BALKAN REGIONAL PROFILE:
THE SECURITY SITUATION AND THE REGION-BUILDING EVOLUTION OF
SOUTH-EASTERN EUROPE
(A Background and March-April 1999 Issue in Brief)
Research Study 7, 1999
Hard copy: ISBN 954 - 9533 - 10 -7
AN I S N SPONSORED MONTHLY ELECTRONIC PERIODICAL
I. INTRODUCTION
II PROFILE BACKGROUND OF THE BALKANS
III CONFLICTS AND POST-CONFLICT DEVELOPMENTS IN THE BALKANS
IV THE NATIONAL PERSPECTIVES OF THE BALKAN COUNTRIES: SPECIFIC ISSUES
V THE BILATERAL AND THE MULTILATERAL RELATIONS IN THE BALKANS. THE STATE OF THE
REGIONAL INITIATIVES
VI THE ECONOMIC SITUATION OF THE BALKAN COUNTRIES AND THE REGION
VII THE INFLUENCE OF EXTERNAL FACTORS ON THE REGION: NATIONAL GREAT POWERS
AND
INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS
VIII THE SECURITY SITUATION AND THE REGION-BUILDING EVOLUTION:
CONCLUSIONS
The launch of the 'Balkan Regional Profile' by ISIS with the support of the ISN stems
from the need to monitor, analyse and predict processes and events in South-Eastern
Europe. The post-Cold War period dramatically accelerated the existing and potential
conflicts but also witnessed the rise of real opportunities to accommodate the Balkans to
the Eastern enlargement of the European and the Euroatlantic civic and security zone and
to the globalising economy. Two patterns of security and foreign-policy behaviours were
basically outlined by the regional actors in the last decade: first, the militant and
destructive one, manifested clearly in the policy of the Yugoslav government and the
bloody conflicts it provoked or opportunistically escalated. The second is the
constructive, stabilising and region-building one. The latter pattern builds on the hopes
that have seemed often distant, if not impossible, for the region - for higher living
standards, modern economies, technology and infrastructure, peace and prosperity. The
interaction of these two models of local political attitude, the dynamics of the security
situation and the region-building evolution are in the focus of the Profile.
The initial dream of the nineteenth century national liberation movements and freedom
fighters when the Balkans were emerging from the remnants of the Hapsburg and the Ottoman
Empires was the liberation and the common future of all nations of the region. However,
those who were first to be liberated with external support concentrated on their national
competitive goals, tacitly or openly renouncing previous regional ideals. The Berlin
Treaty of 1878, an international legal framework for the permanent fragmentation or
'Balkanisation' of the region guaranteed this anti-regional behaviour.
The political ideals of the US President Woodrow Wilson and his practical efforts of
post-World War I national self-determinism-based settlements in Central, Eastern and
South-Eastern Europe did little to overcome this. The USA were not yet a powerful enough
diplomatic force to promote the normalisation of ethnicity/nation and state border
relationships in the Balkans. In the meantime, European powers exploited as much as they
could the possibilities for manipulation of internal regional divisions, conflicts and
animosities for their own ends. The result for the Balkans was opportunistic nationalist
behaviour under the umbrellas of alliances with external powers. The various inter-war
pacts and alignments in the region amply reflected this, as did its further economic
retardation. The Second World War did not change fundamentally the situation.
The Cold War period froze and temporarily diverted conflicting attitudes along the axis
of East-West polarisation. Ex-Yugoslavia was the principal regional beneficiary of this
divide, exploiting its non-alignment status both in the West and in the East. However,
ex-Yugoslavia could not adapt to the dramatic systemic transformations at the end of the
1980s. Nor could the economic, transport and communications infrastructure of the
subregion change overnight: it had been constructed for decades to serve confronting
rather than overlapping attitudes.
The lesson drawn from the horrific Yugoslav conflicts was to prevent the nightmarish
prospect of an all-out Balkan war in the early 1990s. It became evident for politicians
and societies in the area that seeking nineteenth century solution to twenty-first century
problems was counterproductive. Furthermore, the wars in ex-Yugoslavia became a major
hindrance to the economic progress of the non-Yugoslav part of the peninsula as well as to
most of the new post-Yugoslav states. The opportunity to join the modernising democratic
world by a new interpretation of the lessons of history in the region strengthened the
positions of those political actors favouring greater tolerance, reconciliation and
rapprochement. The 'good' in the 'bad' of the Yugoslav conflicts was they brought in
Southeastern Europe major external actors (the USA and the EU) who were interested and
demanded peaceful regional cooperation. Another one, Russia, was stimulated to start
reconsidering her approaches to this key region.
The area of Southeastern Europe - with the sole exception by now of FRY, has been
involved in political, security and economic integration designs within the post-Cold War
Euro-Atlantic security community as well as in the Eurasian land mass. Whatever kind of
configuration the expected twenty-first century redefinition of the geopolitical zones and
geoeconomic conditions and interests would assume in the space between the Adriatic, Black
and Caspian Seas and the Eastern Mediterranean, the Balkans remain an invariant
significant unit of this broader geopolitical, geoeconomic and geostrategic equation with
fundamental interests in it of the USA, the EU and Russia. Notwithstanding the crisis in
Kosovo, the NATO strike against Yugoslavia and the humanitarian disaster in the region the
geoeconomic, geopolitical and geostrategic opportunities outweigh the burden of the
conflicts in the peninsula.
Southeastern Europe has a crossroad position for energy transportation and distribution
from Russia and the Caspian Sea to Central and Western Europe. The transport and
communication opportunities of Southeastern Europe in the context of the larger East-West
and North-South corridors raise the economic attractiveness of the area. Its strategic
economic outreach to the Eastern Mediterranean, the Middle East, the Black and the Caspian
Seas, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and to the Chinese market opens up private and
government investment opportunities. The promising gas, oil, transport and trade future of
Turkey focuses a major US economic interest in the Balkans. The potential of creating in
the mid- to long-term an open and functioning regional common market thus stems from
within the region, the European integration tendency and from the global economy. The
importance of the energy and transport routes induces the evolution of a protection system
and contributes to the security arrangements in the broader area.
The political challenges in the Balkans are great and the political support of the
economic and business activity is one of them indeed. The transition to functioning market
economies and pluralistic democracies, the finalisation of the nation-building efforts in
the post-Yugoslav space, the battle for a secular and democratic Turkey, the proximity of
the biggest European state- Russia, focus the political interest of major external powers
as the EU and the USA. Significant issues remain to be further clarified: of the
whereabouts of the geopolitical region; of the geopolitical centre and the geopolitical
periphery of the region; which will be the active external powers interested in the
formation or the prevention of the formation of the region; if and when finally
stabilised, will the region belong to one major actor (EU), will it become an independent
or just a linking area, or a factor of global antagonism. There exist both positive
internal factors to the regional evolution and obstacles. Due to historical reasons the
external factors possess a decisive role in stimulating the positive factors and in
overcoming the obstacles to the region-building and for the opposite option too. The
monitoring of the 'top-down' role of the EU, the USA and Russia is indispensable to reach
assessment of the crucial interaction and results of the external and the internal
factors. From a 'bottom-up' point of view no people or government in Southeastern Europe
would accept the role of a "buffer" zone or a "security belt" as much
as would turn over any permanent state of being part of "an arc of conflicts".
A third, geostrategic perspective is linked to the dangerous knot of conflicts in the
post-Yugoslavia territory, the link of the region with the Black Sea, its proximity to the
borders of Russia, the Middle East and the Gulf. The developments in ex-Yugoslavia since
the beginning of the 90s proved that international attention is required to prevent or to
end fighting by a concrete military potential. Rebuilding peace and post-conflict
rehabilitation, on the other hand, calls for a universe of difficult political, economic
and social resources that can be hardly separated from the strategic ones. The Bosnia
precedent demonstrated the imperative of an interconnected strategic, social, economic and
political international engagement. The Kosovo tragedy adds a new aspect of the
humanitarian disaster but 'methodologically' underlines the need for an approach that
includes military, economic, political and social instruments for coping with the
difficult situation. The local perceptions in Southeastern Europe of these issues are of
rising needs to cooperate strategically with NATO, of an improved potential of the
Alliance to bridge the security interests of the European countries in the OSCE zone.
The Balkans comprise seven major national-ethnic groups - Greeks, Bulgarians, Turks,
Serbs, Croats and Albanians, and more than twenty smaller ethnic communities - Roma,
Hungarians, Armenians, Gagaouz, Jews, Tatars, etc. Except for Slovenia that claims it
belongs to Central rather than to Southeastern Europe, none of the Balkan countries is
homogeneous in demographic terms.
There are three principal religions in the Balkans: Eastern Orthodox Christianity
(mainly in Bulgaria, FRYugoslavia - Serbia and Montenegro, FYROMacedonia, Greece and
Romania); Catholicism (mainly in Croatia and Slovenia) and Islam (mostly in Turkey and
Albania). Bosnia and Herzegovina is a special case with all three religions confessed on
its territory more or less evenly. A large part of the population in the Balkans
self-recognises itself as atheistic.
The post-Cold War history of the Balkans proved that even if conflicts erupt along
cultural and denominational boundaries they have primarily political and economic roots as
well as keys for solution. The Balkans witnessed: a) bloody wars that seemingly stemmed
from ethnic and religious differences, rivalries and hatreds in Bosnia and Herzegovina and
in Kosovo - a Serbian province in the FRY; b) an ethno-religious conflict with low
intensity in FYROMacedonia, and c) a peaceful settlement of the same conflict in Bulgaria
with its Turkish ethnic minority. The Balkan experience of the last decade proved again
that any military or violent solution of this kind of conflict may lead just to a
temporary halt of the hostilities or a cease-fire but not to a lasting regulation of the
conflict. The lack of a democratic experience and institutions in some of the Balkan
states is a main reason to let the ethno-religious conflict escalate or an obstacle to
prevent the transformation of a cease-fire into a lasting peace agreement. Any attempt to
cope with the ethno-religious controversies by displacing big groups of people ('ethnic
cleansing') as the experience in Bosnia and in Kosovo showed, only creates time-bombs and
explosions of the conflict in bigger proportions in the future. It is only a state
structure that prioritises the principles of ethno-pluralist democratic institutions, a
sustainable market economic society and a conscientious policy of reconciliation and
rapprochement that bear a real potential to prevent or resolve an ethnic or religious
conflict.
Different classifications enlist from twenty to more than ninety acting and potential
conflicts in the Balkan region with even greater number of eventual interactions, linkages
and influences among them. Presently the peninsula is distressed mostly by the Kosovo
conflict. The complexity of the Kosovo issue stems from its ethnic, religious and
legal aspects as well as from the involvement of the great powers of the Contact Group for
former Yugoslavia in this regional problem in an unconcerted way. Though a long preventive
effort of major external to the region actors (the USA, the EU, Russia), international
organisations (the UN, OSCE, NATO) and neighbouring countries (Albania, Bulgaria,
FYROMacedonia, Greece, Romania, Turkey) was exerted, the fragile great-power balance in
the Balkans was exploited by a skilful local political manipulator, the President of FRY
Slobodan Milosevic. After failing to solve in a legal political way an internal problem of
his country he refrained to accept the suggestions of the parties involved in the
Rambouillet talks. Then he dared to test the reactions of the international community to a
policy of ethnic cleansing thus putting at a great risk the life of all his Albanian and
Serbian fellow-citizens in the province of Kosovo. This marked a further heightening of
the risk linked to an eventual worsening of the NATO-Russian relations - a development
that Milosevic purposefully wanted to happen and try to hide his 'smaller' in magnitude
plans of expelling his Albanian population and creating a major Balkan destabilisation
with a potential to proliferate in a wider European region. The application of FRY to join
the Commonwealth of the Sovereign Republics (Russia and Byelorussia) was part of the
political instruments Milosevic exploits for his own purposes. The still unregulated by
international law issue of 'humanitarian intervention' and an obvious inefficiency of the
Security Council of the UN to allow a mandate for such an intervention was exploited with
the hope that this is enough to deter the international community to act and provide
President Milosevic with the free way to continue his 'ethnic displacement' designs. The
inefficiency, the blocking of international law is not an adequate argument to use violent
means against the people of his own country. The consequences of the evolving crisis in
Kosovo and after the NATO strikes against Yugoslavia for the broader region are very
negative. Though most probably the strategy of the Yugoslav leadership will not succeed
for the time-being it supplies all countries from the region with various ranges of
difficult to tragic problems. The population of FRY is also suffering dramatically of this
policy. However, there are great expectations in the region the end of the Kosovo crisis
will mark the beginning of the implementation of a historic programme the Secretary
General of NATO called "Partnership for Prosperity" of the Balkans with the
engagement to support the political, social and economic integration of this area in
Europe.
The second major Balkan issue of this period is the 'Ocelan case'. The arrest of
the Kurdish leader created a lot of frustrations - both political and legal, throughout
Europe and in the Balkans in particular. Undoubtedly it marked intensification of the
Greek-Turkish tensions, both NATO members, on the eve of a major regional crisis. This
case highly marked the EU-Turkish relations and the prospects of this major regional power
to join the Union. It also created a lot of political controversies in Greece, including
the dismissal of Government Ministers, and intensification of the armed operations of the
Kurdish resistance organisations, mainly the outlawed in many states PKK.
The formal recognition of the Republic of China (Taiwan) by FYROMacedonia led to
the break of the diplomatic relations of this young Balkan state with the People's
Republic of China. The involvement of one of the great powers and a Permanent Member of
the UN Security Council in a negative way with the region is not a welcome news. There are
doubts that the economic and financial motivation of Skopje to undertake this act will be
adequately satisfied by Taiwan. Beijing already vetoed the continuation of the presence of
UN 'blue helmets' on Macedonian soil.
A post-conflict achievement in the Balkans - the implementation of the Dayton agreement
about Bosnia and Herzegovina, has been jeopardised by: a) events in the Serb
Republic of this federation, and b) the provocations against Bosnia and Herzegovina after
the beginning of the NATO strikes against Yugoslavia - an element of the strategy of
Belgrade to destabilise the neighbouring regions of FRY.
After creating problems to Muslim and Croat refugees to get back to their homes in
Brcko and to the return of displaced Serbs from Brcko to the Croat-Muslim Confederation
(Brcko is a key strategic town in northern Bosnia, linking the Western and the Eastern
parts of the Republika Srpska), the High Representative of the international community for
civil implementation of the Bosnia peace process, Carlos Westendorp, ordered on 5 March
1999 the removal of Nikola Poplasen - the president of the republic. Later on the same day
Brcko was proclaimed by the High Representative a neutral district, a condominium shared
by both the Croat-Muslim Confederation and by the Serb Republic. While the parliament of
the Serb Republic rejected both the dismissal of the President and the new status of the
disputed town, the Prime-Minister of the republic, Milorad Dodik, who resigned after the
decision about Brcko, continued to carry on his duties and stayed on, cooperating with the
international observers in Bosnia.
Albania received a major 'demographic blow' from the deportee flow from Kosovo. The
poorest European country is providing support to the rising number of ethnic brethren from
the troubled province (more than 300,000 people). Albania is also providing bases for NATO
ground forces for coordinating the humanitarian support and for strikes against Yugoslav
ground forces in Kosovo. The Albanian-Yugoslav tensions are rising and exchange of fire at
the border is reported. The whole air space of Albania is provided to NATO.
Bulgaria has received a heavy blow on its economic reform process from the daily
mounting losses from the war in Yugoslavia - transport, trade, investment activity, etc.
Practically the country is cut from its main economic orientation - the Western one. The
obstacles created by the Romanian Government in constructing a bridge over the Danube
river at Vidin-Kalafat with Bulgarian and international funding have inflicted a dangerous
stroke on the country's national security. At the same time Bulgaria demonstrated full
solidarity with the NATO policy in the Balkans and the Alliance has cared not to carry out
its operation through the Bulgarian air space. Excellent relations with FYROMacedonia,
Greece, Turkey and Romania (despite the bridge issue) are fundamental for preserving the
constructive, the peaceful and humane aspect of the image of the region. Despite the
fragile economic state of the country it has taken up to now about 2,300 deportees from
FRY on its territory and provides support for 3,800 more deportees to the neighbouring
FYROMacedonia.
This young Balkan state is undergoing the harshest trial in its short history - more
than 120,000 deportees found shelter from Kosovo. It is on the brink of its economic
survival and needs much greater international support. The call of the Prime-Minister for
an early integration in NATO is linked with the need to introduce in the state structure a
stabilising factor on an expedient basis.
After receiving a heavy blow with long term effect from the Ocelan arrest, Greece was
keen to get its government in better shape on the eve of the Kosovo crisis. Some of the
biggest demonstrations in support of Yugoslavia and against the NATO strike were organised
in Athens. Greece is a traditional friend of Yugoslavia with whom it has fought on the
same side as an ally four times during this century.
After declining to find a solution in the terms of the Rambouillet and the start of the
strike against Yugoslavia on 24 March 1999, the FRY declared war on NATO. The visit of the
Russian Prime-Minister Primakov to Belgrade in an effort to find a practical way out of
the intensifying war could not achieve its aim. The situation in the other Yugoslav
republic - Montenegro, is becoming more dramatic. The inflow of deportees (about 60,000),
the change of top-brass by Belgrade (a direct hint of a possibility to change a
democratically elected government and President), a worsening social mood after the
strikes against military targets on the Montenegrin territory may lead to a burst of civil
disturbances and the imposition of martial law from Belgrade. The economy of FRY has
suffered a heavy blow and more than 300 civilians have been killed by the air-strikes.
Romania demonstrated full solidarity with the strikes of NATO. Though the public
opinion initially was more favourable of the Yugoslav position it started to change after
understanding the level of human suffering by the Kosovo Albanians. Romania underwent
itself a dangerous social strife just a month before the start of the Kosovo crisis and
police and armed forces clashed with protesting minors. Some were killed and wounded. The
Romanian economy is passing a most difficult period in its reformation.
The Turkish Government was greatly supported by the Turkish population after the arrest
of the Kurdish leader Ocelan. It took steps that tried to highlight the Greek policy and
portrait it as supportive of international terrorism. Though the two countries are with
the most heavily armed military establishments in the Balkans and with open enemy
perceptions of each other, being NATO members they closely cooperate during the campaign
of the Alliance in Yugoslavia.
A complicated network of bilateral relations in the Balkans was formed in March-April
1999 in preparation and in reaction to the Kosovo conflict. Less attention has been
devoted to the constructive efforts to improve the regional economic and social situation
through bilateral interactions. A special attention deserve the qualitative improvement of
the Bulgarian-Macedonian relations on the eve of the Kosovo crisis; the visit of the
President of Turkey in Bulgaria days before the launch of the NATO strike against
Yugoslavia; the visits of the Greek Defence Minister in FYROMacedonia, Romania and
Bulgaria after the first days of the inflow of refugees and deportees from the troubled
Serbian province of Kosovo. The Greek Defence Minister declared his country would insist
in Washington at the NATO Summit in the end of April 1999 the three Balkan countries -
Bulgaria, FYROMacedonia and Romania to be admitted in the Alliance as a measure to
stabilise the general Balkan security situation.
a) The Meeting of the Presidents of Bulgaria, Turkey and Romania on 11-12 March 1999 in
Sinaya, Romania. They discussed the trilateral political and economic cooperation, mainly
in transport and tourism as well as the joint fight against organised criminality. NATO
enlargement and the creation of a free trade zone by the three states were in the focus of
the talks. The hope of the three leaders that the Kosovo crisis will find a peaceful
solution was contradicted later by the events in the field of the conflict.
b) The Meeting of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of Bulgaria, FYROMacedonia, Greece,
Romania and Turkey in Bucharest on 19 March 1999 adopted a Declaration for the Peaceful
Solution of the Kosovo Crisis. It did not produce a practical effect on the Government of
FRY.
c) The Meeting of the Foreign Ministers of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria,
Croatia, FYROMacedonia, Romania, Slovenia and Hungary - neighbours of FRY, with the EU
Troika (Germany, Austria and Finland), the Presidency of the OSCE and the UNHCR in Bonn on
1 April 1999. Aspects of the stabilisation efforts of the region were discussed with a
particular accent on the refugees (deportees), the economic consequences of the crisis and
the ways of their compensation.
d) The Meeting of Secretary of State M. Olbright with the Foreign Ministers of the
'front-line' countries with FRY on 13 April 1999 in Brussels.
The following regional initiatives are influencing the process of shaping of the region
of Southeastern Europe as a normal European region:
a) Balkan Conference on Stability, Security and Cooperation in Southeastern Europe -
a process that was started in July 1996 in Sofia, Bulgaria by the Foreign Ministers of the
Balkan countries, called the 'Sofia process'; a 'bottom-up' effort to develop the region
into a compatible part of Europe. It has practically developed a Foreign Minister, Defence
Minister and Heads of State and Government formats. A very important product of the
defence aspect of the cooperation is the creation of the Multinational Peacekeeping Force
of Southeastern Europe (MPFSEE) - a multinational rapid reaction force of Albania,
Bulgaria, FYROMacedonia, Greece, Italy, Romania and Turkey. The Headquarters of the unit
will be in Plovdiv, Bulgaria for the next four years. The MPFSEE will be operational from
December 1999 and will closely cooperate with the PfP and NATO.
b) The Process for Stability and Goodneighbourliness in Southeastern Europe - The
Royaumont Process - started on 13 December 1995 by the EU and aims the evolution of
the civil societies of the individual Balkan countries, the improvement of the
goodneighbourliness and the mutual information of the national developments, the respect
of human rights in the region. Apart of the EU and the Balkan countries it includes also
Russia, Slovenia, the USA, the CE and the OSCE.
c) The Southeast European Cooperative Initiative (SECI) or "The Plan
Shifterî- launched on 6 December 1996 by the USA. It aims at improving the transport
infrastructure in the border check-points of the Balkan countries, the attraction of
private capital interests and the evolution of a regional common market.
d) The Southern Balkans Development Initiative (SBDI) - a US Government
sponsored initiative of improving the transport infrastructure between Albania,
FYROMacedonia and Bulgaria in 1995. On 22 March 1999 in Washington, D. C. was convened the
12th Meting of the Coordination Group of the SBDI.
e) US-French Initiative to increase cooperation with Southeast Europe's emerging
democracies on security matters, regional cooperation and economic development - an
initiative spelled out on 19 February 1999 by President Clinton and President Chirac in
Washington, D. C. that needs to be clarified further. The conflicts in the Balkans have
highlighted the need to strengthen stability across Southeast Europe. The US-French
initiative waits to be joined by other NATO allies. The focus will be an increased
cooperation with Southeast Europe's emerging democracies on security matters; coordination
of security assistance to them from NATO countries; promotion of regional cooperation and
economic development.
The period of March-April 1999 did not witness activity of promoting the constructive
regional initiatives due to the escalation of the Kosovo conflict.
From mid-1998 the countries of Southeastern Europe meet difficulties in overcoming the
economic stagnation and in implementing the structural transformations of their economies.
The prolonged economic stagnation and the tense situation caused by the Kosovo crisis
narrow the chances for vitalising the general demand. 1999 is expected to end with a
diminishing tendency of economic rise in Bulgaria and Slovenia, deepening of the economic
recession in Romania, Croatia, FYROMacedonia and FRY. The economic situation in Greece and
Turkey is characterised by the policy of disinflation and currency stabilisation at a
moderate rate of structure reform, including privatisation. Decreasing the budget deficits
- the basic source of the inflation, remains the priority economic policy of the two
countries in 1999.
Slovenia, Bulgaria and FYROMacedonia have a positive rate of the rise of the GNP for
1998. Romania, Croatia and FRY slowed down their rate. Positive but comparatively slowed
are the rates of economic rise of Greece and Turkey. The imbalance of the economic
dynamics and the prerequisites for economic stabilisation between the countries
transforming into market economies, on the one side and Greece and Turkey, on the other.
Though there exists a need of seeking better opportunities for regional programmes for
economic interaction and development there is no real progress in this direction.
The external conditions of progress will expectedly be worsened by the war in FRY,
especially by stopping the inflow of new foreign investments in the region, by increasing
the losses from the diversion of the flow of goods, services and people and from the
general reduction of the economic activity in the region.
The major problem of most of the countries in the region in their relations with the
international financial institutions lies in their transition to a non-inflation
sustainable economic rise through implementing structure and stabilisation programmes. An
eventual worsened internal situation in these countries inevitably leads to a worsening of
the issue of the decapitalisation of the transitional economies.
The general economic depression of the region influences negatively the efforts of
Greece to improve her macroeconomic indicators and to narrow the distance from the group
of 11 EU countries that already implement the third stage of the EMU.
Turkey is under the regime of a three years programme of the IMF that should lead to a
structure change and financial stabilisation without financial support.
Bulgaria also implements a three years agreement with the IMF for structure reform with
financial support of the payment balance, including with WB funds.
The belonging to a risky region in connection with the Kosovo crisis further worsens
the problem of the inadequacy of the capital resources for the transforming economies. The
slowed down inflow of foreign direct investments and the diminished chances to reach the
international financial markets after the financial crack-down in Russia in August 1998
have a negative effect on the economic development of the region. The debts of the
organisations from the production sector in all transforming countries influences in a
destabilising way the banking systems and causes a drastic shrinking of the internal
credits as well as devaluation of the national currencies. All this leads to greater
difficulties in getting out from the economic crisis.
Inflation and unemployment are also major problems of the national economies of
the region.
The region of Southeastern Europe is largely dependent on the influences and
involvement of the external power factors. Neither overcoming the conflict burden nor the
gradual transition of the peninsula into a compatible European region will be possible
without the 'benign participation' of NATO, the USA, the EU and Russia (Russia continues
to be the main energy supplier for the Balkans).
This is why the 'Balkan Regional Profile' will carefully monitor and assess the
comprehensive projects of these centres of world power for their involvement in the region
as well as their practical acts of interaction with both the individual countries from the
Balkans and the area in general. The effectiveness of these interaction will determine the
pace of the emancipation of Southeastern Europe into a functioning European region, free
of violent solutions of its problems and part of a working security community in the
Euro-Atlantic space.
1. The Kosovo conflict and its escalation to the level of a full-scaled high intensity
military crisis is a consequence of the clash of two clearly opposing strategies of
behaviour for coping with the issue - of NATO and of FRY. The war reflects also an
inefficient regulation impact of the political cooperative effort of the Balkan actors -
neighbours of FRY, for de-escalating the tensions. The war and the consequent humanitarian
disaster reflects a measured Russian involvement in treating the conflict that is
perceived as just an effort to reach a particular Russian interest by utilising a hot
conflict for Russia's own ends.
2. The Kosovo tragedy, four years after the drafting of the Dayton agreement about
Bosnia demonstrated that the Balkan countries alone cannot decisively drive forward the
process of building-up the region as a modern economic and security entity of Europe
unless they have coped with a most dangerous and politically fuelled by the regime of
Milosevic ethno-religious and territorial conflict - the Kosovo one. Both the overcoming
of the most dangerous conflicts in the region and the comprehensive approach to
region-building will remain ineffective if NATO and EU do not take the initiative. A
constructive Russian engagement has also a chance of realisation.
3. The experience of coping with the refugee (deportee) issue of Kosovo will greatly
influence the formation of an international know-how of solving this issue in
UN-OSCE-EU-NATO framework in eventual future crises.
4. An encompassing NATO and EU plan, a "Partnership for Prosperity of the
Balkans" as declared by the NATO leadership in the beginning of March 1999 will be
most appropriate to start at the end of the war in Yugoslavia. This should be a concrete
programme of scaled integration of the region of Southeastern Europe in NATO and the EU.
In the mean-time a practical support for those in the Balkans that are suffering from the
policy of destabilising the neighbouring to FRY countries is indispensable.
| EDITORIAL STAFF: |
CONTACT AND REFERENCE
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|
Dr. Plamen Pantev, Editor-in-Chief |
ISSN 1311 - 3240
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Dr. Tatiana Houbenova-Delissivkova |
Address:
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Mr. Valeri Rachev, M. A. |
ISIS, 161 8 Sofia, P. O. Box 231, Bulgaria |
|
Dr. Sc. Venelin Tsachevsky |
Phone/Fax: ++(359 - 2-) 551 828 |
|
Mr. Ivan Tsvetkov, M. A. |
E-Mail Address: isis@cserv.mgu.bg |
|
Dr. Dinko Dinkov |
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Dr. Todor Tagarev |
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