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The 1st Significant working Week After The Summer Holidays Has Already Produced A Wealth Of Stories Here In The Western Balkans.
The 1st serious working week after the summer vacations has produced a wealth of stories here in the western Balkans. Some are rather more significant than others, unless of course you live here, when they are all deadly serious. Here is a roundup of a number of them.
Outside of the old Yugoslav Federal Parliament building in the Serbian capital they are rolling up the red carpet which had been unrolled to welcome delegates to the fiftieth birthday bash of the Non-Aligned Movement, which I've written about here. Serbia, which hosted the gathering, is not a member, but never mind that. It finds it handy to lobby over the Kosovo issue and for business.
In the aftermath of the meeting, Serbian papers are reporting that two nations which had as yet been accepted to have recognised Kosovo, now say that they did not. Oman says it just, sort of, um ah, sort of stated that it wanted Kosovo in the U. N, but that is totally different. The West African state of Guinea Bissau claims that recognition was held up in parliament.
Vuk Jeremic, Serbia's foreign minister adds that a criminal inquiry has begun in one African country against a senior official. He announced :
"There are set up suspicions that he received a bribe from an Albanian businessman from Kosovo in order to start the procedure to recognise Kosovo independence. If that inquiry gives results we expect, this country will also withdraw its recognition of Kosovo independence."
In the piece I wrote in this week's print edition I noted that many states find the Non-Aligned Movement's meetings useful because they enable nations to lobby and network. However in a stinging commentary (behind a paywall,) at Balkan Insight Milan Misic, the Washington hack of the Serbian daily Politika, argues the entire shebang was mounted because Belgrade "needed something to lift its confidence". It was merely a show of nostalgia for all its participants argues Mr Misic and "dwelled on the past accomplishments of the movement. "
At the meeting the ex-Yugoslavs all sat together. They'd better be cautious. Folks (especially Croatia's Nova TV) are asking questions. Why Ivo (Josipovic, the president of Croatia) was spending a lot of time with Boris (Tadic, the president of Serbia). 2 men of the same age, same background, same jobs, same issues, what a scandal...
Meanwhile, as some Croatian correspondents were obsessing about Ivo and Boris a little Croatian paper, the Makarska Kronika, seems to have a world-beating scoop, if true for course. In February I wrote about the close connections between the former Yugoslavia and Colonel Qaddafi. The press then wrote that his wife Safiya was originally Sofija Farkas, a Croat with Hungarian roots from Mostar in Hercegovina. According to the paper, Mrs Qaddafi has just been attempting to buy land and property in Igrane on the Croatian Adriatic coast not far away from Mostar.
Mrs Qaddafi and some of the family are now in Algeria. This summer the Balkan press has been full of stories of various celebrities in diverse stages of inebriation or undress, from Prince Harry to Beyonc, who have been holidaying in Croatia. Whether Mrs Qaddafi fits the profile the Croats want, I'm not sure, if she is actually a Bosnian Croat she has every right to a Croatian passport and hence visa free travel throughout Europe.
On a rather more sombre note, Dimitar Bechev of the Sofia office of the EU Council on Foreign Relations writes about the "protracted death of democratic Albania." Discussing the political conflict that has paralysed Albania for the last two years he is saying that both Edi Rama, the leader of the opposition Socialists and Sali Berisha, the prime minister are to blame . However Mr Berisha "must take the lion's share." He is hell bent, announces Mr Bechev, on gaining control of all of the Albanian establishments which still remain beyond his grip.
Why are ordinary Albanians willing to allow such de-democratisation? One reason could be that, unlike the other former Red states, ordinary folks see in the EU nothing different from Albania. To the side, across the Mediterranean, is Italy, with its unique brand of game-show politics ; to the south, over the mountain ranges, lies bankrupt Greece. If this is what it implies to be an ECU state, many Albanian glad-handers can be excused for thinking they already live in one, or should qualify for membership."
Not quite as dramatic, but still, alarm bells have begun to ring in Montenegro too. Thomas Roser, of the Austrian daily Die Presse has written about the series of attacks on autos belonging to Vijesti, one of the states main dailies. Four have been torched in the last few months. Zeljko Ivanovic, the paper's managing editor claims the media situation in the country is appalling and that the attacks are messages from people hooked up to orgainised crime which in Montenengro have invariably been believed to overlap with political interests that "they are stronger than the state" and thus Vijesti's reporting about such issues is pointless. Who cares about the world economy when you can fret about media freedom in Montenegro. Watch this space, writes tagza.com.
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