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Balkans Forced Into Spotlight For NATO Summit

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  • Balkans Forced Into Spotlight For NATO Summit

    BALKANS FORCED INTO SPOTLIGHT FOR NATO SUMMIT
    Michael Bird

    The Diplomat
    March 3 2008
    Romania

    Romania is buzzing with geopolitical significance at a time when
    NATO's heads of state arrive in Bucharest this April.

    After a rare moment of calm, the Balkans is again a flashpoint
    of political struggle. There is a major schism in the EU between
    countries choosing to support Kosovo's independence and those who deny
    its legality. Russia has never been more at odds with the west since
    the Cold War. The greater Black Sea region is dividing into countries
    with Russian influence, such as the Republic of Moldova, those tied to
    the EU consensus, such as Romania, and those with divided loyalties,
    including Ukraine and Serbia. The geography of these new divisions
    forms a kind of iron patchwork.

    But Romania is no longer playing poodle to the USA. Bucharest's
    non-recognition of Kosovo is the first moment when modern Romania has
    challenged American and major European powers on a serious geopolitical
    issue. Instead the country has sided with its neighbours and domestic
    public opinion.

    Recent bilateral visits between Presidents Basescu and Tadic indicate
    that Romania wants to show solidarity with the embattled EU-leaning
    head of state's moderate position. The motivation for this seems to be
    a good neighbourliness. The kind that was absent when Romania allowed
    NATO air strikes to pass over its territory and bomb Belgrade during
    the 1999 Kosovo uprising.

    Serbia also has great relations with Russia, whose foreign policy over
    the last three years publicly seems to have been to ignore Romania's
    existence. Bucharest must regain some dialogue with Moscow, beyond the
    trading of insults. Hopefully, Belgrade can build a bridge for Romania
    to Russia, while Bucharest can act as a bridge for Serbia to the EU.

    Romania has nothing to fear from the 'Kosovo precedent'. This is the
    theory that any European region fostering hopes of independence could
    use Kosovo as an example for the realisation of its aims.

    Recent international news reports have hyped up Romanian fears
    of partition north of the Carpathian mountains. But there is no
    Transylvanian Liberation Army or People's Front of Targu Mures
    preparing to kick out Romanians from the Hungarian-speaking
    territories.

    Instead members of the Union of Democratic of Hungarians in Romania
    are in Strasbourg to learn about the best EU forms of federal
    Government. Romania's future may be federalist, with regional powers
    granted to Iasi, Cluj-Napoca or the Hungarian speaking counties. But
    this will be decided by law-makers and bureaucrats, not gunfire.

    More pertinent is the issue of the breakaway Moldovan state of
    Transnistria. Kosovo's independence may embolden the state to call
    for international recognition. The parallels are vague. This district
    is a melting pot of Russians, Ukrainians and Moldovans, unlike the
    clear Kosovan Albanian majority in the ex-Yugoslavian territory.

    Transnistria is a rogue nation which regularly declares its
    independence or unification with Russia in statements which gain no
    official support, not even from the Kremlin.

    This could change with Kosovo. But any major country choosing this
    moment to grant sovereign status to Transnistria, Abkhazia, Ossetia
    or even Nagorno-Karabakh would be acting on political opportunism
    designed only to anger the west and destabilise the region.
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