SLOVENIA LOOKS FORWARD TO SERBIA'S RETURN TO THE COMMUNITY OF DEMOCRATIC EUROPEAN NATIONS
On the arrest of Slobodan Milosevic

Ljubljana, 1 April 2001


News on the arrest of the former President of FRY is portending that one of the main actors of the years of evil in the Balkans will be tried in court for his actions. Slobodan Milosevic's arrest is an important act in the process of disintegration of the former Yugoslavia’s anachronistic, authoritarian political concept of which he was both a tool and a symbol. Through this, Serbia is also irreversibly entering the community of those who regret the tragedies triggered by Greater Serbian nationalism.

I am convinced that judicial proceedings in Serbian courts and at the Hague Tribunal will contribute to the consolidation of the cognition that war crimes, genocide and systematic violation of individual and collective human rights can no longer remain unsanctioned and concealed behind reference to state sovereignty. It is a reminder to all those who believe they can play with the fate of individuals and entire nations without punishment and who pose a threat to world peace and security.

Serbia is entering a long process of self-examination about why it has found itself in conflict with the democratic world for the past ten years and why it was completely isolated, why Serbian military and political commands set the blaze of ethnic war in states emerging from the republics of former Yugoslavia, why the Serb people are living in poverty, why Kosovo is further and further away from Serbia and why Montenegro, too, must tread an independent path.

I believe that the actions and decisions of the new democratic political and judicial powers in Serbia will be capable of defining a policy that will constitute a recognisable alternative to the concept of Greater Serbia which was so severely enforced by the Milosevic regime, to thus accelerate Serbia's return to the community of democratic European nations.

Slovenia is looking forward to this return of Serbia and supports Serbia in its efforts. These decisions will contribute to an appeasement of the situation and to the installation of values geared towards human development in SE Europe. Ever-new crisis areas of interethnic tensions and conflicts in this region, including the most recent one in Macedonia, are a warning to the international community that durable peace and coexistence in this unsettled region is still a long way away, that the deliberations on the reasons and solutions of the crisis to date were not sufficient and that pragmatism is no solution for international politics. The years of relying on Slobodan Milosevic as an alleged factor of stability are sufficient proof of this.