G-8 SUMMIT LEADERS ENDORSE BALKAN STABILITY PACT
(To work towards lasting peace, stability in Balkans)
By Wendy S. Ross
USIA White House CorrespondentCologne -- Leaders of the world's seven leading industrial nations and Russia endorsed a Balkan Stability Pact for Southeastern Europe to help countries in that region achieve political and economic stability.
Details of the pact have yet to be worked out, but the first donors' conference is to take place in Brussels in July to provide a cost estimate for the immediate needs of Kosovo, followed by a conference of the major economic powers in the Balkans in the fall to look at the longer term needs. The European Union is to play the major role in this endeavor, although the United States, Japan and other countries also will be involved.
The heads of state and government of the United States, Germany, France, Italy, Canada, United Kingdom, Japan and Russia, in a final statement said "We consider this stabilization process to be one of the major political and economic challenges ahead of us."
"Our biggest challenge perhaps will be to put in place a plan for lasting peace and stability in the Balkans," Clinton said as he discussed the conclusion of the G-8 summit with U.S. diplomats.
"We cannot do this -- a province, a nation, a crisis at a time," he said. "All our G-8 partners have agreed it is time to help transform the entirety of Southeastern Europe the way Western Europe was transformed after World War II and Central Europe after the Cold War. We want to give the region's democracies a path to a prosperous and shared future, a unifying magnet that is more powerful than the pull of old hatreds and destructions," he said.
The G-8 leaders made clear that to receive benefits from the Balkan Stability Pact countries must commit themselves to continued democratic and economic reforms, as well as bilateral and regional cooperation amongst themselves.
For the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to participate, it "must demonstrate a full commitment to all of the principles and objectives of the Pact," the final statement said.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said it is "very, very clear" to all the leaders that whoever ultimately heads the Balkan Stability Pact should be an outstanding person with management experience and political sensitivity. That selection will ultimately be made by the United Nations Secretary General.
Schroeder, the host of this year's G-8 Summit, at a final press conference offered an upbeat assessment on the progress made in the June 18-20 talks in Cologne.
"I am "very, very happy" at what was achieved, he said.
Schroeder saluted the "full agreement" among the leaders on the accord reached in Helsinki during the summit on Russia's role in the NATO peacekeeping force in Kosovo. Schroeder also said there was full agreement among the G-8 leaders on rebuilding Kosovo.
But the question of aid to Serbia was less clear.
Most G-8 leaders agreed that Serbia should receive humanitarian aid, but not reconstruction aid as long as indicted war criminal Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic remains in power.
French President Jacques Chirac told reporters "it is not up to us to resolve this problem, it is up to the Serbs." He said Milosevic had cost a great deal in all ways to the Serbian people and Serbian eyes are being opened to this."
Schroeder said, however, that "where you draw the line on that is something you can only do on a case by case basis." Electricity, he said, for heating homes in the winter, could easily be seen as humanitarian. "Are you saying," he responded to a reporter, "that because they have Mr. Milosevic as their President we should let them starve or freeze."
Russia's President Boris Yeltsin was reported to want Serbia to receive both humanitarian and reconstruction aid, but U.S. National Security Advisor Sandy Berger told reporters that this subject never came up at the hour-long meeting June 20 in Cologne between Clinton and Yeltsin.
Yeltsin arrived at the summit only for the last morning's meeting, and the meeting with Clinton following the close of the summit. He was in Cologne only for seven hours.
His new Prime Minister Sergey Stephasin represented Russia for the other summit meetings.
All the summit meetings were held at sites in the shadow of the famous Cologne Cathedral.
On the economic front, the leaders agreed to expand a program to grant debt relief to 33 of the world's poorest countries, and agreed to institute reforms to improve the global financial system.
Russia began attending the annual world economic meetings in the early 1990's following the fall of the Soviet Union, and was formally admitted to the annual summit last year.
Former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl chose Cologne as the Summit site as a parting gift to the Rhineland in compensation for the German government's move of thousands of government workers from neighboring Bonn to Berlin -- Germany's new capital.
The G-8 meeting site rotates each year among the participant countries. Next year's summit will be on the Japanese island of Okinawa.
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