1. The question of ethnic or national minorities in international relations can be viewed in different ways - as a human rights issue; as a legal issue, with connections to other principles like territorial integrity and self-determination; as a security issue. These dimensions are mutually intertwined and in practice cannot be strictly divided. However, for analytical purposes, in this paper we are going to concentrate mainly on the security aspect of minority issues in today’s Europe, particularly in its Southeastern part, the Balkans.

In the past decade Europe has undergone fundamental changes. The collapse of Communism resulted in putting an end to military confrontation and block division. Moreover, this also led to profound changes in the international system, both in the practice of state-to-state relations and in the principles guiding these relations. Thus while the ten Helsinki principles are still, in a formal sense, equally valid as basic norms guiding relations among the OSCE participating states, their relative importance has changed. This is particularly true in the case of “non-intervention in internal affairs.” Today this principle is giving way to the notion of legitimizing the right of international (“humanitarian”) intervention in many fields, not least in the human rights dimension. Although still lacking the rank of legal principles, values such as democracy (multi-party parliamentary system), the rule of law and market economy based on private property, have become, since the 1990 Paris CSCE Summit, as relevant and as obligatory for the OSCE members as the ten “classical” Helsinki principles of 1975.

The changes have affected also the ten principles. The initial differences in their interpretation have been narrowed down and subsequently overcome with the help of commonly accepted standards for the respect and implementation of the norms and commitments included in them. While in the past principles such as sovereign equality, non-intervention in internal affairs, self-determination, human rights protection, etc. used to be interpreted and applied in a different way by the states and governments of the two opposing blocks, today most norms and principles are shared by everybody.

Nevertheless, there is a number of issues in international relations and international law which still give rise to different, even controversial interpretations. Among these, the issue of national minorities is one which remains an object of discord and dispute even today. While it is generally accepted that the rights of national minorities form an integral element in the corpus of human rights, there are differences as to whether these rights should be treated as collective or only as individual rights. Consequently, such discussions are related to issues like sovereignty, territorial integrity, self-determination of peoples, etc. These controversies are so grave that it seems that the rights of national minorities have remained among the most contentious problems in interstate relations even in the changed international environment.

In spite of the fact that the rights of national minorities are dealt with in an increasing number of legal and political international documents - both on the multilateral and bilateral level - there is still no commonly accepted definition of “national minority.” The UN-supported efforts to find such a definition have proceeded slowly and with lukewarm support, often confronted by reservations, or even resistance on the part of a number of UN member-states, among which many Third World countries and the majority of the Security Council permanent members. Although definitions in UN documents, especially in non-binding General Assembly resolutions, have only a limited value, it is indicative that the UN members have been successful in elaborating a common, albeit unsatisfactory, definition of “aggression,” while failing to do so with “national minority.”

2. Following the break down of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Eastern block in 1989 the situation as regards the treatment of minority issues has changed a little. There are two groups of reasons for this. Firstly, the “grand” strategic issues of military confrontation between the two blocks which used to monopolize everybody’s attention almost disappeared from the scene. Apart from that, while in the Cold War confrontation the primary concern of the Western democracies was the state of individual political and civil rights, now these rights, at least in their basic standards, ceased to be an issue. Thus the attention was subsequently turned to the rights of minority groups, including national minorities, which were still not fully guaranteed. Secondly, the “unfreezing” of the situation in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) brought into the open the issue of ethnicity, including the problem of the national minorities in a number of CEE states. These minorities were able to demand their rights within the emerging democratization process. To neglect these problems would have meant to overlook not only a legitimate human rights issue, but also an issue which has clear security and stability implications.

In a sense, the process of paying more attention to the issue of minorities did not develop simultaneously, but somewhat preceded the process of changes in CEE.

In Europe the efforts for the elaboration of new standards for minority rights were intensified already in the early and mid-80’s, especially in the framework of the Council of Europe and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe - OSCE [at that time still the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe - CSCE]. These efforts have brought about marked improvements on the normative level, to which we will return later. However, the concept of individual rights still prevails today, and the principles of sovereignty and non-interference, while played down in a number of aspects, remain as a counter-balance to international concerns for minority rights.

3. Minorities are still generally perceived as a reason for mistrust and potential disputes, and not for rapprochement between the “host states” and “kin-states.” Rather than welcoming the presence of minorities on their territories as “bridge-builders” in their relations with their neighbors, some states prefer to stick to the approach that “good fences make good neighbors.” In certain situations minorities are still perceived primarily as a security threat. Europe’s recent history has very few cases where the presence of minorities has been used as a bond linking the states, the clearest example being the Swedish minority in Finland. Some smaller minorities, especially those which do not come from immediately neighboring states (e.g. Slovaks in Yugoslavia), have been treated by the states concerned as a positive element in the bilateral relations. In most other cases, however, especially when it comes to relatively big minorities in neighboring states, the issue has been a source of discord, rather than accord.

While it cannot be denied that minorities indeed present a complex issue which can evolve into a factor complicating inter-state relations, it still requires a combination of elements to turn this problem into a security threat. Even though the following list is certainly not an exhaustive one, we consider that it contains the most important elements which, by themselves or, more likely in a combination with others, have the potential of transforming a minority issue into a security problem or threat. These are, in order of relative importance:

- duration of minority status (traditional minorities vs. new minorities).

Some of these factors are self-explanatory, while others have a more complex nature and their effects are not always the same.

For example, it is clear that repressive policy towards a minority may eliminate security threat in the short run, while in the long run it may have destabilizing effects. Similarly, irredentist or imperialist ambitions put minorities in a precarious position and tend to provoke repressive or retaliatory policies on the part of the host state. The Third Reich exploitation of the ethnic German minorities’ real or fabricated grievances in order to pursue territorial gains at the expense of some CEE states eventually resulted in the migration or expulsion of the greater part of the German minority from Czechoslovakia, Poland and Yugoslavia after WORLD WAR II. More recently, in the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, the ethnic communities of Serbs and Croats outside their mother states were used as a pretext for open or hidden territorial aspirations, especially against Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Here again desertion -voluntary or forceful - of these minorities from the territories they have been living on for centuries and return to the mother states have been or might become the ultimate result.

Of course, manipulation of minorities is much more difficult with numerically small and/or territorially dispersed minorities. Since they do not present a security threat, host states can pursue a relatively tolerant and non-discriminatory policy towards them. However, this is not always the case, the example being the discrimination against Roma, in spite of the fact that they do not present any security threat, since they do not have a neighboring “kin state” and are usually territorially dispersed.

The level of urbanization can also play a role in the different situations. Minorities in rural areas tend to preserve their separate identity longer and are more easily organized in compact groups in a crisis situation. Urbanizing a minority would seem a convenient strategy to eliminate, in the long run, a basis for potential security threats involving this minority. Therefore, the campaign of forceful “urbanization” pursued in Ceausescu’s Romania was perceived, especially in Transylvania, not just as a scheme of “modernization,” but as a long-term strategy of uprooting the identity of the Hungarian minority living in the villages of the area.

On the other hand, the process of urbanization and the education of a new and self-confident intellectual elite can stimulate the identity build-up of a minority and heighten its aspirations and radicalism. This has been shown in the development of Kosovo after WORLD WAR II and especially in the 1970’s and 1980’s. However, the attempts to slow down, control or even reverse this process can be a backlash which may increase security threats.

Similarly, the duration of minority status can play different roles in different periods and situations. One would generally assume that the “old,” “traditional” minorities, which are used to their status do not pose a security threat to the host state, while groups which find themselves suddenly relegated to this status, usually as a result of territorial changes or a breakup of a country, can immediately become a security issue (e.g. Serbs in Croatia; Serbs and Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina; Russians in Moldova). However, it is also true that some new minorities - recognized or unrecognized - like Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks in Slovenia and Russians in some Baltic states have not become a security threat, while other “traditional” minorities, like Kosovo Albanians and Macedonian Albanians, are increasingly posing such a threat.

It would therefore seem that the importance of these factors is only relative and secondary and that they can make a difference only in combination with other factors (e.g. repression and irredentism).

Of course, the development of democratic institutions both within the minority and majority populations (i.e. in the whole country concerned) have an indisputable positive impact and significantly reduce the threat on security. However, the building of genuinely democratic and tolerant societies with fully established democratic institutions is a long process. Thus in some regions, like the Balkans, which are generally lagging behind in this process and which have a complex ethnic structure, the issue of minorities will remain not only a human rights issue, but also a security problem for some years to come.

It is widely assumed that the “ethnic mixture” of the Balkans makes the region a “troubled area” from the point of view of security. “The powder-keg of Europe” is the usual label given to it. Indeed, the sheer number and territorial distribution of minorities in the region is impressive, even if we list only those generally known. Albanians make up sizable minorities in Yugoslavia and Macedonia while an Albanian-speaking assimilated minoity exists in Greece; Macedonian minorities are present in Bulgaria, Albania and Greece; Turkish minorities live in Bulgaria and Greece, while there is a Greek minority in Albania; small Bulgarian minorities live in Yugoslavia, Macedonia, and Romania. In the northern part of the region, Hungarians are the most numerous and widespread minority, represented in four countries: Romania, Yugoslavia, Croatia and Slovenia. The last two countries also have small Italian minorities.

To these “traditional minorities,” new ones - although most of them not recognized as such - can be added. These are the ones which resulted mainly from the breakup of ex-Yugoslavia. These are: Serbs in Croatia and Macedonia; Croats in Serbia and Montenegro; Moslems (Bosniaks) in Serbia, Montenegro and Croatia. In the other end of the region, in Moldova, there is a new minority (Russians), and an old one (Gagauz).

Besides these minorities, most of which have their kin-states in the immediate neighborhood, there are minorities without such territorial connections, like the already mentioned Roma and Vlachs.

Finally, there is the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina where the three ethnic groups are not minorities but constituent nations with equal rights. However, as a result of population transfers and territorial divisions within the country, some segments of the Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks have found themselves in a position of a minority, or are treated in such a way.

4. The actual position of minorities and their legal status in the Balkans differ from one country to another. Without going into details, it is interesting to note that the existence of minorities with their corresponding rights is recognized more readily - at least formally and on the legal level - in the newly emerging democracies (the post-Communist states), than in those which have longer democratic traditions like Greece and Turkey. Recent history shows that the last mentioned countries have mixed records in parliamentary democracy. Still, they have adopted the basic ideas of Western democracy a long time ago. This indicates that even the development of democratic institutions does not by itself solve any problems posed by minorities, unless there is a clear break with certain historical prejudices and creation of such a security environment in the region, in which the recognition and improvement of the rights of minorities would not be perceived as opening the door to security risks.

If we take into account the above mentioned factors, it would seem that, despite the fact that there are many minorities in the Balkans, only a few of them pose an actual or potential security threat. The combination of factors as size, territorial concentration, mutually connected elements of repression and irredentism or separatism, would suggest that minorities like Albanians (in Kosovo and Macedonia), Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina (although these two nations do not have the status of minority in this state) have the potential of becoming a security threat. This is true to a lesser extent for Turks in Bulgaria, and is least likely for Hungarians in Romania and Yugoslavia. Without going into the concrete problems of the different minorities and the legitimacy of their demands, we can confidently say that the conflict between minorities’ aspirations for increased self-rule or autonomy and the principle of territorial sovereignty and integrity, creates an unstable and security threatening situation.

5. The international community has recognized in its documents, especially those adopted since the late 1980’s, that human rights, including the rights of national minorities, have a security dimension and is therefore a matter of legitimate concern. For example, the “emergency mechanism” of the OSCE, adopted in Prague in 1992, implies that gross violations of human rights present a threat to international peace and security. That is why in cases like that a special mechanism - an emergency meeting convened even without the agreement of the participating state in question - can be put into effect..

However, the connection between the treatment of minorities - at the time defined mainly as religious ones - and stability and security in the Balkans was internationally recognized already in the decisions of the Berlin Congress in 1878. The recognition of the independence of the new nation-states (Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia) was tied up with the acceptance of the obligation to respect the rights of Moslems and other religious minorities on their territory.

Similarly, after WW1 minority guarantees were again imposed on the newly independent Central and Eastern European states and on some of the defeated states like Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary and Turkey. However, such guarantees were not required from Germany, or from the victorious powers like France, Italy and the United Kingdom.

The League of Nations developed a rather elaborate system of minority protection in the inter-war period on the basis of treaties with the states required to guarantee minority rights.

The first treaty like that was signed in Versailles on June 29, 1919 between the Allies and Poland. This served as a model to similar treaties with other CEE countries. The treaty obligations included provisions on non-discrimination of the recognized minorities and provided for special protection of their ethnic, religious or linguistic identity, including the right to officially use their mother tongue, to have their own schools and to practice their religion. The League of Nations acted as a guarantor of these rights and established a mechanism to deal with the complaints in the cases of violation of minority rights.

However, the system of minority protection broke down with the rise of totalitarianism and the demise of the League of Nations. In 1934 Poland renounced its treaty obligations for minority protection. The most serious blow on the idea of international minority protection came from the fact that minorities started to be used for provoking international rivalry and for undermining European security. The so called “revisionist powers” - the ones who were defeated in WW1 - and most of all Germany and Hungary exploited minority grievances - real or provoked - against new states like Czechoslovakia, Poland and Yugoslavia. On the other hand, these new states often tried to evade their responsibilities towards their minorities. Ultimately, the demands of national minorities were used as pretext by Nazi Germany and by Hungary to justify the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia (1938) and the annexation of the southern part of Slovakia and Transylvania to Hungary (1940).

This abuse of minority problems and the inability of the League of Nations to prevent policies like the ones which contributed to the outbreak of WORLD WAR II were among the main reasons which made the United Nations concentrate on individual human rights, non-discrimination and equal protection of individuals, rather than on minority protection.

The treaties signed after WORLD WAR II did not include clauses on minority rights protection. There were, however, some exceptions like the Austrian State Treaty of 1955. In it Austria accepted obligations for the protection of its Slovenian and Croatian minorities. Other documents in the same vein are: the agreement between Austria and Italy from 1946 regarding the rights of the German speaking minority in Southern Tirol (Alto Adige); the treaty between the Federal Republic of Germany and Denmark from 1955, which includes clauses on the protection of the German and the Danish minority in the respective country. Still, for many years after WORLD WAR II the general assumption was that insistence on minority rights is detrimental to international peace and security. Following the example of the UN, most of the regional organizations adopted the same negative, or at best, reserved attitude towards minority rights. There are two notable exceptions in the face of the Council of Europe and the CSCE, which devoted more attention to the issue, but again concentrating primarily on the protection of individual human rights.

The change of attitude mainly in Europe towards the development of a system of minority rights came about with the end of block confrontation and the reemergence of ethnically provoked conflicts, which affected the continent for the first time after WORLD WAR II.

6. This brief overview of the treatment of minority issues in international relations in Europe in a hundred years’ period - from the Berlin Congress to the fall of the Berlin Wall - shows that the approach to the issue has been largely determined by the changes in the international system.

The periods of increased attention to minority rights were usually an answer to big territorial changes or, to be more precise, an answer to the disintegration of multinational empires and the consequent redrawing of borders. These new borders could not accommodate the whole ethnic complexity and therefore created numerous and often quite large minorities within the newly emerging states. The insistence on minority rights at the Berlin Congress was a response to the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans; the Versailles system introduced guarantees which dealt with the ethnic repercussions of the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; the renewed and increased attention to minority issues in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s coincided with the process of dissolution of three multinational federations - Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union. The exception to the post-1945 situation was a reaction to the unfortunate experience of the League of Nations’ minority system, as well as a reflection of the fact that unlike the respective situations in 1878, 1918, and 1990-1991, WORLD WAR II did not result in the breakup of multinational states but, on the contrary, in their reestablishment (e.g. Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia). Although significant territorial changes did occur, they were mainly at the expense of Germany, whose nationals in the East emigrated from the territories they used to inhabit, thus diminishing substantially the number of German nationals in these regions.

Regardless of whether minority issues are treated with increased concern or with clear preference for individual rights, there have always been some security implications. In dealing with this aspect of the problem, various strategies have been applied with different success. The international community, usually represented by the victorious Great Powers, has not yet tried to tackle the roots of the problem, but just encouraged the implementation of measures for the elimination of the problem. This has been done through the - either publicly known or tacit - endorsement of population transfers or assimilation. For example, in 1923 there was an exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey which involved almost 2 million people, while in the immediate post-WORLD WAR II years over 6.5 million ethnic Germans left for Germany from Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and Yugoslavia, with the Allies’ approval given at the Potsdam conference. Similar was the approach at the Paris Peace Conference in 1946 which dealt with moving ethnic Italians from former Yugoslavia (Croatia and Slovenia) to Italy. On the whole, the insistence on individual human rights during the larger part of the post-WORLD WAR II period in a sense encouraged or, at least, overlooked the assimilation policies towards national minorities.

In retrospect, it could be summarized that the issue of national minorities was treated as a security issue with human rights elements in the latter half of the 19^th century, as a human rights and security issue in the inter-war period, and as a human rights issue with security implications in the post-WORLD WAR II period. Finally, in the post-Cold War period, it is treated again both as a security and a human rights issue. In this sense, we are back to a century ago - to the Berlin Congress situation. Of course, now we have a significantly more advanced understanding of human rights and security concepts.

7. What are the main elements of the strategy of the international community in dealing with the security aspects of the problems of national minorities today?

It is interesting to note that with respect to the most acute problem - the status of national minorities in the new states - the approach strikingly resembles the one taken more than a hundred years ago. It relates state recognition with guarantees for national minorities. This was the approach which the legal advisory commission formed by the European Community (the Badinter Commission) recommended with respect to the recognition of the states emerging from the breakup of ex-Yugoslavia, and which de facto became the basis for the official EC policy.

The European Union today requires from all its prospective members to solve their outstanding bilateral problems with their neighbors, particularly the ones related to minorities. It is largely because of this condition that Hungary took a more conciliatory approach to the issue of the Hungarian minority in Romania, while the latter, on its part, displayed more flexibility and openness as regards minority rights. This enabled the two countries to conclude a treaty in 1996. It regulates the position and rights of the Hungarian national minority in Romania. The protection of national minorities is also among the criteria for Council of Europe admission.

On the multilateral level, the basic concern of the international community is still the reconciliation of national minorities’ rights with states’ interest for territorial integrity. We have already stated that during the greater part of the post-WORLD WAR II period the solution to this dilemma has been sought in the emphasis of individual human rights and in the incorporation of national minorities’ rights into the general principle of human rights. An additional element to all that are the references to principles like territorial integrity and sovereign equality, so that there is no connection between them and the principle of self-determination of peoples. This cautious approach was, for example, adopted in the CSCE Final Act of 1975.

Although such a balanced approach prevails even today, it has been changed somewhat due to important advances in minority rights’ protection undertaken in the last decade, primarily in the framework of the Council of Europe and the CSCE, as well as in the UN.

The first steps in the direction to the recognition of minority rights as collective rights and directly relating them to security concerns were taken in the Copenhagen Document of the CSCE Conference on the Human Dimension (1990). There it is explicitly stated that the rights of national minorities “are an essential factor for peace, justice, stability and democracy,” implying that these rights should be enjoyed collectively (“in community with others”).

The Report of the Geneva CSCE Expert Meeting on National Minorities (1991) went even further and adopted a provision in which the participating states explicitly recognized that the issues concerning national minorities “are matters of legitimate international concern and do not constitute an exclusively internal affair of the respective state.”

The approach within the UN has been somewhat more cautious and reserved. This can be explained by the fact that many member-states are Third World countries, which are extra sensitive for their new statehood and are primarily concerned with the preservation of their territorial integrity. Although the 1992 UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities contains indirect references to the collective aspects of these rights (“rights could be exercised individually or in community with others”), the emphasis was put on the provision that minority rights should not be the basis for secession or irredentism (Article 8 of the Declaration contains references to sovereign rights and territorial integrity).

The importance of minority rights for stable relations in Europe was recognized in the EU-sponsored Pact on Stability in Europe adopted in 1993. The protection of minorities constitutes one of the five basic elements of the Pact, but the principle of inviolability of frontiers is singled out again. This is not surprising, keeping in mind that one of the main initiators of the Pact was France - a country which is traditionally reserved as regards collective minority rights. It is evident that in today’s Europe there is a growing convergence of views on many issues, including on national minorities. However, there are still persistent differences between the countries which are for individual minority rights and territorial integrity and those which advocate collective rights and territorial autonomy. These differences are due to the historical backgrounds and doctrinal traditions of the countries - federalist vs. centralist traditions. Yet what they primarily reflect is the fact that some countries - the more reserved ones - host minorities, while others - the more open ones - have their kin as minorities abroad. The first group includes: Bulgaria, France, Greece, Romania, Slovakia and Turkey, while the other group includes: Austria, Germany, Hungary, Italy and the Netherlands. It is interesting to note that former Yugoslavia used to be one of the most radical proponents of minority rights, insisting on the introduction of collective minority rights in the CSCE Final Act of 1975, while today, twenty years after that, most of the countries which emerged from the former state are much more restrictive, avoiding collective minority rights, particularly when it comes to real autonomy.

8. It could be concluded that the common denominator of the different positions and interests of the European states is still closer to the traditional view on the primacy of individual rights. However, two new norms have emerged in the recent documents on minority issues - the first one aims at the prevention of forced assimilation and population transfers, while the other deals with various forms of autonomy and self-government for minorities, albeit mainly in the form of recommendations to the states. Both types of norms are present in the Copenhagen Document of 1990 - although the reference to autonomy is conditioned by the clause “in accordance with the States’ policies” - and have been reaffirmed and further elaborated on in later OSCE documents.

There is yet another new trend. While before 1989 the issue of minorities used to be treated mainly as a prerogative for domestic policies, after the changes in Europe it is considered a matter of legitimate concern of the international community. As mentioned above, this change was introduced in the Geneva document (1991), to be repeated and reinforced in the Moscow Document on the Human Dimension of the CSCE (1991) and in the Helsinki Document of the CSCE Summit Meeting in 1992.

The Council of Europe has taken a similar approach, stating in the very first article of the European Convention on the Protection of National Minorities (1995), that minority rights are “a matter of international cooperation.”

Recommendation 1201 (1993) of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe is of special importance for the promotion of minority rights on the normative level. It is probably the most advanced document on the issue to date. It speaks explicitly of collective rights of minorities and refers indirectly to territorial autonomy, recommending that in certain situations minorities be given a special status, corresponding to their historical and territorial position (Article 11). However, the fact that this is a non-mandatory document gives possibilities for restrictive and selective interpretation. The recent example of that is the Romanian-Hungarian bilateral treaty of 1996 which stipulates that the Romanian side does not consider Recommendation 1201 as implying territorial autonomy.

The Recommendation also lists specific minority rights like: the right to form minority political parties; to use publicly their language in contact with the governmental and judicial institutions; to have schools in their mother tongue, etc. Finally, the Recommendation attempts to give a definition of “national minority,” enumerating criteria such as: residence on a defined territory and links with the state; specific ethnic, cultural, religious or linguistic characteristics; representation in “a sufficient” number which is still smaller that the rest of the population; separate identity, accompanied by a wish to preserve this identity.

Along with these developments on the normative level, instruments and mechanisms for monitoring of the implementation of human rights, including minority rights, have been elaborated in the European framework. For instance, the Council of Europe requires from its member-states to report annually on the implementation of human rights standards, thereby including minority rights. Violation of human rights by member-states can in certain cases result in their suspension or even in their expulsion from the Council.

The OSCE has created the multi-stage human dimension mechanism which can be invoked by a participating state vis-a-vis other participating states in cases of presumed non-implementation of commitments in the field of human rights. With reference to minority rights this mechanism has already been applied to Croatia, Estonia, Moldova, Romania, former Yugoslavia and today’s Yugoslavia ( Serbia-Montenegro).

In 1992, at the initiative of the Netherlands supported by the EU, a special OSCE instrument was established - the High Commissioner on National Minorities. It is another illustration that the security implication of minority issues are clearly recognized by the participating states. The primary role of the Commissioner is not just to review the implementation of the undertaken commitments in this field, but also to act as the instrument of early warning and prevention in situations where minority questions can evolve into security threats.

9. These recent developments suggest that, in spite of the political differences, the international community has not been unprepared, as it is often claimed, for the reemergence of ethnic problems and conflicts.

As we already noted, the process of developing instruments for dealing with emerging and potential problems, including ethnic tensions, started already in the period between 1986 and 1989 at the Vienna CSCE Follow-up Meeting. There the West European states managed to ensure the adoption of the above mentioned mechanism concerning the “human dimension.” The mechanism was further elaborated on at the Conference on the Human Dimension in Moscow in September 1991. It represented the first, albeit procedural, departure from the up to then existing absolute principle of consensus (i.e. the addressed state could not refuse the initiation of the mechanism against itself, or refuse to give information or convene a bilateral meeting on the disputable questions with regard to human rights, including minority rights). The next important step was made on the eve of the CSCE Paris Summit meeting in October 1990 with the adoption of mechanisms for consultations in cases of unusual military activities. The Summit did not accept - due to the Soviet Union’s refusal - an even more far-reaching Western proposal related to the so-called “crisis mechanism” (e.g. the possibility to convene extraordinary meetings of high officials of the CSCE states upon the request of a certain number of countries). However, the instrument was adopted in the following year - at the CSCE Ministerial Meeting in Berlin, June 1991 - and almost immediately implemented, together with the mechanism on unusual military activities, when the conflict in former Yugoslavia broke out.

Further important steps towards the creation of a more elaborate CSCE structure were taken at the 1992 Helsinki Summit. There provisions concerning the possibilities of CSCE engagement in peace operations were adopted and, as already mentioned, the function of the High Commissioner on National Minorities was established (i.e. an instrument “for conflict prevention at the earliest possible stage”). The decisions on the extension of the prerogatives of the CSCE Chairperson-in-Office, as well as of the “troika” consisting of the former, the current and the future Chairperson, were also very important. The Chairperson was thus authorized to create ad hoc initiative groups in particular situations and dispatch his special representatives into crisis regions. As additional means for conflict prevention and conflict resolution fact finding and rapporteur missions were introduced.

This stage of organizational transformation of the CSCE was completed at the Budapest Summit in December 1994. There a Permanent Council was established (previously it existed as the Permanent Committee). The Council was given the authority to carry out operational tasks, including the sending of missions to crisis regions. The Committee of Senior Officials transformed into the Senior Council, which meets, as a rule, three times a year in Prague. The logical outcome of this evolution was the decision of the Budapest Summit to rename the CSCE into the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

Hence, it cannot be said that the OSCE, which has evolved under the growing influence of the Western countries, especially of the EU, was unprepared for the breakout of conflicts in Eastern Europe. There were relevant instruments at the Organization’s disposal. What it lacked, however, was the political will to act decisively and forcefully.

10. It is still to be seen whether, with all this experience, the international community will be able to respond in a timely and more effective way to new challenges, including those related to ethnic problems.

Admittedly, national minorities still represent one of the most controversial issues in international relations, since this question touches on the national unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of states. However, it seems that the international community, at least in Europe, has finally developed a relatively coherent strategy for dealing with the problem. Even the most restrictive countries do not deny the importance of minority rights, at least on the individual level. Moreover, policies of open assimilation have been discredited. The rights of national minorities in the field of culture and education are heading to a wider acceptance. On the other hand, political rights including the right to self-rule, particularly in relation to territorial autonomy, are still disputed. These rights would certainly be less objectionable to the states, if they are clearly distinguished from the right to self-determination (statehood), a right whose subjects can be nations only. This approach still dominates both the theory and practice of international relations. It has been spelled out in more or less explicit terms in all the main documents on national minorities. As it is noted by analysts of the problem, even the most recent and advanced text, from the period 1990-1995, explicitly affirms the inviolability of existing boundaries within the nation-state system and the supreme authority of states over their citizens, regardless of whether they are members of national minorities or not. Minority rights are still held in check by traditional principles of state sovereignty, territorial integrity and inviolability of frontiers.

However, a recent generally accepted norm is the one that human rights issues, and by implication also the rights of national minorities, cannot remain an exclusive prerogative of the states, especially if these issues have, as they often do, wider security implications. The last OSCE Summit, held in Lisbon in December 1996, explicitly recognized that ethnic conflicts represent one of the most fundamental threats to security and stability in Europe. Article 2 of the Lisbon Declaration on a Common and Comprehensive Security Model for Europe for the 21^st century states that “ethnic tensions, aggressive nationalism, violations of the rights of persons belonging to national minorities, as well as serious difficulties of economic transition can threaten stability and may also spread to other states.” At this meeting the OSCE confirmed that one of its basic tasks is conflict prevention. The main Declaration of the Summit (Para 5) states that “the OSCE has a key role to play in fostering security and stability in all their dimensions” and that it will “continue efforts to further enhance its efficiency as a primary instrument for early warning, conflict prevention, crisis management and post-conflict rehabilitation capabilities.”

Basing itself on these general principles, the OSCE has taken a concrete position on a number of issues involving ethnic tensions such as those in Chechnya, Moldova, Nagorno Karabakh and, most recently, Kosovo. In the March 11, 1998 decision of the Permanent Council of the OSCE in Vienna the representatives of the 54 participating states (excluding Yugoslavia which is still under suspension in the OSCE) note that the “crisis in Kosovo is not solely an internal affair of the FRY [Federal Republic of Yugoslavia] because of the violations of OSCE principles and commitments on human rights and because it has a significant impact on the security of the region.” Undoubtedly, the OSCE would be the appropriate organization to contribute to the solution of the problem, but its involvement is still rejected by the Yugoslav authorities. A possible solution could be the combination of the CSCE action with the reinstatement of the FRY status in the OSCE. This has been hinted at in the statement of the Permanent Council. In their call to the FRY to accept without preconditions an immediate return of the OSCE missions of long duration to Kosovo, Sandjak an Vojvodina, the participating states also noted that the return of these missions is essential for the Federation’s future participation in the OSCE.