 Again, the name of this panel is Building a Stable Balkans. In the past five years, the Institute of Peace has become a leading center of expertise on the Balkans in conflict there. And the person who has been principally responsible for putting the Institute on the map, having a tremendous impact in policy centers and in the Balkans conflict zone itself, happens to be our next moderator. She is also the principal peacemaker within the Institute where she serves with distinction as the executive vice president. Please welcome Dr. Harriet Hentges. Thank you, Patrick. And never was that statement more true than in putting on a conference like this, to have a great team to work with. In crafting the day's program, we tried to focus on issues likely to provide the biggest challenge to the administration, but also the greatest potential and opportunities. The Balkans presents both. And the issues facing the administration on policies in the Balkans are a microcosm of the issues on the foreign policy agenda. Three practitioners today will take a look back in order to look forward. And the Institute itself is doing that, looking at its own considerable work to decide to shape its future work. The recent changes in Belgrade and Zagreb bring historic opportunities to advance towards genuine peace and stability in the region. Few would have predicted during the last presidential transition that the Balkans would be a focal point of international peacemaking efforts. While there is cause for optimism, there are certainly unresolved issues likely to affect regional security in the Balkans over the next five years. The destabilizing influence of Milosevic has been removed, but his legacy of corruption, criminal networks, nationalism, and degraded political and economic institutions has not. And there are still disputes over what territory and ethnic groups constitute a state, poor economies exacerbated by violent conflicts, sanctions against Yugoslavia, and failure to make the necessary market reforms, and continued dislocation of refugees and displaced persons. There are lessons to be learned and basic questions to be asked at this historic juncture. Does the common objective of these former combatants to join Europe mean that the significant locus of action is that of the Europeans and that the time is right for the US to disengage? If so, how do we do it and what signals will it send our allies and others? What will the Europeans do in the region without us? How critical are we? And where should we in the foreign policy community concentrate the resources? The Institute has devoted considerable resources to the Balkans over the past five years, trying to capture the lessons learned from years of work on post-conflict societies. We have gathered some 30 senior fellows of very diverse backgrounds working on a diverse set of issues, added them to our resident research capacity on issues of the role of the media in the Bosnian conflict and reconciliation, the UN preventive deployment in Macedonia, the creation of a goodwill classroom, and the impact of the Kosovo intervention on international law. We've given some 58 grants worth 1.8 million since 1998, and much of it to indigenous groups on the ground, working with very focused problems and in their own language. The demands on the ground and our capacity that we built up shifted the nature of our work. As a result, the present director of the Balkans Initiative describes the Institute as a think and do tank. Four themes have emerged from our work. You might say lessons learned. The first, recognizing the centrality of the issues of justice to reconciliation peacemaking. In that light, we have advised justice officials in Bosnia on war crimes accountability, supported the work of the Hague Tribunal, and trained lawyers in Bosnia how to use the Dayton-created human rights institutions. Second, in recognizing that justice for the perpetrators must be coupled with addressing the needs of the victims. In that regard, we made the Institute extensive work on truth commissions in its various forms available to justice officials in Bosnia. Justice officials of all three ethnic groups. As a consequence, all three of them asked us to play a role in developing an appropriate commission for Bosnia. And the seed we planted has taken root with indigenous efforts. The commission will become a forum for victims to come forward and tell their stories. Some of them horrendous, but some of them also positive. It will bring to light the abuses committed by all three ethnic groups as well as the suffering experienced by each. And this is a necessary step in writing one history of the conflict rather than the three that now exist. We will also be assisting Serbia in the development of the commission. And there, the commission can serve to educate the passive or the uninformed as to the atrocities that were done in their name. A third theme is that key players to the resolution of conflict and reconciliation are not always the official government players. Think broadly about who the actors are. The list is quite long. Religious leaders, justice officials, police, military, both the national ones and the international peace groups, NGOs, emerging leaders, local leaders, the young, educators, the media. But these are actors that need nurturing, training, and support. The Institute has worked with each of these in the Balkans. We facilitated the creation of the Interreligious Council among the four major religious leaders of Bosnia, giving them a venue and a vehicle for cooperation, while giving their communities a symbol of tolerance and potential unity. We trained members of the International Police Task Force and local police in mediation skills, NGOs and consensus building skills, and emerging foreign affairs practitioners in negotiations. And in February, we will train Serb and Albanian mayors from Kosovo in conflict resolution skills, all with the intent of equipping a broader group of actors with more tools to prevent and resolve conflict. Finally, one of the most important lessons of our work is that dialogue among combatants can be facilitated even when the wounds are still open. And this can change the nature of the communication and open up new paths of problem solving. The Institute conducted a series of these dialogues with the support of the Department of State following the Kosovo War to initiate dialogue between the Serbs and the Albanians. And the final one, it was described by Archbishop Artemia, is historic. And it gave the participants their first positive experience of discussing differences and articulating hopes. It resulted in a campaign and a day against violence that helped calm inter-ethnic tensions in Kosovo. And while the relations established at early are undoubtedly hard to maintain back in Kosovo, all have agreed to participate in a cyber dialogue, meant to enable further collaboration on common interests, which the Institute will facilitate. This dialogue was made possible by a gift of laptop computers by the Waite Foundation to the various participants of the early House conference. Today's presenters have ample competence to look back and give wisdom for the future for the new administration in this region. Morta Baramowicz, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, has had a brilliant career in foreign service, serving as Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Research, Ambassador to Thailand and Turkey, to the Mutual and Balance Force Reduction Negotiations, and a founder of the International Crisis Group. In recognition of the fact that the risk of the conflict in the Balkans has shifted south to the dangerous triangle of Serbia, Montenegro, and Kosovo with the potential to destabilize Macedonia and Albania, we asked Mort to look at the triangle, review the present policy, and to suggest a framework for looking forward. Morta. Thank you, Harjit. As Harjit said, I am going to look at the most immediate and the most difficult problem to sort out in the form of Yugoslavia. The future of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the FYI, as it's usually referred to, are more accurately the Serbian Montenegro-Koslo relationship. I'm afraid there's always danger in such a partial focus, because not looking at the whole of the form of Yugoslavia, however difficult that is to do intellectually, inevitably leads to policy problems and the law of unintended consequences. A case in point is our handling of Milosevic and Kosovo in our absorption with protecting with eight agreements. Macedonia and Bosnia, of course, come to mind in considering the final status of Kosovo. The new administration inherits a much better situation than the first Bush administration left the Clinton administration. The Balkan issue has lost much of its gravity. Milosevic and Kosovo are, of course, gone. The West has constructive relations with both of the largest countries. And while violence is quite possible in Kosovo or in Bosnia, if it should disintegrate, the notion of large-scale violence a la 1991-92 is unlikely, certainly as long as NATO forces remain in the area. And there is no realistic likelihood of Allied forces departing until some distant day, although NATO can adjust the numbers and the burden sharing. Indeed, NATO forces will not be able to constructively depart until after final status issues, particularly for Kosovo, are somehow resolved. The principal questions, however, today are different, but familiar. It's no longer, as it has been for the last two or three years, how do we get rid of Milosevic? They are now the more excruciating questions of nationality and development, where objectives often conflict and national perspectives are divided and hard to reconcile. At stake, humanitarian considerations aside, and people seem to be putting them aside more today, are still the stability of the wider area, not just the whole of Southeast Europe and the cohesion of the NATO alliance. I have been asked to delineate the new changes, the challenges the new administration faces in the area, and what useful steps might be taken to better deal with them. I see four closely related challenges. Most important is the policy challenge, to figure out in the post-Milosevic era what to do and how to proceed to build a reasonably peaceful, reasonably stable region to use a bad word these days, nation-building, if you like. And it involves existential issues which can erupt into violence and hinder economic reconstruction. Its center remains Serbia. What is it, and where do Montenegro and Kosovo fit in? How do we help establish a more democratic Serbia that can be at ease with its neighbors and able to adjust to the realities of the Kosovo scene? In short, can the Serbian national issue be resolved? And how long will it take? There's also a problem of timing. Serbia, after all, has enormous, enormous political and economic problems. And the political stability of the area is fragile. One policy school holds that over time, political development and economic construction throughout the area will reduce ethnic and national sentiments to dimensions that permit and cost of either separation, that is less painful, or allow for some form of continued association. Indeed, that assumption seems to be Western policy today. So let me, in very concrete and very crude terms, sort of state what I believe to be the principal tenets of Western policy toward this triangle. First, to give priority to Serbian political change built to democracy and Serbian economic reconstruction and to keep the FRY intact and avoid dealing with questions of final status in part to avoid creating instability in Serbia. More specifically, to discourage Montenegro from breaking away and refuse to consider cost of independence. EU countries in particular are presently strongly opposed to cost of independence. And many want to go slow and holding cost of a wide elections to create a more or less autonomous entity. And third, to provide large-scale economic assistance and to create a process leading to greater regional and European integration for countries in the area, although no roadmap has been established. Another policy approach, an alternate one, holds that proceeding in the slow fashion will more likely keep the nationalist issue in Serbia festering. To discourage Serbian leaders from dealing candidly with their public on the future of Kosovo and ultimately harm political democracy in Serbia. Simply keeping the international protected in Kosovo indefinitely will inevitably arouse Kosovo anger and make the Kosovo region much more difficult to control. This school holds the view that a Hague trial for Milosevic is essential and some conditionality on aid may be required. It also maintains that Montenegro should be allowed to go its own way if its people want to. Doing away with UN 1244 and better forcing Serbia to face the question of what it is. This school, however, does not deal with handling the impact of a change in Serbian voters on Macedonia and on Bosnia. Now determining what to do, however, leads to a different sort of challenge which could ultimately shape what is in fact done. And that's the handling of the EU and our alliance partners. Countries are divided on the issues and feelings are strong. Changing the current approach will not be easy. And that enhances the attachment to existing strains of policy. Given the extent of European involvement in the region, many here want to turn over to Europe the principal responsibility for allied involvement in the area, much as we did in the early 90s. What does that mean for effective policymaking and what impact would that have on the peoples of the area? Maintaining harmony in the alliance, however important, does not necessarily facilitate achieving our goals. There is another management dilemma for the United Nations. It has been given an important role in Kosovo and making serious changes in current lines of policy, risk troubles with China and Russia and a variety of others, many of whom we have large equities with. How do we handle the UN of Montenegro leaves the federal republic? These dilemmas reinforce the attachment to existing lines of policy. Finally, there's a significant domestic political challenge. The requirements for the Balkans are variable, but they are long term. Progress is likely to be slow and uneven with ups and downs. Governments usually have short time horizons and so does the public and the Congress, particularly when they find progress slow or undulating. Any administration has its work cut out even to retain existing policy for any length of time. So they may well look for shortcuts, which may not be so bad, and they search for ways to reduce the American civil left. Whether that produces the right results is another matter. But a continuous US government effort to sustain a long term posture in the Balkans could cost a lot of domestic political capital. So briefly, are there any course adjustments that might facilitate progress toward a more stable Balkans or a more stable triangle? My own belief is that we are not in a position to do anything radical. But there are measures that need to be taken, which will still cause consternation and raise the challenges of management and politics that have already raised. In the case of Montenegro, first in the case of Montenegro, we can let it go its own way if the people really support it. We do not have to fear a military takeover and it may force, the separation may force Serbia to begin to face its essential national issue. Whether Montenegro goes or stays does not resolve the cost of a problem a little less accentuate. On Kosovo, there is no need to face the status issue now. There's not even an ex-Kosovo entity. But it is important, I believe, to set a direction, to establish some facts on the ground, so to speak. This means we should finish producing a Kosovo Constitution as we have been working on. All the elections there as soon as possible and see the emergence of a cost of a wide government under international support. Serbia will probably fight this all the way and they will have considerable support in Europe and in the United Nations. Finally, a matter I have skirted. It's a very important matter, but there's not much time. Every effort must be made to get Europe to go beyond the stability pact, ensure the rapid disbursement of funds, and set forth as much as possible the detailed roadmap for the countries of the region that may lead to some better form of European integration for them. I have left out much and avoided many difficult questions, but let me close with a general observation about policy. While the former Yugoslavia is not the pressing policy matter it once was, it is still a region that will consume sizable resources and attention, and one still subject to violence and disorder if the West proceeds wrongly. Resolution and stability are not on the horizon. Relegating the issue to second-class diplomatic consideration or making it one of a lion's burden sharing may diminish short-term domestic political problems or convince us we are tough in getting our international priority straight. But it also risks a huge investment and ultimately pose a great danger for the cohesion of the alliance and US credibility if it goes sour or shows little progress. In great part, after all, that is what the past decade has been about. The only successful exit strategy after 10 years of horrors and enormous expenditures remains a lion's success. That is a long way off. I'm skeptical that it will be achieved without continuing large American involvement and a determined policy which requires resources to back up our voice. And achieving that and pursuing that will be no mean feat for any administration who wants to try. Thank you. Thank you, Mort.