Since arriving in Paris on August 28, the team had already visited Zagreb, Belgrade, and Sarajevo as well as Geneva, Berlin, Paris, and Brussels in a frenetic effort to gain support for the “Agreed Principles” that we intended to announce in Geneva on September 8. But on Labor Day, September 4, 1995, with only three days until Geneva, I convinced Holbrooke to add two more stops en route to Ankara, Turkey. Based on a visit that the DOD representative Jim Pardew and I had made to Skopje on Friday, September 1, we were also going to stop in Athens and then Skopje to try to close the “interim accord,” a set of mutual obligations to be agreed to between Greece and Macedonia that would result in an end to the Greek economic embargo on Macedonia, which was strangling that small and troubled country in the south Balkans.
The problem between the two countries might seem like a joke in the heads of a late-night comedian, but in the Balkans there was nothing funny about it. Greece objected to Macedonia’s use of a name that first appeared in Greek antiquity and had since served as a place-name for an area that included northern Greece and southernmost Yugoslavia. Macedonia was the name of Alexander the Great’s home kingdom, the Macedonians his tribe. When Tito fashioned Yugoslavia, he recognized that the Slavic people living in that southernmost part since around A.D. 700 (a thousand years after Alexander the Great) were not Serbs, as the Serbs were inclined to insist; however, neither were they Bulgarians, as the Bulgarians insisted. They were Macedonians, that is, people living in a region known as Macedonia.
The Greeks accepted the creation of a “Republic of Macedonia” as long as it was a part of Yugoslavia. But when Yugoslavia broke up and the Macedonians like other republics created their own state via a referendum, the Greeks objected that an independent Republic of Macedonia was in effect a heist of intellectual property rights from ancient Greece and might imply a territorial claim on northern Greece, also a part of geographical Macedonia.
The Macedonians were having their own bout with nationalism and did not help matters by the adopting of a flag that was based on a symbol from ancient Macedonia unearthed some years before in an archaeological dig near the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki. They were stirring up bitter memories among Greek-Americans, many of whom had been driven from their homes during the Greek Civil War in 1947. It was a war that had engaged a (largely) Slavic minority in northern Greece, in line with Tito’s ambitions to stretch his communist Yugoslav state all the way to the Aegean Sea. Whether it was a fight that dated from Alexander or represented a modern territorial dispute, the problem was not going away on its own. Meanwhile, Greece had imposed a blockade aimed at forcing the Republic of Macedonia to change its name and constitution and to abandon the symbols from the time of ancient Greece.
By 1995, the issue had been mediated for some two years by both former U.S. secretary of state Cyrus Vance, representing the United Nations, and Matthew Nimetz, a New York–based lawyer representing the United States. The two distinguished negotiators had worked tirelessly to get Athens and Skopje to negotiate an interim accord, one whose purpose was not the final resolution of the “name issue” but to put to rest other issues that made the narrower question of the name so intractable.
The United States had a special interest because Macedonia was the one country in the Balkans in which the United States had agreed, primarily as a gesture of solidarity with beleaguered Europeans who were already deployed in Bosnia and Croatia, to station forces under UN command. Progress in Macedonia’s relationship with its southern neighbor would strengthen Macedonia’s stability and viability, and help it overcome its status as the most fragile new state in the Balkans.
Vance and Nimetz had taken the talks as far as they could, but they now required an endgame. However, there was a serious problem. Macedonia would not sit down with the Greeks to negotiate the final points of the plan unless the Greek embargo was lifted. The Greeks would not sit down with the Macedonians unless the embargo remained in effect. For some two months, little progress was achieved.
Just before we were to head to Paris and on to the Balkans, I had gone to see Holbrooke late at night, knocking perfunctorily on his door and walking in. It was the usual dark and forbidding office, with the table lights on and the overheads off. I told him I had an idea for how to break the Greek-Macedonian impasse. He was reading a memo on Bosnia.
“Chris, I don’t have time for Macedonia now.” He was tired of listening to me about Macedonia. Admittedly, I had become a little obsessed with the idea that Macedonia-Greece was the low-hanging fruit of the Balkans, a place where most pickings seemed to require an extension ladder, but Dick didn’t mind people taking another run at him. He did it all the time to them.
“Dick, we could solve this. Can you imagine what it will look like if our delegation swept into Skopje and Athens and came away with an agreement, a breakthrough that would really give us momentum for Bosnia?”
He looked up from what he was reading. I think I had him on the words momentum and Bosnia.
“Here’s the idea: During our trip to the Balkans Jim and I will break off from the delegation to go to Skopje and offer the Macedonians to arbitrate the last few issues, based on consultations with them and the Greeks. The Macedonians and Greeks would then meet in New York for what would essentially be a one-day signing ceremony. No one, given the time zone differences, would remember whether the embargo was lifted in the morning or the afternoon. The sticking point is [Macedonian president] Kiro Gligorov. If he agrees, I would propose you head to Athens and Skopje and seal the deal.”
“How will Matt and Cy react?” said Holbrooke, his wheels turning.
“I’ve talked to Matt. He told me we are down to a few issues in the text, none of them deal breakers, really small items.”
“Chris, if there is one thing I thought I had taught you, it is that there is no such thing as a small issue in the Balkans. Okay, what are they?”
In seconds Holbrooke’s laser focus took him from barely knowing where Macedonia was on the map, to being a full-fledged expert on the minutiae of the Vance-Nimetz interim accord.
“The problem is that every time Matt and Secretary Vance”—I could not refer to the former secretary of state, one of the most distinguished Americans alive, by his first name—“receive a proposed solution from the Greeks, the Macedonians object, and vice versa.”
“So you would arbitrate it?”
I leaned over from my chair and put both my hands on his desk: “No, not me. You! Based on conversations with the parties that you would have on the next trip. They would know what the ideas are, where we were heading with them, and accept them when presented with them at the negotiation-signing ceremony.”
“Marshall okay with this?” Holbrooke asked, referring to Marshall Adair, head of the Greek office in the State Department. I told him he was (which he was, sort of). I asked Holbrooke whether I should brief Matt Nimetz. He thought for a second, tilting back on his chair behind his desk, his hands behind his head, and his elbows spread from what seemed like one end of the room to the other.
“No, I’ll handle that.”
On September 1, 1995, I went to Skopje to meet with Macedonian foreign minister Stevo Crvenkovski and President Gligorov. Jim Pardew from the Office of the Secretary of Defense, who was also a bit of a Macedonian enthusiast, accompanied me on the two-hour flight.
I always enjoyed going to Skopje. I had visited it on several occasions since becoming the office director for the Balkans a year before. It was a quiet town, an outpost of the Ottoman Empire whose downtown was dominated by a hill and a Turkish fortress, much as it had been for four centuries. A stone bridge connected the older part of the town with the newer section, built after an earthquake had devastated the city in 1963. The bridge had survived for centuries, a testimony to Turkish engineering. Grainy old photographs on display in the ethnographic museum revealed its multiple uses. During late-nineteenth-century uprisings the Turks hanged insurgents off the sides, a warning to potential recruits to the cause.
Macedonia was truly off the beaten track for journalists and officials alike. Under the steady leadership of its octogenarian president, Kiro Gligorov, it had managed to gain its independence without a shot being fired. But its serious issues included an unhappy ethnic Albanian community in its western regions, bordering Albania and Kosovo; an unmarked border with Serbia proper on the north; Bulgarian neighbors to the east who maintained that Macedonians were Tito-ized Bulgarians and spoke a language which was a slightly Serbianized Bulgarian; and, of course, the issue with its southern neighbor, Greece.
Jim and I arrived at Gligorov’s downtown office, part of the parliament building. It was a large, musty structure with red carpets that slid with every footstep over the marble floor. I went over the remaining points in the text with Foreign Minister Crvenkovski and President Gligorov, explaining how I would propose to resolve them, one in favor of them, the other in the Greeks’ favor, and so forth. Gligorov said very little, but both men agreed to the approach—provided, of course, that the Greeks would, too. I assured them that we had worked with the Greeks and would have them fully on board. President Gligorov explained the risk for his government, which had made it clear it would never sit down with the Greeks and negotiate under the pressure of an economic embargo. To do so, even for a day, would be politically risky. I assured him that the Greeks wanted to get through this as much as he did. “How can I trust them?” he countered. “You don’t have to,” I explained. “That is our problem, not yours. Your problem is whether you trust us.” I was rather proud of that line, and thought I might file it away for future use. So far, so good, I thought, as we headed back out to Skopje Airport.
Jim and I flew on to Belgrade, where a U.S. Embassy car was waiting to drive us to Milosevic’s office to catch up to Holbrooke. We walked into the middle of a session and Holbrooke asked how it had gone. “We got it,” I answered. Milosevic was left to wonder what I was talking about.
During a break I gave Holbrooke more details and reminded him that he had to call Nimetz and Vance, that we didn’t want to look like we were poaching, worse yet have them hear anything on the news. Vance’s and Nimetz’s sensitivities aside, an announcement on the interim accord would be a powerful signal that our team meant business. It would set us up as different from the parades of negotiators that came before us. Greek-Macedonian issues did not amount to much in the international press, but everyone in the Balkans would take notice.
As the evening came to an end after dinner, Milosevic heard Holbrooke and me talking about the next day’s travels. He approached us in his usual emphatic way: “You are completely wrong if you think you can solve that problem.”
“Watch us,” I replied.
“Take it easy,” Holbrooke told me. “It’s not over till it’s over.”
We arrived in Athens and went to see the elderly prime minister, George Papandreou, who looked older than anyone I had ever seen. His young wife, a former flight attendant from Olympic Airlines, attended to his needs as he agreed to our proposal, all the time telling us how untrustworthy the team was in Skopje. Holbrooke turned to me to then explain our reading of the outstanding issues and how we would solve them. I laid out the issues as the prime minister gazed at a wall, seemingly uninterested but reiterating that we could go ahead as proposed. Neither he nor his younger and feistier foreign minister commented on the remaining items. They seemed to want to get out from the embargo they had imposed, perhaps, I speculated to Holbrooke, because it was harming commercial interests in northern Greece.
As we drove back out to the airport, Holbrooke turned operational, wanting to make sure he knew exactly the whereabouts that afternoon of the U.S. chargé d’affaires for Embassy Athens so that he would be available if we needed to get back in touch with the Greeks while in Macedonia.
In Skopje, we went to President Gligorov’s residence, away from the downtown, at the foot of Mount Vodno. Holbrooke was in full deal-closing mode as he laid out all the good things that would come with the Greek-Macedonian interim accord, an arrangement that would create a broad foundation for the two countries to normalize on all issues except for Greece’s insistence on a name change for its tiny northern neighbor. He said that he would personally make sure an American ambassador was quickly named and dispatched to Skopje. He tried to interest Gligorov in a more direct relationship with Prime Minister Papandreou. Gligorov ignored the offer while he continued to look at Holbrooke carefully, as if sizing him up. I thought at that moment of the asymmetry. For us it was a deal to jump-start our Bosnia shuttle; for Gligorov it could be the future of his country.
The president quickly turned to his favorite set of talking points, his government’s strongly held position that the Greek embargo was illegal and would be determined as such in international law. Holbrooke, for whom references to international law never led to any good, immediately returned to the subject at hand, that the Greeks were prepared to meet in New York City in September and sign the interim accord. The Greeks promised the remaining issues would not hold up a signed agreement that day. If Gligorov’s government was prepared to do the same, this would be the long-awaited breakthrough.
Gligorov would not allow himself to be hurried, despite Holbrooke’s theatrical looks at his watch as he explained the need to leave for Athens and, to a perplexed host, the fact that we could not be late because of the U.S. Air Force’s strict rules on crew rest time.
Gligorov would not be pushed, and he began a point-by-point discussion of the issues, and why it would be problematic to expect them to be resolved in a single session. Holbrooke turned to me seated on the couch and in an exacerbated tone whispered: “Chr-is,” somehow turning my name into a two-syllable word with the second part slipping into a higher pitch. I motioned with a rolling gesture of my hand to keep at it, that it would be okay. Foreign Minister Crvenkovski, sitting on a couch opposite ours, interjected to say that he knew the text well and that if the Greeks were really ready to accept these points as we had laid them out, then this could indeed be wrapped up in a single session. Holbrooke, who hadn’t paid the slightest attention to the foreign minister, turned his full attention to him as if he were a bona fide BFF. He talked about the modalities of the agreement, expressing his personal sympathy and respect for the Macedonian position and for their skepticism about the Greeks. He had instructed our chargé in Athens to stand by the phone and at a minute’s notice to go to the Greeks if there was any confusion.
The president, not sure what to make of the fact that some hapless American diplomat was standing by the phone in Athens, nodded approvingly. After forty-five minutes of sizing him up, he had concluded that Holbrooke was a closer, and was not going to allow this one to slip by. He got back into the conversation by agreeing to the plan. Holbrooke turned back to Gligorov, leaving his BFF in midsentence.
And then Gligorov said, “Mr. Holbrooke, I have one more request. Could you leave Mr. Hill here?”
I was slow to pick up on that, since I had been working on a heart attack for most of the meeting. But Holbrooke understood immediately.
“You want Chris as your ambassador here?”
Crvenkovski confirmed that that was what the president had in mind.
“Okay, you got him. I need him for a couple more months on Bosnia, then he’ll come here as the first U.S. ambassador. Chris, you have your next assignment!”
“Um, sure, Dick, that would be great,” I managed to say, but the craziness had started to get on my nerves. “Would you mind mentioning this to our secretary of state or president, what with them both having a role in this sort of thing? And, by the way, did you ever call Nimetz?” Holbrooke ignored me and turned back to Gligorov and Crvenkovski, dismissing me with a downward chopping motion of his hand.
“Mr. President,” he said, “with your permission I would like for Foreign Minister Crvenkovski and I to go out and announce that there will be a meeting on September 13 for the purpose of signing the interim accord.”
President Gligorov shot an admiring smile Holbrooke’s way and told him to go ahead, still shaking his head in amusement and realizing he had been totally won over.
“Do you have time for lunch?” Gligorov added, mentioning that Holbrooke had talked about needing to get back out to the airport and on our way to Ankara.
“Of course, Mr. President. I would be delighted. As much time as you can spare.”
As Dick made the announcement in several quick calls to senior Washington officials (though not, to my knowledge, to Nimetz), I talked to Gligorov and his aides in a reassuring tone. Buyer’s remorse is an ever-present danger to a diplomatic deal. The ambassadorship seemed distant and unreal to me, and I felt I knew more about the laborious process of being selected than Holbrooke did, that it might have been one of those last-minute points in a negotiation that helps the atmosphere but is never actually realized. Indeed, it wasn’t until mid-November 1995 that the secretary offered me the position. Of course, I was delighted.