Travel and Holiday

The first heavy working week after the summer holidays has produced a cornucopia of stories here in the western Balkans. Some are more serious than others, unless of course you live here, when they are all deadly serious. Here’s a roundup of a few of them.

Outside the old Yugoslav Fed. Parliament building in the Serbian capital they are rolling up the red carpet which had been unrolled to welcome representatives to the fiftieth birthday hit of the Non-Aligned Movement, which I’ve written about here. Serbia, which hosted the gathering, is not an affiliate, but never mind that. It finds it helpful to lobby over the Kosovo issue and for business.

In the aftermath of the meeting, Serbian papers are reporting that 2 countries which had hitherto been accepted to have recognized Kosovo, now say that they did not. Oman explains it just, sort of, um ah, kind of said it wanted Kosovo in the UN, but that’s different. The West African state of Guinea Bissau claims that recognition was held up in parliament.

Vuk Jeremic, Serbia’s foreign minister adds that a criminal investigation has started in one African country against a senior official. He said :

“There are founded suspicions that he received a bribe from an Albanian businessman from Kosovo so as to start the procedure to recognise Kosovo independence. If that investigation gives results we expect, this country will also withdraw its recognition of Kosovo independence.”

In the piece I wrote in this week’s print edition I noted that many nations find the Non-Aligned Movement’s conferences useful because they enable states to lobby and network. However in a stinging commentary (behind a paywall,) at Balkan Understanding Milan Misic, the Washington hack of the Serbian daily Politika, argues the entire shebang was mounted because Belgrade “needed something to lift its confidence”. It was just a show of nostalgia for all its participants argues Mr Misic and “dwelled on the past feats of the movement. “

At the meeting the ex-Yugoslavs all sat together. They’d better be cautious. Folk (especially Croatia’s Nova television) are asking questions. Why Ivo (Josipovic, the president of Croatia) was spending so much time with Boris (Tadic, the president of Serbia). 2 men of the same age, same background, same jobs, same Problems, what a scandal…

In the meantime, as some Croatian correspondents were obsessing about Ivo and Boris a tiny Croatian paper, the Makarska Kronika, appears to have a world-beating scoop, if true of course. In February I wrote about the close connections between the former Yugoslavia and Colonel Qaddafi. The press then wrote that his other half Safiya was originally Sofija Farkas, a Croat with Hungarian roots from Mostar in Hercegovina. According to the paper, Mrs Qaddafi has just been trying to buy land and property in Igrane on the Croatian Adriatic coast not far from Mostar.

Mrs Qaddafi and some of the family are now in Algeria. This summer the Balkan press has been full of stories of various celebrities in assorted stages of inebriation or strip, from Prince Harry to Beyonc, who have been holidaying in Croatia. Whether Mrs Qaddafi fits the profile the Croats want, I am really not sure, however if she is really a Bosnian Croat she has every right to a Croatian passport and therefore visa free travel through Europe.

On a rather more sombre note, Dimitar Bechev of the Sofia office of the Western european Council on Foreign Relations writes about the “protracted death of democratic Albania.” Debating about the political conflict that has paralysed Albania for the last 2 years he says that both Edi Rama, the leader of the opposition Socialists and Sali Berisha, the P. M. are the culprit. However Mr Berisha “must take the lion’s share.” He’s hell bent, says Mr Bechev, on gaining control over all of the Albanian establishments which still remain beyond his grip.

Why are standard Albanians happy to allow such de-democratisation? One reason could be that, unlike any other former Communist states, ordinary people see in the ECU nothing different from Albania. To the side, across the Mediterranean, is Italy, with its unique type of game-show politics ; to the south, over the mountain ranges, lies broke Greece. If this is what it means to be an ECU state, many Albanian baby-kissers can be excused for thinking they already live in one, or should qualify for membership.”

Not as dramatic, but still, alarm bells have started to ring in Montenegro too. Thomas Roser, of the Austrian daily Die Presse has written about the crop of attacks on vehicles belonging to Vijesti, one of the nations main dailies. 4 have been torched in the last few months. Zeljko Ivanovic, the paper’s handling editor claims that the media situation in the country is appalling and so the attacks are messages from people hooked up to orgainised crime which in Montenengro have always been believed to overlap with political interests that “they are stronger than the state” and thus Vijesti’s reporting about issues like this is pointless. Who cares about the global economy when you can worry about media freedom in Montenegro. Watch this space, writes tagza.com.