Global Policy Forum

By Daniel Simpson

Lawmakers in Belgrade's federal Parliament consigned the troubled name Yugoslavia to the history books today, endorsing the Constitution of a new, less binding union between the republics of Serbia and Montenegro.

The new state, to be called simply Serbia and Montenegro, is a compromise between the aspiration among many Montenegrins for independence and an edict from international officials that there can be no further redrawing of borders in the Balkans.

As such, it is a solution that satisfies few people, as today's heated parliamentary debate illustrated, despite the adoption of the constitutional charter by overwhelming majorities in both chambers.

If anything, this latest incarnation of this country has only increased nostalgia for the peace and relative prosperity that Serbs and Montenegrins shared with their Croatian, Bosnian, Macedonian and Slovenian neighbors before the ethnic wars of the 1990's ripped apart the socialist Yugoslavia created by Marshal Tito in 1945.

An earlier incarnation of Yugoslavia, which translates as the Land of the South Slavs, had been ripped apart in savage violence during World War II. The country was first formed as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1918, before adopting the name Yugoslavia in 1929. Throughout its life, Yugoslavia was troubled by tensions between its constituent peoples.

Still, nostalgia is not infrequent in the Balkans. Even those too young to remember Tito lament the passing of an era when they could travel freely around the region, with the time and the money to enjoy themselves, thanks to a quasi-Communist economy sustained by a drip-feed of Western aid as an incentive to snub Moscow.

After brutal wars with Croatia and Bosnia, where Serbian forces drove civilians out of wide areas, and a crackdown on separatist Kosovo Albanians that led NATO to bomb Belgrade, Serbia is still fighting to shed its pariah status.

"I am Yugonostalgic — that's they way I was raised," said Ivana Jovanovic, a 24-year-old student. "I miss being able to visit the Croatian coast. This whole thing with the Union of Serbia and Montenegro doesn't make any sense."

Officials from the European Union, who have spent the past year cajoling Serbian and Montenegrin politicians into approving a plan devised in Brussels, see it differently.

The new union, which binds Serbia and Montenegro together for three years but leaves them the option to part company thereafter, has one overriding objective.

"It buys us some time," one European diplomat said. "The last thing this region needs is further balkanization. Instead people need to knuckle down to reforms if they want to be in a position to join the E.U. one day."

In effect, the new Constitution will shift power to the two republics, whose prime ministers have already been seeking to extend their influence under the old framework.

The big loser is Vojislav Kostunica, who has been president of Yugoslavia since he defeated Slobodan Milosevic in 2000 at the helm of an unwieldy alliance of 18 reform-minded parties.

For most of his time in office, Mr. Kostunica has been locked in a seemingly interminable power struggle with the Serbian prime minister, Zoran Djindjic, who has done everything possible to prevent his rival from becoming the president of Serbia.

Having drawn the most votes in three presidential elections last year, only for his victory to be discounted because of a Milosevic-era voter turnout law that Mr. Djindjic refused to abolish, Mr. Kostunica vowed to fight on despite losing his job.

"We must stand in the way of rendering democracy senseless," he said in a newspaper interview published today. "We stopped Milosevic, we will have to stop his successor."

The most likely president of the new union, Svetozar Marovic, is a Montenegrin who is far from enthusiastic about the job, which will only begin after further haggling over the structure of state institutions and how to staff them.

"A tedious, complicated and very difficult task awaits us," Mr. Marovic said. Many believe that an independent Serbia and an independent Montenegro will eventually emerge.

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