"A Europe at long last undivided, prosperous and free. A Europe where war becomes unthinkable". These were the objectives set out by President Ahtissari of Finland in his introductory speech yesterday as EU president of the Sarajevo summit to launch a Stability Pact for Southeast Europe. The summit endorsed a general statement of commitment to develop the whole region and include it in European integration. It will be judged very much by the relationship between the noble ends envisaged and the means and resources put forward to achieve them.
It is important to realise that Kosovo is but a small part of a wider region damaged by the war. Unless its needs are responded to as a whole there is a danger of more wars erupting following further disintegration of the former Yugoslavia. This means that Montenegro, Albania, Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria and Romania all have a strong case for inclusion. So too does Serbia. It is impossible to envisage the overall development of the region politically, economically or in terms of security without that state's participation. Its exclusion from yesterday's summit was to be expected after the end of the war. But the effort by the United States and Britain to make that semi-permanent until the removal of President Slobodan Milosevic from office, along with the refusal to extend reconstruction as distinct from humanitarian aid, are objectionable and counter-productive.
The war has brought economic collapse, disintegrating social structures, widespread poverty and high unemployment not only to Serbia but also to surrounding states. Yesterday's statement is long on political rhetoric about the need for regional co-operation, democratic change and market economies; but so far fewer resources have been committed than were talked about when the Stability Pact was launched as a German initiative during the war. Admittedly it is now recognised that the costs of immediate reconstruction in Kosovo were overestimated, and a number of committees are to report back on further funding. Looked at in the medium to long term, there can be no doubting the need for it.
The Balkan region has enjoyed peace historically under the overarching authority of successive empires and more recently when Tito's Yugoslavia stabilised inter-state relations. Its political and ethnic complexity and diversity are certainly best preserved now under the rubric of an inclusive European framework in which, as the Sarajevo statement puts it, borders denote good neighbourliness not division. The Kosovo war has qualitatively changed the project of EU enlargement by putting the region into this framework. But this has, as yet, not been adequately recognised in the negotiating process with candidates for accession.
There is much merit in the calls made increasingly within the region and by those sympathetic to its needs elsewhere, for a re-examination of that process to take account of changed political and security realities. Many Europeans were quite understandably irritated by the blithe assumption of US congressional representatives that while the US paid for the war, the Europeans must pay for reconstruction. If that is so, there will have to be a more equitable arrangement of transatlantic relations as well as those within Europe. The Sarajevo summit squarely poses those challenges to the continent's leaders.