Back from four days in Macedonia and Kosovo, mainly talking to my team in the Balkans (including Bosnia and Serbia) but with time out also for dinner on Saturday with two Kosovar intellectuals, and meetings on Thursday with senior government officials in Macedonia.

I do like Macedonia. I first visited in 1997, spending ten days travelling around Macedonia on behalf of my then employers persuading the local pols of the merits of multiparty democracy. Since then I’ve been back at least once a year, including another ten-day trip in the middle of the conflict in 2001. I played a minor but I hope positive part in the creation of the Ohrid Peace Agreement that year; I was the first person to publish the infamous Prizren Document in May, and also published an analysis of the draft peace agreement, leaked to me from an American source, in early July in one of the Macedonian magazines (which also meant I was able to be the first person to do an analysis of the final text when it was agreed in August). There is half a sentence in the peace agreement (the end of $3.3 in the main text, reinforced by the second and third bullet points of Annex B$4) which was actually my idea, as far as I know (see Section III, page 27 of a report I helped write)– at least I don’t know of any other person who suggested it before me. This was the radical thought that in any given Macedonian town, the mayor and the chief of police should talk to each other occasionally.

Ohrid itself, where I went on Thursday and stayed to yesterday, remains an underexploited jewel of a medieval city, perched on the edge of the eponymous lake. Unfortunately I had some difficulty in getting really tasty specimens of the famous local trout in the restaurants. But in general it was a good time. And good to take a detour to visit Kosovo again, which is always full of interesting developments. Now back in the office and still loads of work to do…