Day 15

I've come to my final week in Serbia. I can't believe it's already 2/3rds of the way over. I'm still waiting for a few interviews to come through but I have what I'm hoping will be a great one on Wednesday with Vladan Živulović the president of The Atlantic Council of Serbia. I'll also be going to a conference on EU-Serbian integration on June 22nd which should make for a lot of very interesting contacts to take home with me.

Thus far I've had seven formal interviews. Three of them are professors of political science, one a former chief editor at Politika, another a member of the DSS intelligentsia, another a visiting political scientist, and finally a Serbian official at the USAID Competitiveness Project. Everyone has a different perspective but interestingly enough I've found the following issues to be foremost in these people's minds:

ICJ ruling on Kosovo
Everyone is in agreement that the ICJ will refrain from taking one side or another. One of my interviewees went so far as to say that really the opinion has no significance what so ever. The others however, look at the ruling as significant in that it makes political space for movement on the part of the Serbian government. One of my interviewees said that the ICJ ruling will contain hints of opinion either towards the American et al. side or the Serbian et al. side which will determine the subsequent policies. Another of my interviewees said that the ICJ ruling will allow the Serbian government to begin to step back from the Kosovo issue by telling the voters look we did all we can. All agree that deciding to recognize Kosovo would have catastrophic effects upon Serbian politics. The main question seems to be how to proceed forwards in international politics with this given.

EU Visas
Everyone I've spoken with seems to agree that this has to happen this year. That the EU has strung Serbia on far enough. There was a huge amount of expectation following the last election. Several of my interviewees have stressed the importance of the last election. Following the declaration of independence by Kosovo Tadic (DS) and Kostuncia (DSS) split over how to handle the issue. Kostunica wanted it to be a stumbling block to the EU while Tadic advocated a more moderate approach.

NATO membership
There strong division on this issue. One interviewee said that it may very well prove to be a source of further conditionality by the international community especially if the US and Russia continue in the Cold War-esque standoff begun during Bush administration over the proposed missile shield defense system. My other interviewees have been dismissive of this concern. One said that Serbia will be able to choose whether or not it wants to join and the international community will not do anything about it. Another advocated approaching the issue from another direction. The commonly sited statitics over Serbia and NATO is the fact that around 75% of Serbs are against NATO while nealry the same percentage is for the EU. My interviewee said that given NATO's bombing of the region it is significant that 25% of those surveyed are in favor of joining NATO. Moreover he pointed to other surveys which have found that support for Serbia's current Partnership for Peace(PfP) which is a political alliance with NATO without full military commitments is at 60%. This means, therefore, that Serbs do want to be aligned with NATO at least politically.

Impact of EU conditionality
This is perhaps the most surprising result of my interviews and the point which makes me so greatful I've come here to conduct this research. I am learning the importance of distinguishing between rhetoric and practice and between what the US media reports and the actual behind the scenes actions/relations of the politicians. I have heard, from several of my interviewees (which is signifiant considering how much they disagree) that "threats" made by foreign leaders leading up to an election have not had a detrimental effect upon the ability of the political parties within Serbia to obtain votes. Moreover, some have told me that really the EU doesn't have the power that it would like to think it has. However, I have now heard the phrase several times "using gasoline to stop a fire" in reference to the issues of the ICTY and Kosovo and continued delayed EU promises.
There's more to say but I'm running out of brains :-p I'll go into it more later. --Suzie