Not just money but also time will be needed in large quantities. Issues related to borders, sovereignty, and regional cooperation are unlikely to find any easy solution soon, while inevitable delays in the reconstruction process may aggravate strong residual feelings of bitterness and even anger among the Serb population. The West will still be looking closely at potential instabilities before and after the December 23 legislative elections in the federal republic, and developments in and about Kosovo remain unclear. Yet, the new political realities within Serbia, as well as in Kosovo, where the latest local elections yielded victory to the moderate democratic party of Ibrahim Rugova, offer reason for optimism-at least for a while. An emergent entrepreneurial spirit and new business opportunities could provide the basis for an acceptable modus vivendi in the short to middle term, while lessening temptations toward renewed political and ethnic confrontation.
Reconciliation can neither substitute nor precede reconstruction.
This is why an explicit commitment to reconstruction, and tangible expressions of its effectiveness, will be needed if national redemption is to be sought and regional reconciliation achieved. The past two months have been a remarkably volatile period for the euro. Then, in a previously announced September 28 referendum, the Danes voted against adopting the euro, and on October 16, in a remarkably candid interview, ECB president Wim Duisenberg stated that he did not believe central banks would intervene in the foreign exchange markets in the event of some external disturbance, such as a war in the Middle East. Although he was only referring to a specific, hypothetical occurrence, and did not rule out intervention as a general tool, investors were quick to abandon the euro, forcing the weak currency to lose all the ground it had gained after the unexpected international intervention. Although this increase was largely blamed on higher oil prices, with core inflation standing at just 1.4 percent, it only reinforced investors' skepticism about the euro.