RADIO FREE EUROPE/RADIO LIBERTY, PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC
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RFE/RL NEWSLINE  20 July 1999

HAS HUNGARY OVERSTATED ITS VOJVODINA CASE?

by Michael Shafir

	 There are indications that Budapest's repeated
insistence on the need for the autonomy of neighboring
Vojvodina is having diminished returns. Hungary's new
allies in NATO and its prospective future EU partners
have distanced themselves from the Hungarian position,
according to which the Vojvodina Magyars must be
safeguarded against the idiosyncrasies of Slobodan
Milosevic's regime in Belgrade. There are three reasons
for this development.
 	First, Hungarian leaders have been using vague
terminology, such as "personal autonomy," borrowed from
the program of the Hungarian Democratic Federation of
Romania. That term, which has been widely employed but
seldom clarified, means little more than ensuring that
Vojvodina ethnic Hungarians living in settlements where
there is no Magyar majority have the right to
participate in electing provincial representative
bodies. The lack of understanding of this term is self-
evident: The Hungarian language is not exactly an
international communications tool, nor are leaders of
Hungary's new allies known for browsing through
Hungarian publications over their morning porridge or
croissants.
	Second, Budapest's behavior during the Kosova
conflict failed to meet the expectations of its new
allies. While that behavior was not as unsatisfactory as
that of the Czech government--prominent members of which
criticized the alliance as air strikes took place
against Yugoslavia --the Hungarian cabinet obviously
considered it had done its duty by allowing the alliance
to use the Taszar air base for anti-Yugoslav sorties.
Moreover, according to a report in the daily
"Vilaggazdasag" on 25 June, Prime Minister Viktor Orban
had vetoed in April a planned NATO ground operation from
Hungary.
	Budapest repeatedly emphasized that Yugoslavia's
likely reprisals against the 350,000-strong Magyar
minority in the province prevented it from contributing
troops to a possible ground force. Its worries about
such reprisals are likely to have been the reason for
Orban's vetoing an invasion from Hungary. But after the
conflict ended and Hungary escalated its own Vojvodina
autonomy campaign, her allies were little inclined to
follow a course that could lead to a new conflict, one
for which neither domestic nor international public
opinion were prepared.
	Not that the Hungarian argument lacks in
persuasiveness. Orban, Foreign Minister Janos Martonyi,
and other Hungarian officials have all pointed out that
since the region's autonomy was abolished by Milosevic
in 1989, Vojvodina has lost much of its multi-ethnic
character. The break up of Tito's Yugoslavia saw Serbs
from Croatia and Bosnia settled in Vojvodina, and the
region's ethnic balance was further altered by the
recent conflict in Kosova. In an address to a NATO
workshop in Budapest on 21 June, Orban said that no
fewer than 250,000 Serbs fled from Kosova to Vojvodina
once Milosevic's defeat became clear. Even more
worrisome, as Hungarian President Arpad Goncz indicated
during a visit to Norway in late June, members of
Serbian paramilitary organizations from Kosova had
appeared in Vojvodina, increasing the prospect of
ethnic-cleansing in the province.
	The third reason for NATO's reluctance to support
the Hungarian position stems from the reaction of
Hungary's neighbors, other than Yugoslavia, which fear
that the next step in applying the autonomy model might
be "imported" to their territory. When NATO Supreme
Commander Europe, General Wesley Clark spoke in Budapest
last month about the obliteration of the Trianon legacy
(by which he meant non-interference in so-called
"internal affairs" when human rights are at stake),
Romania's politicians were united in denouncing the
declaration and calling for "clarification." It was not
sufficient for NATO headquarters in Brussels to send a
verbatim report of Clark's statement to Bucharest, which
the media printed in full. Clark himself had to reassure
his hosts, during a brief visit of Bucharest on 15 July,
that he had not suggested that borders would in any way
be questioned after Kosova. NATO was pursuing regional
stability, he stressed, and "stability means no change
of borders."
	When William Cohen visited Budapest on 12 July, the
U.S. defense secretary's hosts were confronted with his
obvious reluctance to back ethnic Hungarians in
Vojvodina. "Magyar Hirlap" reported that when Orban
asked for such support, Cohen "politely" changed the
subject. The look on his face, according to an AP
report, was "not again!" A senior US official, speaking
on condition of anonymity, told AP that the U.S. would
certainly not meet Orban's request that the issue be
included on the Western agenda for talks on the future
of the Balkans. "The last thing we need," he said, "is
another push for autonomy."
	Likewise, a Foreign Ministry official from one of
the EU member states told "Nepszabadsag" that the issue
of autonomy for Vojvodina's Hungarians will be at the
bottom of the list of priorities in talks on the
region's stability. The official rejected the Kosova-
Vojvodina link, noting that the two provinces are not
comparable, since one's population is 90 percent
Albanian and the other's 17 percent Hungarian. When
Orban was asked whether his demand that NATO "guarantee"
autonomy meant using military force, he replied "How
else?"
	He would have been well advised to come up with a
different answer. Unless, of course, he is ready to
settle for an air base in the U.S, from which Hungary
would launch air strikes to defend its Vojvodina
brethren.

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