Long time no post. But I should record my visit to Croatia at the weekend for a conference of the European Movement. In a lot of ways I felt like I was returning to the beginning of the cycle of my interest in the Balkans. The Europe House was where Michael Emerson and I gave our first public presentation of CEPS’ work on the Balkans, back in May 1999 (and that was the week that Milosevic was indicted for war crimes, and his trial is now going ahead). I was staying in the Astoria, whose Chinese restaurant was where I went for my first NDI meal with Francesca Binda, after I had arrived to work in Banja Luka in January 1997. And to cap it all as I was leaving I got a lift to the airport, quite unexpectedly, with Koraljka Tomasic, who had first got me interested in the Balkans when we met at a LYMEC conference on using the internet in November 1995.

But the conference itself was a very good event. The headline attractions for the organisers were the Euro-federalist enthusiasts of various European Movement national branches, including Willy de Clercq from Belgium, and Alan Dukes from Ireland. I found the latter very easy to get on with, if anything rather shy, but also friendly in contrast to when I had last encountered him at a British Irish Association conference in 1989, when he was still leader of Fine Gael and I paranoiacally suspected him of chatting up my girlfriend. I was able to bring him greetings from John Cushnahan who I had bumped into on Wednesday night at the opening of the Northern Ireland Executive’s office in Brussels.

I also renewed contact with Erhard Busek and Janez Potocnik, and met for the first time Jacques Paul Kein. But I particularly got on with Andrew Hardie and Kate Lane, a British couple on the verge of getting married; Andrew perhaps in his mid forties, Kate in her mid twenties, but obviously devoted to each other and very sweet.

Read Kissing the Beehive by Jonathan Carroll, and Impakto by Richard Calder, and to be honest not especially impressed by either. Things Unborn by Eugene Byrne a different matter though, an audacious alternate history where the Cuban Missile Crisis became a nuclear war and the dead are returning to life.

Meanwhile in Montenegro the expert teams were in Brussels yesterday to meet with the EU, and after some manoeuvring my colleague was able to get in on one of the meetings. They will give me their debriefings first thing this morning (Tuesday). But it is very late now and I must go back to bed.