By IPS Correspondents
BRATISLAVA, Feb 14 2002 (IPS)

Slovakia’s hopes for NATO and European Union admission still hang in the balance despite the largest threat to political stability for the last three and a half years seemingly fended off.

Deputy Prime Minister for Economy, Ivan Miklos, survived Thursday a vote of no-confidence brought by MPs from the opposition HZDS party when the motion failed to receive less than the required 76 votes to remove him.

Had he lost the vote Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda had said he would offer his resignation, prompting the collapse of the government and early elections.

But although the Dzurinda remains in place, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, NATO, and European Union entry, which could be secured by the end of this year, still look uncertain.

Former Prime Minister, Vladimir Meciar, whose last government’s policies were named by NATO and the EU as a major reason for not inviting Slovakia to join both groups in 1997, remains the most popular politician in the country while his HZDS party commands more than 30 per cent voter support.

After the vote HZDS representatives refused to rule out further motions of no-confidence in ministers. One HZDS MP, Olga Keltosova, said that by March 30, the latest date at which early elections could be called, “parliament will be paralysed”.

Scheduled elections in September, just six weeks before a crucial NATO summit in Prague and two months before an EU summit, could produce a return to power for Meciar.

If that happens, numerous statements from senior EU and NATO officials in the last six months backed up by private and public comments from diplomats in Bratislava, suggest that it will almost certainly be an end for Slovak hopes of joining both institutions.

“If Meciar comes back to power then 100 per cent for sure it will be the end for NATO ambitions. The European Union may take longer and wait until the elections and watch Meciar to see if he really has changed, but the majority of EU states will be worried about him,” says Pavol Lukas, advisor at the Slovak Foreign Policy Association.

A NATO summit in Prague in November is expected to invite at least one country, probably more, to join the organization in 2004. An EU summit in December is expected to offer membership to 10 states, again in 2004.

Slovakia aspires to be included in both enlargements, but NATO and EU representatives have made it clear that a return to power of Vladimir Meciar could affect their decision.

NATO General Secretary, Lord George Robertson, said in November in Bratislava that Slovaks must “vote with their eyes wide open” in this September’s general elections, asking them to bear in mind that the 29 member states will be closely watching the outcome.

The statement came just weeks after Gunther Verheugen, EC Commissioner for Enlargement warned of the dangers of “the return of past forces” to power in Slovakia.

Most recently Slovakia was unofficially labeled a problem candidate state at a meeting of EU states’ foreign ministers in Spain last weekend.

Unnamed diplomats were quoted in a number of media as saying that Slovakia was “a problem candidate state” and that there were concerns within the Union over the political development of the country after the elections.

Slovakia missed out on invitations to join NATO in 1997 along with neighbours the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary, when it was deemed the Meciar government of the time could not be viewed as fully democratic.

Similar reasons were given at the end of the same year when, again, Slovakia was left behind Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic and not invited to start negotiations on accession to the EU.

Under Meciar’s 1994-1998 government freedom of the press was limited and commitments to the rights of the Roma and Hungarian minorities largely ignored. The PM and the Slovak Secret Service were linked to the 1995 kidnap of the then-president’s son Michal Kovac Jr., while serious concerns were raised about corruption in many areas of society, particularly in the judiciary.

A foreign policy was also pursued that saw Slovakia seemingly supporting anti-NATO figures of the time, such as Yugoslavia under Slobodan Milosevic and Russia under Boris Yeltsin.

Meciar had a number of personal meetings with Milosevic during his last government, while relations were so good with Yeltsin that the Russian leader sent a telegram to the then-PM saying before the 1998 elections he hoped he would be reelected so as both countries could mutually benefit.

But since the Mikulas Dzurinda coalition came to power in October 1998 much has been done to bring the country out of what was essentially European isolation under Meciar.

It has opened negotiations with the EU on entry and has closed 22 of 29 accession ‘chapters’ in the acquis communautaire, a pre-accession legislative harmonisation document. It hopes to have the remaining seven closed by this autumn.

Support for the NATO campaign in Kosovo in 1999 and solidarity with the alliance and the US in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks, along with army reform have contributed to the country being viewed as front runner for admission to the 29-country group, the concerns over Meciar notwithstanding.

But NATO and EU representatives are still reluctant to countenance a return to power for Meciar, and diplomats in Slovakia have gone as far as to openly suggest voting for the former prime minister will rule them out of NATO.

Ronald Weiser, new United States Ambassador to Slovakia, told local media December 21 in one of his first public statements that the U.S. would not support Slovak admission to NATO if Meciar was reelected.

“A return to power of the government that was here before the last elections in 1998 would mean that the United States would not support the entry of Slovakia to NATO. This kind of government does not share the values which are shared by the government of the USA and other NATO member states,” he said.

And on the eve of the Miklos no-confidence vote assistant commander of NATO forces in Europe, Dieter Stockmann, said during a meeting with Slovak President Rudolf Schuster there were still concerns about political developments in Slovakia, both in relation to the Miklos confidence vote and commitment to the alliance after the elections.

However, Meciar, whose HZDS party has topped voter preference polls since the last elections in 1998, last summer declared his and his party’s commitment to western integration.

In a series of press and media briefings he made clear that his party was now giving its full support to Slovakia’s drive to join NATO and the European Union.

He has also reacted angrily to what he described as the West’s “demonising” of him.

His apparent stance has received a cautious welcome from both institutions in Brussels, but dismissal from ruling government members and some diplomats in Bratislava.

One senior diplomat in Bratislava said: “The ambassadors have made it quite clear what they think. Has Meciar really changed? No, of course not.”

Foreign policy experts are equally doubtful of the willingness of either NATO or EU leaders to accept the HZDS leader as the head of a potential member country.

“I would be extremely skeptical that there would be any acceptance of any government led by Meciar or one in which the HZDS was a constituent part,” said Grigorij Meseznikov, president of the Bratislava-based think tank IVO.

But after seeing his minister remain in government, Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda said he was determined to continue the work on integration his cabinet had started.

“This year is crucial for integration. The vote was extremely important and we now want to complete our work,” he said.

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