Tarasyuk participates in conference on investment opportunities in southeastern Europe (05/14/00)

Tarasyuk participates in conference on investment opportunities in southeastern Europe

by Irene Jarosewich

NEW YORK - "I once met a man who lived in the same house his entire life, he never moved. Living in that house, he told me, he had lived in seven different countries. Same house, seven countries. This is how I respond when people ask me 'What are the Balkans?'" stated European Union High Representative Javier Solana as he began his presentation at the international conference "Moving Towards an Integrated Europe: Investment Opportunities in Southeastern Europe" held at the Metropolitan Pavilion May 2.

The one-day conference, sponsored by the non-profit EastWest Institute and the investment company Regent Europe, focused on regional strategies to maintain political and economic stability in southeastern Europe without the use of force and included introductory remarks from U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and financier George Soros, as well as presentations from more than 20 speakers, including Foreign Affairs Minister of Ukraine Borys Tarasyuk.

In her remarks, Ms. Albright stated "... [southeastern European] regional leaders have forged a pact with outside donors to transform this area of instability into a full partner in the Euro-Atlantic community. ... The United States welcomes this, because we learned in the last century that America cannot be secure if Europe is at risk and that Europe will always be endangered if its southeast corner is embattled."

High-level ministers from Albania, Bosnia and Herzogovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Romania, Turkey and Ukraine and about a dozen international business managers were among the speakers on the three panels on the topics "Priorities for Change," "Lessons from the Field: Managing Country Risk Factors," and "The New Geopolitics of Southeastern Europe: Building a Secure Investment Climate for the 21st Century," the panel on which Mr. Tarasyuk spoke.

Mr. Tarasyuk, who is also a member of the board of directors of the EastWest Institute, was in New York City May 1-2, to attend the conference and to attend to matters related to Ukraine's new position as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.

At the beginning of his presentation Mr. Tarasyuk said that Ukraine, strictly speaking, is not considered an intrinsic part of southeastern Europe, a region that is generally understood to mean countries that border Yugoslavia, but noted that geography is not necessarily the most important factor delineating security and stability in this region.

"The crisis (in the former Yugoslavia) affected the entire European community," he noted, "and to resolve the problems will take the concerted effort of the Euro-Atlantic community." Furthermore, he added, "Europe is too small to be fragmented into further sub-regions, especially when such fragmentation is accompanied by new political, economic or visa 'curtains.' The big, old division of Yalta 1945 that we have been trying to overcome for more than 50 years should not give birth to new, `small Yaltas' in different parts of the Euro-Atlantic region."

An example of such a new curtain, noted Mr. Tarasyuk, is the European Union's lack of response to Ukraine's suggestion that a think-tank, the Ethnic Research Center under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe High Commissioner for National Minorities be established in Ukraine to study and develop preventive measures to conflicts in inter-ethnic relations.

"I would like to recall," he said, "that before regaining its independence, Ukraine was considered as the place of potential inter-ethnic discord and explosion. ... we avoided such grim scenarios by pursuing a very careful and tolerant policy in the field of human and national minority rights ... acknowledged by the Council of Europe as one of the best of its kind. Therefore we proposed that the Ethnic Research Center be established in Ukraine ... but so far we have heard no reply. I am afraid that this is an example of the curtains that I mentioned before: if you belong to the region, or if you are part of the EU family, your ideas will be considered, if not, then just observe, mind your own business, no matter how useful the initiative."

Mr. Tarasyuk also stated that the regional crisis left many questions unanswered, including under which circumstances other countries and entities lawfully can take action to intervene in a "humanitarian catastrophe" such as the Kosovo. "We should not pretend that there are none [humanitarian catastrophes]," he said, "but should prepare a legitimate, universally accepted basis for the resolution of future contingencies. ... Stability of societies ... is only possible when there is a combination of rule-of-law principles inside the states and the primacy of law in international relations."

A powerful economic incentive is essential to regional stability, continued Mr. Tarasyuk. "Paramilitary groups and individual fighters in the region are trigger-happy not only because of ethnic hatred, but also because they have nothing to lose. If they had property, farms, businesses, they would be much more reluctant to go fighting," he said. Furthermore, he noted, large-scale economic undertakings, such as the reconstruction of a country's economy, or punitive measures, such as economic sanctions, must be done only after taking into consideration not just the implications for any one country, but the effects on other countries and consequences for stability in the entire region.

According to Mr. Tarasyuk, 726 of Ukraine's ships are blocked in the Danube River, unable to travel because of a dispute over bridge reconstruction between the European Union and the countries of the former Yugoslavia. This blockade has cost Ukraine tens of millions of dollars; Ukraine's Danube Shipping Co. alone has lost $52 million since the beginning of the year, he said.

Furthermore, economic sanctions against Serbia in 1993-1995 had little impact on the actions of Serbia's President Slobodan Milosovic, but cost Ukraine more than $4 billion in lost trade with the region. In general, noted Mr. Tarasyuk, economic sanctions rarely prove to be effective in breaking an authoritarian regime; in fact, they usually backfire, to the detriment of neighboring countries and the region.

The daylong conference was followed by an awards banquet at the Grand Hyatt Hotel during which the EastWest Institute gave its "Statesman of the Year" Award to George Papandreou, foreign minister of Greece, and Ismail Cem, foreign minister of Turkey, for their efforts at improving relations between their respective countries. In 1995, Ukraine's President Leonid Kuchma was given the "Statesman of the Year" Award along with former U.S. President George Bush.

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