“There was the feeling that we had reached the bottom of the deck,” one Contact Group diplomat said in Belgrade.Attempts to isolate the Bosnian Serbs in the hopes of securing their agreement to the last peace plan had failed. Attempts to bring them back into the peace game, la Jimmy Carter, failed spectacularly. “It may not be a great plan, but it is the best way forward because it is the only way forward.”One American official said that while Washington had doubts about the plan, the US felt it had to try to prevent war from spreading in the Balkans.One problem is that the Contact Group is hampered by the competing national interests of its members who differ on the ways to resolve the conflictWhen the diplomats of the five nations sat down at recent sessions to examine ways to end the war, they discovered that they had run out of fresh options. The latest proposal, whose outline was agreed to by the five countries on Tuesday, would offer Serbia the possibility of a suspension of economic sanctions in exchange for Belgrade recognising Bosnia and Croatia in their pre-war borders.
It is far from clear whether President Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia, the champion of the Greater Serbian cause, will accept the offer, or, if he did, what difference it would make to the war in Bosnia.”No one believes we are going to see any dramatic changes to the Bosnian landscape as a result of this plan but there is the chance that it could lead to the recognition of Bosnia and Croatia, which would be positive steps in the right direction,” said a diplomatic source close to the five-nation “Contact Group”.”Besides, while there is a peace process going, it keeps the more drastic measures, such as lifting the arms embargo, at bay,” he added. But France, Germany, Britain, Russia and the United States are resigned to the idea that any peace plan is better than no plan. The five powers brokering peace efforts in the former Yugoslavia have little faith their latest plan to stem the bloodshed in the Balkans will fare better than earlier initiatives. “Our official position is that we have never called for a change in borders,” Mr Fini said.Mr Fini insisted that his party’s only concern was to safeguard the rights of Italian-speaking minorities in both Croatia and Slovenia..

The Italian government has held up negotiations for Slovenia to join the European Union, largely as a result of pressure from the National Alliance. He believed also in the inevitable need for a single currency, although he felt it must be adapted to the circumstances of each member state. “The fact is that there exists a two- speed Europe,” he said.Mr Fini was questioned about his party’s stance towards Italy’s north- eastern neighbours of Croatia and Slovenia. But he sketched out an Italian right-wing vision of Europe that will have disappointed British Conservatives who see in Mr Fini a potential Euro-sceptic sympathiser.”The National Alliance believes in a united Europe,” he said. He faced questions about the National Alliance’s nostalgia for the past, its foreign policy and its views towards Europe.Mr Fini said his party was committed to democracy and to maintaining Italy’s credibility, its fidelity to the European Union and its international engagements. He noted that a delegation from Italy’s main left-wing party had also attended the recent National Alliance congress.Mr Fini gave a smooth and extremely able assessment of the complex state of Italian politics and the prospects for the next election.But his audience was evidently not to be convinced. “In Italy there is a democratic left and a democratic right,” he said.

“There has been a real democratic revolution in Italy,” he said. “Our people wanted to punish a political class which had managed the public administration so badly.”Mr Fini said the post-war age of ideological confrontation in Italy had come to an end. He described Mussolini’s racial laws as “an error that became a horror”.Mr Fini said he had come to convey the “new reality” of the Italian right. “I don’t need to.” He said the National Alliance “took the firmest possible stand to condemn all forms of racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia”.He said a delegation from the right-wing Likud Party of Israel had attended the alliance’s recent congress in Fiuggi. The Italian right-wing leader, Gianfranco Fini, faced hostile demonstrators and a protest by a member of the Royal Institute of International Affairs when he delivered a speech to the institute in London last night. Mr Fini, standard-bearer of the Italian extreme right, is seeking to make respectable the former neo-Fascist party that was dissolved and renamed the National Alliance.
His visit to London has caused controversy among members of Parliament and an angry crowd of anti-Fascist demonstrators greeted him on his arrival at the meeting.Before Mr Fini could speak, one member of the audience rose to protest against the invitation. “It is a disgrace that he should come and an outrage,” the protester shouted “This is purely giving him a cloak of respectability.

He is Mussolini in an Armani suit.”Mr Fini was questioned on his attitude to Mussolini and Fascism “History has condemned Mussolini,” Mr Fini said. “It makes no sense to help countries through community aid while hindering them by placing restrictions on their exports.”EU foreign and aid ministers failed to reach agreement last night on increasing assistance to partners in the developing world, French Foreign Minister Alain Jupp said.Mr Jupp, who chaired the meeting, said: “If you added together what each of the delegations was prepared to contribute to the new European Development Fund, you would still be well short of the target.”. No one would have set out to design them in their current form.”We must do more to ensure coherence between community programmes,” he added. The amount that will be going to the EDF in future is still under negotiation, according to the Foreign Office.Mr Hurd also called for EU aid to be used more effectively “EU aid is diffuse,” he said “The EU’s programmes suffer from having grown haphazard. That is why Britain will in future be making a reduced contribution to the European Development Fund.”Britain contributes 16 per cent of the total EU aid budget – around £510m a year The EDF receives £172m of this. This is set to rise to above 40 per cent by 1998,” Mr Hurd said.”We have to limit the erosion of bilateral aid.

The Foreign Secretary, Douglas Hurd, yesterday criticised Europe’s aid programmes as “haphazard” and “diffuse” and announced that Britain would be cutting aid to the European Development Fund (EDF). In a speech to the Overseas Development Institute in London, he suggested some European aid programmes did not have full British confidence, and added that Britain wanted to stop the squeeze on direct, bilateral assistance to countries in need.
“Around a quarter of our aid programme is now spent through the EU. So far, however, few politicians have suggested joining a single currency should be put to another referendum.. It’s difficult,” a senior EU government minister said.Having emerged from a November referendum that produced a narrow majority in favour of EU membership, Swedes have had little time to consider whether they want to be in a monetary union.Ultimately, the issue must be debated and, as in November, it will raise issues of self- determination and democratic controls that are important to Swedes.