A three-day series of meetings intended to rebuild Kosovo and foster stability throughout the Balkans began in Brussels yesterday and is scheduled to resume tonight in the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo.
Yesterday's Brussels meeting, hosted by the EU Commission and the World Bank, was held to solicit financial pledges for Kosovo and was attended by 60 nations and 40 international institutions. During NATO's 11-week bombardment of Yugoslavia, it was widely predicted that reconstruction would cost up to $25 billion, but it is now obvious that far less will be forthcoming.
Officials say the costs were over-estimated, but the reluctance of donors is another factor. "We realise that the cost of reconstruction is less than we had foreseen," Mr Francois Lamoureux, who co-presided over the Brussels conference, told Le Monde.
Mr Bernard Kouchner, the Frenchman in charge of the UN mission in Kosovo, has come under criticism for the slow pace at which the UN is setting up a civil administration. His chief difficulty is getting Serbs and Albanians to work together.
Since Washington bore most of the cost of the bombardment, the US Congress now expects the EU to pay for the damage done by Serb forces and NATO aircraft.
The US nonetheless proposed $500 million in humanitarian - not reconstruction - aid yesterday. Confusion reigns both in Kosovo - where 130 aid agencies are stumbling over one another - and in Western capitals, where conflicting studies abound. A second pledging session is to be held in October.
For its part, the EU has set aside €378 million from its 1999 budget for Kosovo - far less than the incoming EU Commission President, Mr Romano Prodi, had advocated at the Cologne summit in June, when he suggested the EU might spend up to €6 billion each year for five years. Mr Prodi has expressed concern that "the capacity for organising war far outstrips our capacity to co-ordinate the reconstruction of people's shattered lives".
With winter just a few months away, housing remains the first priority in Kosovo. Serb forces systematically looted and burned the homes of the Kosovars they drove out.
Now 730,000 ethnic Albanians have returned, and EU officials yesterday estimated that it will cost €1.1 billion to rebuild 120,000 damaged and destroyed houses. If €700 million in aid could be raised, the Kosovars could manage for the rest, the EU Commission spokesman, Mr Nico Wegter, said in a press briefing.
He said another €100 million was urgently needed for water, electricity, hospitals and schools.
Many of the participants in the Brussels meeting will move on to Sarajevo tonight for the opening dinner at the "conference of heads of state and government of the participating and facilitating countries and international organ isations and agencies of the Stability Pact". European leaders and President Clinton will attend the symbolic Sarajevo summit, which is intended to signal Western support for democratisation in the Balkans. The Yugoslav President, Mr Slobodan Milosevic, is the only Balkan leader who has not been invited.
The Stability Pact for the Balkans was signed in Cologne on June 10th. Its philosophy, summarised by Mr Prodi, is that "we owe the Balkans a clear economic and political future, putting an end to centuries of endless conflict".
Only the EU could provide that future, he added.
The German EU presidency planned the Sarajevo meeting, which will cost the EU €1.2 million. The summit will last only three hours, and some critics in Brussels claim it is a waste of money.
The Taoiseach and the British Prime Minister are likely to discuss the political deadlock in Northern Ireland on the fringes of the Sarajevo summit tomorrow. Mr Ahern is expected to leave Dublin for Sarajevo late tonight or early tomorrow and will return tomorrow night.