Serbia: Transition to Democracy?

If Serbia wants to rejoin Europe as a respected member of that community, its leaders will have to honor democratic values and institutions, says Max Kampelman, former ambassador to the CSCE.

Right: Max Kampelman (left) talks with a pro-democracy demonstrator in Belgrade (photographed from a CNN video tape).

he leaders of Serbia, besieged by months of pro-democracy demonstrations in Belgrade, have an important choice to make, says Max M. Kampelman, vice chairman of the board of directors at the U.S. Institute of Peace. They can resist the tide of democracy and be swept away like former Romanian president Nicolae Ceausescu, or they can facilitate the peaceful transition to democracy and compete fairly in electoral politics.

Kampelman visited Belgrade in late December representing the United States as part of a fact-finding delegation for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). He has played a leading role in the U.S. engagement in the OSCE and its predecessor, the Commission for Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), since 1980, when he served as ambassador and head of the U.S. delegation to the organization's Madrid conference. The delegation to Serbia--headed by Felipe Gonzalez, former prime minister of Spain--met with lawyers, judges, two Serbian vice presidents, the foreign minister, and the three opposition leaders, including Vesna Pesic, leader of the Citizens Alliance party. Pesic, who was a senior fellow at the Institute in 1994-95, received the Medal of Freedom from President Clinton for her anti-war activities in Serbia during the Bosnian conflict. She is the author of an Institute report entitled Serbian Nationalism and the Origins of the Yugoslav Crisis (Peaceworks no. 8).

Based on the recommendations of the delegation--whose members included representatives from Canada, Denmark, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Russia, Spain, and Switzerland--the OSCE adopted a resolution in early January calling on Milosevic to validate all municipal election results, including in Belgrade, and urging him to enter into dialogue with opposition leaders to examine what changes would be required to turn the country into a democracy. "That resolution was in fact Europe speaking. The Serbian government indicated it would like to get back into the OSCE. The resolution said in effect, 'These are the kinds of things you have to do, if you want to belong.' "

Kampelman took time out from a hectic schedule of meetings to join the demonstrators on December 21. " My purpose was to give the demonstrators encouragement. The people I talked with said they were there to demonstrate their eagerness for democracy. They all wanted the election results validated."

Pesic also discussed the struggle for democracy in Serbia with Joseph Klaits, director of the Jennings Randolph fellowship program, by phone in December. During that conversation, she urged the West to support the opposition protests in the name of democratic values and regional security. The notion that Milosevic is a force for stability in the region is highly ironic, Pesic said, because in her view he bears major responsibility for leading the former Yugoslavia into bloody conflict as the country broke apart, and for Serbia's subsequent economic collapse. She foresees that Milosevic, should he survive the current crisis, is likely to prove increasingly unpredictable as economic conditions continue to worsen in Serbia and political unrest, consequently, continues to grow. © 1997 United States Institute of Peace