LONDON -- Economics and business trends are bringing the world together, but politics continue to tear it apart.
This is the lesson that is being born in on the member states of the European Union as they wrestle with the task of enlarging their numbers to include East and Central Europe, and as they try to make sense of the unsettled and fragmented map of Europe that is the legacy of the old Soviet empire.
Nowhere is this lesson more acute and challenging than in the Balkans, an area that stretches from the borders of Austria and Hungary in the north to the Peloponese and the Eastern Mediterranean in the south -- an area seething with ethnic rivalries and hatreds that continue to lead to instability and violence on a hideous scale.