Balkan States

The Balkan Endgame

Another Balkan High Noon

Exorcising the Last Balkan Ghosts

A European Cure for Balkan Depression

Kosovo became the powder keg of Balkan.

One of the most dreadful decades of Balkan history ended five years ago.

Welcoming the progress made in the normalization of relations among all States of the Balkan region,

(s) Balkan Legal Forum 2004, Business and law in South East Europe (Sofia, Bulgaria 17 September 2004)

Severe to moderate droughts in mid 2005 affected Austria, the Balkan countries, France, Hungary, Italy, Portugal and Spain, leading to important agricultural losses.

The situation in Kosovo is now at an important stage with respect to its future as well as the stability of the Balkan region.

The organization also undertakes several programmes supporting new member States, European Union candidate countries and western Balkan and former Soviet Union countries and technical support programmes in other countries.

It remains our belief that their arrest and transfer to The Hague would clear the path to increased participation by Western Balkan countries in European and Euro Atlantic processes.

The leaflet was circulated by the Union and other organizations in the entire country and especially the frontier areas, countries of the Balkan Peninsula, Eastern Europe, Africa and elsewhere.

While governments might offer attractive liquidity facilities, banks will be unable to on lend the funds. And spillover effects from Greece will continue to affect Balkan and other emerging European banking markets.

The meeting agreed on the need for the establishment of a Balkan subregional drought management centre and requested that a second workshop be organized in 2005 on the terms of reference of the centre.

Thus, demoralization of Balkan society creates a dynamic of its own when the best and the brightest see their future outside of their own countries and where stability is just another name for political and economic stagnation.

As Kosovo approaches a unique, decisive moment, with consequences for the entire Balkan region, we are encouraged by the indications of increased awareness on the part of Kosovo's people and leadership about the effort that lies ahead.

The Paris Pact (see S 2003 641) identified several new action priorities for South Eastern Europe, notably along the Mediterranean coastline, as well as on the Black Sea, in the Caucasus and along the traditional Balkan route.

But the EU has so far failed to prepare the Western Balkans for accession, in line with its leaders promise at their Thessaloniki summit in 2003 to admit the Western Balkan states when they meet the Union s standards.

Kosovo is the last piece of the Balkan jigsaw puzzle, and it is of the utmost importance that all actors engage constructively so as to put the final piece of the puzzle in place as soon as possible.

Right after September 11, the WTCA went ahead with its plans for a trade fair in Zagreb on September 18th through 20th, with the assistance of several WTCs in the region to help re establish trading connections among the Balkan states.

According to the communication, Mr. Gurbandurdy Durdykuliev, resident of the village of Suvchy in the Balkan region of western Turkmenistan, was arrested and taken away on 13 February 2004 by some six medical personnel and another six in plain clothes.

In 2003 it cooperated with T.E.D.K.N.A. (Local Municipalities and Communities Union of the Attica Prefecture) in the international conference The new, enlarged Europe and the role of the Mediterranean where it presented the subject of trafficking in Eastern European and Balkan countries.

But failure to proceed definitively now on Kosovo s final status will produce a worse Balkan situation, one that blocks Serbia s move toward the West and ultimate membership in the EU, condemns Kosovo s ethnic minorities to dangerous ambiguity, and imperils fragile states like Bosnia and Macedonia.

Certainly, the pace of candidate countries approach to the Union depends on the speed of their reforms. And Europe, with the vital support of the United States, worked hard to stop the carnage of the 1990 s and subsequently to help rebuild the Balkan countries.

DENVER Much has been said about the similarities between the chaos in Syria and the Balkan wars of the 1990 s. But, while the prolonged killing may indeed be reminiscent, the political and diplomatic effort that finally ended the war in Bosnia is hardly in evidence today.

For example, the total cost of the Balkan wars of the 1990 s is estimated at 150 billion. Today, NATO continues to maintain a safe and secure environment for all of Kosovo s people, and is helping the entire region progress along the path of Euro Atlantic integration.

There are now two options for the region one is a shock integration program that takes all of the Western Balkan states into the EU the other is a journey into the unknown. The hope that these countries can muddle through on their own is a dangerous illusion.

I recently took part in a conference in Belgrade entitled Dealing with the Past in ex Yugoslavia. Although the rest of postcommunist Europe confronted such questions a decade ago, the Balkan wars of the 1990 s left both perpetrators and victims stuck in a time warp of justice delayed.

Fortunately, the time for armed conflict in that region appears to have come to a definitive end, now that the Balkan states are on the path to NATO and EU membership. But Eastern Europe, especially Ukraine and Moldova, also must be treated as a region of special importance.

In fact, enlargement fatigue has been the dominant feature of EU relations with the western Balkan states and explains why the accession process has been flat lining along a path of frozen negotiations and mutual mistrust toward an increasingly uncertain destination. This remains the case even after Croatia s accession.

Due to our recent efforts, the wounds of the Bosnian war are being healed, facilitating peace and stability among Balkan peoples. Turkey s efforts are also helping to prevent wars in the Middle East, and our intense efforts have helped keep a diplomatic track open on the Iranian nuclear issue.

The actions of the Programme focus on information and awareness campaigns (broadcast spots, etc.), on networking and coordination of Greek and Balkan non governmental organizations, as well as competent governmental institutions and international organizations, qualitative and quantitative research and survey and exercising pressure for the implementation of the legislation framework.

They are still mostly being welcomed, but the capacity of the reception centers is fast reaching its limits. To staunch the flow of migrants over the Balkan route, Hungary has imposed controls on its borders and was promptly followed by Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Croatia, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, and Poland.

Since the end of the Cold War, Europe has no longer been the first line of defense of the United States. And, since the end of the Balkan wars, the continent s security problems have disappeared (except at the margins, as in Georgia, or potential threats stemming from its near abroad, particularly the Arab world).

The next big step was the emergence of the concept of humanitarian intervention after the genocide in Rwanda and the Balkan wars in the 1990 s. As a result, international law came to recognize the right of protection against governmental arbitrariness and states crimes against their own people, even though enforcement remains quite uncertain.

Poland, a country that belongs to New Europe, is repaying the EU with a legitimacy that it had gained from Europe during its post communist transition. And the entrance of Croatia, followed by Montenegro and a few other Balkan countries, could compensate for the departure of Greece (should it come to that for the Greeks).

Today, three factors loom large in the avoidance of disaster the United States military presence in Europe, the progress of European integration, and Europe s abandonment of great power politics. Yet there is no point in fooling oneself Only as long as the Balkan countries believe in the European Union and the benefits of membership will today s precarious peace in the region become permanent.

The will to transcend the murderous trauma in the Balkans was also present. Watching students from Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia confront their memories of the Balkan wars, European students had first hand experience of what true reconciliation meant and what the rules of the game were in the greatest success the EU had known transcending the Cold War and nationalist animosities.

One major task that NATO performed in the first decade after the Cold War was to attract the newly freed countries of Central Europe toward the West, with the prospect of membership conditioned on meeting democratic standards. Another important task was to help bring stability to the troubled Balkan region after the breakup of Yugoslavia and the resultant wars in Bosnia and Kosovo.

After the First World War, a large number of Albanian people, who were living in the Balkan Peninsula, moved to Turkey. The proportion of Serbian people was relatively rising. The actions of taking back their own lands in the sight of the Serbian people were considered as the predations of the Greater Serbian Nationalism by Albanian people. The contradiction between the two nations intensified.

One reason the current situation facing Europe is so difficult is that it was so unexpected. Here we are, 70 years after the end of World War II, a quarter century after the end of the Cold War, and some two decades after the Balkan wars, and suddenly Europe s political, economic, and strategic future seems much more uncertain than anyone predicted as recently as a year ago.

Yet this prosperous and peaceful Europe is not idyllic sometimes Europe is not at all an easy place for its citizens to live, as the tumultuous Balkan Wars and painful postcommunist transitions of the past decade demonstrated. But even in hard times, every European knows deep down that European integration has delivered peace with clear prospects for broadening Europe's zone of peace and stability.

Confronting the disintegration of Yugoslavia in 1991, former EU Council President Jacques Poos made his famous but now derided statement This is the hour of Europe not the hour of the Americans. What the EU learned from the subsequent four years of Balkan disasters under its management is now being tested by another major turning point and potential crisis when and how Kosovo is to become independent.