Speech at the meeting of the European Council of Religious Leaders and Religious Leaders of Kosovo, Leuven (Belgium), 8 November 2004

Esteemed members of the European Council of Religious Leaders and religious leaders of Kosovo! Dear speakers – representatives of Norway, the European Union and NATO! Dear brothers and sisters!

I greet the participants of the meeting, at which we shall listen to the representatives of states and international organizations dealing with the problems of the Balkans and of Kosovo in particular.

First of all I would like to thank all those who work for the establishment of peace in the Balkans. The contradictions, which are rooted in the distant past, have become worse in the region and led to wars and conflicts in the recent years. There is no great bloodshed in the Balkans at present, and great service to this situation was rendered by many states and international organizations. However, it were the Balkan nations themselves who ‘guided their feet into the way of peace’ largely thanks to the preaching of the religious leaders who have called people to peace and tried to stop violence.

Having said this, I cannot help drawing your attention to the tragic and alarming aspects of the situation. Unfortunately, peace in the Balkans, and in Kosovo in particular, is neither complete, nor just. Many people are dying or are being expelled from their land, the ancient holy places are barbarously destroyed, and the return of the considerable number of refugees is still out of the question.

An attempt to justify the foreign military intervention was reduced to the idea of the defense of a national minority. We were promised an ethnical peace and multicultural society under the control of the international military contingent with the assistance of international civil personal. Yet, people still suffer – this time the Serbian population of Kosovo.

As a result, a wall of mutual distrust between the Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo has grown to inconceivable dimensions, while the responsible persons do not try to radically change the situation.

The present relations among people in Kosovo show that the world community actually recognizes ‘the right of the might’ and cannot do anything to restore justice. It is not fortuitous that we hear the appeals to radical division of the territories, where the Serbs and Albanians reside. The rigid ethno-territorial division becomes the outcome of conflicts both in the Balkans in general, including Bosnia, and in the regions of the Middle East and the Armenian-Azerbaijanian conflicts, as well as in some African countries.

We hear about the ability of the world community to settle conflicts by bringing people to peaceful coexistence, However, practice shows that the establishment of the monoethnic territories, divided by frontiers and walls, sometimes gives real guaranties of security.

Moreover, the most powerful countries of the word de facto recognize military victories of one party in a conflict, and sometimes assist the achievement of these victories. All this puts into serious doubt the existing standards of law, the very principle of justice, and the idea of building a multicultural society. Some people even say that this idea failed. Yet we cannot and should not turn down the ideals of justice and lawfulness by making world politics a domain of the ‘right of the might’.

The situation in Kosovo should become a litmus paper by which the world will see whether we are ready to implement the best moral ideals, or whether humanity is receding into the law of the jungle.

The world community should stop the suffering of the Serbs in Kosovo as well as of any other nation. May I express my hope that we, politicians, international and religious leaders, will be able to bring about a lasting peace in this region through our common work, as the way of injustice, hatred and violence will never lead to any real settlement of the conflict.