Post-war reconstruction of the Balkan region comes fully into focus with the announcement yesterday that a conference will be held in Sarajevo next month to decide on how to undertake that task. The costs involved will include aid for Kosovo, neighbouring states and regional infrastructure. The question of aid for Serbia is contested among the main potential donor states. It is clear that the European Union will play the predominant role in organising the reconstruction and bear most of the costs involved. In the longer term the Kosovo crisis has opened up the case for future accession of these states to the EU, decisively accelerated the process of its enlargement and the implementation of its security and defence policies.
All this amounts to a sea change in European affairs that is only gradually being fully appreciated. President Clinton's meeting with the current German EU president, the German chancellor Mr Gerhard Schroder, yesterday underlined some of the main issues at stake. He said bluntly that while the United States has borne the main burden of paying for the war it will fall to the EU to pay most of the costs of reconstruction. That very fact will help to develop the EU's structures and broaden discussion about them. It remains to be seen whether the necessary funding will be made available, despite a succession of political commitments made in recent days. It helps of course that most of the contracts will be won by EU companies.
These commitments will add a new layer of financial obligations to those negotiated so painstakingly in the Agenda 2000 agreement reached in Berlin when NATO's bombing campaign against Serbia began last March. It is now much more widely appreciated how important it is to recognise the costs borne by Bulgaria, Romania, Macedonia and Albania during the course of the war and the huge strains imposed on their economic and political development.
This bears on the emerging debate about whether aid should be extended to Serbia while President Slobodan Milosevic remains in power. President Clinton and the British prime minister, Mr Blair, take a hard line, saying not a penny should be given to his regime, clearly with the political intent of encouraging his overthrow. Mr Schroder, in contrast, distinguishes between reconstruction aid, which he thinks should be given even if Mr Milosevic remains in power, and humanitarian aid. It must be remembered that transport along the River Danube has been completely disrupted, affecting the entire region; the same applies to road transport through Serbia. Mr Schroder's approach to aid is therefore more alert to the needs of the region.
Yesterday's agreement between the KFOR commander and the Kosovo Liberation Army on demilitarisation puts another piece of the immediate jigsaw in place in the province. It remains very much to be seen whether it will encourage Serbs to remain there. Most of them are fleeing in fear of retribution and revenge. They face an unsympathetic reception in Serbia and will join the hundreds of thousands of Serb refugees from Bosnia and Croatia there. President Milosevic faces a huge task in coming weeks to justify his policies in the face of mounting popular anger. But it would be foolish to think that democratising Serbia will be an easy or rapid task. The long term attraction of EU accession forms an essential incentive for its people in convincing them to travel along that road.