At the moment when Miroslav Lazanski is the ambassador in Moscow, and Marko Đurić was announced as the ambassador of Serbia in Washington, when the president of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, does not take the minister of foreign affairs, Ivica Dacić, to the signing of that "historic" something in Washington, when it is difficult for the strong pillars of foreign policy to discern in which direction Serbia is moving, the question arises as to who and how leads Serbian foreign policy, what are the criteria for the position of ambassador, how personnel decisions are made in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
How it was while Yugoslavia existed, which had an influence in world diplomacy disproportionate to its size and was an authority in global events, says Milan Predojević, the last ambassador of the SFRY to the German Democratic Republic, where he experienced the fall of the Berlin Wall. After graduating from the Faculty of Economics, Predojević worked at the Pen Factory in Zagreb, applied for a job vacancy in the State Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which was advertised in the newspaper, and began his diplomatic career in 1964. He served four times in the embassies in West and East Germany, became a kind of expert on economic and political relations with both Germanys, and during the break between the two missions abroad, he was the deputy federal minister for foreign trade.
"I was ambassador in East Berlin when the wall fell, and when I returned home, my country fell apart," says Predojevic. He could not identify with the politics of Slobodan Milošević, so after twenty-eight years he left the diplomatic service and went into private business. Today, as a pensioner, he observes Serbian foreign policy with displeasure, reproaching it for the lack of seriousness and professionalism that distinguished Yugoslav diplomacy in which he spent a good part of his business life, in which he rose from an intern to the position of ambassador.
"WEATHER": Why are you in 1992?. left the Secretariat for Foreign Affairs?
MILAN PREDOJEVIĆ: Because it was no longer the same ministry, compared to the one in which I started my diplomatic career. It was a ministry in disintegration, the state was in disintegration, and there is no good embassy without a good ministry, no good ministry without a good government. When I returned to the country in the early 1990s, there was none of that. Since I was a profiled economist who worked for ten years with both the European Community and the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance of the Eastern Bloc, so I knew both systems well, I could easily find a job in the economy. In the break between two stays abroad, I was also assistant minister for foreign trade, so I also acquired administrative culture.
You were in Berlin at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Did they really sleep through that global tectonic disturbance in Belgrade??
In a way, Belgrade slept through that historical event, because at that time it was primarily concerned with drawing borders within the country. Of course, the competent ministries and the federal government were informed, there were reports from Gorbachev and Helmut Kohl and from the United States of America, of course I also sent reports. Both SIP and the Government were supplied with all possible information, but no one dealt with it. That is why it can be said that they slept through the fall of the Berlin Wall.
How did you experience Slobodan Milošević's coming to power??
It is enough to quote two sentences. "Milošević is an ordinary bank rat, because of him there will be blood up to his knees." That's what Koča Popović said in 1989, and I agreed then, and I still agree with it today. Somewhere in 1991 and 1992, attacks by the Serbian republican leadership on all federal institutions followed. The names of the people employed in them were spread all over the newspapers out of sheer calmness. My biggest regret is that after the fall of Slobodan Milošević's regime, there was no lustration of those who forced the war, killed and robbed.
And how did you experience the fall of Milosevic 5?. October 2000?
By then, I had long been out of diplomacy and any kind of civil service. I thought it was good that it finally ended, I had hopes for Zoran Đinđić and hoped that the previous opposition had learned something, that they would come to an agreement and create a decent country, because they had such a tragic period behind them that only a fool would do anything about it he wouldn't learn. We are in a similar situation now.
How did you end up in Yugoslav diplomacy??
It was sometime in 1963/1964. year during the process for changing the Constitution, which was supposed to bring greater rights to the republics. Ranković was still in the saddle, but not for long. At that time, there was a general Yugoslav competition for work in the State Secretariat for Foreign Affairs, the advertisement was published in all newspapers in all republics and in all languages of the peoples and nationalities. At that time, I had graduated from the Faculty of Economics and was still in military uniform, so my brother applied for the competition without any special recommendations. A year before that, about thirty people were accepted to serve in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the same number in my generation. They were the first fully educated generation that applied for work in diplomacy, they had to take an entrance exam in the ministry that consisted of six or seven subjects before a committee made up of professors from the University of Belgrade. Those who passed took a state exam and at the end had to do a three-year internship. Out of approximately 120 of us, 33 were accepted. The State Ministry for Foreign Affairs then opened for young people. It is interesting that at that time they avoided accepting Belgraders, because there were too many of them in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, they took care of some kind of balance, people were also accepted according to their national key.
At that time, serious work was done on the recruitment of new staff. The internship lasted three years, during which time all the departments in the ministry had to be passed. I immediately worked in the department for Germany and Austria, then in the department for international organizations, but I learned the most in the press department. There they taught us how to frame questions, how to prepare answers or how to treat journalists. I think at that time there was a press conference every Thursday. After three years in the ministry, as a young diplomat in 1967, I went straight to Berlin.
I will tell an anecdote about the great man Josip Broz who, wherever he was, left human and political traces. Tito was the first to release German prisoners of war, he did everything he could to establish good relations between the two countries. I followed him two or three times when he met Honecker, or on Brioni with Brant. So at Wanga in the winery, he was joking, telling Brandt how his gardener, who had seen all possible heads of state and government and kings, got excited when the Emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie, was supposed to come. When Selassie left, the gardener said to him, “Tito, you're a real bull compared to him.” The gardener expected the emperor to be six feet tall, and Selassie was short. I want to say that Tito knew how to negotiate and create an atmosphere, that he knew how to get the country what it needed. Eighty percent of all the wheels that turned in Yugoslavia came from Germany, whether they were wheels from a locomotive or a limousine, or the wheels of some cranking machine.
How widespread in Yugoslav diplomacy was the custom of people coming in from the side to serve in embassies?
Those were the exceptions. A distinction should be made between the generation of diplomats who practically entered the diplomatic service directly from the war, and later generations. Immediately after the end of the war, Tito and Kardelj took a few diplomats from the Kingdom of Yugoslavia because they needed people who knew how to draw up a contract, who were familiar with the protocol, so some of them even reached retirement in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Of course, the army appointed military attachés, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs sent its personnel to work in consulates. In my generation, only one man entered without the competition, but later he really turned out to be an excellent diplomat and was also the deputy minister of foreign affairs.
You were the ambassador in East Berlin. What is the job of an ambassador??
An ambassador is an envoy of the head of state. The head of state can give the Ministry of Foreign Affairs a greater role in appointing ambassadors, but he signs the credentials. Under normal circumstances, the ambassador speaks on behalf of the head of state, on behalf of the official policy of his country. The ambassador leads a collective, which, for example, had thirty-eight employees in Bonn in the seventies, and is responsible for each member's work. Personal contacts established by the ambassador are very important, small gestures that can later open some doors.
How would you briefly define the foreign policy of SFRY until its collapse?
Today they are talking about some kind of pillars of foreign policy, two pillars, three or four, but all pillars are important, Yugoslavia led a foreign policy with the aim of achieving the maximum possible everywhere. And the pillar of Albania is important, even if they don't plant our feet abroad. I, for example, treated the Albanian ambassador the same as the American ambassador. The Albanian ambassador is our neighbor. It used to be said, and it is still true now, that Yugoslavia borders on worries, and those worries can only be solved by good neighborly relations.
Yugoslavia had very good relations with almost everyone. She was seen somewhere as a candidate for the European Union, was active in the United Nations, Tito and my friend Leka Lončar (the last Minister of Foreign Affairs of the SFRY) made the Non-Aligned Movement a dear partner for Yugoslavia. It was very clear that Yugoslavia would never get too close to the Eastern Bloc and that it would keep a sufficient distance from NATO. It was called the "policy of equidistance towards the great powers". In the bipolar world, SFRY, as one of the winners of the war and largely thanks to Tito, had enough authority to allow itself such a foreign policy.
After the Second World War, multilateral relations became more and more important in relation to bilateral relations, and Yugoslavia recognized this. Because it's one thing when you sign an agreement with one, and another thing when you sign it with dozens of countries at the same time. Tito was constantly surrounded by businessmen, they followed him and concluded deals, it was done at a crazy pace. Tito used his influence and his good personal connections for the benefit of the Yugoslav economy, he opened doors and our businessmen knew how to use it.
As for the non-aligned countries, as an example I will tell you that at one point eighteen ministers in the government of Ethiopia studied in Yugoslavia, they spoke our language, you can think that we could have finished everything there. It was the same with Iraq and Iran or with Egypt, Libya or Algeria. Yugoslav companies were privileged in those countries, and we had something to offer.
Do you recognize the goals of Serbia's foreign policy today??
I would define Serbia's foreign policy today as an attempt to somehow survive. There is no consistency in it. One day you have one brother, the next day you have another brother. It can't be like that. A country must have a consistent basic foreign policy. It's okay to have slightly better relations with a country, but that must not be shoved in the eyes of other partners. Foreign policy is a very serious and well-documented area, everything is recorded and can have some consequences even after a long time.
