Doubts are sometimes expressed about the capacity of the Montenegrin Government to deliver on this strategy but it is certainly an interesting approach for them to take.
Dr Anastasakis: I also think this is an interesting development because it shows a genuine attempt by Chris Patten and the Commission to understand what exactly the problem is. My deep conviction is that the understanding on Serbia is still a bit underdeveloped. The centrality of Serbia in the Western Balkans is really crucial. I think one has really to try and approach this country in the right way in order to be able to have positive side effects in the other parts also. In that respect, I think maybe they recognise that this kind of (Solana) state was a kind of failure and they had to make up for it. Showing this kind of flexibility will definitely create this kind of competition between the two and end the antagonism in trying to approach the standards of the EU. We all know of course that in Serbia there is still this kind of polarisation and we do have a more clear distinction between the reform forces on the one hand and the more nationalistic forces on the other. There is a real battle going on between those two sides in Serbia.
Q135 Ms Stuart: We have talked a lot about outside players and whether they have failed or succeeded. Something which struck me through the whole evidence session was that you talk about what the US does, what NATO does and what the EU does. Is there not an argument made that the people on the ground need to take a bit more responsibility? There is another outside player, which no-one has mentioned so far in particular in relation to Serbia, and it strikes me that could play more of a role and that is actually Russia?
Dr Anastasakis: I agree with you. The international factor is always the easiest target to which to address criticism and to attack, but, by being critical towards local actors, and even sometimes being very critical towards them, one also shows them respect because that is how they should be treated. It is definitely the case, and that is why I tried to indicate this in my previous remark, that there is this kind of polarisation between the Serbian forces themselves. This is a country with a background and with human capital and really able people who can deal with the international environment. If the international community wants to work with people in Belgrade, they can find people who are really interesting and who know their way about. In that sense, the Serbian people, yes, and from my contact with them, do have a strong victim attitude and it is sometimes over-emphasised because that explains for them why their situation is not better. There is definitely a lot of work that needs to be done within the local actors themselves.
Mr Whyte: I would just like to make two points in addition. One of them is that engagement by Western political figures with the local actors on a continued and sustained basis is the only thing that will work. For instance, Mr Chairman, it would be great if this Committee's report, when it is finalised, were to be launched in the Western Balkans as well as published here. I think it would be very interesting for the local media to pick up on that. It would certainly be a sign that you were taking them seriously, and they will take you very seriously, whatever you say. It will be a sign of respect in the other direction. My second point on Russia, Ms Stuart: the Russian attitude, I am afraid, is, frankly, irresponsible at the moment. On the one hand, they call for the United Nations to crack down more heavily on Kosovo. On the other hand, they have withdrawn their own troops, so fighting is the last drop of somebody else's blood, in other words. On the one hand, the Russians describe the Kosovo authorities, dubious as they may be but legitimately elected by UN mandate and structures, as terrorists and thugs; on the other hand, Russia continues to support separatist regimes, which have much less legitimacy in South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Nagorno-Karabakh and Transnistria. There is a real problem there. It will take sustained attention from the Kremlin, not from the Russian Foreign Ministry, and at the moment the Kremlin has other things to think about.
Dr Anastasakis: It goes further. Russia is going through an interim period because of its own problems within its own country. I think the importance of the Balkans for Russia is decreasing and will now be seen to be decreasing.
Chairman: Gentlemen, you have contributed much to our own study of this fascinating area. We thank you both for giving us of your expertise.
Witnesses: Dr Othon Anastasakis, Head, South East Europe Programme, St Antony's College, University of Oxford, and Mr Nicholas Whyte, examined.
Q99 Chairman: The Committee is continuing its inquiry into the Western Balkans. Today, for the first group of witnesses, we have Dr Othon Anastasakis, Head of the South East Europe Programme at St Antony's College, Oxford. We also have Mr Nicholas Whyte. Mr Whyte, we do draw frequently on the work of your group and find it very relevant indeed in a wide range of areas. Gentlemen, just to give a general setting of the scene, it would be helpful if both of you were to comment on the strategic significance of the Western Balkans, both in itself and as a source of international contention. It is a relatively small group of countries, containable. How would you put it its strategic significance?
Mr Whyte: The two important factors about the Western Balkans both stem from the geography of the region. First, it is across a main transport route by land from Western Europe to the Middle East, and that is something we cannot get away from. All of the main roads, the famous Corridor 10, of the pan-European corridors go through Belgrade, either south to Thessaloniki or south and east to Istanbul. That is just a plain fact of where it happens to be. The second point from the more political side is that the Western Balkans are right inside the enlarged European Union, once Bulgaria and Romania join, as they are programmed to do in 2007. Then you have an island of territory completely surrounded by EU Member States with which the EU is going to have to come to significant terms sooner rather than later, whose stability is crucial. It now becomes an internal rather than external issue for the European Union.
Dr Anastasakis: Thank you for inviting me here. I intend to make the most of the experience in discussion with you. I am also very glad that you are so interested in the Western Balkan region because, as happens right now, international attention, especially EU attention, is diverting towards Bulgaria and Romania where is a commitment for 2007. There is also a lot of discussion about Turkey now which is dominating the picture. There is a risk that the Western Balkans, which is becoming smaller and smaller as we see now it is minus Croatia, will become an island of instability. I would agree with Nicholas Whyte on his presentation of this as an island of stability. I think it is of great strategic significance to the European Union because, as we know from the 1990s, whatever happens in the region affects directly or indirectly the rest of Europe. In that sense, the EU has to learn some of the examples of the 1990s and is own failures and try to incorporate the region. I am happy that you are putting forward the question on the Western Balkans today and that there is an increasing interest in this region.
Q100 Chairman: Gentlemen, in all the key hotspots of this small but significant area both the United States and the European Union are involved. We see it particularly dramatically when EUFOR will take over in Bosnia in a couple of months' time. What differences of strategic perception are there, in your judgment, between the United States and Europe in this area?
Mr Whyte: It is very simple. None of these countries in the Western Balkans is likely to become the 51st through 55th state of the United States - it is going to stay pretty much where it is at 50 - whereas the European Union has actually made the promise of future membership to every single one of the territories in the Western Balkans. From that point of view, the quality of engagement is very different. For the United States, it can only ever be a security issue with a certain nod towards economic stabilisation, but that too is in the security context. For the European Union it is much more than a security issue. This is a question of ensuring the economic stability as well as the military stability of a territory that actually borders on the EU itself.
Q101 Chairman: Given the long-term implications for Europe of stability or instability in that area, and perhaps the other pressures on the United States in terms of over-stretch, do you see, over time, the commitment of the US to the area diminishing and that of the European Union increasing?
Dr Anastasakis: I think we are already seeing that. There has been a decreasing commitment since the beginning of this new century. If should also consider that during the 1990s there was very reluctant involvement by the United States, due to the inability of the European Union basically to deal with this kind of security question. We realise now that this is going to be a big issue for the European Union. It has to prove that it is able to bring about stability and security in that area and also economic prosperity. In that sense, I think this is the big gamble for the European Union. It has to prove to itself and to the region that it has commitment and that it can also stabilise the situation. As I write in the paper which I distributed yesterday, I think that the EU is the only game in town for them and in that sense it is particularly important.
Q102 Chairman: But it is not the only game in town because the US is there and the US has a substantial commitment of troops. We are told, for example, that the US has far great clout in a key area like Kosovo. To what extent is it imperative for us as Europeans that the US commitment is maintained to that area and at what level?
Dr Anastasakis: To follow up, I think it is important that those two co-operate as smoothly as possible in that region, and I think they have done so. In the Western Balkan area, the way the United States and the EU have worked together has proved that they can do it without any major problems. The region is very significant for the United States in terms of terrorism and also as a transit route for terrorist traffic and organised crime. In that sense, I think it is of strategic significance for the United States, and it will continue to be, but there is commitment on the part of the United States elsewhere in other parts of the globe. In that sense, it is decreasing, and the fact that the EU is now becoming the major force in terms of a police mission and military mission, that proves it has to take the upper hand in that.
Q103 Chairman: And why we should beware of the precipitated US withdrawal from the area?
Mr Whyte: As Othon has already said, we are seeing that to a certain extent; we will never see it happen completely. At one point the catch phrase of the trans-Atlanticists in this debate was "In together, out together". There is on out for the European Union in the Western Balkans. There potential is for the United States, at least in military terms. However, it is impossible to see the United States as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, as a member of the Six Nation Contact Group. The United States will remain politically engaged, I think, whatever happens on 2 November. Certainly it will remain sufficiently politically engaged to be playing the key role in the resolution of the Kosovo final status, which is going to be the big question that comes up in the next 12 months.
Q104 Chairman: As we have seen in Bosnia, are we likely to see the US increasingly seeking to disengage?
Mr Whyte: Absolutely, and that is my understanding from conversations in Washington, that the Pentagon basically has other priorities at the moment. We can see that by watching the news. There is no great desire in the United States to keep troops in the Balkans any longer than they feel is necessary. Who defines what is "necessary" is a different question.
Q105 Mr Illsley: Following along that theme, you mentioned that the European Union surrounds the Western Balkans. We are looking at Bulgaria and Romania in terms of accession countries. The European Union throughout the Nineties did not exactly give a united front towards the Western Balkans. What can be done to re-engage the European Union in this and take a more immediate and more urgent view of the area?
Mr Whyte: The first thing that happened was the very failure of the EU in the 1990s caused a great deal of sober reflection among heads of government. It is often said that Slobodan Milosevic did more to build the European common foreign security policy than any other individual because he demonstrated the failures of the previous system. We do now have things we did not have in the EU. We do now have Javier Solana. We have a whole set of structures within the European Council Secretariat which simply did not exist before. Now the EU can actually put several thousand troops on the ground in Bosnia. That was unthinkable even two years ago, let alone ten. Things have progressed in the last ten years.
Dr Anastasakis: I agree that there has been, in the last four years, an increasing and growing engagement and commitment on the part of the European Union, but there is also a difficulty in that disengagement has to be successful in the end, not just engagement and a growing one; it has to be effective and successful. This is a real test area for the European Union because it is engaged in many ways in the Western Balkan region. It is engaged in military terms. It is engaged in reconstruction efforts, in co-operation and reconciliation efforts, and also in transition. This is the major difference with central and eastern European countries, and this is also the major innovation for the European Union that it has to deal in multiple ways in that particular part of Europe.
Q106 Mr Illsley: Is the Stability and Association process model working effectively within the Balkans? Does that need to be altered? Does it need to be bolstered? Is there anything the British Government could do to try and encourage our European Union partners to improve the SAp process?
Mr Whyte: The SAp process works well where you have well-functioning state on the other end to work with, and that clearly applies to Croatia and I would argue that most of the time it applies to Macedonia as well. It has run into real problems in Albania, due really to the failure and unwillingness of the Albanian Government to undertake the necessary reforms. I think it has clearly had a beneficial effect in Bosnia along with all the rest of the international efforts. It has certainly increased the credibility of the Bosnian state. But I think it has shown almost no tangible results in the case of Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo because that state is not really a state, it is three different states, which happen to be bunched together internationally, and the SAp has almost had a negative effect rather than a positive effect over the last three or four years there.
Dr Anastasakis: To continue, and I agree with it, the EU has been used to dealing with the central authorities. In that way, that particular area of Serbia, Kosovo and Montenegro is a new territory for it because of the unclear borders and the non legitimate authorities basically. The SAp process has been a good step in the right direction. It is just that the priorities have to be adjusted to the specificities and the needs of the particular countries. I think that has been acknowledged by the EU, especially lately, and they are trying to be as specific as possible, focusing on the particularities of each country. There is the wider discussion about how technical the understanding of the EU is and how technical it should be because there are other developmental needs for instance in the region that are not adequately addressed by the European Union through the Stabilisation Association process in particular.
Mr Whyte: Could I add two points? You asked for improvements that could be made and the two that I would suggest are, first of all, that the process needs to include a better perspective for economic development. At the moment, it is aimed very much towards institution‑building. It is all very well to have a well-functioning parliament built in Sarajevo but it still takes three hours to drive there from anywhere else. If that corridor 5C were to be improved, then Bosnia would be opened up much better to the world. The second thing, and I think this may be a bit more controversial, is the question of the visa policy. The mean spiritedness of Western Europe in its approach to the Western Balkans is exemplified best by the restrictive visa policy that exists. The current policy empowers people traffickers and penalises honest travellers. If we want to send a real signal to these people that they are considered as Europeans, we have to allow them to travel here.
Q107 Mr Illsley: Is there anything in the idea that maybe some countries within the region are looking at European Union accession and the SAp process as the be all and end all and that they are representing to their own countries that they have done enough because they have got within that process?
Mr Whyte: You would have to bracket that also with NATO accession, which, as we know, on the ground is of less dramatic effect but symbolically is of equally dramatic effect. Certainly, in terms of national goals, I think one could do worse than have that.
Q108 Chairman: On that, would it be fair to say that although all the countries want to join the Euro-Atlantic structures, NATO would just be seen by them as a first step on the route?
Dr Anastasakis: I think we do tend to put those two together but they are very different. The aim of NATO is different from the aim of the EU. NATO is a security organisation and in that respect it is much easier for NATO to commit and to engage those countries within its own ranks. For the EU it is a much more complex organisation and it has its economic dimension and also it has a growing political dimension as well. In that respect, the process which brings those countries closer together is much more complicated. I think there is a differentiation between the two and how easily the countries can become members of the organisations.
Q109 Mr Olner: On the EU accession point, and I can understand all the choreography of the dance to join the EU, I just wonder whether we are going to be faced with the same difficulty that we have with Cyprus joining the EU where there was a promise of an amalgamation and a joining and the reality, at the end of the day, is that they are not joining now. I would hope that the EU is not going to face the same problem in the Western Balkans.
Dr Anastasakis: This is a very interesting comparison. I have been thinking a lot about Cyprus lately and why the EU, in the end, has not been so effective or maybe it has been effective in some ways that we do not see and we might see in the future in that it is now gradually engaging with the north of the island. That seems to be an unavoidable pathway for the north to be integrated into the EU. Maybe there are differences because the EU did make mistakes with Cyprus in that it never held out any stick to Cyprus. It only gave the carrot of membership without doing its conditionality. It also left the Turkish Cypriots completely outside the game. In that respect, there was a different kind of situation there when we compare it with the Balkans where all the different parts are really engaged in the process, but in a different way.
Q110 Mr Pope: I certainly agree with that analysis on Cyprus where the Committee is going in a couple of weeks. I wanted to ask, though, about the European Union's reconstruction and development funds. The EU has allocated over €4 billion to 2006. It struck me that that did not seem a great deal of money, given the scale of the problem. If economic stability and political stability go hand-in-hand, it seems to me that there is at least a case to be made for saying that the EU is trying to do this on the cheap and that it should allocate some more money. I wonder what your view is?
Mr Whyte: I would agree with that in terms of development. As I said earlier, I think there is a lack of an economic development aspect to the SAp, indeed to the EU's whole approach to the region. On reconstruction, on the other hand, I would give the EU quite good marks for the last few years. The European Agency for Reconstruction has been a good model of how to do it - a decentralised agency accountable to Brussels eventually but set up very much based in the region. I think it has a very good rate of disbursement of funds. If you look at €4 billion as a reconstruction budget, that is probably about right, considering the absorptive capacity of the region, but, on development, you are quite right.
Dr Anastasakis: I agree with you that there should be more money but there is one qualification: what do you do with this money? There can be too much money. I come from a country, Greece namely, where there was too much money coming from the European Union and basically we did not know how to spend it. The issue about absorptive capacity is very significant in the Western Balkan countries. There definitely has to be money directed towards developmental aims but there is one problem, I understand, from the regional side in that where the money can be spent on projects is always decided by the European Union. There is very little consultation with local actors, those really involved in that business.
Q111 Andrew Mackinlay: You mentioned the meanness of the European Union states with regard to the visa regime. Are you saying there should be a relaxation in the visas, and perhaps not a visa required, or are you saying there should be full mobility of labour extended to this region by the European Union before they come in?
Mr Whyte: I think you could certainly look at the latter alternative. I would be very surprised if the costs outweighed the benefits. If that is considered too radical a move, as I suppose it probably would be, let us consider what the consequences of the current policies are. Currently, Croatia and Bulgaria both actually enjoy visa-free access to the EU. It is very easy for most Bosnian citizens also to get Croatian citizenship; this undermines Bosnian statehood. It is very easy for Macedonian citizens to get Bulgarian citizenship; this undermines Macedonian statehood. The existing policy is actually making things worse.
Q112 Andrew Mackinlay: As we know from experience, despite what the newspapers have said, the whole of central Europe did not move here on 2 May, did they?
Mr Whyte: Certainly I did not see them coming.
Q113 Mr Mackay: Can I move you on to the International Tribunal? We note and are perhaps slightly puzzled that the European Union and NATO seem to set slightly different standards in respect of the various Western Balkan states complying with the Tribunal. Would you like to comment on that and, in commenting, which end of the scale should we be on: the rather more relaxed view that the EU seems to take or the more stringent NATO view probably backed by American pressure?
Mr Whyte: It is perhaps not fair to characterise it in precisely that way. First, I would say the view that should be taken is the hard line that is taken by the British Government inside both organisations, inside both NATO and the EU, and that tough line consisting of full compliance with the internationally mandated tribunal is the right one to take. What the EU has done is to promise a feasibility study on whether or not further integration is possible with the EU to Serbia and Montenegro. It seems, on present form, that that feasibility study will be negative because there is no co-operation from Serbia with the War Crimes Tribunal, apart from cosmetic things like the arrest of somebody from Srebrenica who nobody much had heard of. That simply is cosmetic. Until that happens, ultimately the answer from both is gong to be the same. Of course NATO's cut-off point comes a little bit sooner because of Partnership for Peace specifically dealing with the army of Serbia and Montenegro, and you cannot have a situation where you have indicted war criminals participating in joint exercises with NATO troops. Obviously, the wall has been hit a little bit sooner in that case but I think it is in the same place in both cases.
Dr Anastasakis: I agree, and I think everybody agrees, that there has to be a hard line. One also has to be careful, especially in the case of Serbia because the people there really feel that they are discriminated against on that particular aspect, that there is a lot of punishment addressed to them, that everything revolves around that, and that their sensitivities are not taken so much into account. As far as linking feasibility studies is concerned, and that is a technical process leading towards the start of the Stabilisation Association process, whether they are sending a war crime criminal to The Hague or not does not tell us much about how able they are to adopt and implement standards. There is this kind of discrepancy. It is, of course, part of the political conditionality but there are other conditions that have to be looked as well here.
Q114 Mr Mackay: Are they high profile alleged war criminals, and obviously there are Karadzic and Mladic? Are they just symbols and are they very important or should it run deeper? Presumably, Mr Whyte, when you are trying somebody fairly obscure, and this is Beara who was picked up recently, and this is a question for both of you: is this all just symbolic - let us get one or two big fish, and then all will be well - or should it run much deeper? What is realistic and practical?
Mr Whyte: This is a part of the world where nothing is just symbolic, where symbols are of extreme importance, and there is an operational security issue as well in that as long as Karadzic and Mladic continue to be at liberty, then we cannot say that the security mission in Bosnia has been completed. That is an operational question but the symbolism is very important as well, the symbolism of coming to terms with what was done in the name of the Serbian people during the entire period of the 1990s. Does it matter? Yes, I think it does. Whether or not you then repatriate some of the war crimes trials to Serbia or not, that is a decision that is up to the Tribunal and it is fairly clear that the Tribunal will increasingly want to repatriate trials to Croatia, to Serbia and to Bosnia, but it must go through them first. I do not think there should be a short-cut to that.
Dr Anastasakis: I think that apart from the issue of punishment, which is a fair thing to do, if done in the right way - and what I am saying is very vague - the Serbian people have to come to terms with their own past and in fact during the 1990s many of them were really unaware of what was going on outside their own country. I think that process of bringing those people to justice will also help them in some ways to come to terms with the past and acknowledge mistakes.
Q115 Mr Mackay: Finally, the repatriation of some of these trials is clearly, at least in theory, a good idea because The Hague is a very long way away and we have seen elsewhere in the world that it is often better to have such trials on site, so to speak. It seems to me that there might be very real difficulties about intimidating witnesses and putting pressure on witnesses actually in Serbia or Kosovo, Bosnia as well, that there would not be at The Hague. Can that be overcome? There is a balance I am trying to weigh, is there not, between keeping it local, which I am in favour of, and not pressurising and intimidating witnesses, which obviously I am against, and how should the balance sway?
Mr Whyte: This of course is why the Tribunal was set up in The Hague in the first place because it was feared that local judicial structures were not up to it. I think it is a developing process and it should be the Tribunal's call as to whether or not local conditions have matured to the point where repatriation of such trials is possible.
Q116 Chairman: Gentlemen, I am turning to Kosovo. We now have the result of the elections of last Saturday. It is very difficult to put any positive gloss or spin on them. So far as the Serbs are concerned, there was a massive boycott of those elections. Of the 108,000 possible Serb electors, both in Kosovo itself and the refugees in Serbia proper, only just over 500 actually voted. That seemed to be a response of the Serb community, as it were, denying the legitimacy of the institutions which are currently in Kosovo, and I suppose also responding to the appeal of Premier Kostunica, ignoring the appeal of the more moderate President, and really casting a question mark over the effectiveness of the work of the United Nations over the past four years or so in putting a massive block on any move towards a multi-ethnic community, which is the declared aim. Can you give me any glimmer of hope which arises from the elections last Saturday?
Dr Anastasakis: I think the only glimmer of hope, because I do share your pessimism, is that they were done in a peaceful way; there were not any conflicts or riots, or worse than that. I do agree with you that that shows us how much Serbia proper is divided on the issue when there are those main political factions advising on different directions. I would also add to what you have said the fact that there was a very low turnout from the Kosovo Albanian community as well.
Q117 Chairman: It was 53 per cent of the total, which is not disastrous in Western European terms. We only had 59 per cent in our last general election in the UK.
Dr Anastasakis: If you look at it that way, it is just over 50 per cent. What I meant to say by that is that the legitimacy of those electors in the eyes of the Albanian community is something that has to be looked at, and not just the Kosovo people; this kind of political apathy is a general trend in the Western Balkans in general. There are regular elections everywhere, more elections than anyone can imagine basically, but people fail to go because they are not interested and there is a certain point of political apathy in that process.
Q118 Chairman: Mr Whyte, does it signal a failure of the UN effort over the past four years, in spite of all the expenditure of money and a disastrous blow to prospects of a multiethnic community?
Mr Whyte: You asked for a glimmer of hope, Mr Chairman. I think I would like to depress you still further just for a moment. I would say within the Albanian community, look at what happened to the one Albanian politician who had started from a very hard line position and had consistently tried to moderate his line, particularly by making overtures towards the Serb community. Hashim Thaçi, the leader of the PDK, saw some of his vote fragmenting off to the new party led by Veton Surroi; he saw other parts of his vote splintering off to the more hard line political realities of President Rugova. The Kosovo Albanian results were in fact even more depressing than you have portrayed them. My glimmer of hope is that I think this clarifies the issue. We have got two very hard line positions. Yes, the UN was unable, through five years of enlightened government, to persuade passions to cool and more moderate alternatives to emerge, but anybody who believed that was going to be the case in 1999 was engaging in very wishful thinking indeed, given the history of the region, and indeed given the history of UN interventions. If the UN was supposed to deliver liberal politicians in Kosovo, it obviously failed, but I do not think it was ever going to achieve that. I would say that we have now got a situation where the Kosovo Alabamians have supported a very firm and robust line on independence and where the Kosovo Serbs have clearly placed their faith in Belgrade rather than in their local representatives. That is simply the situation we must deal with. It is going to require serious and sustained engagement by the international community to bring about a settlement. They cannot just get on with it on their own.
Q119 Chairman: The policy of Belgrade is clear, that there was the vote in July in the Serbian Parliament in favour of this so-called decentralisation proposal, rather Bantustan like, of having a list or group of dots on the map grouping together the various Serb communities on an ethnic basis. Is this the end of the attempt to form a multiethnic society?
Dr Anastasakis: Relating to what you are asking and on the previous comment, I was just wondering to what extent the involvement of the international community is really geared toward creating multiethnic, multicultural societies. This is a question that can be discussed both politically and practically.
Q120 Chairman: It is the declared aim.
Dr Anastasakis: It seems to me that the way things are going is not creating a multicultural or multiethnic society but rather trying to divide them. I definitely think, particularly in Kosovo, it had to do with the fact that the international community was not able to deal with the creation of this kind of multiethnic society and it also turned the Kosovo population against it. That was a very different development. In the end, people turned against the international community.
Q121 Chairman: Should the result of the election lead to a fundamental re-think by the international community? Is the plan put forward by the Secretary General of the UN Special Representative, Ambassador Kai Eide, now no longer relevant in the light of these elections?
Mr Whyte: No, I think it is even more relevant. I think Ambassador Eide identified very skilfully a number of key problems facing Kosovo at the moment. The fact is that while the final status question remains unresolved, all the other issues are going to be held hostage to that, including particularly the issue of interethnic relations. Basically, any concession to Serbs as citizens of Kosovo is seen by Albanians as a concession against their own future independence and vice versa as well. At the moment it is purely a zero sum game. Until you have a credible process that his going to resolve the final status of Kosovo, you cannot expect ethnic tensions to become calmer.
Q122 Chairman: The Serbs are just not going to participate in such a process?
Mr Whyte: Which Serbs?
Q123 Chairman: Only 500 odd people of the total Serb community bothered to vote. Even with possibly some intimidation, that does suggest a massive lack of legitimacy of the institutions in the eyes of the local Serbs?
Mr Whyte: That is absolutely right but it means, as I read it, that local Serbs have effectively given the mandate to Belgrade to negotiate on their behalf rather than to their own locally‑elected officials. That is how I see it. The Serbs will be involved but it will be Belgrade rather than the local representative.
Dr Anastasakis: What seems clear is that Belgrade is guiding the whole game here. As far as discussions on the status are concerned, as you pointed out, the only unhappy thing is that the policy standard before status is basically a failure because there is going to be a discussion on status without having made any progress on standards basically. In that respect, I find this even more pessimistic than anything else.
Q124 Chairman: Before turning to Mr Illsley and Bosnia, a few questions in respect of Macedonia: I concede that because the result of the referendum is not now known, it is very difficult to speculate, but how significant do you believe is the referendum and the prospect of a "yes" vote, which some claim would undermine the Ohrid framework agreement?
Mr Whyte: First of all, one lesson that comes out of this is that when you are writing peace agreements, look out for loopholes that can be exploited by other people, and that is what has happened in this case. It was not foreseen that a referendum could actually overrun minority guarantees that were inserted into the Ohrid peace agreements, but that nonetheless is what happened. Yes, the referendum is very significant. It is effectively a poll on one part of the peace agreement rather than the entire package, and this of course is very dangerous. If it is passed, at the very best it will mean a delay of at least a year in implementing the reform of local government, which was a key part of the peace agreement. That is the best possible result, without which further progress into EU and NATO integration for Macedonia is not possible. It will also, of course, result in a certain increase of internal tensions within Macedonia. That goes without saying, whatever the result of the referendum.
Q125 Chairman: How significant is it?
Dr Anastasakis: One aspect is that there will be a lot of internal tension, which is something which can go to unpredictable levels. The second is that EU integration will also be delayed. Macedonia in particular is an interesting case in that it would act as a model for the other countries where you do have two different ethnic communities and there is an overall consensus as far as the EU goal is concerned. In that respect, I think especially the Macedonian case would be particularly critical to what happens with other divided societies as in the Western Balkans.
Q126 Chairman: The US Ambassador in Skopje has warned, and perhaps an interesting intervention in the domestic affairs of Macedonia, that if there were to be a "yes" vote, that would put back the prospects of Macedonia joining NATO beyond the next possible opening of the door in 2007, possibly for many more years. Is that a message which, in your judgment, is getting through to the electorate in Macedonia?
Mr Whyte: As far as I can tell, yes. There is still another two weeks to go in this campaign but it is very interesting to follow the comments in the Macedonian press. The Ambassador's statement I think is absolutely unchallengeable. If Macedonia has to wait another year, then they basically miss the window that is currently opening for them, Albania and Croatia to join NATO.
Q127 Chairman: In 2007?
Mr Whyte: Precisely, and if they are not ready to join by the middle of next year, which they will not be if the referendum passes, then they do miss that opportunity. It is a straight statement of fact.
Dr Anastasakis: I would say yes in principle, but in reality I would look differently at this and to what extent a factor such as NATO or the EU can be a gear, not just for people voting in a certain direction but also for reform. I think this is much more complicated, especially when one is inside this kind of society which is going through unemployment and poverty. Those issues are really important to the people. NATO and the EU are there as a long-term goal, and that means prosperity and strength and all that for them, but I think when people are in a referendum frame of kind, that kind of blackmail can have an adverse effect. If you blackmail them and say "you are not going to get into the EU or into NATO", that can have the opposite effect, as the case of Cyprus teaches us.
Chairman: I think President Mitterrand said the French always answer the wrong question in a referendum. That may be the same.
Q128 Mr Illsley: I have a couple of questions relating to Bosnia and the hand-over from the NATO stabilisation force to the European Union force in December. There is a suggestion that because of the situation in 1992-95 the Bosnian perception is that the European Union will not act militarily or does not wish to act militarily. What implications does that have for the hand-over in December?
Mr Whyte: The clear implication is that there will be a trial of strength at quite an early date, I would anticipate. Of course, things are very different in Bosnia now from ten years ago. This is no longer a country at war. This is a country that has at least a sullen peace for the last nine years. On the other hand, if the EU does come into it, despite the improvements that we have both referred to earlier, with this very unfortunate legacy of failure, we can expect that people will be putting it to the test, so it has to be ready to face those tests and to pass them.
Q129 Mr Illsley: What exactly does it have to do to face them?
Mr Whyte: What form it takes we cannot precisely predict right now but I would have thought that there will certainly be challenges to the EU military authority of some kind, whether that is through rioting - rioting is a strong term - or through some other form, we cannot quite tell yet.
Dr Anastasakis: I think when the EU takes over militarily it has to do that with a different frame of mind this time because it is not an immediate post-war situation; the security threats are different now from what they were in the 1990s. It is not just about the ethnic conflict and trying to keep those communities apart so that they do not slaughter each other; there are also issues of organised crime. There are issues of security but the agenda is much wider and I think that the EU will have to adjust to this new type of environment. The other thing that I would also suggest is that it is not just for the EU to prove that it can act militarily in a similarly satisfactory way as the United States or to prove to itself that it can do the job; it also has to know what the situation is on the ground basically and be able to help and act in synergy with other organisations involved in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Mr Whyte: Can I raise a slight technical point on this? I do not know whether this committee has considered this in the past but the EU force will not just be an EU force; it will include at least I think 11 other countries that I have seen listed as likely participants. I am a bit concerned about the lines of command and control in this case when you have Moroccan or Canadian or Turkish soldiers under EU command in an operation that is run by the Political and Security Committee in Brussels on which there are no Canadian, Moroccan or Turkish representatives, but there are indeed representatives of Denmark and Luxembourg, two counties which will not be participating. I think there is an issue of accountability there which I hope does not become a political crisis point but I can see that is likely as a possibility.
Q130 Mr Illsley: Are there likely to be difficulties within the EU as well between EU members and is there any likelihood - and this all depends on how smooth the transition is - of any conflict between NATO and the EU in terms of the hand-over?
Mr Whyte: I think people are bending over backwards to try and prevent any such conflict, and this is why the two main military officers in charge of it are British. This is clearly an attempt to finesse the differences between the EU and NATO. There were problems in Macedonia when a similar situation was applied, with a much smaller force, specifically to do with what exactly the role of the NATO AF South in Naples was to be within the command structure. I understand that they are working on that as we speak in Brussels to make sure it does not happen again. There will always be unforeseen problems.
Q131 Mr Illsley: Given that the two forces are likely to have different mandates, would that make it easier for EUFOR? Does the fact that the European Union has development assistance as well as a military force, the carrot and the stick approach, make it any easier for EUFOR or does it not have that effect?
Mr Whyte: Provided that there is joined-up thinking and I think the prospects for joined-up thinking are fairly good in this particular case. As a general point, I think it is a bit unfortunate to separate civilian and military lines of command, as has been done in the Bosnian case. In general for an intervention, I would have thought it would make more sense to have parallel and converging liens of command in a particular country.
Q132 Chairman: Before Ms Stuart, Dr Anastasakis, you made the point that we are in a very different security environment now than we were four years or so ago. Is it therefore important that the European Union is able to bring together a whole wider range of instruments to bear on the problem in Bosnia and Herzegovina? Is it appropriate therefore, in terms of its possibilities of the instruments, that the EU is there now rather than with a narrower focus of NATO?
Dr Anastasakis: Yes, and the EU is involved in a broader way in Bosnia and Herzegovina through its feasibility report and on all the particular points it has been advising the government to work on. Of course, the problem with Bosnia is that because of its protector situation, it is difficult to expect the government to act in a very active and passionate way on the demands by the European Union. I think it is high time for the EU to act in a much more broad way and deal not just with reconstruction or reconciliation, because I would say that has evolved in quite a satisfactory way, but also with development issues, which are particularly acute in that part of the Western Balkans.
Mr Whyte: One specific security issue that we are facing in Bosnia in the next few months is the question of police reform. You may be aware that Lord Ashdown has set up a special commission to look at this. I would not be surprised, in fact I would welcome it, if his recommendation turns out to be a kind of nationalising of the Bosnian Police, removing security responsibilities from the entities; in other words, a greater incentive---
Q133 Chairman: On the precedent of the Ministry of Defence, on a statement?
Mr Whyte: Precisely, yes. One does find other countries where the main police force is national rather than local, particularly if, as there is in Bosnia, there is a problem with local competence, local corruption of the police force that happened to be on the ground. I think that could be a very interesting development and that could well be the crisis point where we see the EU's courage being put to the test.
Q134 Ms Stuart: I would like to take you back to Serbia and Montenegro in particular and turn to something which you started to address in your answer earlier to my colleague Mr Illsley and also to Mr Mackay and that is around the whole Stability and Association Agreement and the divergence between the progress the two countries are making. Do you think the new twin-track approach will actually help that or is there simply just such a big gap to be caught up on that it just leaves them behind?
Mr Whyte: That is a really good question. I think that the twin-track approach recognised the reality that the attempts to make Serbia and Montenegro integrate with each other before joining the EU simply was not working and, in a sense, the EU thus avoided making one of the several Cyprus mistakes that my colleague referred to earlier. I think you are quite right to say that the interests of Serbia and Montenegro remain very divergent. I understand that the Montenegrins now plan to make the best go they can of proving their European credentials within the framework of the new proposed feasibility study, and they hope to be in a position to be able to turn around to their own voters and say, "Look Serbia is holding us back from our European integration" and that will then be used as an argument for separation. Doubts are sometimes expressed about the capacity of the Montenegrin Government to deliver on this strategy but it is certainly an interesting approach for them to take.
Dr Anastasakis: I also think this is an interesting development because it shows a genuine attempt by Chris Patten and the Commission to understand what exactly the problem is. My deep conviction is that the understanding on Serbia is still a bit underdeveloped. The centrality of Serbia in the Western Balkans is really crucial. I think one has really to try and approach this country in the right way in order to be able to have positive side effects in the other parts also. In that respect, I think maybe they recognise that this kind of (Solana) state was a kind of failure and they had to make up for it. Showing this kind of flexibility will definitely create this kind of competition between the two and end the antagonism in trying to approach the standards of the EU. We all know of course that in Serbia there is still this kind of polarisation and we do have a more clear distinction between the reform forces on the one hand and the more nationalistic forces on the other. There is a real battle going on between those two sides in Serbia.
Q135 Ms Stuart: We have talked a lot about outside players and whether they have failed or succeeded. Something which struck me through the whole evidence session was that you talk about what the US does, what NATO does and what the EU does. Is there not an argument made that the people on the ground need to take a bit more responsibility? There is another outside player, which no-one has mentioned so far in particular in relation to Serbia, and it strikes me that could play more of a role and that is actually Russia?
Dr Anastasakis: I agree with you. The international factor is always the easiest target to which to address criticism and to attack, but, by being critical towards local actors, and even sometimes being very critical towards them, one also shows them respect because that is how they should be treated. It is definitely the case, and that is why I tried to indicate this in my previous remark, that there is this kind of polarisation between the Serbian forces themselves. This is a country with a background and with human capital and really able people who can deal with the international environment. If the international community wants to work with people in Belgrade, they can find people who are really interesting and who know their way about. In that sense, the Serbian people, yes, and from my contact with them, do have a strong victim attitude and it is sometimes over-emphasised because that explains for them why their situation is not better. There is definitely a lot of work that needs to be done within the local actors themselves.
Mr Whyte: I would just like to make two points in addition. One of them is that engagement by Western political figures with the local actors on a continued and sustained basis is the only thing that will work. For instance, Mr Chairman, it would be great if this Committee's report, when it is finalised, were to be launched in the Western Balkans as well as published here. I think it would be very interesting for the local media to pick up on that. It would certainly be a sign that you were taking them seriously, and they will take you very seriously, whatever you say. It will be a sign of respect in the other direction. My second point on Russia, Ms Stuart: the Russian attitude, I am afraid, is, frankly, irresponsible at the moment. On the one hand, they call for the United Nations to crack down more heavily on Kosovo. On the other hand, they have withdrawn their own troops, so fighting is the last drop of somebody else's blood, in other words. On the one hand, the Russians describe the Kosovo authorities, dubious as they may be but legitimately elected by UN mandate and structures, as terrorists and thugs; on the other hand, Russia continues to support separatist regimes, which have much less legitimacy in South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Nagorno-Karabakh and Transnistria. There is a real problem there. It will take sustained attention from the Kremlin, not from the Russian Foreign Ministry, and at the moment the Kremlin has other things to think about.
Dr Anastasakis: It goes further. Russia is going through an interim period because of its own problems within its own country. I think the importance of the Balkans for Russia is decreasing and will now be seen to be decreasing.
Chairman: Gentlemen, you have contributed much to our own study of this fascinating area. We thank you both for giving us of your expertise.