 I thank you very, very much, Tony, for the very kind invitation to speak here today. Yes, I am aware that this being July, although one wouldn't know it from the weather outside, that I'm delighted that so many people were able to make it. Really, what I'd like to do today is take a look at four conflicts that currently still exist in southeast Europe that need to be addressed. Cyprus, Kosovo, FYR, Macedonia and Bosnia. I'm trying to link this into a broader theme, if you like, of how the European Union has tried to manage these conflicts. Really, what I'd really like to say in this is that we are definitely looking at a European Union in crisis in so many ways and I wish I could come with some positive news, but I think even when we look at conflict management, the European Union is in a terrible state at the moment. Really what I'd like to do is flesh out some of the reasons why that's the case and maybe hint at some ideas as to how we might resolve it. I think the reason this is so very important is that above all, the European Union, as we all know, was founded as a conflict management mechanism. That's always been sold as its greatest benefit, the greatest good that it's managed to deliver to Europe. And yet we can see that in southeast Europe, for reasons and a lot of very complex reasons, it's failed to deliver. I'd really like to have a look at that and I think the three arguments that I essentially make is that I think part of the problem is that European Union's unclear about its conflict aims. What does it want to do? Tied in with that, it's unclear about its enlargement aims. That it can't actually do a lot unless it actually takes a very clear position on what it wants to do, which countries it wants to admit, and offer them a much clearer perspective. But also, I think that we've seen certain incidents over the past few years where the European Union's fundamentally undermined its normative power. Its ability to go out into the wider world and say, we are a force for good, we represent an uphold international law, we support multilateral institutions. And I'll explain specifically in the context of Kosovo where we've created a problem. I think really where I'd like to start is on the Cyprus problem. As many of you might be aware, I mean this is now in the bizarre situation that we are now facing almost 50 years of UN peace-making efforts on the island. I simply don't have the time to sort of go into a full history of the island, but suffice it to say, one of the big arguments that was made was that Europe made a terrible mistake taking a divided island in 2004. My view on that is actually that we essentially have two questions there that need to be looked at. The first is, did the European Union make a mistake in opening up accession talks with Cyprus? Absolutely not is the simple answer. We have to look at the situation, the conditions that existed when the European Union took that decision. At that point it was very clear from all sorts of UN accounts, from the accounts of senior international officials who'd been working on Cyprus that the fault lay with the Turkish Cypriot leadership and with the Turkish government and that it was simply unacceptable to be able to punish the Greek Cypriots for the position that was taken by the Turkish government, by the Turkish Cypriots. Also there was a greater issue at stake. How does the European Union allow to have veto powers over who can and cannot join the European Union was completely unacceptable to allow the third country, Turkey in this case, to determine who the European Union couldn't and couldn't accept. I think that one has to measure that against another important debate that was taking place at the time, which was obviously the Baltic Republics. If we allowed Turkey to have a say on whether Cyprus could or couldn't join, were we going to give Russia a say into who couldn't and couldn't join the European Union? So I think from that context it's cut and dried. We did not make a mistake. Where we did make a mistake I think, and this is something that we do have to bear in mind with the other conflicts that I'm going to talk about, is we didn't put in place proper safeguards to make sure that all parties to the conflict could be kept on track right up to the moments of accession. Essentially the problem that was created was that from the moment that the Republic of Cyprus was in treaty of accession in April 2003 until it joined in May 2004, there was no institutional leverage that the EU could exert over the Greek Cypriots. And they knew this. This was stated to me by officials from the commission. They had looked into this but it was simply Cyprus fell into an odd period of limbo and it couldn't be disentangled from the overall process of membership of the other nine countries that joined on 1 May 2004. And so hence we had this big problem and I would say that one of the key things that the European Union needs to consider because it will encounter these problems in the Balkans is how do you put in place certain mechanisms that make sure that you keep both parties to a conflict on track and then try and make sure that when one of them joins the European Union it doesn't have the ability to then undermine the membership of the other. It's a very complex question and I'm happy to take some questions on this as to you know it's not as simple as it sounds but I think that this is one of the key lessons that we've learnt from Cyprus. The problem we have now at the moment of course is that the talks have resumed. They've been going on for three years. They show very little prospect of being resolved. In part one must accept that this is because obviously Cyprus is a member of the European Union and obviously feels that its institutional position, its leverage has strengthened significantly and that's obviously creating terrible problems in terms of Turkish membership. We look as though we might have a further crisis next year in the past couple of days the Turkish Foreign Minister has said that during the period of Cyprus's presidency of the European Union in the second half of next year Turkey will not retain any institutional links with the European Union at the highest level in terms of the presidency because they don't recognise the Republic of Cyprus. They'll continue to work with the Commission but they won't. They'll have to freeze contacts with the presidency. So obviously that's you know the ongoing situation in Cyprus is one that keenly affects EU decision making. I think where Cyprus is potentially very interesting as well is with what we've seen in Kosovo. The Cyprus lesson, if you like, is that we cannot afford to take in another country with a border dispute, a territorial dispute and so what we're now seeing is that argument applied to Serbia's membership of the European Union and the question of Kosovo. I actually think that that's a fundamentally unfair position to take. For reasons I'm happy to go into, the Artisari status process was one of the most flawed and unfair diplomatic mediation efforts of recent times. It was very clear that although he was mandated by the UN Security Council and by the Secretary General to enter into a period of mediation with Serbia and Prishtina, he didn't do so. There was never any intention to try and find anything other than independence. He'd made up his mind and he sought to implement it. I think that this is an area where the European Union has just an opportunity to show some real leadership on its own part. Effectively, it allowed the status process to be held hostage by the United States and Russia. They thought of this in simple terms of independence or not independence. I think that the European Union really had the opportunity to come in and do what a lot of people argued that it does best, which has come up with innovative ideas for how you manage questions of sovereignty. It failed miserably to do so. What is worse in my mind is that this process was then led by the United States, which felt that there was no alternative to Kosovo's independence. A number of key members of the European Union took the same line. What we ended up with is an outcome that I believe is contrary to international law. I know that people immediately say, but the ICJ said that it wasn't. The ICJ didn't say nothing along those lines. The ICJ actually, on the question of the legality of Kosovo's statehood, decided it wasn't going to deal with the question at all. Instead, it took a very different position, which was on the Declaration of Independence. Again, I'm happy to discuss that a bit further. In order to support the position on Kosovo, an argument was made that it amounted to a sui generis case in international law. That argument is, for want of another word, nonsense. You can't create that argument. There were three basic reasons for this. One, they argued the constitutional status of Kosovo under the 1974 Yugoslav Constitution. Kosovo was not a federal republic. It had many of the rights, but it missed out on several key elements of it. I think that that's if you start then extending rights of independence to territories which fall below a federal status which do not have rights of secession as the Six Republics had under the Constitution, but it was a little bit more complicated than that. Then you're going to start opening up problems in various other conflict resolution circumstances. The second question was on human rights abuses and the right of the cost of Albanians to have independence on that. Again, I find this an extremely troubling position to take, especially in the context, for example, of Cyprus. We know full well that there were terrible abuses of Turkish Cypriots in the 1960s, and yet we asked them to overcome their past and engage in a process of reunification with the Greek Cypriots. In 2004, remembering that the Greek Cypriots were led by somebody who had actually been very closely implicated in some of the worst atrocities committed against Turkish Cypriots in the 1960s, we were asking them to reunite with a leader at the helm who they fundamentally mistrusted and distrusted. Thirdly, there's the element of UN administration, that because Kosovo had been under UN administration, that this somehow created the conditions for Kosovo to be granted independence. Again, one can see very clearly where the problem arises if you take that line of thought. You then make it almost impossible for the UN to be able to engage in other conflicts around the world. What country is going to want to accept a UN force, UN administration, if they feel that this is going to follow the Kosovo precedent? I think also for the European Union, there was a very troubling aspect in all of this in as much as they were willing key states to undermine the Security Council in order to pursue this. Now, they might not have been happy with the fact that Russia was exercising a veto over Kosovo's independence, but that was Russia's prerogative to do so under the UN Charter. If Britain wants to object to something and use its veto, it has the right to do so, and it expects that that's going to be respected. The United States, China, France all expect the same. Now, one might not like this system for the UN Security Council, but it's the system that exists, and it's the system that we agree to abide by. And once you get into a situation where some countries can say, well, look, we feel that another country has been obstructive, so we're going to simply bypass the Security Council, I think was an extremely dangerous precedent to set. And certainly for the European Union, I think it's going to undermine its position on the world stage. And I think now we're in a situation that having created this problem with Kosovo, we're now trying to force Serbia to accept it. And I think that this is where, all right, we've seen some very positive developments with the recent dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina. And I do believe that this is the right way to go at the moment, but at the same time, we can see very troubling aspects that EU states are putting pressure on Serbia to accept Kosovo's independence. And, for example, recently, a delegation of German parliamentarians said that Serbia wouldn't be able to join the European Union. They would block it unless it recognised Kosovo. And frankly, I just cannot see that Serbia is going to relent on this issue. It will go a very, very long way towards normalising a relationship with Kosovo, but if it comes down to the crunch, to recognise Kosovo in terms if it wants to join the European Union, I don't think that's going to happen. I think that people will resist it. It will be seen as humiliating. People feel very unhappy about what happened with Artisari, and I think that this pressure would then seem to tip things. So I do seriously believe that we still need to reach some sort of consensual solution in Kosovo. I believe it's possible, but I think, again, that the European Union is going to have to take a far more active approach and actually be willing to take a joint decision on how do we get to a position where we reach a consensual solution between the parties. The third case is Bosnia. And here again, I think we see interesting parallels with Cyprus and the effects of the Kosovo unilateral declaration of independence. It's caused a lot of resentment amongst Bosnian Serbs who see it as being a case that the Kosovo Albanians are entitled to independence. Why are they? Interestingly though, one of the strongest Serbian voices in favour of an independent Kosovo is Milorad Doddic, who's president of Republika Serbska, because he can very obviously see the parallels that can be drawn in this, and telling Serbia, forget Kosovo, concentrate on us, that we should be your real target. Why do you want to keep hold of Kosovo with Kosovo Albanians? Why not concentrate more on some sort of functional relationship between Serbia and Republika Serbska? So in that sense, I think that the argument that Kosovo's move to independence should be a source of stability. I think the argument that was put forward by a lot of countries that supported Kosovo's independence, I think we can see is rather hollow, certainly in the case of Bosnia. The problem we have with Bosnia is that by all accounts it is a dysfunctional state, which is making no progress towards the European Union at the moment. This is not just simply a problem that exists between Republika Serbska and the Federation, but I think we've also seen very serious problems emerging within the Federation itself. We've now had a number of months since there were major elections in the country, and there's still no government. We had the Foreign Minister of Bosnia come and speak to us a few weeks ago, and he suggested that we couldn't expect to have a government in Bosnia until, well now, I guess the middle of September at the earliest. And so this is naturally having a major effect in terms of Bosnia's relationship with the European Union. It's unable to engage in a lot of the processes that it needs to try and take its succession process forward. And here again, I think in terms of how the European Union deals with this, we have got very serious questions about international oversight of Bosnia. Is it too early to pull it out? Have we got beyond a stage now where it can function reasonably? But I think there's also another element in all of this, which is as we think a little bit about how we try and deal with the constitutional problems that exist between the parties in Bosnia, is that European Union has got to be extremely careful in how it manages this. It's got to avoid being seen to take one side or another in its position. And this is a real danger, as highlighted, commission officials have said, but they feel that this is something that has got to be watched out for because it's very easy to get tracked into constitutional debates. That one side will say, we need to centralise in order to meet European criteria. The other one will say, well, absolutely not. It's something that the European Union demands central decision making on, and the European Union will be called upon to pronounce on this. And I think the danger is if it seems to take one side over another, if it seems to promote a gender of increased centralisation on issues which don't actually require centralisation under EU norms, then I think it's going to be seen as being, well, a biased actor in the process. And I think that that will actually make the situation first worse rather than better. So we've really got to deal as a priority with trying to get the constitution in order to deal with those questions which fundamentally affect Bosnia's process of accession to the European Union, and EU's got to act as a much more neutral partner in doing so. Of course, that's the greater question of whether Bosnia is really viable. A number of people have asked the question of whether maybe it would be simply better to let it split. Obviously, it's an extremely contentious discussion. But I think relating it back to Cyprus, one of the things that perhaps we should consider is the current, the present of Bosnia, the future of Cyprus. And that then opens up questions about how perhaps we look at trying to deal with Cyprus. I'll try and wrap all this up in a conclusion and sort of come up with some answers. I think that deal with what we can see a very clear paradox emerging. Finally, we have Macedonia. The name issue rumbles on. It shows no immediate sign of being solved. Efforts are still continuing. It strikes many people as extremely strange to put it mildly that this issue has been allowed to go on for as long as it has. But it's actually a little bit more complex on just the name of the country. Apparently, the sticking point tends to relate more to relevant adjectives. So it's fine for the country to accept to call itself Northern Macedonia. But they will certainly not accept that their language is Northern Macedonian. That they will call themselves Northern Macedonians. This is unacceptable. Apparently, when a country applies to join the United Nations, it has to fill out basically one side of A4, giving some fundamental details about the country's capital city, size of population, and adjective is one of those. Apparently, that is one of the key sticking points. There is actually a very obvious example around this that you can take, which is the British example where, of course, British is not officially the relevant adjective. It's United Kingdom. And so that argument has been put forward. But it doesn't really wash with the Macedonians. And so that has retained a problem. If anything, the matter is getting worse because we're seeing an increase in nationalism in the country. You might have heard that there's appropriations of Greek archaeological sites. They're now calling them Macedonian. They're building up a massive statue of Alexander the Great in the middle of Skopje. All this is serving to make relations with Greece. That much more fraught at a time, I think, when Greece, frankly, would like to solve this issue and put it out of the way. But again, this in many ways is a sideshow. The far more serious issue that's affecting the country is the dispute between the majority Slavic Macedonian and the minority Albanian community. We saw this erupt into violence about 10 years ago. And a lot of observers still are very worried that ethnic tensions may re-emerge in the country and that this is something that's got to be addressed. So, really, what I'd like to do, just by way of wrapping things up before having a discussion on more of the details of these, is really to say that I do believe, despite the way that looking at how the European Union has tried to deal with all of these, that the European Union does remain potentially an extremely powerful force for solving regional conflicts in southeast Europe. I think it's potentially got the mechanisms there. I certainly don't believe that it's a panacea. The argument that European Union can simply solve ethnic conflicts I think is wrong. It can take away, if you like, the most acidic elements of these conflicts. But I think we can see that sovereignty still matters. The flag that flies over a piece of territory matters to people. And so it might be a European Union flag that flies, but next to it will be a state flag. And I think that this certainly has a great effect. And we mustn't underestimate that in any way. We can see it here, but we do also see it very clearly in south to southeast Europe. And I think what more worryingly, if you like, is that we can see that the EU doesn't quite know how it wants to approach conflict in southeast Europe. On the one hand, there's very powerful forces calling for reunification. It's doing this in Cyprus. It's taking a very strong position, but the Greek and Turkish Cypriots must reunify. They must get past their problems, work out a system for coexistence, cohabitation. But at the same time as we saw in Kosovo, they've been willing to endorse a division. Saying that it's actually not possible for two peoples to get past their problems, that they've got to be allowed to go their own way. And I think that this has created a real mess that sends out very, very strong mixed messages about what we're trying to do. Now, I wouldn't actually propose that we take one rather position. I think that this is actually something that falls into a problem. Where I think it's far more effective is that if it says, let's take two fundamental principles in how we deal with conflicts. We're not going to propose an outcome. What we're going to do is facilitate process and stick to two basic rules in doing so. Adherence to international law and a respect for democratic values. So, for example, acts of unilateral succession are not accepted under international law. There's a whole body of legal literature which I can refer you to, which makes this very clear. However, to simply say that territory should be held together, even when it's quite clear that the overwhelming majority of the population desires a different outcome, I think is untenable and doesn't actually hold any sort of democratic values that we expect. I think that this has... We can see the shaping, if you like, positions in various countries. Most obviously Canada. There was a very high profile case on Quebec's right of secession and the Canadian Supreme Court effectively ruled that unilateral secession is illegal. You must hold a legitimate process, democratic process, and then engage in a process of negotiation for how that split should take place. I think we're now starting to see the start of that debate in the United Kingdom. There's a lot of debate about Scotland and Scotland's future. I think the argument has emerged there as well, that this is not something that can be unilaterally done. You would have to have a referendum and then that referendum will act as a guide for the Scottish executive to engage in a discussion with Westminster about the terms of that separation. It could be a very long and drawn-out process. I think that we should really be applying this in southeast Europe. Ideally, if you can come up with models of autonomy that are acceptable to both sides, then certainly that's well and good. Perhaps also it's a question of bringing European values and norms into play and saying that perhaps there are arguments for a consensual split, a negotiated discussion leading to division. Not saying it's either or, not saying one should be applied in one circumstance or another, but the European Union coming in. I think we've had a very, very powerful message of the importance of this in the past few days with South Sudan. Precisely because this was a consensual split that took place, Sudan is now a member of the United Nations within five days of having declared independence. Kosovo, on the other hand, over three years later, has 76 recognitions out of the 193 members as it stands now of the United Nations. Has no immediate prospect of joining the United Nations. It's part that the European Union is held up because you've got five members that won't recognise it. It's membership of a whole raft of other international organisations, international bodies, UN-affiliated organs, is blocked. It can't get a dialing code. It can't get a top level domain name. It can't play in the World Cup. It can't participate in the Olympics. And all of this, as I say, because a decision was made to pursue a unilateral declaration of independence. Interesting is, or not as it may be, my own position is in actual fact I see very good arguments for an independent Kosovo. This is not about saying that Kosovo shouldn't be independent. What this is about is saying that I think that the European Union, how it approached Kosovo, did it in the fundamentally wrong way. It pursued a unilateral solution instead of trying to look for options which might have allowed for a much more consensual split. It might have taken longer, but I think that there were very good arguments to say that this was a possibility. And in the case of Cyprus, I lived in Cyprus for many years. It's a small place. Too small, I think, to be divided. But nevertheless, maybe this has got to be something that has opened up for greater discussion on what terms could you see a consensual split between the two sides if that is what they wanted. And I believe that amongst many Greek Cypriots, as controversial as this may be, that they do look at the situation and ask themselves if reunification is what they want under the terms that are on offer. They were very unhappy about the 2004 Annan plan. And I think that you still have a great deal of resentment. And I think that that's part of the problem that we're seeing in the talks at the moment, that you have a leader who I think is genuine about trying to pursue reunification. But a large proportion of the population that's deeply skeptical about this. So where does the European Union perhaps come into this? And I think that this ties in with the initial points I made. I think if it's to have any credibility in pursuing a process of conflict resolution in southeast Europe, it's got to offer quite clearly the prospect of membership to the countries. And that's not a position that you're using at the moment. And it's causing a real problem, I think, in how we approach this. We're seeing it with Turkey. It's got very grave doubts about how serious the European Union is in terms of allowing Turkey to join. And I think that that in its own way we're hampering a search for a solution in Cyprus. I think in the case of Bosnia, a lot of the parties don't see EU accession as a realistic prospect. So there's very little reason to engage actively with one another, positively with one another, in order to pursue this. Likewise in Macedonia, although it's a candidate, again, I think that without a proper clear statement of the effect that we are pursuing membership for southeast European states in the European Union, I think we're seeing a dialing back of progress that has been made and quite seriously. But again, it's not just about the carrot of EU accession. I think the European Union needs to think also about some of the sticks that it has in its arsenal. And this again comes back to the point that I made about what we saw in Cyprus, which is recognising that you cannot let up on the parties really until they've joined the European Union. You've got to be able to keep the pressure there. And it's not about punishing one side by keeping it out. No, you make the judgement as to how far it's trying to pursue a peace settlement. But if it hasn't shown the willingness to engage in a proper dialogue and is now sitting back and thinking, well, we're just going to join the European Union on the benefits of doing so to get a solution that we really want, the European Union has got to be on the lookout for that and start thinking more seriously about how it can address this. So it's not really a case of the EU trying to punish countries for problems, but it certainly has the right to ask for solutions. And I think it's also in an ideal position to help countries find those solutions. Thank you.