Spiegel Interview With Tomislav Nicolic, SRS
Source.May 23, 2008
SERBIA'S ULTRA-NATIONALISTS
'It Is not Us but Europe that Needs to Face Reality'
The next Serbian government could include Tomislav Nikolic, the leader of the ultra-nationalists. In an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE, he shows himself uncompromising on the question of Kosovo and even raises the spectre of a new war in the Balkans.
Tomislav Nikolic at an election rally in Belgrade on May 6.
Tomislav Nikolic at an election rally in Belgrade on May 6.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Mr. Nikolic, despite resistance in Europe, it is possible that Serbia could soon see a governing coalition made up of Radicals, Socialists and Vojislav Kostunica's Democratic Party of Serbia. Even at this stage, no one seems to think that such a government could stay together for long. Some even think that it could lead to civil war.
Tomislav Nikolic: The European Union has divided our people into good Serbs and bad Serbs, thus destabilizing the country. Europe puts all its support behind the Democratic Party (eds. note: The Democratic Party and the Democratic Party of Serbia are two different parties) of Boris Tadic, despite the fact that 90 percent of all voters have cast their ballots for parties in favor of joining the EU.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: That is a different message from the one often heard from your Serbian Radical Party.
Nikolic: Of course we are in favor of the EU. But what is the difference between our demand that the EU accept Kosovo as a part of Serbia and President Tadic, who, just after the elections, said he would never recognize the independence of Kosovo? It is clear that without this recognition, we will never become part of the EU.
ABOUT TOMISLAV NIKOLIC
Tomislav Nikolic is head of the ultra- nationalist Serbian Radical Party (SRS). He took over the office in early 2003 after his predecessor, Vojislav Seselj, voluntarily surrendered to the war crimes tribunal in The Hague. Nikolic is considered the second most powerful figure in Serbia after president Boris Tadic. In the presidential elections on January 20 he even secured more votes than Tadic, but lost to him two weeks later in a run- off election. In 1991, when the war of independence broke out in Croatia, Nikolic commanded Serbian troops.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: The current -- and likely future -- Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica threatened to annul the Stabilisation and Association Agreement between Serbia and the EU immediately after the mid-May election.
Nikolic: That is a decision for the parliament and the question is not a priority. We can wait until the agreement is ratified by all EU member-states, and that will never happen. My goal is not a dispute with the EU, but communication.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: About what?
Nikolic: Decisions cannot continue to take place over our heads. Why weren't we offered the Cyprus solution for Kosovo? Cyprus was recognized as a country despite the fact that the northern part is de facto almost independent. I feel as though I have been raped. Now, the EU wants to send a mission to occupy Kosovo. Why aren't they talking to us? Perhaps we would accept such a mission under the principles of UN Resolution 1244. I was in Kosovo two weeks ago. Chaos is rampant…
SPIEGEL ONLINE: The chaos only gets worse with Serbia establishing a parallel state and provoking violence.
Nikolic: The international community is getting what it wanted. Brussels was fully aware that we wouldn't recognize an independent Kosovo and that we would establish our own local administration there. The NATO troops of the KFOR mission can remain on the current border between Kosovo and Serbia. We won't allow a Kosovo-Albanian army there.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Doesn't Serbia realize that ignoring reality is only hurting Serbia and, especially, the Serbs in Kosovo? You as a realist should understand that Kosovo will never again be a part of Serbia.
Nikolic: Who says? We will use our veto to prevent Kosovo from becoming a member of almost all world organizations.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Which is a fine strategy to force Kosovo to become part of Albania. By taking such a step, Kosovo would automatically gain membership in those organizations.
Nikolic: Don't count on it. Otherwise there will be war in Europe. Or do you think that Bucharest will sit on the sidelines should the Hungarians in Romania demand to become a part of Hungary? It is not us but Europe that needs to face reality. For precisely these reasons, there are many countries in both Europe and elsewhere in the world which will never recognize the precedence of Kosovo.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is the Radical Party not secretly hoping that foreign territory might fall to Serbia -- that, for example, Bosnia will collapse and the Serbian part, Republika Srpska, would become part of Serbia?
Nikolic: We don't need that state nor do we need unification. But the Republika Srpska has now reached the level of a Bosnian province, without having been granted the competencies owed it according to the Dayton Accords. The population there should decide on their own future in a referendum.
Part 2: 'It Was a Bloody War and Everyone Was Killing Everyone'
SPIEGEL ONLINE: What would you like to say to the chief prosecutor of the war crimes tribunal in The Hague when he next comes to Serbia?
Nikolic: That it would be immoral to ask Serbia to hand over further suspects.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: So you will continue to celebrate General Ratko Mladic, who has been a wanted man for 13 years, as a hero?
Nikolic: That is a different question. If we were to form a government, I would want to see the charges, and if necessary, we can try him here. I know, however, that he is not in Serbia. I am not running away from the war crimes that Serbs committed, and there is no doubt that these crimes were committed. But they were not only carried out by Serbs. It was a bloody war and everyone was killing everyone.
SPIEGEL ONLNE: In the Bosnian town of Srebrenica at least 8,000 Muslims were executed by Serbs …
Nikolic: But not during liberation. These madmen who killed after that, they have to be held responsible for what they did. But the same goes for the murders of the 2,600 Serbs who died in the villages surrounding Srebrenica.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: You are regarded as a Russophile. If your coalition comes to power, Serbia's economy would also be oriented towards Russia, China and India. That is reminiscent of rhetoric from your party chairman Vojislav Seselj's -- currently sitting in The Hague accused of war crimes. He says Serbs "can also feed themselves on grass."
Nikolic: I admit I like the Russians. I feel very close to these people. And we have to have an outlet if the EU decides to boycott a government that includes the Radicals for a few months. Fundamentally we would like to be a gate to the East and to the West in equal measure. And India, China or Russia are also part of the EU's future and are currently its preferred trading partners. Western investors will very quickly realize that they can trust my guarantees and can invest their capital in Serbia.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: You have promised a stable government. How can you achieve that with a Socialist party that sells itself to the highest bidder? Socialist leader Ivica Dacic travelled to Moscow before the election to offer Milosevic's widow the chance to return to Serbia without having to face any charges in return for her support during the election campaign. And then after the election he did not want to rule out a coalition with the pro-European block of President Tadic.
Nikolic: Europe has behaved even more embarrassingly. The Socialists -- who during the election campaign had promised a continuation of Milosevic's policies -- were told their way into the Socialist International would be smoothed, with the help of Germany, if they teamed up with the Democratic Party of president Tadic. I am very concerned about Tadic's latest aggressive statements and fear he is already preparing our people for demonstrations, should we form the next government. Is that the stability the West is after? If we were to come to power, we will get to work and not just argue, as has happened in the past.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Yet you of all people are known for attacking and insulting your political opponents …
Nikolic: There is also plenty of swearing in the German parliament.
Interview conducted by Renate Flottau
Here's another interesting article, by Nebosja Malic:
Source.Tadic's Titanic
In Serbia, the Wreck of Wishful Thinking
by Nebojsa Malic
Nothing so destroys the delusions about democracy as the practice thereof. Examples of this are legion; one could look at the daytime drama presidential campaigns in the U.S., or the ethnic referenda in places like Kenya or Bosnia-Herzegovina. The latest exhibit in the case against democracy comes from Serbia, where general elections were held on May 11.
Even before the polls closed, the "European Serbia" coalition, led by the Democratic Party leader and President of Serbia, Boris Tadic, was claiming a stunning victory. Media, both in Serbia and the West, thundered about the country's "clear European choice" and waxed poetic about Serbia's "tilt to the West." The morning after, however, electoral math spoke differently.
In order to form a government, any party or coalition in Serbia has to have at least 126 seats in the 250-member Skupshtina. Tadic's coalition got 103. Even with the support of every possible ethnic minority party and the militant Liberal Democrats, the most votes he could put together in the parliament was 123.
On the other hand, the "patriotic bloc" that supposedly "lost" the election - Serbian Radical Party (SRS), ex-PM Vojislav Kostunica's populist coalition (DSS-NS) and the Socialists (SPS) – won more than enough mandates among themselves to put together a government: 127.
As the awareness of numbers slowly crept into the post-election EUphoria in both Serbia and the West, anger and threats replaced self-congratulatory twaddle. U.S. and UK ambassadors, as they've grown accustomed to, lectured the people of Serbia that democracy didn't really mean letting those who won the most votes rule. Because, you see, only the Democrats had democratic legitimacy to democratize democratically in a democracy…
And if democracy failed to bring Democrats to power, there were always other means. Ceda Jovanovic, leader of the militantly pro-Imperial Liberal Democrats, spoke about a "parallel government." Bozidar Djelic, Tadic's right-hand man, claimed there would be protests in the streets – then tried to backtrack and blame Reuters for misinterpretation.
Tadic himself threatened he would "not allow" any "tampering with the popular will." Yet there was no disguising the fact that he found himself in the exact same position as the Radicals have been in the past five years: the strongest single party in the parliament, unable to actually rule.
Courting the SPS
Empire's enablers and EU's favorites thus found themselves in a quandary. They could not go back into a government with Kostunica; they had to be dragged into a marriage of convenience with him last year, and burned all their bridges this spring, after sabotaging the government's policy on Kosovo. The Radicals stand for everything they despise: tradition, sovereignty, independence. So in desperation, they reached out to the Socialists – the party of the late Slobodan Milosevic, whom they have incessantly demonized for the past decade.
Suddenly, one could hear from the champions of "democratic reform" that the Socialists weren't really all that bad, they could be a modern leftist party if they'd only shed the 1990s baggage, and say, wouldn't they want to join the Socialist International, of which the Democrats are a member (sort of)? Even the Brussels commissars chimed in, saying the Socialists' support would not be objectionable (quite a different story from four years ago).
Somehow, the Serbian voters were supposed to believe that the Radicals, who were allied with Milosevic for a short time in the 1990s, and Kostunica – who ran against Milosevic in 2000 and succeeded him as President after DOS took power – somehow represented the "retrograde forces of the 1990s," while Milosevic's actual party was a "modern, progressive" force of reform?
On the Edge
There was some reason to believe that Socialist leaders could be seduced by the promises from Brussels. After all, Serbia's obsession with the EU was manufactured from people's nostalgia for the old Socialist Yugoslavia, in which no one had to work and everyone had everything – until the IMF loans came due, anyway. Those in Serbia who worship the EU don't want a bigger market for their products, or lower customs, or better standards of governance; they want free money, pure and simple.
For a week, the Democrats seemed convinced the Socialist leaders would sell out their voters for a chance to partake in Brussels junkets. Serbia was "on the edge," declared political analysts, punning on the name of the Socialists' leader, Ivica ("edge") Dacic.
Over the weekend, Dacic flew to Moscow, ostensibly to meet with a minor Russian politician. Serbian media feverishly speculated whether he discussed a possible deal with the Democrats with members of Milosevic's family, who now live in Russia. Or could he have sought advice from Putin and Medvedev?
Finally, news came on Tuesday that the Socialists agreed to form a government with the Radicals and Kostunica.
No Easy Task
Last Friday, Tadic derided the possibility of Socialists joining his opponents, saying such a government would be a "short trip on the Titanic." One can only assume the Democratic Party leader had in mind to be the iceberg; the "nationalist" government may actually be the most stable political structure in Serbia since the DOS coup in 2000.
DOS was a squabbling mess of pocket parties whose leaders all suffered from delusions of grandeur. Subsequently, under tremendous pressure to keep the Radicals out of power, Kostunica had to accept either allies of the Democrats (G17-Plus, in the first mandate) or the Democrats themselves (in the second mandate), both of whom ran their own policies and ultimately caused the government to collapse. For the first time in almost a decade, the government actually has a consensus on issues of vital importance to Serbia, and doesn't contain a "Trojan" element.
On the other hand, the Empire has invested too heavily in the Democrats and their hangers-on, as well as a host of "non-governmental" organizations, and is likely to increase their funding now. Political pressure from Brussels and Washington is bound to rise. So will the demonization of "nationalists" in the Western press, already growing for the past few years. Serbian press is by and large controlled by foreign interests, both economic and political; it will continue to hound the government and brainwash the people into "accepting the reality" of Imperial domination.
The Stumbling Giants
It is questionable, however, how long that domination may last. With each passing day, oil gets more expensive (strengthening, say, Russia) and the dollar gets weaker. The Mesopotamian expedition is bogged down, and attempts to "win" by expanding the war to Iran may result in a Stalingrad scenario.
Empire's hegemony in the Balkans may soon be put to a test by none other than its Albanian protégés. Elections in Macedonia are on June 1, and the country's restless Albanians are already up in arms, again. One of their leaders, Menduh Thaci, is a cousin of the current "president of Kosovo," Hashim Thaci. Another, Ali Ahmeti, was a longtime lieutenant of Avni Klinaku, who has just established a "Movement for Unification" (of "ethnic Albanian lands"), on May 17 in Pristina. Meanwhile, videos announcing the formation of the "Liberation Army of Chameria" (Epirus, in western Greece) appeared on the internet recently, following the same pattern that Thaci's KLA used to initiate its campaign in Kosovo. It is indeed tempting to conclude that the Greater Albanian project is about to enter its next phase.
The EU's effort to supplant the UN in the "independent state of Kosovo" seems to have foundered as well, the Brussels bureaucrats finding that there was more to creating reality than they initially thought.
All over the world, the idea that wishing for something could make it reality is facing the cold, hard facts that say otherwise. The verbal acrobatics of the Empire and its enablers in Serbia only underscore the vacuous nature of their hegemony. President Tadic's unfortunate metaphor about the Titanic wasn't wrong, merely misplaced. For the real monument to arrogance proudly sailing on the irreversible course towards the End of History now appears to be that of his masters, and his own.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Farnan
.. Kosova Is Indenpendent and you cant take Back, or have back something that's not yours PERIOD. :original:
...how can you accomplish a balanced negotiation with this kind of attitude, thriving on misconceptions about the history of Balkans, the International Law and the realities of global politics and international relations?? (I should've probably quoted his entire post to illustrate more clearly) I think this is exactly what brought us to the situation where instead of continuing the negotiating process, one side made a unilateral and an illegal move (backed by few countries) and now we're stuck in the mud....
