I go to Serbia on business and my agent, a good friend and a cyclist to boot, is a Serb. In all the trips I’ve made there nobody has been willing to open up and discuss it with me but the Serbs are a proud, strong-willed people and there’s an undercurrent of resentment about what happened. Last time I was in Belgrade the two ministries still stood there, surrounded with hoardings, a huge hole through each one made by a Nato cruise missile. Nobody seems to have the will to knock them down and deal with the issue.
Mamy many years ago the Sunday Times ran an article on the Yugoslav Republic, written by somebody well-informed, explaining what was going to happen when, eventually, the whole thing broke up. It wasn’t good. I was so impressed that I cut out the article and kept it but of course when it all kicked off I couldn’t find the damned thing, I’d lost it.