POLITICS-YUGOSLAVIA: Government, Opposition in Separate Moves to End Isolation

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Mar 17 2000 (IPS) - Hoping to end the isolation of the Belgrade government Yugoslavia is seeking new friends in what critics call “remote countries” little known by the Serbian public.

Foreign Minister Zivorad Jovanovic is just back from official visits to North Korea, Myanmar and Laos, declaring himself “very satisfied with the outcome” of the trip.

“Our talks in those countries covered prospective for broader economic co-operation and revival of our economies”.

The government has also been reaching out to China and Russia, but none of these countries appear interested in any closer relations with the Slobodan Milosevic administration.

“It’s normal that an isolated country seeks at least one big friend, ” says Predrag Simic of the Forum for International Relations, an alternative organisation of foreign policy specialists and former professional diplomats in Belgrade. “But it is highly unimaginable that China would tolerate or accept the building of another Great Wall that Yugoslavia proposes by offering itself as a Chinese ally,” he adds.

A much touted government initiative to unite Serbia with Russia and Belarus died abruptly last week when Genedy Seleznov, the President of the Russian Duma (Parliament) said in Moscow that “such a symbolic” thing might be considered only “after a change of regime in Belgrade”.

Milosevic’s government, including the coalition partner Vojislav Seselj of the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party, had insisted for months that “the imminent historic union with Russia and Belarus” would solve many of the country’s problems. No details of the union with the geographically distant countries were ever revealed, however.

Milosevic’s brother Bora is Yugoslavia’s ambassador in Moscow.

“Yugoslavia is one of the most isolated countries. It’s relations with the rest of the world are at an historic low,” says Aleksandar Nenadovic of the Forum for International Relations.

Yugoslavia’s journey into the global political wilderness began at the beginning of the 1990s over Belgrade’s role in the war that broke up the Yugoslav federation. Its membership such international groupings as the United Nations, Organisation for Security and Co- operation in Europe (OSCE) and the Non-Aligned Movement were suspended.

Last year after NATO forces began its air raids against the country, the government broke diplomatic relations with the United States, Britain, France and Germany. Still, some 39 countries maintain embassies in Belgrade.

The decline in Yugoslavia’s foreign policy and its isolation were worsened by two major purges of the professional staff at the Foreign Ministry. The first, in 1992 got rid of non-Serbs and the second, in 1998, ousted those whose ideology was suspect.

The purges weakened the professional and diplomatic staff — less than 700 people now work for the Foreign Ministry — and those remaining are loyal to Milosevic’s Socialist Party and his wife’s Yugoslav Left (JUL).

“This regime does not need and does not want a serious foreign policy. Within the virtual reality it lives in, it proposes itself as a creator of a new front that is going against major international developments,” says Nenadovic.

JUL, party of Milosevic’s powerful wife Mira Markovic, recently announced that its plan to establish a “permanent forum of freedom loving movements and parties” has been “broadly welcomed abroad”. It did not say where.

“The Forum will enable all the progressive political forces in the world to create a unique bloc of resistance to the new international order. One of the main aims of Forum will be the creation and establishment of World civilisation for the new millennium,” a JUL statement said. “This will become the World resistance movement,” it added.

But if the Milosevic administration is not having much luck in its diplomatic efforts abroad, opposition parties appear to be faring better. Amid a backdrop of government disapproval of their actions opposition parties have made contact with Croatia and are trying to establish ties with western nations and Serbia’s neighbours.

A delegation of Serbian opposition parties attended the inauguration of new Croatian President Stipe Mesic last month and talks were held on re- establishing real communications between Serbia and Croatia.

Belgrade and Zagreb established diplomatic relations in 1994, three years after the start of the war that disintegrated the Yugoslav federation. But relations between the two are chilly. Belgrade is particularly angry over last month’s opposition party visit to Zagreb as the visitors were mainly interested in experiences of opposition victory against a nationalist, isolated regime.

“We discussed whether something can start, even with this undemocratic regime in Belgrade. We think it can. We also think we can start making plans for some regional future without wars,” Zoran Djindjic, one of the leaders of the opposition Alliance for Change said.

“Nothing can be done without having good relations with our neighbours,” Nenad Canak, another opposition leader said. “Croatia is the first one we should count on, despite what the politicians in power – like late Croatian President Franjo Tudjman and Slobodan Milosevic did in the past.”