Carl Bildt – Croatia, the War, and the Future

Rotten Foundations Rocking Court Ruling On Slovenia-Croatia Border Dispute

July 1, 2017 by inavukic 20 Comments

EU Arbitration Tribunal – Hague
Photo: Famagusta Gazette

Global arbitration court in The Hague June 29th handed Slovenia victory in a long-standing maritime dispute with Croatia, granting it direct access to worldwide waters in the Adriatic Sea. In their reportedly convoluted 300-page judgement, judges ruled Slovenia should have “a junction area” with global waters, allowing “freedom of communication” to all ships, civilian and military, seeking access to Slovenia. The tribunal had awarded three quarters of the Bay of Piran to Slovenia, evidently ignoring the fact that Croatia had in 2015 withdrawn participation in the border dispute arbitration after a phone-tapping scandal which brought to light improper dealings evidencing disturbing lack of impartiality in the case by a Slovenian judge sitting on the court’s panel of judges. The Croatian newspaper “Vecernji” leaked tapped phone calls where Jernej Sekolec, the Slovenian representative to the EU-backed arbitration panel, spoke with Simona Drenik, Ljubljana’s intermediary dealing with the case, about tactics that would secure a favourable ruling for Slovenia. In 2009, the two former Yugoslav states agreed to a deal wherein the five-member tribunal would reach a binding decision on five square miles (13 square kilometres) of mostly uninhabited land and coastline, including Piran Bay on the northern Adriatic Sea. Both countries were asked to propose one member for the panel and a key element of impartiality was that no member discusses the tribunal’s work with their government. Slovenia breached the impartiality agreement and rule and still gets to win the case!

Who said justice was blind? Well, in this case it’s blindness pertains to ignoring corruptness within.

But then, who would expect anything else with Carl Bildt (notorious for his evident indifference to ethnic cleansing of Croats and Bosniacs during the 1990’s war of Serb-aggression in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the co-chair of the 1995 Dayton Agreement that fortified the division of Bosnia and Herzegovina into a relentless ethnic battleground even during peace time), co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations, saying the international community “is likely to overwhelmingly endorse [the] arbitration conclusion on [the] Croat-Slovene dispute”.

In Ljubljana, Slovenian Prime Minister Miro Cerar Friday 30 June 2017 hailed the ruling as a “historic moment for Slovenia”, saying the judgement “is definitive and must be applied on both countries, Slovenia and Croatia”.

Ahead of the ruling, Croatian authorities and opposition said they would consider the court’s decision to be “a dead letter on paper” and that another way to solve the dispute should be sought, “in a peaceful and sober manner”.

Croatia insists the matter is not resolved and wants to continue bilateral talks. “Croatia’s view is known,” said Andrej Plenkovic, Croatian prime minister, before the ruling. “We quit the arbitration, since for us it is irrevocably contaminated and compromised.”

“Today’s arbitration decision for Croatia is a decision which is not obliging us in any way…. nor do we intend to implement its content,” Plenkovic told reporters after the arbitration court’s decision was made public.

Photo: Wikimedia

“With respect to the arbitral award rendered today in the arbitration process that Croatia withdrew from because of unlawful acts of Slovenia, the Government of the Republic of Croatia states the following:

1. Today’s arbitral award does not in any way bind Croatia and Croatia shall not implement it.

2. Croatia has made its position towards this arbitration unequivocally clear already in July 2015, immediately after the scandalous and unlawful actions of Slovenia’s Agent in the case and a Member of the Arbitral Tribunal were publicly disclosed. Their actions remain without precedent in international jurisprudence. They constitute systematic and grave violation of the most fundamental principles in international dispute settlement, most notably principles of party equality and independence and impartiality. Such acts of Slovenia represent a material breach of the Arbitration Agreement to Croatia’s detriment. The fact that the Member of the Arbitral Tribunal, appointed by Slovenia, and Slovenia’s Agent in the case resigned immediately are indicative of the gravity of unlawful actions. This was confirmed by the prompt resignation from the position of the Member of the Arbitral Tribunal of the then President of the International Court of Justice who was appointed as replacement by Slovenia.

3. To protect its rights, pursuant to the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties and on the basis of a unanimous decision of the Croatian Parliament of 29 July 2015, Croatia initiated the procedure of termination of the Arbitration Agreement, ceased to apply it and withdrew from the arbitration.

4. Croatia particularly emphasizes that, in protection of principles and values of international law and peaceful settlement of disputes which it has always upheld and promoted, it does not accept the results of this obviously compromised arbitration process.

5. Since this arbitration failed in bringing about a final resolution of the open border issue, Croatia now repeats its invitation to Slovenia to launch dialogue, convinced that two neighboring states, NATO and EU members, must have enough motive and willingness to resolve this issue by mutual agreement.

6. Croatia expects that Slovenia will not take any unilateral acts that would in any way change the current state of affairs along the common state border.

7. Croatia invites all other states and international organizations to continue treating this open border issue as a purely bilateral matter which concerns only Croatia and Slovenia.”

Obviously, the dispute has highlighted a legacy of hasty partitions of few territorial patches of disputed borders, while keeping the bulk of internationally recognized borders, left behind by the disintegration of former Yugoslavia and the Serb-led war of aggression of the 1990s, during which the sudden dissolution of Yugoslavia, propelled by the plight to secede from communist Yugoslavia and establish democracy, spiraled into bloody and destructive conflict where Croatia found itself forced to defend itself and its people’s self-preservation. Ina Vukic

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Andrej Plenković, border dispute, Carl Bildt, Croatia, EU Arbitration tribunal, Jernej Sekolec, Miro Cerar, Piran Bay, Simona Drenik, Slovenia

Croatia: Benghazy Scrubber Scrubs Western Balkans

July 16, 2014 by inavukic 42 Comments

Lately, Victoria Nuland, US Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia, is best known, or, rather, notorious, for her role in objecting to the initial set of the Benghazi attack talking points when she reportedly asked that references to al Qaeda and previous CIA warnings about threats posed to U.S. diplomats in Libya be scrubbed from the document. I.e., she is said to have demanded that (accurate) assessments of terrorist involvement be scrubbed, along with references to (accurate) intelligence warnings about the deteriorating security situation in Benghazi leading up to the 9/11/2012 attack on US diplomatic compound in which four Americans were murdered. Nuland’s role provided the closest thing to smoking-gun evidence of a cover up.

Then I assume all of us remember when in January/February of this year on YouTube, there was uploaded an audio recording of a confidential telephone conversation between Nuland and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine – Jeffrey Payette. Offended by the indecision of European Union leaders in the fight against Moscow’s “evil intentions” in Ukraine, the cheeky high-ranking American did not hesitate to use dirty words towards the European Union (“Fuck the EU”).

Episodes like these draw attention to the type of people who are deciding the destinies of the world – trying to teach others.

Victoria Nuland,
AP Photo/Boris Grdanoski

And on Friday 11 July 2014 Nuland attended in Dubrovnik the 9th “Croatia Forum” held around issues of EU enlargement into the Western Balkans region. She called for struggle against corruption and for democratic recourse to preserve the values of transatlantic community. She sent a serious message to the corrupt Balkan politicians that the United States know for their corrupt practices and their undemocratic rule.

“Europe can’t be whole when kleptocrats treat states as a bonanza of spoils for themselves and their cronies. And it can’t be free when elections are rigged, independent media is silenced and minorities are vilified. And it can’t be at peace when corrupt officials use political, economic and judicial intimidation to stifle opposition and rip off their own citizens,” Nuland said to the participants of the forum and continued:
“Corruption also threatens national sovereignty because every dirty politician in our midst, every dirty non-transparent contract that we allow, creates another wormhole of vulnerability and an opportunity for mischief by outside forces. From the Balkans to the Baltic to the Black Sea, we must understand, as those on the Maidan did, that corruption is not just a democracy killer, it’s another grey tool in the arsenal of autocrats and kleptocrats who seek to extend their influence, weaken our democracies and enrich themselves at the expense of our citizens”.

Nuland said the gas price dispute, Moscow’s annexation of Crimea and fighting in eastern Ukraine underlined the energy security threat facing Europe. Europe’s energy security needs much work and “building up diverse flow capabilities and capacities and building up deeper networks throughout the continent,” was what was needed. “Croatia has an essential role to play, as an energy security hub for the 21st century… You (Croatia) have spectacular assets to do that so long you as you make smart choices as you are going forward,” Nuland said.

Nuland did not spell out what choices she considers “smart” but given that Croatia is already an EU member perhaps she was using the Croatian platform to address the non-EU members at the forum such as Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Albania… Perhaps it her address was not about energy security but about gaining anti-Russia support and in doing so all sorts of compromises, scrubbing of war crimes etc., could emerge to fast-track some of these countries into EU membership as a matter of harnessing might for the looming cold war against Russia.

According to Croatian news agency HINA, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexey Meshkov said in Dubrovnik on Saturday 12 July that the European Union should not use Western Balkan countries’ desire of joining the bloc to force them to choose between Europe and Russia.

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said for Croatian Radio that Jean-Claude Juncker’s (European Commission President-designate) statement, that there will be no new EU members in next five years, may be true but sends a wrong message because without enlargement, there will be no security and thus the credibility of the EU is at risk, while Serbia’s First Deputy Prime Minister Ivica Dacic said that every EU member state should undergo an assessment every ten years and that he is certain that many would not pass on the criteria test that Serbia is now expected to pass.

Carl Bildt, who was one of the architects of the abysmally failed Dayton agreement for Bosnia and Herzegovina, should truly stay out of this exercise of contemplating EU extension into Western Balkans. He has nothing to offer for any real peaceful solution.

The likelihood that Croatia’s leaders will swallow head-and-shoulders Nuland’s glowing compliments to Croatia as a country that “could become a regional energy hub” is very, very high. The carrot is likely to become even more attractive now that Germany’s Angela Merkel said 15 July in Dubrovnik at a meeting of eight Western Balkans heads of state that her country would support the “region’s” future in the EU.

Croatian current leadership of communist extraction will do everything and anything to intercept and set back any processes dealing with post WWII communist crimes and there are two such cases in German courts at this very moment. One wonders whether justice in these will be compromised for a goal of uniting Western Balkans against Russia. Perhaps Nuland’s “smart choices” include a scenario where Croatia should stop pursuing justice for its own victims of communist crimes and of 1990’s war crimes.

While I completely agree with Nuland on the points of corruption and kleptocrats I find it extremely unsettling that it was she who points to the wrongs of it. If I consider the definition of corruption as a moral impurity or deviation from the ideal then her Benghazy scrub would certainly brush at least some corruption against her character. One wonders how much scrubbing of corrupt individuals’ tracks may occur in the process of making Croatia the energy hub of Europe. One wonders what the price the people will pay if their leaders take up the “offer” to lead the way in that region in a cold war against Russia. The huge numbers of unemployed, hungry and poor are not interested in any cold or hot war; their prime concern is how to bring food to the family table.

Certainly, it would be welcome if Croatia picked up on investments necessary to make it that hub, but I fear the biggest beneficiaries of such an exercise will not the Croatian people or workers. I gladly wait to be proven wrong on this. Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps.(Syd)

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Alexey Meshkov, Angela Merkel, Benghazy scandal, Carl Bildt, cold war, communist crimes, Croatia, energy security, European Union, Ivica Dacic, Jean-Claude Juncker, Russia, transatlantic community, Ukraine crisis, Victoria Nuland, Western Balkans

Towards A Croatian Entity In Bosnia And Herzegovina

July 13, 2014 by inavukic 58 Comments

19 Anniversary of Srebrenica Genocide
Photo: Reuters

When US diplomat Richard Holbrooke and former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt gathered Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks), Serbs and Croats together in 1995 at an American air force base near Dayton, Ohio, harassing them into a deal that would end years of terror, genocide and ethnic cleansing that became the modus operandi of what initially appeared to be Serbian resistance to a breakup of communist Yugoslavia but emerged as an utterly brutal attempt to widen borders of Greater Serbia on the territory of former Yugoslavia, the world breathed a sigh of relief. Dayton peace agreement for Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) was signed in November 1995. Consequently, Carl Bildt was installed as the first High Representative for BiH and remained in that role during the initial crucial 18 months of implementation of the Dayton agreement.

Holbrooke and Bildt essentially endorsed the partition of the country into Serb Republic and the Bosniak-Croat Federation, giving ample leverage to Serb republic forged on genocide to affirm itself as some legitimate entity that has a “God-given” right to independence. On the Federation side, the Bosniaks grabbed a card blanche made available through this Dayton deal to pursue oppressing the Croats. Lacking political and institutional incentives for inter-ethnic cooperation, lacking leadership via the internationally imposed Office of High Representative the system imposed in BiH rewarded, largely unchecked, ethnic-based nationalist platforms and intra-ethnic infighting, making cross-group cooperation almost impossible. (Milorad Dodik, the president of the Serbian Republic entity of has turned to nationalist rhetoric to gain and consolidate power since 2006 while in Bosniak controlled government of the Federation the Croats are increasingly suppressed into a tortured, striped-of-most-decision-making-rights ethnic minority even though they are a constitutional ethnic group just as Bosniaks are).

Hence, divided into two entities, the Bosniak-Croat Federation and predominantly Serb, Serbian Republic, post-war BiH has been marred by political games – that retard democratic progress of ethnic equality – trickling through either actions or inaction of the Office of High Representative, systemic corruption and remains vastly underdeveloped. A mess of overlapping and competing administrations, ethnic rivalries that undoubtedly owe much of their their impetus to unresolved or under-resolved war crimes issues (Bosniak side seems to have magically evaded full responsibility for its part in the violence and bloodshed) had created out of BiH a mecca for ethnically based politicians at all levels to exploit many possibilities for corruption and personal enrichment. All the while unemployment grew to catastrophic proportions (hovering around 45%) due to utter inadequacy in economic development, corrupt and atrociously managed privatisations, and thieving, yielding a large sector of population that lives in distressing levels of poverty and hopelessness. Most of the while the European Union kept injecting subsidies, keeping this dying, suffocating Dayton agreement model afloat.

The 19th anniversary of Srebrenica genocide has just passed and was marked by the heartbreaking burial of 175 souls whose newly identified bones were scattered across a number of mass graves found on the territory known as the Serbian Republic. The Serbs still deny the genocide, the Serbs still seem to count on international politicking to bury the past and create a peace, in the creation of which they would not need to lift a finger, not even the one that represents remorse.

Having in mind the Dayton agreement imposed solution for BiH that did not require a full reconciliation of war crimes through pressure to achieve justice for all victims regardless of their ethnic background – that played and plays the dangerous game of equating the aggressor with the victim in an effort to achieve lasting reconciliation – in the eyes of those grieving at Potocari Memorial Centre (Serbian Republic) on 11 July I could sense the meaning of Antony’s words in Act 3, Scene 1 from William Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” when he addresses Caesar’s departed spirit and says:

“If your spirit is looking down upon us now, it must hurt you more than even your death to see your Antony making peace—shaking the bloody hands of your enemies—in front of your corpse. If I had as many eyes as you have wounds, and they wept as fast as your wounds stream blood—even that would be more becoming than joining your enemies in friendship…”

On 10 July the International Crisis Group released its extensive Europe Report No. 232 in which, among other matters, in its recommendations regarding the failing Dayton agreement model of BiH it sates:

“…The European Union (EU) and the wider international community should support Bosnia without high-handed interventions. The UN should close the Office of the High Representative and dissolve the Peace Implementation Council. The EU should welcome a Bosnian membership application as a first step towards eventual accession…”

On the occasion of the 19th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre the Foreign Secretary William Hague and German Foreign Minister Frank Walter Steinmeier made the following statement:

“The commemorations remind us of the terrible consequences when poisonous rhetoric is followed by acts of killing and ethnic cleansing, and when these go unchallenged. We reject entirely the efforts of those who seek to alter history, to deny Bosnia and Herzegovina’s rich and diverse ethnic make-up, or that work to undermine the territorial integrity of this country. The redrawing of borders in the Balkans is over.
Germany and the UK stand firmly with those in Bosnia who want to a build a peaceful, united and prosperous future”.

The international community repeats what was said in 1995 for BiH and it contributed heavily in making it into what it is today: a country exhausted from foreign power play and a country ready to be divided into three entities in accordance with its three ethnic constitutional peoples (Croats, Bosniaks and Serbs). What the international power brokers either don’t understand or won’t acknowledge is that ethnic communities in BiH are not the same as ethnic communities in US, UK, Germany, France etc. Loyalty to the ethnic communities and their identities are intrinsically very strong and it is upon that strength that joint existence within the state should be built.

And given that BiH is on its knees, desperately avoiding its total break-up and disintegration, ethnic federalism makes most sense and promises a path to a happier and more productive life. Croats, with their own entity within BiH would gain the deserved sense of equality with the other two (Serbs and Bosniaks) and ethnically based recriminations, ethnic based competitions of all sorts that affect daily lives would be reduced under a model of equal federal representation in the decision making for BiH. Certainly, the international community, or the most influential members of its network who are to blame for the conflicts and problems that have evolved from the Dayton agreement model for BiH, have without explanations or reasons so far been against the creation of a third (Croat) entity. They have treated Croats in BiH as and unplanned child in a family that, for whatever sinister reasons, visualises itself without it. It is no wonder that BiH Croats want their own entity, and why shouldn’t they have it when in effect the other two ethnic groups have it. After all, after 19 years of failed Dayton recipe, this would provide a significant assurance that BiH would indeed exist as a “rich and diverse ethnic make-up” the UK foreign secretary and German foreign minister want because the “richness” here (and everywhere else in the world) is defined and underpinned by equality in the sense that matters to the people most. Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)