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East or West which is best?

• Mark Mardell
• 17 Jan 08, 09:03 PM

from Serbia, the villagers get poorer, the roads worse.

The road signs start being odd, with sign-posted but not

Then they stop altogether. As we pull over to stretch our legs before crossing the border, an old man offers us a coffee. 鈥淚ts very quiet here,鈥� he tells us.

So it is at the border too. We are the only ones crossing. As we wait for the Serbian police to examine our passports, an oil tanker pulls up, travelling the other way.

鈥淲here鈥檚 it from originally?鈥� I ask. 鈥淟ook at the plates: KS, Kosovo,鈥� replies my companion.

Just as he鈥檚 speaking the driver calmly removes the plates in full sight of the police and appears with a new set in his hands.

We get our passports back and are waved on to the United Nations checkpoint before I see for sure what he is up to. But I presume he is putting Serbian number plates on.

New tricks

The driver of the oil tanker is prudently sensitive but will he have to learn new tricks?

A lot hangs on , with the favoured date at the moment sometime during the second week of February.

That鈥檚 when America would like it to happen. won鈥檛 speak with one voice but may agree a statement recognising the situation has changed and then leaving it up to individual countries to decide what to do.

The Spanish want to delay that until

Whenever it happens, the Serbian Government has just approved setting out possible ways it could react. It鈥檚 secret but the elements are known.

They might break off diplomatic relations with countries which recognise Kosovo.

Many Western diplomats regard that as rather laughable, Serbia hitting itself on the nose to spite its face.

Cutting electricity supplies or closing the border wouldn鈥檛 be a laughing matter.

Anything aimed at destabilising Kosovo would be regarded as a grave provocation, threatening Serbia鈥檚 future along a road to Europe.

Indeed one of the main questions of the Serbian election is whether the country will continue down its painfully slow path towards membership of the European Union, or reject that, turn its back on Europe and face towards Russia.

Stability pact

The Prime Minister has warned if the EU recognises an independent Kosovo, , generally seen as a very first tentative step towards membership.

Although the current president Boris Tadic has dismissed this threat, we are in the middle of elections for this very job. So it鈥檚 by no means certain he鈥檒l be the one making the decision.

It鈥檚 easy to mock this threat: Merkel, Sarkozy and Brown are not going to be sent into fearful hysterics by the thought of Serbians throwing down their pens and refusing to put their names to a document which is of more meaning and benefit to them than anyone else.

But it would be an important moment. From a British viewpoint, where the European Union is often derided as irrelevant or worse, it is easy for people to miss the fact that for many in Eastern Europe, membership is seen as a badge of modernity, a guarantor of democracy and the rule of law, and a path to prosperity.

It may be a long time before Albania, Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine join, but the elite at least want in, and see their future with Europe rather than Russia.

If Serbia became the first nation to turn its back on the European Union, it would be a spoke in the wheel of the EU鈥檚 soft power, its intention to spread its values simply by attraction.

It would be particularly important because this would not be a simple rejection of an organisation, just another Norway, Iceland or Switzerland deciding that the EU was not for them. It would be high stakes geopolitics, Serbia turning away from the West to face East.

Of course , and has long been an ally of Serbia.

Its decision to come to Serbia鈥檚 aid against Austro Hungarian aggression was one of the triggers of World War I.

Trivial and profound

There are many concoctions from the trivial: the fashions in the streets and the blast of uncontrollable heat on entering a hotel room, to the profound: a shared Cyrillic script, similarities of language, religion and heritage. 鈥淲e are the same people,鈥� as one Serb I spoke to put it.

But this is not just history and culture. It is to do with Russia鈥檚 new found confidence and assertiveness under Putin. There is no doubt that many Serbs see Russia as more than just a true friend, a friend that understands.

They see Russia as willing, even eager to stand up to a sanctimonious, yet bullying West.

Then again, when I talk to Serbs about facing east or west they nearly all mention.

Their message is that Serbia need not choose, and like Yugoslavia before it could steer a third, unaligned course.

Serbia certainly sits close to two of the important fault lines that define our history: that between Russia and Europe and between the old Ottoman Empire and Europe.

East or West, which for Serbia is best ?

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