July 30, 2002

James Morrison

News and dispatches from the diplomatic corridor.

Joining the club

     Just three years after NATO bombs fell on Belgrade, Yugoslavia is ready to take the first tentative steps to link up with the alliance, according to Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Aleksandra Joksimovic.

     In town for talks last week with Bush administration officials and private analysts, Mrs. Joksimovic told Washington Times reporter David R. Sands that Yugoslavia is pushing to join the Partnership for Peace, a group of countries that have established formal military links with the 19-nation alliance. As part of the country's efforts to re-integrate with the West after the ouster of former President Slobodan Milosevic, Belgrade is expected to join the Council of Europe in September.

     "It's still too soon to talk about Yugoslavia in NATO, but the idea of joining the Partnership for Peace is incredibly popular," Mrs. Joksimovic said.

     She said the government of Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic has managed to consolidate democracy in the country, despite the still uneasy status of Kosovo, the battered economy and the fragility of democratic governments throughout the Balkans.

     Mrs. Joksimovic said the initial fascination with Mr. Milosevic's trial in the Hague at the International War Crimes Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia has died down considerably. In presentations that received blanket media coverage back home, the former president spiritedly and unapologetically defended his actions in the ethnic conflicts in the Balkans in the 1990s.

     "The tribunal was perhaps not very well prepared, and the first images brought a very bad message, but people are losing interest," she said. "It's a soap opera, and like any soap opera, the plot gets old."

     "If there was any positive from the early part of the trial, it was that the whole world could see the strong personality and the demagogic power" of Mr. Milosevic, she added.