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Which I think is very good.
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Croatia, too? Bosnia-H.? Crna Gora... erm... ah yes, Montenegro, what about them?
And if the road map fails, does that mean all of us will get blown up?
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EU Plan Brings Balkans Hope, Skepticism
Wed Jun 18, 2:22 AM ET
By WILLIAM J. KOLE, Associated Press Writer
BELGRADE, Serbia-Montenegro - Srdjan Bosnjak has a small life, but his dreams are big.
AP Photo
Bosnjak, 29, barely gets by hawking CDs at a flea market, but he dares to believe the unimaginable: that this turbulent corner of the Balkans could join the European Union (news - web sites) within a decade.
"Hope dies last," he said. "It will happen one day. I believe times will be better in the future."
Holding out the promise of prosperity to a region still bruised by war and steeped in ethnic strife, EU leaders at a summit opening Thursday in Greece will take up an ambitious plan to give the volatile Balkans a road map to membership — perhaps as early as 2010. By that time, the EU already will have grown from 15 nations to about 25.
The risks of absorbing the former Yugoslavia and neighboring Albania into the EU are enormous.
Nationalism abounds. Tens of thousands of American and European peacekeepers remain stationed across the region. Corruption, cronyism and racketeering are a way of life. Indicted war criminals are hailed as heroes. Human rights and the rule of law are patchy, and entire economies are in a shambles.
But Greece, which holds the EU's rotating presidency, sees a bigger threat on its doorstep if the Balkans are shut out of the rapidly expanding club. The rationale is simple, if startling: Eliminate the continent's biggest security liability by offering it a future in the family.
"If we are really serious about talking about this part of Europe becoming at some point full members, we need to begin preparing them for accession," said Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou, whose government wants to pump more EU aid into the region to help its emerging democracies get ready.
Balkan leaders, more accustomed to being bullied and scorned by an impatient West, scarcely know what to make of it all.
"We're going to board a crowded bus to Europe, with some people saying, `No more room!,'" Goran Svilanovic, Serbia's foreign minister, told The Associated Press in an interview.
"But our people are dreaming of a better life," he said. "The EU is not going to be complete until the Balkans are in. This offers us a totally new perspective."
The promise of eventual EU membership is heady stuff in Serbia, whose reformist prime minister, Zoran Djindjic, was assassinated in March in a plot allegedly hatched by rivals with links to organized crime.
It's no less enticing to the other ex-Yugoslav republics EU leaders are reaching out to: Macedonia, which erupted in civil war just two years ago; Bosnia, which has been under international administration since its devastating 1992-95 conflict; and Croatia, which formally applied for membership in February and hopes to join along with Romania and Bulgaria in 2007.
From Skopje to Sarajevo, there is a mixture of hope, skepticism and disbelief on the streets.
People are struggling to grasp the notion that a region still deep in a funk after a dozen years of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic (news - web sites)'s ruinous rule could get such an unthinkable boost — or that their aggravating waits for visas in long lines outside EU embassies could end, for many the chief perk of membership.
"I don't expect anything from Europe," said Igor Popovski, 32, an electrician in Macedonia. "We are still an island on the continent, and Europe treats us as second-class citizens."
Like many Bosnians, 29-year-old student Drazen Pandza eagerly looks forward to EU membership but thinks "it won't happen in the near future" for the war-wrecked country still struggling to tamp down ethnic rivalries.
Hopes are higher in Croatia, which resents being lumped together with the other ex-Yugoslav republics and is racing to qualify for membership just four years from now.
The country's pro-Western leadership has stepped up appeals to Serb refugees who fled a 1995 government counteroffensive to return. It has intensified its cooperation with the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague (news - web sites), Netherlands, angering war veterans and others who view some fugitive suspects as patriots.
The road to the EU is fraught with far more obstacles in Serbia and Montenegro, a loose alliance which replaced the last of Yugoslavia this year.
Both republics are likely to vote on a final breakup in three years, preoccupying leaders still rebuilding from the 1990s wars and struggling to stamp out rampant crime and 50 percent joblessness.
They also must settle the final status of Kosovo, which has been run by the United Nations (news - web sites) and NATO (news - web sites) since Milosevic's brutal 1998-99 crackdown on the independence-minded ethnic Albanians who dominate the province.
Only this month did Serbia lift long-standing visa requirements for Americans and most Europeans.
Miroljub Labus, a leading politician and economist, thinks the EU preparations will test the republic's resolve to break with its bellicose history.
"There's a battle between new and old Serbia," he said, "between looking to the future and looking back to the past."Comment
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What is with this EU expansion? They are like the Borg, assimilating anything and anybody in their path!'There is a greater darkness than the one we fight. It is the darkness of the soul that has lost its way. The war we fight is not against powers and principalities, it is against chaos and despair. Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope, the death of dreams. Against this peril we can never surrender. The future is all around us, waiting, in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain.'"
G'Kar - from Babylon 5 episode "Z'ha'dum"Comment
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No, that's what the US cannot do
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They also must settle the final status of Kosovo
Couple of days ago Henry Kissinger, a world renown promoter of peace, cooperation and neighbourly love, said that Kosovo will become an independant state.
So it is settled.Comment
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Oh and the sooner the Italians get the presidency the better. I don't like Simitis very much
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Couple of days ago Henry Kissinger, a world renown promoter of peace, cooperation and neighbourly love, said that Kosovo will become an independant state.
So it is settled.
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Hey Vetty, shame on you for that waterpolo final. Learn to lose you loser
BOOOOOOO
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paiktis, do you know what is going to happen to Croatia and Bosnia? Woill they join? Does the Serbia offer include Serbia AND Montenegro?Comment
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Hey Vetty, shame on you for that waterpolo final
[img]****[/img] you we were leading 7:4 and ofcourse the referee was pro serbian all the way, especially after he got hit in the head by croatian ..
We are better then the Serbs in waterpolo if you look at the avreage of the games that we played, but the hell with excuses, they won, I salute it, I hope they repair the Croatian consulate they trashed in Berlgrade also
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do you know what is going to happen to Croatia and Bosnia? Woill they join? Does the Serbia offer include Serbia AND Montenegro?
This is the story. As far as statistics go Croatia is well ahead of both Serbia and Mtngro and Bosnia and even Romania and Bulgaria who have it set for year 2007.
But. There is a but. Simitis is trying to put us in the same basket with Serbs (this we will not forget
) and some other EU officials are trying to set up a 'regional approach' so that all the countries in the region get assimilated by EU at the same time (who knows when). Croatia is aiming for 2007.
Bosnia is great, I say we build a monument to whoever can figure it out what to do with it.
Anyway.. Serbia and Montenegro are artificial and are going to break up in .. 2004 or some such, I forgot.
The appendix of Europe, truly. What happens, nobody knows.Comment
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How is Bosnia great?
should we wipe them all out and make the area a Ger... European protectorate? [/Bodd's style question]Comment
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