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Verona Forum for Peace and Reconciliation on the Territories of the Former Yugoslavia

10.11.1994., From the Verona Forum, 10 November 1994
At first - during the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly, which was held in Bruxelles in July 1992 - the Verona Forum was meant to be a type of “Peace Parliament”. That is, it was intended as an assembly that could bring together leading representatives of all the entities which belonged to Ex-Yugoslavia, so that they could meet periodically and put forward common proposals for a solution of the conflict, whereas the warlords never managed to reach an agreement.

It was thought that, just as in Brussels women from Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia could sit together at the dining table and get along well easily with one another, even though the war had already been going on for a year, it should not have been too difficult for citizens to cooperate and - also with support from abroad - spread their positive attitude to political parties, mass media and chancelleries. Undoubtedly, at that time, one could not even dream of organising meetings in Zagreb, Belgrade, Lijubliana, Skopije or Sarajevo. Even in order to just talk, one had to resort to “telephone conferences” via Brussels or to the Milan “Phone bridge” (“Telefonski Most”).
However, it soon became clear that our aim of bringing together civil society in a “Peace Parliament”, and what is more a non-electable one, was unrealistic. At the first Forum meeting, held in September 1992 on the outskirts of Verona at a Catholic institute which had been found for us by the “Movimento nonviolento” (Nonviolent Movement) and by the “Casa della Nonviolenza” (House of Nonviolence), it was difficult even to agree on the name of the Forum. The abbreviation “YU-Forum” was rejected by some Slovenes and Croats, and in the end it seemed that using the name of the town of Romeo and Juliet would make for a good omen.
Since then, the Forum’s full name is “Verona-Forum for Peace and Reconciliation on the Territories of the Former Yugoslavia”, a long and complicated name, which reveals someone’s mistrust of the Yugoslav heritage and someone else’s suspicion of the new ethnic sovereignty. Over the months, and then over the years, it became clear that, however frail it might have been, the Forum was unrivalled: it was the one and only permanent channel of communication among people who belonged to all of the Ex-Yugoslav Republics or ethnicities, at a time when someone’s participation was always at risk, especially that of Slovenian or Kosovar representatives.

But what does this Forum do, and what is it for? For a while, the Forum meant mainly conferences, which desperately sought to counter the deficiencies of official Conferences, where the different nationalist leaders would meet in order not to make peace.
Although at first only the pacifist circle was involved, with war gaining ground, more and more people started to join the Forum, until it became a meeting point for democrats of all kinds (liberals, social democrats, reformists, moderate nationalists, environmentalists and “alternatives”), for independent journalists, for exponents of citizens’ associations.
Four outstanding conferences (two in Verona, one in Vienna and one in Paris), have given birth and strength to a common voice, which nevertheless did not succeed in gaining the European Institutions’ attention, as we had hoped. Resolutions, proposals, appeals… which tried to strengthen inter-ethnic and democratic pressure groups through a small “multiplier” office run by the Greens at the European Parliament, where Rada Gavrilovic, a Bosnian woman who was married and lived in Belgium, kept in touch with a few hundred threads of this net.
Today - after the meetings in Verona I (1992), Strasbourg (1993), Verona II (1993), Vienna (1993), Brussels (1994) and Paris (1994) the phase of international conferences seems to have come to an end, given that what needed to be said has been said, and the message coming from the other (Ex) Yugoslavia has reached those who should have been listening. In all this, there is one crucial difference with respect to the traditional pacifist circles, be they leftist or municipal, for instance the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly: in the Verona Forum there has never been any nostalgic reference whatsoever to Yugoslavia, and ex-communists, or intellectuals who were connected with the past, never prevailed.
The second phase of the Verona Forum activities was appropriately opened at the beginning of November, 1994, with a conference in Tuzla1, titled “Is Europe possible without multiculture?”: this time, the conference was held in the Balkans, and not abroad. There were visits, actions in support of newspapers and citizens’ associations, radio and TV stations, invitations, training seminars. It is now possible to meet in the Balkans again, to hold meetings and gatherings in Skopje (as at the end of January, when Marijana Grandits held a seminar and organised a delegation’s visit) or in Zagreb (February, and then March). Also, it is possible to try and prepare people for the post-war period: an important step in this direction is represented by the Macedonian delegation’s trip to Europe, when people from Macedonia and Albania could visit the European Institutions and get to know the South Tyrolean experience of multi-ethnic and autonomist cohabitation.

For those who observe all this from a distance, it is hardly possible to imagine what it really means to the two hundred people who are scattered over the fragments of Ex-Yugoslavia, to feel that they are part of one same initiative of solidarity, and that they can count on their own embassy “in Europe”. Some Arab intellectuals who by cance attended one of the meetings, immediately remarked: “We need a Verona Forum also for the Arab world…”.

From the Verona Forum, 10 November 1994

Post Scriptum
After Tuzla, the Forum, chaired by Marijana Grandic and coordinated by Rada Gavrilovic, convened in Budapest, in May 1996. A few months earlier, it had issued a significant document about the Dayton agreement, which will be fully copied below. In Budapest, the Forum focused on the situation in Former Yugoslavia with respect in particular to the judgement of war criminals and the return of refugees. Also, it expressed its general concern about the state of democracy (human rights, rule of law, independent media) in the three newly formed states, Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Republic of Croatia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro).
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