Global Policy Forum

By Stefan Racin

The Serbian opposition may be allowed to send an observer to the United Nations following the debarring of the Yugoslav government's official representative from a Security Council session on Kosovo last month. The observer would take a seat as guest of a western country or group of countries.

The initiative for this came from Bosnian diplomats who together with some Serbian opposition leaders attended last week's conference on integration processes in Europe in Brussels, the co-president of the New Serbia party Milan Protic told a press conference in Belgrade.

The initiative was immediately supported by international community figures present at the conference, which also concerned itself with the Balkans and Serbia, according to Protic. They included NATO's political leader George Robertson, the U.N. high commissioner for Bosnia Wolfgang Petritsch, the European Union's Balkan stabilization Pact coordinator Bodo Hombach, American financier George Soros and some World Bank officials, Protic said.

"It was agreed to work out details of this plan as soon as possible. Technically, a western country or perhaps the EU. mission would be our host in the U.N., which would enable us to be free to lobby in the interests of our people," inside the international community where " there is much misunderstanding of Serbian interests," he explained.

"We can do so better and more faithfully to the national interests than the country's official diplomacy has done so far," Protic said. He said it would be very important for the opposition to see this plan materialized because there is "no willingness" in the world to discuss anything with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.

Protic added he considered it especially important in view of the fact that Yugoslav diplomat Vladislav Jovanovic, a former foreign minister, was barred from representing the Belgrade regime in the Security Council during the debate on extending the international peacekeeping force's mandate in Kosovo at the beginning of last month.

The United Nations rejected the present rump Yugoslavia's request to be recognized as the successor to the former six-republic Yugoslav federation after it disintegrated in the early 1990s and asked Belgrade to reapply for membership, which it has refused to do ever since.