By Vesna Peric Zimonjic
BELGRADE, Nov 10 2005 (IPS)

Six years after its bombing of Serbia, NATO is back, this time at least to official welcome.

Serbia has allowed free passage to North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) troops to their bases in neighbouring Bosnia-Herzegovina and the southern Serbian Kosovo province. Thousands of NATO troops have been stationed there as peacekeepers for a decade now.

The agreement was finally ratified with a tight vote in favour in the parliament of the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro last week following months of controversy. But many continue to oppose the decision.

“Allowing NATO to cross the country whenever its commanders want amounts to the occupation of Serbia,” Dragan Todorovic from the ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party (SRS) said in a recent interview to Serbian media. “We rebuilt this country after it was destroyed by NATO in 1999 and fought against them only to allow another form of occupation now.”

Dailies sympathetic to ultranationalists carried headlines such as ‘NATO Licence to Kill Serbs’. They said NATO soldiers may “shoot, kill or harm citizens of Serbia” without facing legal consequences. Some MPs from the Socialist Party of ousted former leader Slobodan Milosevic even called for a referendum, claiming that more than 55 percent of people in Serbia oppose the agreement.

All 33 SRS and Socialist MPs voted against the agreement, that was signed Jul. 18 by NATO secretary-general Yaap de Hoop Scheffer and the foreign minister of Serbia and Montenegro Vuk Draskovic. The agreement then awaited ratification by parliament.

Under the agreement NATO would have to inform Belgrade of planned routes and timetables, but would not have to specify what equipment or weapons the alliance convoys carry. NATO troops also would enjoy legal immunity, and the alliance would not be responsible for any damage caused during transit.

The ultranationalist SRS remains the most popular party in Serbia after the decade of wars in the 1990s, despite the fall of Milosevic’s regime five years ago. SRS supported Milosevic’s Socialists in the wars.

At the time of NATO bombing carried out to check Milosevic’s repressive politics against two million ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, SRS took the position that all non-Serbs should be evicted from the province. Some 800,000 ethnic Albanians were evicted.

Both SRS leader Vojislav Seselj and Milosevic stand trials for war crimes before the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at The Hague in the Netherlands.

The turbulent post-Milosevic era, with its slow introduction of democracy and the painful transition to a market economy only boosted the popularity of SRS.

Serbia remains deeply divided over the course the country has taken over the past five years. For SRS and Socialists supporters, NATO is still the enemy that needlessly devastated the country in 1999, causing the death of some 2,500 people.

The government sees it differently. “The ratification of the agreement with NATO is additional proof that we are becoming a country that respects the rule of law, a democratic country,” special envoy of Serbia and Montenegro to NATO Branko Milinkovic told IPS.

“This country has undertaken major reforms, including the issue of defence, and the agreement is only additional verification of the new course we have taken. Besides, the political context has dramatically and completely changed since 1999,” he added.

Military analyst Aleksandar Radic says the agreement represents a gain.

“This is a security gain and a step in the right direction,” Radic told IPS. “It makes it easier for them to have quick access and bring reinforcement at times of crises if they happen in the neighbourhood (Bosnia and Kosovo). On the other hand, it shows that this country and its military have distanced themselves from the politics of the 90s and want to join at least the Partnership for Peace (PfP) programme of NATO.”

Bosnia and Serbia and Montenegro remain the only countries in the region who are still not members of PfP.

The pro-democracy government has been trying to join this partnership since the ouster of Milosevic. Most of the military personnel involved in war efforts in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo have been retired, and the army has shrunk from more than 150,000 to less than half.

“There’s no need to think that this is a loss of sovereignty or that Serbia can be used as grounds for aggression on other countries. Similar agreements have already been signed by NATO and other countries in the region and even neutral Switzerland,” Milinkovic said. “This brings us closer to the community of nations we were excluded from for a decade.”

Serbia and Montenegro were expelled from all international organisations in the 1990s, including the United Nations (UN) and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) that the predecessors of Milosevic had helped establish. The union was re- admitted only after Milosevic was ousted.

Excerpt: