Thomas Fischer

"Getting to Know Their Limits: The N+N and
the Follow-up Meeting in Belgrade 1976-1978"

When the 35 participating states had left the CSCE summit after the signing of the Final Act in Helsinki on 1 August 1975, it was agreed that the delegates meet again in two years’ time in Belgrade to review the implementation of the Helsinki provisions and discuss new proposals on European security and cooperation. The neutral and non-aligned states, which had won much respect for their active participation in the talks leading to the Helsinki summit, were keen on continuing their role in the follow-up of the CSCE. While the N+N had developed a remarkable dual role as negotiators (actively contributing to the discussions on the content of the agenda, e.g. Confidence Building Measures, peaceful settlement mechanism, human rights, follow-up) and intermediaries (catalysers of the negotiation process by performing administrative tasks and seeking compromises) in the original conference, it was only in the wake of the Helsinki summit that the co-operation of the N+N states became more regular and quasi-institutionalised. Expecting a certain leverage with the military alliances and bloc powers by closely co-ordinating their positions, the N+N went to the first follow-up meeting in Belgrade with clearly defined ambitions regarding the substance of the talks. Once the multilateral preparatory meetings for Belgrade started, however, the N+N soon had to realise the limits of their possibilities to influence the course of events. In the context of a renewed Cold War atmosphere the room to manoeuvre was very narrow for the N+N and their role in Belgrade was mainly reduced to mediating between the blocs and trying to keep the Helsinki process alive.
The paper analyses how the N+N states prepared for Belgrade and what policy they were able to implement during the Follow-up meeting. It will be shown that despite the frustrating result of the meeting from an N+N point of view, Belgrade was the heyday of their common efforts in working for a substantial concluding document of the follow-up. The paper draws on new archival material and oral history sources on the subject collected in the course of an ongoing research project by the author on the neutral and non-aligned states in the CSCE. It namely profits from exclusive access to the private papers of former Swiss diplomat and member of the Swiss CSCE-delegation, Hans-Jörg Renk, including his handwritten notes taken as a basis for the delegation’s reports to Berne during the negotiations in Belgrade.