Politika’s not-so-riveting revelations
When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?
—J. M. Keynes
I remain underwhelmed by the Serbian daily Politika ’s flurry of revelations that Slovenia’s regional policies have changed over the past twelve years. This is true. But is it news?
Following up on its recent scoop, when it got hold of a record of the Slovenes’ 24 December talks with the U.S. State Department, Politika claims to have another ten or so confidential documents from the Slovenian foreign ministry since 1996. It is publishing these alleged “Slovene secret documents” in installments (here, here and here).
This grab bag of “documents, analyses and notes” is said to reveal a “saltomortale” in Slovenia’s policy, “from supporting the territorial integrity of Serbia (after Dayton)”, to rejecting it in favour of a coordinated independence for Kosovo. Not exactly a state secret.
Facts change. In 1996, Serbia was still exercising its state sovereignty, in terms of a monopoly of force, over Kosovo. Slovenia was not an EU and NATO member. Just about everybody was pursuing the same shortsighted policy of ignoring Kosovo to keep Milošević on board the Dayton peace train for Bosnia. The KLA was barely a rumour, NATO had not bombed Serbia, and Serbia had not undertaken a massive ethnic cleansing of Albanians under cover of that bombing. There was no SCR 1244 placing the terrritory under UN administration, legalizing the NATO presence, and leaving Kosovo’s final status wide open to a political settlement. And Kosovo had not been festering in legal limbo for nine years.
Something FISHy in the state of Balkania?
One curisosity: Politika (or perhaps the Slovene documents it cites?) ascribes the idea of a new state called “Balkania” to Rexhep Qosja, not to Adem Demaçi. Unless I’m missing something, Balkania was Demaçi’s idea for a confederacy of Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo as three equal states. It was hardly compatible with the idea of moving Albania’s borders to take in Kosovo and other Albanian-inhabited territories, which I think Politika correctly identifies as the position of Qosja’s memo.
(To be precise, the Qosja memorandum referred to was made in October 1995 by the Forum of Albanian Intellectuals in Prishtina, known by its Albanian acronym as FISH. Wonder where that FISH might be? There is a detailed summary in Albanews Kosova Daily Report #734 and #735.)