Why the Balkans aren't all bad: Europe and Nato should offer the region carrots as well as sticks, says Jonathan Eyal

GREECE'S Foreign Minister, Karolos Papoulias, is touring Balkan capitals this week in an effort to strengthen regional co-operation. For Greece, which assumes the European Union presidency in January, the task of launching a Balkan initiative is likely to prove a tall order, even though it was former prime minister Constantine Mitsotakis who ultimately persuaded the Serbs to accept the original Vance- Owen plan.

Yet Mr Papoulias knows that more is at stake than Greece's national interests. In most of Europe the Balkans are now regarded as a zone of perpetual instability, a region best left outside the continent's co- operation structures. Poland, the Czech and Slovak republics and Hungary are considered serious candidates for membership of the EU and Nato. When it comes to Bulgaria and Romania, however, the West is ominously silent.

Those who believe that the best tactic is to isolate the Balkans from the rest of Europe are likely soon to be proved wrong: either the region's problems are handled collectively with Western support, or the looming crises in the Balkans will ultimately affect the rest of Europe.

Yet Europe still has a chance of saving a great deal from the Yugoslav debacle. Despite the Yugoslav experience, the record of the European Union and Nato in the Balkans is not all bad. The EU is responsible for more than 68 per cent (almost dollars 1bn worth) of all humanitarian aid sent to former Yugoslavia; it has concluded association agreements with Romania and Bulgaria, signalling its determination not to abandon the area; and Nato remains the only military institution able to deploy any forces that might be required.

Nevertheless, both institutions continue to believe that it is up to them to decide just how far they should become involved in the region. That assumption is wrong, as is the West's current insistence that Balkan states solve their problems before, not after, joining Europe-wide institutions.

The view that the Balkans represent a disease rather than a geographical entity is based on a fundamental misreading of history. While the region has suffered more than its fair share of violence, much of it was engineeered by competing alliances hatched in the West, rather than local animosities.

Nor is it true that the Balkans are still torn by 'tribal warfare': former Yugoslavia always excepted, there is no other Balkan country in which ethnic minorities represent more than 10 per cent of the population. Nor is land up for grabs elsewhere. 'Balkanisation' is a Western nightmare, not an Eastern reality.

And the region has displayed a genuine desire to forget its turbulent history: Bulgaria and Romania, refusing to engage in any regional disputes, have embarked on friendly relations with Greece and Turkey. The Romanian military, which has done much to reform itself, is promoting co-operation with its Hungarian counterparts.

But regional co-operation has its limits. Albania, for example, is 20 times poorer than Greece, and local economies compete to attract investment from the same sources at a time of world recession. The media let people know how comparatively poor they are, and that fuels pressure for migration. Regional co-operation is more of a long-term solution.

The EU started life as a bureaucratic construction, founded in the belief that political co-operation would follow economic integration. The EU and Nato always proceeded from the assumption that their members' problems were better tackled collectively. Even so, neither Nato nor the EU has 'solved' a single ethnic dispute in the West, although they did reduce the significance of these conflicts for Europe's wider security concerns.

The same effort is required in the Balkans today. To be effective, it requires the active involvement of Nato and the EU. Despite protestations from Bulgaria and Romania, the triumph of democracy in the region is by no means assured. In Romania, a former high-ranking Communist is still president: the same man who summoned miners in 1990 to beat up opposition supporters, then thanked the mob for its efforts. In Bulgaria, a democratically elected government collapsed in less than straightforward circumstances. Intrigue, unreformed security services and battles for complete power are classic Balkan problems.

There is still a purpose, therefore, in trying to distinguish between European states that have achieved democracy and those still languishing under disguised dictatorships. Yet if the West is genuinely interested in promoting stability and democracy in the area, it must offer carrots as well as sticks. The carrots have been conspicuously lacking.

The states of the region were never properly consulted when economic sanctions were imposed on Serbia. The damage to their economies has been substantial and their appeals for compensation, based on provisions of the UN Charter designed precisely for this eventuality, have elicited no response. To be sure, much of the economic mess in Bulgaria and Romania has other causes: in both countries, the process of economic reform has practically been halted.

Whatever the real cause, however, the West's refusal to address the damage inflicted by the sanctions on Serbia is now encouraging all the nationalist elements, which the West has always sought to neutralise. Throughout the region, politicians are finding it increasingly difficult to justify their countries' continued suffering for the sake of Yugoslav principles that the West itself has shown no desire to uphold.

Balkan leaders will still be willing to incur the wrath of their own electorates by supporting Western policies, so long as they can see some long- term advantages. These, however, have been few and far between: while the West continues to be good at proffering advice, it remains poor at offering real co-operation.

Italy continues to block ratification of the EU's association treaty with Bulgaria, and Nato seems more interested in incorporating Poles, Czechs, Slovaks and Hungarians into its structures than Romanians or Bulgarians.

The lesson of Yugoslavia is that, despite all their differences, the Balkan countries cannot be separated from Europe's wider security concerns. Ignoring the region's pleas for integration into continent- wide structures can only create further trouble: the prospect of Hungary as a member of Nato, for instance, while Romania is kept outside, is only likely to draw this military organisation into fresh ethnic and territorial disputes - precisely what everyone is seeking to avoid.

And, if the EU is keen to spur local economic co-operation, it must also hold out the prospect of eventual membership for Romania and Bulgaria on no more onerous terms than those contemplated for other East Europeans.

Instead of being suspected of ulterior motives, Greece's diplomatic offensive in the area should be supported as a good move that could help to defuse the long-term consequences of the Yugoslav debacle. Greece may have its own problems, but it is also a living example that neither the EU nor Nato stops at the Balkans' borders. The region's states need reassurance that they will not be forgotten. If this does not come soon, current fears of further violence will become self-fulfilling prophecies.

The author is director of studies at the Royal United Services Institute in London.

(Photograph omitted)