EX-YUGOSLAVIA: Embargoes End, but Doubts Remain

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 22 1995 (IPS) - Wednesday’s lifting by the U.N. Security Council of economic sanctions against Yugoslavia and of the arms embargo against all the warring parties in the Balkans showed the limits of the peace process which played out this week in Dayton, Ohio.

The Council’s actions appeared intended to reinforce the idea that a turning point has been reached in the Balkans and that the peace reached in Dayton is now irreversible.

But last-minute haggling and confusion over the resolution to lift the arms embargo served as a reminder of the tensions that still afflict the region after four years of brutal war.

The Security Council agreed unanimously Wednesday to immediately suspend the sanctions against the rump Yugoslav state and to suspend trade sanctions against Bosnian Serbs in a phased manner in the coming days.

Minutes before, the Council agreed to lift all restrictions on the import of weapons to the Balkans within 180 days of a formal signing of the Dayton peace accord. Under the Council plan, the arms embargo would begin to be phased out 90 days after the parties sign the peace accords and would be ended altogether over the following 90 days.

But both votes nearly did not happen. Until the last minute, Russia opposed lifting the arms embargo. It said suspending the embargo would more effectively discourage any new arms race. In the end, it abstained on the resolution, which was approved by the other 14 Council members.

Moscow argued that the Dayton agreement made little sense when it proposed both convening a meeting to discuss regional disarmament in the Balkans, and, at the same time, permitting all sides to buy weapons.

“Both the spirit and the letter (of the arms embargo resolution) do not fit into the logic of the political process,” Russian Ambassador Sergey Lavrov said. “We believe the Balkans should no longer be a threat,” he added, but rather that its vast arms supply should be reduced.

Russia was not alone in expressing doubts. Tono Eitel, Germany’s U.N. ambassador, argued that the United Nations should not permit the peace agreement to be followed up with a new Balkans arms race. Eitel Wednesday called for “an arms control meeting in Bonn, at the earliest possible date.”

The Czech Republic, which intends to provide troops to enforce a Bosnian peace, expressed similar concerns. “We would hate to suffer any casualties from a freshly legal flow of arms,” Czech Ambassador Karel Kovanda argued.

Ending the arms embargo became a classic superpower stand-off. Russia desperately wanted economic sanctions against Yugoslavia to end, while the United States refused to back off its promise to lift the embargo and begin supplying the ill-equipped Bosnian government with weapons.

The two sides resolved their differences by adding a clause to the arms embargo resolution vowing that the Council “maintains its commitment to progressive measures for regional stability and arms control” and would support further measures to achieve those ends. But few expect that vague language to resolve the conflict for long.

Ironically, some Bosnian Muslims sympathised with Russia’s doubts. Muhamed Sacirbey, the outgoing Bosnian foreign minister, noted how difficult it would be both to pursue regional disarmament and to help the Bosnian government defend itself by arming it.

That seeming contradiction is exactly what the Dayton agreement and Security Council resolutions create. As one senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, put it, the United States intends to pursue “some build-up, but mostly a build- down” of regional arms.

What that means in practice is that the well-armed Serbians will have to give up some of its arsenal to fit below an authorised ceiling for weaponry. At the same time, the Bosnian government would be free to acquire more arms until they reach that ceiling. One U.N. source said acidly of that plan, “Try telling a Serbian commander to give up his best-loved tanks” while the predominantly Muslim government forces are re-arming.

The annexes to the Dayton peace plan indicate a complex formula by which some sides — notably Serbia and Croatia — reduce their arms while others — mainly the Muslim Bosnians — gain. If the parties themselves cannot agree on a disarmament plan, the U.S. official said, Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia would have to maintain weapons at a ratio of 5:2:2.

Under the proposals, Bosnia can maintain about 30 percent of the weapons levels of the rump Yugoslavia. But its neighbour, Croatia, would have to reduce its arms stocks to about 75 percent of its present level, the official said.

Some diplomats already have scoffed at such plans as unworkable and divisive. But most set aside their differences at the United Nations, so that they could deliver some of the first fruits of the Dayton accords.

The United States, which served as the main broker for the Dayton agreement, remains optimistic. “We have undertaken a historic turning point,” U.S. Ambassador Madeleine Albright said. The resolutions, she contended, were “the first concrete way of translating what happened in Dayton.”

EX-YUGOSLAVIA: Embargoes End, but Doubts Remain

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 22 1995 (IPS) - Wednesday’s lifting by the U.N. Security Council of economic sanctions against Yugoslavia and of the arms embargo against all the warring parties in the Balkans showed the limits of the peace process which played out this week in Dayton, Ohio.
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