Balkans still Europe's most volatile region

A WALK down Gavrilo Princip Street in Belgrade is a salutary reminder that one is in a part of the world in which great conflicts have emerged from small local disorders. Princip, in 1914, killed the Archduke Franz Ferdinand on the streets of Sarajevo and unleashed the series of events which led to the Great War.

The Dayton accords notwithstanding, the Balkans simmer dangerously away as the most politically and militarily volatile region of Europe. As old trouble spots cool down, new ones are inclined to erupt. First there was Slovenia and then Croatia and then Bosnia Herzegovina and then peace.

Now the needle of the political seismograph trembles in Serbia, Bulgaria and Albania, overtly for very different reasons but behind it all due to the united experience of emerging from communist rule. The last ripples of the great waves of "people power" experienced in Prague and East Berlin in 1989 and 1990 are washing up finally on the Balkan shores.

In Serbia the struggle is for democracy, in Bulgaria for a decent standard of living and in the poverty stricken streets of Albania, there is turmoil on the streets because an entire nation has fallen" for a confidence trick, for a Lotto in which everyone loses their life savings.

Outwardly at least, the people who took to the streets in Serbia and Bulgaria appear to have been victorious but the tremors which their marching feet have produced may could yet become quakes.

One man has the capacity to make instability reach breaking point. He is President Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia, a guarantor of the Dayton accords, a politician with the power to annul elections when he pleases and reinstate them later.

Mr Milosevic, a reclusive man, both of whose parents took their own lives, has had little compunction in the past in committing the region to horrific warfare. Opposition leaders, now coming to terms with their victory after 80 days of, protests on the streets of Belgrade and other cities, have in the back of their minds the fear that he may be prepared to do so again.

One word is whispered in political circles these days in Belgrade. The name of Kosovo is not spoken loudly. It was by stirring ethnic tension there that Mr Milosevic gained power in the first place. He could be prepared to risk conflict again to preserve his powerful status.

Kosovo holds all the holy sites of Serbia, the place of a great if losing battle against Turkish invaders, the site of the primacy of the Serbian Orthodox church, the hills, valleys, towns and villages from which the Serb people sprang. But Kosovo is now 90 per cent Albanian and has its small if militant armed separatist movement. A spark to the tinder of Kosovo might help a desperate Mr Milosevic retain power, but it could set the southern part of the Balkans alight, engulfing not only the region itself but also Albania proper.

There is some hope of peace. Prof Milan Bozic, of the opposition Serbian Renewal Movement, sees a benign scenario in which Mr Milosevic retires to the ceremonial grandeur of the presidency of the Yugoslav Union of Serbia and Montenegro.

Others fear a reversal to type, a series of cunning and apparently contradictory moves by Mr Milosevic leading to a catastrophically irresponsible action against majority Albanians in Kosovo or minority Magyars to the north.

International pressure appears to have been successful so far in keeping the cauldron from boiling over and it has been applied in different ways. The west in the" form of the United States has been very much to the fore in its declarations verging on contempt for Mr Milosevic's actions in annulling local election results.

In the east, in the form of Russia, a country with long standing emotional, religious and political links with Serbia, more traditional behind the scenes diplomacy has been employed.

During all the period of sanctions and western pressure, Moscow has remained Belgrade's friend. Western threats of renewed sanctions have been made in the sure knowledge that any such move would be torpedoed by a Russian veto in the UN security council.

Then last Sunday, Mr Milosevic's police waded into the demonstrators on the Branko Bridge near the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers in Belgrade. Eighty people were injured, riot police systematically beat marchers and found time to pay special attention to cameramen from the international media.

With uncharacteristic speed, a statement was issued from the great gothic skyscraper on Smolenskaya Square which houses the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Moscow, roundly if diplomatically condemning "the use of force regardless of which party resorts to it".

Beset by its enemies, Belgrade now found itself under attack from its remaining friend. It may have been coincidental but by Tuesday afternoon, Mr Milosevic was engaged in the biggest climbdown of his political career.

Russia's influence in Bulgaria has been even stronger than in Serbia. In Sofia the main cathedral is named for the Russian warrior saint Alexander Nevsky, there are squares dedicated to Russian soldiers and tsars, and Russian is widely spoken.

But if Russia is gaining influence in Serbia it may be losing it in Bulgaria, long its most compliant ally in the Soviet era and earlier. The country's new president, Mr Petar Stoyanov, made this clear in his inauguration speech last month. He wanted Bulgaria, he said, to be more closely linked and eventually to resemble "those countries to which our young people emigrate."

Young Bulgarians emigrate to Frankfurt and to Paris and to New York, not to Moscow or St Petersburg or Nizhny Novgorod. A clear break from the traditional ally has been signalled. Bulgaria has its severe economic problems but is unlikely to be a flashpoint.

About 45 per cent of the economy has been privatised and further moves towards the market are being made. The people, of course, are suffering as the people of Poland and Russia and Romania have done in their transition.

Although discriminated against, the considerable Turkish and Rom (Gypsy) minorities are most unlikely to rise in armed rebellion.

Finally there is poor God forsaken Albania, where the wide boys, the get rich quick merchants and the pyramid schemers have conned an entire nation out of its property. If the Serbian demonstrators were motivated by a determination to achieve democracy and the Bulgarians by the desire to oust an ineffective and corrupt government, the Albanians appear driven by sheer hysteria at the loss of all they own.

This hysteria has quickly taken on a political dimension with the finger of blame pointed at President Sali Berisha, whose "Democratic Party" holds power by less than democratic means.

Across the border lies Kosovo with its Albanian majority smouldering almost to flashpoint, ready to be manipulated by predatory politicians of many hues.