Thursday, April 15th, 1999

Is Milosevic a Protege of the West?

    Is Milosevic a protege of the West? In certain intelectual circles in Serbia there is strong suspicion, in the past ten years, that Slobodam Milosevic is a key figure of strategic Western interests in this region. This suspicion has been confirmed by many concrete incidents that made Milosevic stronger. Let me mention some of these incidents:

    - Accepting Milosevic as the main negotiator for this area, although, his formal position does not allow him that.

    - Support to Milosevic's representation of Serbs living outside Serbia and him making crucial desisions in their name.

    - Mild and just formal support of democratic forces in Serbia, especially during the 1996/97 demonstrations, which were supported by the West three weeks after they had started.

    - Strict sanctions implemented by the international community served as an excuse for many repressive actions by Milosevic, who strenghtened his position during this time.

    - Deceiveing the Serbian democratic opposition, which expirienced this in a most brutal fashion during the 1997 elections, when Western diplomats spent months convincing the opposition to boycott the election because of strong indications that they would be irregular and wouldn't be recognized by the West itself. Suprisingly, less than two weeks before the elections Richard Holbrooke visited Milosevic, and on that occasion stated that election boycott would be meaningless.

    Unfortunatly, opposition parties continued to rely on Western policy inspite this gesture of support to Milosevic, hoping that the West would help democratization of Serbia. And with this last action the West definitely sealed the fate of Milosevic as the sole leader in the next, persumably, very long period. After all this, only one dilemma remains for us: Who fought for the past ten years for democratization, reforms and, even, cooperation with the West, and is now left alone, like a sitting duck?

    Is this behaviour of the West a result of some rational policy, unknown to us, or is it only the result of enormous ignorance and stupidity of Western politicians, who don't realize that FRY is not Republika Srpska and the problem cannot be solved in that manner.

    By attacking FRY, NATO showed that it has no confidence in the democratic opposition in Serbia, and also showed that their support up until now was in words only and was to the sole purpose of keeping the public quiet. The democracy-oriented opposition is now left alone, without a chance to bring reforms to this country.

Dusan
age 27, physicist