Pressinfo 1997

“The future of the Brcko area was the only one not settled in Dayton. Thus, it was either the most difficult of all, or the United States and the parties agreed that it would be better to have their decision concerning that hot spot appear as binding arbitration. The arbitration decision is expected by mid-February. But any solution will antagonise at least one of the groups in the Brcko area, the entities or neighbouring republics,” says Jan Øberg, director of the TFF who recently returned from the TFF’s 24th mission to ex-Yugoslavia, including a fact-finding visit to Brcko. “The Dayton Agreement created a conflict by not defining the area under arbitration, and it will create more now,” he adds. “The three options usually mentioned — give it to the Federation, give it to Republika Srpska, or make it an area under international military control — are zero-sum games and care...

A Civilian U.N. Authority Supported By NGOs for a Negotiated Settlement in Kosovo “The Serbs and Albanians have proved that they themselves are unable to start and sustain a process towards conflict-resolution and reconciliation. International attempts, lacking analysis as well as strategy, have failed, too. The overall situation has deteriorated and violence is escalating, slowly but surely. It simply cannot go on like that in the future and go well,” says Jan Oberg, director of the Transnational Foundation which has been engaged in the conflict in the Kosovo region of Serbia, Yugoslavia since 1991. “New thinking should be applied sooner rather than later,” he urges. “With the breakdown in Albania, Serbia has lost the argument – never very credible – that the Kosovars want to unite with Albania. President Milosevic recently visited the region with no new proposals. The pragmatic non-violent policies of the Kosovar leadership is being undermined. The Kosovars have failed...

“The current rhetoric about NATO expansion — exemplified by US Foreign Secretary Madeleine Albright’s recent article in The Economist — is pathetic, and the discourse about it lacks intellectual quality as well as creativity. If advocates of this historic step are unable to find better arguments, the idea itself is probably flawed or, perhaps, indicative of less noble motives. In addition, it is clearly divisive within NATO itself,” states TFF director Jan Oberg. “We now have a tame debate about NATO’s expansion where we ought first to clarify humankind’s post-Cold War needs for conflict-resolution, security, and development and then NATO’s contribution, if any, to new thinking and policies. NATO members failed abysmally as conflict-managers in ex-Yugoslavia 1991-95 and made UN peacekeeping “mission impossible”. Then they deployed NATO — much in need of a raison d’etre and lacking peacekeeping experience — and equated peace with what NATO/SFOR could deliver. NATO expansion...