NEXT week the news agenda from the western Balkans will be dominated by the elections in Serbia (which will be fully covered on Eastern Approaches). In the meantime this year's Globsec conference in Bratislava, the Slovakian capital, proved a big pull for movers and shakers from the region, and a chance to talk about issues which rarely get an airing in the international press.

Slovakia is one of five European Union countries not to recognise Kosovo as an independent state. That didn't stop Kosovars from travelling to Bratislava in force. The price of their attendance was to be depicted as representatives of Kosovo* rather than Kosovo. That peculiar asterisk is the result of a deal Kosovo struck with Serbia in February in EU-sponsored talks. It means Serbia is not supposed to object to Kosovo's representation in regional organisations. (Incidentally, the Kosovo Foundation for Open Society and the British Council have recently published a report on Kosovo and the EU's five non-recognisers, as well as Serbia and Bosnia, neither of which recognise Kosovo.)

At the conference I spoke to Miroslav Lajcak, who is about to begin his second stint as Slovakia's foreign minister. Asked whether his country, with a newly elected government, might change its position on Kosovo, he said: “our position is given but it is not set in stone. It will certainly be adjusted when the situation on the ground is different.”

Mr Lajcak was at pains to point out that Slovakia had no intention of blocking Kosovo's aspirations towards European integration. Yet whatever Mr Lajcak's personal views may be, I think his government is unlikely to change course soon. Many Slovak politicians continue to view the Kosovo issue through the prism of their country's own Hungarian minority. 

Mr Lajcak knows the western Balkans well, having served as the international community's high representative in Bosnia for two years. Just before leaving in 2009 he said, notoriously, that he did not want to be "the rider on a dead horse". He was referring to his own office, which had failed to gain the international backing it needed.

For years the fate of this post, with its important (albeit faded) powers, has been the subject of an almost theological debate between European and American diplomats. Most EU countries want the office shut; the Americans and others have fiercely resisted this. Could Bosnia apply for EU candidacy even if the post still existed? Yes, thinks Mr Lajcak, even though it would be somewhat “strange”, as the high representative can overrule elected politicians.

Another prominent participant at Globsec was Igor Luksic, Montenegro's prime minister. He was there mainly to build support for his aim of getting the EU to agree to open membership negotiations in June.

Mr Luksic also spoke of a "velvet divorce" between the government and Oleg Deripaska, a Russian tycoon who owns a company that bought KAP, a notorious aluminium plant in Podgorica, Montenegro's capital. He suggested that the carcinogen-producing, loss-making plant may have to be closed down, something Montenegrins have previously done everything they could to avoid. Discussing recent protests against his government, Mr Luksic says simply that the authorities are listening to people's concerns about corruption and the economy.

Another big fish in Bratislava was Stefan Füle, the EU's enlargement commissioner. He said that he thought there was a “realistic” chance Bosnia could submit a bid for EU candidacy later this year. The country, he said, had only to show it was making a “credible effort” to abide by the European Court of Human Rights' ruling in the controversial Sejdic-Finci case, which went in favour of two plaintiffs who had been excluded from political office because they did not belong to one of Bosnia's three main ethnic groups (Serb, Croat, Bosniak).

Mr Füle expressed optimism that Montenegro would get a green light for EU accession talks in June. On Macedonia he said the country's destiny lay inside the EU and NATO, and warned that without that prospect there was a danger it would be left "in limbo", during which "bad things" might happen. That is why, he explained, the European Commission had begun a new dialogue with the Macedonian government.

There are small things happening all across the Balkan region, many of which suggest the emergence of broadly positive trends. If countries like Slovakia can play a small role in helping this along, that is all to the good.