Wasting your money, Tomislav?

This is inside baseball, but for those of you who might be interested:  former U.S. Ambassador William Montgomery’s September 2010 registration with the Justice Department as an agent for Tomislav Nikolic, President of the Serbian Progressive Party.

I would be the last to deny a retired Foreign Service officer whatever income he can find, and 7500 euros a month is not pocket change, but I would also want to know whom he represents when he gives interviews calling for the dissolution of Bosnia.  To be fair he was doing this even before the date of his registration, and he is of course entitled to his views, which are contrary to mine.

The partitions Montgomery proposes are sure formulas for re-igniting conflict in the Balkans, with devastating results, including the formation of an Islamic Republic in central Bosnia.  Remember Bill?  We called that the “non-viable, rump Islamic Republic that would be a platform for Iranian terrorism in Europe.”  Hard for me to see how that is in the U.S. or Serbian interest.  But there is of course no longer a need for Bill to worry about that.  He works for Nikolic.

The bigger problem may be for Nikolic:  he is going to have a hard time being welcomed in Washington unless he takes a pro-Europe, One Bosnia line.  Associating himself with Bill Montgomery’s advocacy of partition of Bosnia and Kosovo is no way to overcome Nikolic’s past association with the hard-line, anti-European ethnic nationalism of the Serb Radical Party, from which he split in 2008.

What does Montgomery do for Nikolic’s money?  He’ll call his old friends at State, the National Security Council and Congress to get appointments.  This is something that the head of a party in the Serbian parliament could and should have done by his own secretary, or by the Serbian embassy.

If that doesn’t work, I’ll help him, for free.  I am vigorously in favor of Washington hearing from all parts of the political spectrum in Serbia.  But it is simply outrageous that people get paid to make appointments in Washington–our public servants should all be told to tell paid agents that appointments can only be made directly, not through intermediaries.

If Nikolic wants to pay Montgomery to write his talking points, that’s fine with me.  But they’ll have to say something different from what Montgomery has been saying in public.

Wasting your money, Tomislav?