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.President Gligorov repeatedly worked to ease tensions withMilosevic, humouring the Yugoslav leader over his objections to thedeployment of US troops in Macedonia as part of the UN preventiveforce deployed there to prevent a spillover from the Bosnian conflictin 1993.The end of the sanctions in November 1995 and the signing of theDayton Accord ending the Bosnian War in December 1995, meaningthat Skopje no longer needed to worry about being drawn into thatconflict, started a new phase in relations with Belgrade climaxing withYugoslavia s recognition of Macedonia in April 1996.This went aheadin spite of remarks by Gligorov during his first official visit to Croatiathat month, in which he offended Serbs by praising the Croatian army.2AlbaniaAlbania welcomed the independence of Macedonia as a counterweightto Serbia and a nuisance to Greece.But, in the 1990s, Tirana was notparticularly vehement in its protests to Skopje against conditions forthe ethnic Albanians in Macedonia.It was more concerned with theAlbanians in Kosovo.Albania took in 350,000 refugees during theKosovo emergency of 1999, placing considerable strain on theimpoverished country of 3.5 million people (about half the total numberof Albanians worldwide).During the Kosovo crisis, Albania followed NATO policy closely.Tirana s acute dependency on foreign assistance meant that theAlbanian authorities were extremely reluctant to become involved inthe crisis in western Macedonia.However, the possibility of Albanian military involvement couldnot be excluded if the crisis were to spiral totally out of control.WesternON T HE B RI NK OF CONF L I CT  83policymakers were concerned that, in the event of Albanianintervention in Macedonia, Tirana might seek military support fromits regional ally, Turkey.BulgariaAs the first country to recognize Macedonia as a state in 1992, Bulgariawas in a good position to increase its influence in Macedonia bypresenting itself as a protector of the Macedonians.This promptedspeculation that Sofia might re-float the old idea of a Balkan Federationlinking Bulgaria and Macedonia with which Tito and the Bulgariancommunists had flirted in the late 1940s.The Serb nationalist press was suspicious of Sofia in the early 1990sand accused Macedonians of not wanting genuine independence butof aspiring to be part of a Greater Bulgaria.Ever since 1878, theBulgarians had regarded Macedonia as Bulgara irredenta and mostBulgarians denied that a separate Macedonian nation existed andviewed the Macedonian language as a dialect of Bulgarian.In 1990, Sofia restored the San Stefano Day national holiday on 3March, which had been abolished in 1946.This was interpreted asmeaning that Bulgaria still aspired to all the Macedonian territorywhich it was awarded under the short-lived San Stefano treaty.TheBulgarian President, Zeljo Zelev, was reported to have foiled a Serbian-Greek plan for the partition of Macedonia.Part of Zelev s Union ofDemocratic Forces, the Bulgarian anti-communist and pro-westernparty founded in 1989, had good relations with Georgievski snationalists and relations between Skopje and Sofia improved whenthe VMRO took power.On 22 February 1999, the Bulgarians buried the hatchet with Skopjea short time before the Kosovo war by recognising the existence of aMacedonian language, culture and nation separate from Bulgarian.The Macedonians renounced their claim on Pirin Macedonia.Thisput an end to fears that Macedonia would lay claim to the area, wherea handful of Bulgarians claim to be of Macedonian nationality.InMarch 1999, Bulgaria agreed to supply Macedonia with militaryequipment and the two armies held joint manoeuvres.Thisrapprochement enabled NATO to feel there would be stability in thearea to the east and south of the Kosovo battleground.In spring 2001, Bulgaria rushed military equipment to Macedoniaand it was felt Bulgaria might be willing to go to war to protect Skopjefrom the Albanian rebellion.Macedonia initially rejected offers ofmore direct military assistance from Sofia, however.The victory inthe summer of 2001 of the movement of the former Bulgarian king,84  MACE DONI ASimeon II, would have a calming effect on the region, since his populismdid not fuel nationalist aspirations towards Macedonia.When I interviewed him in Sofia during the election campaign,Simeon Saxe Coburg Gotha indicated he did not want Bulgaria to bedrawn into the conflict. Everybody is terribly worried by the eventsin Macedonia, was all he said, declining to be much drawn on such apainful subject for Bulgarians.Bosnia and HerzegovinaBosnia and Herzegovina is divided between the Bosnian Muslim andCroat-dominated Federation and the Bosnian Serb-dominatedRepublika Srpska.The Bosnian political elites have no interest inMacedonia, being absorbed instead after the Dayton peace agreementof 1995 in reconstruction, political change and relations with theinternational community that runs it as a protectorate.The main im-portance of Bosnia for the ethnic Macedonians was the fear that theircountry could follow the Bosnian example and end up divided betweenmainly Slav and predominantly Muslim entities or become involvedin an equally tragic civil war.Bosniaks, or Bosnian Muslims, are arelative majority in Bosnia s population of 4 million, making up some44 per cent against 31 per cent of Serbs and 17 per cent of Croats.In the election of 2002, President Kostunica indicated  highlycontroversially  that Belgrade still hopes to obtain control eventuallyof the Serb-run half of Bosnia, the Republika Srpska [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]