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On Friday, Nato celebrates its 50th anniversary in Washington. It will do so in circumstances its founders could never have imagined. The threat which the Alliance was formed to counter has, through steady nerves and steadfast determination, been overcome. There are new democracies in Eastern and Central Europe, and a new, democratic Russia, whose soldiers are serving alongside our soldiers in Bosnia. Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary - trapped for so long on the wrong side of history - are now members of the Alliance. Fifty, even twenty years ago, who would have believed such things possible? But they have happened - testimony to how free societies, united in defence of the values they share, can overcome seemingly overwhelming odds. But this decade of positive change has been mirrored by tragedy in the Balkans. A whirlwind of destruction and violence, unleashed by Milosevic in 1989, has torn through Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and has now come, full circle, to an appalling climax in Kosovo. The Iron Curtain has been replaced by a new division with South Eastern Europe. Behind it languishes a zone of instability and misery. At its core lies a regime that for a decade now has exported hatred and bloodshed to its neighbours and if left unchecked, could spread its poison elsewhere. So today, after fifty years of peace, Nato is at war, locked in a new struggle against a new threat. Not against a brooding, expansionist and heavily armed belligerent- but against policies of ethnic hatred and barbarism in the midst of the European continent which, if we choose to ignore them, could ultimately destabilise European security in more subtle and destructive ways than the Warsaw Pact could ever have done. We have not kept the peace in Western Europe for fifty years only to see it imperilled by the emergence of a new tyranny at the end of the century - a century that has seen all too many European tyrannies. Many may argue that we waited too long to draw the sword, too long to take up arms and to say to Milosevic, on our own behalf, and on behalf of all those you have terrorised and maimed and driven from their homes, 'enough is enough'. Now we will stand and fight. I do not intend to focus tonight however on the military campaign. That is not my role, and there are enough retired generals giving us the benefit of their views without this retired general joining them. I would just like to pay tribute to the prominent role that Britain is playing in the campaign, and to the courageous aircrew of the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy. I have seen your military in action in Bosnia. I have seen your soldiers disarming Serb thugs in Banja Luka. I know how good they are. I'm proud to serve with them. Nato must prevail in this enterprise - whatever it takes, however long it takes - and we must make available the resources to do so. The British Prime Minister is wholly right when he declares that 'ethnic cleansing must be defeated and seen to be defeated'. It must be defeated for the sake not just of Kosovo, but of Serbs and Serbia too, a brave people, our allies in WWII, many of whom would I believe be horrified at what is being done in their name in Kosovo. They may not acknowledge it, they may not know it, but the Serbs need to be saved from Milosevic as well - a man who has led them into one historical cul de sac after another. Milosevic must be defeated for the sake of all the people of the Balkans, who anxiously await the outcome of this struggle. Because they know that on it depends the fate not just of Kosovo, but the prospects for democracy and a brighter future in their countries as well. The vast majority of those people - in Bosnia, in Croatia, just as in Serbia and Kosovo - wanted no part of the last eight years. They have found themselves sucked into the vortex of history, and watched their lives smashed to pieces by forces they were powerless to control. What happened in the Balkans has not shown that the Balkans are different. It has shown that the people there are as vulnerable as people anywhere else where extreme nationalist dictators are in charge, totally in control of the media, especially the awesome power of television, using it to foment discord and enmity, continually sowing the seeds of hate. That is what smashed the cosmopolitan harmony of Sarajevo , where a third of pre-war marriages were mixed and where people prided themselves on a tradition of live and let live - not some rogue gene buried deep in the Bosnian or Balkan psyche. So what then are the lessons that we can take from building peace in Bosnia to help us in due course, when the military campaign is won, as it must be, in Kosovo? I confess right away that Bosnia is not Kosovo and we must beware seeing it just through the prism of Bosnia. But there are parallels, and there are surely some lessons to be learned. One crucial lesson of the last eight years is that peace cannot be brought to the Balkans without resolve and unity of purpose and action on both sides of the Atlantic. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the Bosnian war years, I hope we can all agree that we can never allow the challenge of evil to divide us again. One of the most impressive aspects of the last 27 days has been the resolve and unity of the 19 sovereign democracies of the Alliance, a centre-piece of which has been the axis between London and Washington. We must work round the clock in the coming weeks and months to preserve that resolve; to stay the course. I hope too that we will be able to repair some of the damage in the relationship with Russia. Russia has be a valuable ally in building peace in Bosnia. Our experience of working with the Russians in the Contact Group in recent years has been one of the more positive things to emerge from these years of crisis. We must be careful not to waste that experience. We must continue, as we are doing, to work constantly to keep the Russian Federation engaged, and to encourage them to bring positive influence we know they can bring to bear on Belgrade. The second lesson of the last eight years is that however much we might wish them, there are no tempo-centric quick fixes, no instant solutions, no magic wand marked 'peace'. We are in this for the long haul. This is an uncomfortable truth in the television age. Images of suffering generate pressure for political leaders to act. That is a wholly admirable instinct in democratic and civilised societies. But the speed with which crises can be shown on the TV has not brought a corresponding acceleration in the speed with which they can be solved. War is as destructive, unpleasant and nasty a business today as it was fifty or a hundred years ago. But modern war tends to be reported a bit like a soccer game or a test match, with the score totted up at the end of each day. That it might take a long time, be unpredictable, involve set-backs and, worse still, that people, including some of our own people, might be injured or get killed, is regarded as a slightly eccentric view. The process of clearing up after a war is expected to be similarly rapid. Some people express astonishment that three years after a four-year war of astonishing ferocity in Bosnia, we haven't yet already cleaned up, put the place back together and gone home. They are surprised that the international community is still in Bosnia in large numbers, that most of the refugees have not yet returned to their homes, and four sets of internationally-supervised elections have thus far failed to replicate in Bosnia the responsible political discourse of Westminster or Capitol Hill. What on earth did people expect? Bosnia is like a patient. It is getting better - but it is still on life support machines. If we disconnect them early, there will be a relapse from which it will be difficult to recover. Reflect for a minute on the scale of the problem. 2 million refugees and displaced persons. 20,000 missing. Infrastructure totally destroyed. A million mines dotted at random around the country. Two, some would say three armies, armed to the teeth and eyeing each other nervously. A total absence of the rule of law, or of democratic institutions. A communist economy in tatters. No history of the market or of accountable democratic government to fall back on. A corrupt and demoralised ethnically based police force, incapable and unwilling to protect members of other ethnic groups. To this must be added a legacy of deep distrust and ethnic hatred born no longer born out of folklore or myth, but of the real horrors in recent war. We entrusted many of the same leaders who prosecuted the war with implementing the peace. Bosnia is like a menage a trois that has broken up. We can try to force them together; we can bribe them economically; but getting the to live together of their own accord is more problematic. Refugees are quite understandably reluctant to go home without jobs, without schools for the kids - but above all, without security. It could never have been accomplished in a matter of months. We have to face up to the fact that we are talking years, probably a generation, before peace in Bosnia is safe enough for us to leave. That applies to Bosnia; and it will certainly apply in Kosovo, in Macedonia, in Albania too as well. There will have to be a substantial measure of international engagement over a very long time. The remarkable thing is not how little has been accomplished so far, but how much, given the levers originally placed at the international community's disposal. Despite the initial gloomy post Dayton predictions, Bosnia remains at peace. That in itself is a considerable achievement. Refugees, primarily from the Sandjak and to a lesser extent from Kosovo, are now coming to Bosnia - of all places - in search of safety. In the last three years:
At the same time, elections and the passage of time are, slowly, breaking up mono-ethnic political structures and helping new, more moderate leaders to enter political life. The reaction in Republika Srpska to the crisis in Kosovo says a good deal about how the attitudes of most people there are changing. They have had enough of war. They do not like Nato's bombing of Yugoslavia, to be sure. But they have had enough of crazed Milosevic adventures. They have seen his promise of a Greater Serbia turn into the reality of a much Smaller Serbia. They have seen how he is always willing to sell Serbs down the river to save his own neck. They remember that he did not lift a finger to help them. In recent weeks there have been attacks by hired gangs of marauding hoodlums. Windows smashed, internationals threatened. But repeated attempts to bring out the masses have spectacularly failed; the masses have stayed at home. But despite the progress, there remains an immense amount to be done. Bosnia remains:
Bosnia stopped the killing, but it did not end the war. Extremists and radicals on all three sides still attempt to fight it by administrative and bureaucratic means. So for the time being, peace in Bosnia will continue to grow out of the barrel of a Nato gun. If we leave too early, we would be back all too soon. It's as simple as that. So instead of concentrating on exit strategies, it would be better to decide exactly what we want to achieve and how to do so. In retrospect we could have implemented Dayton more quickly in Bosnia if we had given ourselves adequate authority to so at the outset. We must make sure in Kosovo that we arrive with the tools to do the job on day one. I understand that Robin Cook has proposed that Kosovo should eventually become a full Protectorate of the international community. I am sure that some such arrangement is sensible. I do not say that Bosnia should have been or should be a full protectorate. But it took us 18 months in Bosnia to recognise that the High Representative had not been given the authority he needed to implement the civilian aspects of the agreement. We underestimated the scale of the task, and we over-estimated the willingness of the local parties to work together to achieve it. Having set up the Office of the High Representative, we then failed to provide it initially with the staff, resources or powers to get the job done. Instead of taking the levers of power into our own hands, we relied on the many of the old Communist leaders, newly reincarnated under the mantle of nationalism, to put their own house in order. But all too many of them still seem to have a Communist chip in the brain. Instead of taking tough action at the outset - for example to disband the military and to disarm and reconstitute, retrain and pay the police, we left too much up to the local parties. We pleaded with them. We pushed them. We bullied them. But ultimately we spent the first two years after Dayton waiting for them to agree with each other before vital steps could be implemented. The Serb representatives made a point of blocking almost everything - living up to their motto of 'never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity'. I spent my first six months in Bosnia in interminable negotiations about everything from the design of the flag to the faces on the new bank note to the symbols that should be on the license plate to the whether precise height in millimetres of the Entity name on the passport. Never in the history of diplomacy was so much time and effort expended by so many diplomats over such trivia. It was an absurd situation. It could not conceivably have been allowed to continue given the size of the international community's investment in Bosnia. If things had gone on like this, political support in donor and contributing nations would have dried up, Parliament and the Congress would have been up in arms and justifiably so. So at Bonn in December 1997, the Peace Implementation Council beefed up the High Representative's powers to break the log jam, by giving him the authority to remove obstructive officials and to impose solutions where after lengthy delays the local leadership could not do so. These are the sort of powers that make democrats uneasy, and Carlos Westendorp rightly exercises them reluctantly and only as a measure of last resort. We are conscious of the danger of encouraging a dependency culture, and of absolving local leaders from responsibility for getting the job done themselves. But set alongside the danger of almost total paralysis in civilian implementation, I am clear that we had no alternative. Since we have had these powers, things have moved along much better. Carlos Westendorp has pushed through:
Krajisnik told us his people would take to the streets if we did these egregious things. They did so - to get they new licence plates and acquire the new currency as quickly as possible. The people, given the chance, have showed time and again that they are a great deal smarter than their politicians give them credit for. In addition, a number of the most extreme and obstructionist politicians most responsible for impeding the implementation of the peace agreement have been removed from office, most notably the obstructionist former President of the Republika Srpska. Let me say a further word about mandates. In Bosnia and in Eastern Slavonia I have operated under very different mandates. In Eastern Slavonia, as UN Transitional Administrator, I had control of both the civilian part of the mission and the military force - some 6000 strong, ably-led by a superb Belgian general officer. The two sides of the mission were therefore totally integrated and, although I immediately delegated control of the military to my excellent Belgian Force Commander, the two were clearly working in tandem. In Bosnia, admittedly a considerably larger undertaking, the Nato-led Force operates under its own mandate, and may - or may not - assist the implementation of the civilian aspects of the agreement. Carlos Westendorp as High Representative is primus inter pares amongst a plethora of civilian implementing agencies which include the UN, UNHCR, and OSCE. He has no control at all over SFOR, although obviously we work closely alongside them. Things work remarkably well under the circumstances, and SFOR, especially in recent months, have been immensely supportive of the civilian effort. But in drawing up future mandates, there is no doubt in my mind that the chain of command is one aspect that needs careful attention, and that a single individual - be that individual military or civilian - in charge of both the civilian and military aspects would probably be preferable. This is regarded as heresy in some quarters. But it worked in Eastern Slavonia, and I am not convinced that it cannot be tried elsewhere. There is a further lesson that Bosnia has taught us about mandates: we worry far too much about what is known in the jargon as 'mission creep'. Like Dick Holbrooke, I worry more about mission contraction - doing less than planned rather than more! The priority must always be to move the process forward, and very often that can only be achieved by bold and resolute action with the civilian agencies acting with military support. When we have taken such resolute action together in Bosnia, it has paid off.
All controversial steps in the short term. But the right thing to do, and beneficial in the longer term. There is one area, however, where we have certainly not been bold or decisive enough - and that is in arresting alleged war criminals. I oversaw the arrest of the first alleged Balkan war criminal in Vukovar in the summer of 1997. It is totally unacceptable that three years after the end of the war in Bosnia, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic remain at large. Others of course have been apprehended and that is very welcome. But as long as these two remain free, it will continue to undermine the credibility of the international effort to bring peace to Bosnia. It tells the world that the international community is impotent in the face of evil; that we lack the political will to act. I welcome the public announcement of the indictment of Arkan by the ICTY. Anyone who has stood in the mass graves of Zvornik, or in the tunnel where hundreds of bodies lie awaiting identification in Tuzla, or watched the agony of the families knows that there can never be a real peace in Bosnia - or in the region - without justice. It applies in Kosovo, just as it applies in Vukovar and in Bosnia. In this, as in so many areas, the problems in Bosnia cannot be seen in isolation any more that the problems in Kosovo can. Kosovo underlines the regional nature of the problems we face. We are dealing with a whole region that is either still gripped by crisis or staggering out of it; a region in which the moral vacuum left by Communism has made the killing easier and the tragedy all the worse. Kosovo now obliges us to do something we never really did in Bosnia; to think ahead for the whole area; to offer a vision for the Balkans that gives hope a chance. Because there is an old Balkan proverb: if you set out on a journey and you don't know where you are going, you are likely to wind up somewhere else. What is our policy for the Balkans as a whole? What do we hope the Balkans might look like in, say, 2015? What institutional changes must we make to the way we work to drive such a policy - to the Contact Group, to the agencies in theatre? What are the resources we need to do the job? How long - realistically - do we think it will take? I am not sure we have answers to these questions. But we sure need them. We have to recognise that democracy in Bosnia will never be secure until there is democracy in Belgrade and in all of BiH's closest neighbours. That Milosevic - so long regarded and treated as part of the solution - is in fact the cause of the problem and must go. That the economy of Bosnia will never prosper without free trade and market economics throughout the region. There are some who say that the crisis in Kosovo gives us an opportunity to go back to the drawing board - literally. That the answer to the crisis in the Balkans lies in tinkering with maps, with an adjustment to a border -line here, a territory swap there. Lord Owen advocates a straight-forward geographical carve-up, the centre-piece of which would be a straight swap of the Eastern RS for an independent Kosovo. He calls it a 'Balkan solution to a Balkan problem' I profoundly disagree. We have had enough Balkan solutions to Balkan problems. Such an approach would likely re-open all sorts of new wounds, spark new refugee flows and new problems in areas most commentators have never heard of. Above all, it would reward the ethnic cleansing and send a disastrous signal to ethnic cleansers everywhere that, ultimately, their tactics would work. It would be morally wrong and politically dangerous. How would the ethnic Hungarians in the Vojvodina react? Or the Sandjak Muslims? Would the Western RS really settle for becoming a tiny sliver in what remained of Bosnia and Herzegovina? And what of the Herzegovinians - would they not demand union with Croatia? And what would happen to those Bosniacs who remain there? How would Croatia react to having the FRY expand its borders to Trebinje in the South and in the present Western RS? And where would all this jiggery pokery leave the Bosniacs? A sliver of territory, a Balkan Gaza strip. Meddling with the maps means trouble. If we have learned one thing in the last eight years, it is that there is no magic map, no neat geographical fix to solve Bosnia's or the region's problems. The answer lies in more enlightened government, not more enlightened map making, across the region. It lies in an open, democratic, free-trading Balkans, with close links to Europe and to the rest of the world. It lies in reforming the educational, media and political environment so that ethnic diversity comes to be seen, over time, as a source of strength not division, where men and women are judged by what they do, not by their ethnic background. A society where justice prevails over revenge. It lies in a massive effort to bring political and economic know how to every country in the region, on a much greater scale than anything we have attempted so far. We need a much bigger effort by the European political institutes and parties, by the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and others. We need to wean the people off the old party structures, on which they depend for their jobs, their children's education and their entire livelihoods. It is a kind of modern feudal bondage. We need to harness the power of the market to foster co-operation and trust. One way to do that might be to examine setting up new intergovernmental structures to create a single market in the Balkans, a Balkan Economic Area modelled perhaps on the European Economic Area - a logical precursor to the ultimate prize of EU membership. Not to undermine the newly-won sovereignty of states, or to try to force them by sleight of hand back into political union. That is out of the question. My goal is to open markets in the knowledge that open markets open minds. I do not say that is the only way. But we need to think in these sorts of terms. We have to work above all towards democracy in Serbia, buttressed by a free media and the rule of law. We need to convince the peoples of the region that while they cannot change the past, they need not live in it - they can shape the future. We should encourage and stand shoulder to shoulder with new generation of leaders. The future of the Balkans lies in the emergence of more leaders of the calibre and courage of Montenegro's President. The Balkans needs more Milan Djukanovics. We have to do all we can to encourage and support fresh leaders like him. Even as we prosecute the war against the dictator in Belgrade, it is surely the time to turn our best minds and policy makers to developing a strategy to convert such hopes into reality. Even in the darkest days of WW II, as Max Hastings pointed out in an excellent article in The Evening Standard recently, the Allies understood the importance of developing strategy for the period afterwards. We have, after all, done it before. Nato was not conceived in isolation. It was part of a much wider plan, which included the Marshall Plan for Germany and new structures, including the IMF, the OECD, the World Bank, and the ECSC to entrench democratic government and free trading market economies across Western Europe. We need to develop such a strategy, such vision, such forward thinking to cope with the Balkan crisis today. Not a Balkan Yalta - not more lines on maps. But a Balkan Bretton Woods if you like - a forum to decide how best to instil political freedom and economic prosperity to these impoverished and unhappy countries, how to put in place the new political and economic structures necessary. A strategy to help their peoples to raise their sights to the horizon, to look to a brighter future for themselves and their children. It is not enough to focus on the politics. There is already too much politics in the Balkans. We need to focus on the economy too, and find ways to bring the power of the market and trade to tear down barriers between ethnicities and countries, recognising that throughout the war the one thing that continued was trade. We need to work towards a free trade area for the region, as a way to bridge divisions between communities and brings the Balkans closer to Europe. A plan that offers a future in Europe, one day as a member of the EU, a plan that brings the region into the fold as an incentive to reform, instead of erecting new barriers. It is a daunting task, a task which will take many years. In the case of Kosovo, it is very likely to bring pain and sacrifice on a considerably greater scale than we ever experienced in Bosnia. They say they an Alliance is a strong as the protagonist you face. As Nato leaders gather together in Washington on Friday, they will be able to reflect that Nato ten years after the demise of the Soviet Union, Nato now has a monumental challenge to face. Are we a match for it? I strongly believe we are. Because Nato has, in a sense, been here before; that aside from the obvious differences between now and the time when the Alliance was founded, some things have stayed the same. Now, as then, we are defending values which we share and which we treasure. We have overcome the great challenges in the recent past. Now, in the Balkans, with persistence, with unity and resolve, we can do so again. The people of the Balkans deserve no less than our best efforts on their behalf. A distinguished member of the House of Lords has described the position we face in this way: "No language can describe adequately the condition of that large part of the Balkan peninsula - Serbia, Bosnia, Herzegovina and other provinces. Political intrigues, constant rivalries, a total absence of public spirit....Hatred of all races, animosities of rival religions and absence of any controlling power..." Those were the words on Benjamin Disraeli, spoken in 1878. They are all too apt today. That is our challenge. Thank you.
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