Subject: Minority report - The Nation, July 3, 1995, Christopher Hitchens From: Stratos Safioleas page 7, minority report Christopher Hitchens Athens Greece is the only Balkan country to be a member of the European Union; the only country professing Eastern Orthodoxy to be a member of NATO; and the nearest approach in the region ot an ethnically homogeneous nation. As a partial outcome of these anomalies, Athens is the only "Western" capital where one encounters a public opinion that is generally pro-Serb. Formally speaking, the Greek government observes the sanctions on Belgrade and attends the endless Euro-summits at which reprisal and retaliation are discussed. Informally, there are about one hundred Greek volunteers fighting on the Serbian side in Bosnia, and a much greater number - either from pulpit, neswpaper column or coffee bar - cheering them on. The roots of this are principally historical. Leave Thessaloniki in the north and drive towards the border with former Yugoslavia - now the disputed frontier of Skopje "Macedonia" - and you come to Polycastro and its monument to the Macedonian Front. Here are well-ordered grave sites and military memorials, flying the flags of France, Great Britain, Italy, Greece and Serbia. Here, also is a special monument commemorating the alliance between Eleftherios Venizelos, the liberal Greek Prime Minister, and Nicola Pasic, leader of the Serbian Radical Party. In the course of that very costly campaign, which outlasted the First Worl War, Thessaloniki at last became part of Greece, but then Kemal Ataturk, who was born in Thessaloniki, succeeded in claensing all the historic Greek populations of Asia Minor while consolidating his power in Turkey. Modern Turkey's continuing interest in its former colony of Bosnia, combined with Turkey's increasing military alliance with Albania, more or less guarantees continuing Greek suspicion of anything that may resemble an anti-Serbian axis. The element of religious solidarity in all this may possibly be overdone. After all, the Bulgarians and their allies in Skopje are devoutly Orthodox. Moreover, many Greeks are secular, and it is not all that long since the fascist and corporatist slogan of the disastrous military junta was "Greece for Christian Greeks." Elements in the church do their stuff, hymning Orthodox brotherhood and the rest of it, but for many Greeks the issue is one of history and still more of geography, and not of common ritual. Many of them, in any case, resent the way the Serbs have precipitated a regional crisis. A former Foreign Minister, encountered on the street, announces loudly that Belgrade started the whole thing, and could have stopped it, and didn't, and thus must bear almost the entire responsibility. Other Greek, aware of the potential threat from a future "Greater Albania" movement - whose maps already lay claim to much of Greek Epirus as well as most of what is now Skopje Macedonia - are also aware that Greater Albania is an inevitable byproduct of the Greater Serbia project. Serbia is a selfish and provinical state, with no ambitions outside the Balkans and no real interest larger than the domination of its former Yugoslav partners. Greece, by contrast, is necessarily the apotheosis of internationalism. It is a Balkan country, but also a Mediterranean and a maritime one. It has a large diaspora in North America, Europe, South Africa and Australasia. Its ties to the Arab and Muslim world have always been extremely close. It cannot afford to be penned in by the definition of "Orthodox" or any of its analogues. The recent partial Greek success in bargaining for the release of the Serb-held United Nations hostages is also an illustration of the hazards of becoming embroiled in that way. Papandreou's Defense and Foreign ministers, Makis Arsenis and Karolos Papoulias, went to Belgrade in the first days of June to see Slobodan Milosevic. He refused to receive them, on the grounds that he hoped to use the prisoners as a lever to secure the lifting of international sanctions. The two ministers accordingly bypassed him and went direct to Pale to see Radovan Karadzic. Privately they describe Karadzic's entourage as totally subsurvient to Milosevic yet psychologically determined to prove their independence. The Pale Serbs agreed to release the hostages almost at once but agreed to a short delay while Milosevic was "let in on" the deal. Informed of this agreement by Arsenis, Milosevic was extremely cross and accused Greece both of interfering in inter-Serb affairs and of undermining his own bargaining position. To this Arsenis was compelled to reply that Greece has been paying a high economic price by having to support the embargo, and a high moral price in international forums for its sypmathy for Serbia. The fact is that Milosevic and Karadzic are something of an embarassment even to their friends. (The Russian Foreign Minister, Andrei Kozyrev, was also snubbed by Milosevic when he attempted a hostage inititiative.) It may well be that in speaking too glibly of Orthodox "sensibilities" the NATO powers are confusing the current bankrupt and isolated Serbian junta with deeper, more complex factors. Yet there is still an emotional reason for many Greeks to identify with the embattled pariahs to their north. "There is an undiscussed sense of shame in this country," said one close friend of mine. "Cyprus was invaded by the Turks, and we never fought or resisted. We are menaced on our borders - in Thrace, in Epirus and in Macedonia - and we only seek approval from other countries or alliances. The Serbs do not care what the world thinks of them. They are defiant. They fight." When the Serbs of Pale proclaimed their "independent" state, on of their leaders told John Burns of The New York Times that of course they would get away with it, pious U.N. resolutions notwithstanding. Had not the Turks got away with their forcible, illegal partition of Cyprus ? Of course the great powers colluded in that too - as usual, thinking of any partition of a troublesome small country as better than none. That time, it was ostensibly to appease Turkish feeling. When it comes of carving up other people's countries, the West is agnostic and, so to speak, value free.