A Russian puzzle
What, exactly, is Putin's game in Kosovo?
The stand-off, in the opinion of a British general, harboured the
risk of starting a third world war between Russia and the west. It was
the summer of 1999 and General Mike Jackson, now retired, was leading a Nato ground force into Kosovo after 11 weeks of Nato bombing had driven the Serbs out.
Serbia's main ally, Russia, was fuming impotently on the sidelines.
Boris Yeltsin and his top military men had been totally against Nato's
first war, refused to supply a UN mandate for the campaign, and then
had to stand by as Tony Blair and Bill Clinton made a case for the use
of force as humanitarianism.
When the war ended and the Nato troops moved to secure Kosovo,
Yeltsin and his chief of staff pulled a fast one. Secretly, Russian
peacekeepers in nearby Bosnia were ordered to make a dash to grab
control of Kosovo's main airport at Pristina. It worked. The Russians
got there before Gen Jackson.
Wesley Clark, the American officer commanding the war, went
ballistic and ordered Jackson and his ground troops to recapture the
airport.
No way, answered the Brit insubordinately. "I'm not going to start the third world war for you."
That was then - the tail-end of the Yeltsin decade. Russia was weak
and demoralised. Eight years later, Vladimir Putin's main claim to his
position is that he has stopped the rot. Russia, he boasts, is back as
a big international player. It will no longer be ignored or pushed
around. And on Kosovo, it's payback time for the humiliation of 1999.
Nursing grudges and making mischief, Russia now stands as the main
obstacle to a peaceful settlement of the Kosovo conflict - redrawing
the borders in the southern Balkans and creating a new, independent
state of Kosovo inhabited mainly by ethnic Albanians but including a
sizeable frightened and hostile Serbian minority afforded extensive
powers of self-government and international protection.
No one knows what Russia wants, what its real aim is, or where it
identifies its genuine interests. To drive a hard bargain? Get a
pay-off somewhere else? It is threatening to veto a new UN security
council resolution needed to mandate the EU's most ambitious ever
mission as the international overseer of Kosovo independence and the
implementation of the independence blueprint drafted by the Finnish
fixer and UN envoy, Martti Ahtisaari.
Ahtisaari laid
his 58-page settlement before the security council in New York this
week and added three pages of recommendations in which he forcefully
used the i-word for the first time. Independence was the only viable
option for security, stability, and lasting peace.
No surprise there. In the crisis of 1999, it was the same Ahtisaari
who went to Belgrade on an emergency mission and persuaded Serbia's
Slobodan Milosevic to back down, creating the scenario for the
insertion of Gen Jackson's troops in Kosovo. Ever since, Ahtisaari has
privately told diplomats engaged in the Balkans, the west has blundered
by failing to move more promptly towards Kosovo independence.
The issue should have been tackled seven years ago, he believes,
rather than being left to fester during years of uninspired UN
administration. Now, much depends on the Russians.
The British, and then the Americans, chair the security council in
April and May and everyone involved thinks the Russians will stonewall
to keep London or Washington from taking the credit for any
breakthrough.
In June, the security council chair falls to Belgium, while Angela
Merkel, the German chancellor, leads two big international summits - of
the EU and of the G-8. Mrs Merkel is proving a very able international
fixer and the hope is she will charm and deliver Putin on Kosovo at the
G-8, while the EU summit rubberstamps the dispatch of some 2,000 EU
officials, policemen, judges, and administrators to Kosovo to act as
midwife to a new country.
This is the optimistic scenario. There's a reasonable prospect of it prevailing.
The alternative is grim. A Russian veto in New York will unleash
diplomatic chaos internationally and violence on the ground in the
Balkans.
The 27 countries of the EU tentatively support the Ahtisaari plan if
it can be implemented. EU and Nato leaders are daily calling for
European "unity", in the full knowledge of how fragile that consensus
is.
Greece, Cyprus, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Hungary, Bulgaria all have
strong reservations about the peace and independence plan. If there is
a consensus in New York and a security council resolution, the European
unity will hold. If not, the European position will buckle, with many
of the Europeans effectively supporting the Russian position and that
of Serbia, which will never volunteer to give up Kosovo.
The Russians are adroit at sowing and exploiting European division,
whether on energy and gas pipelines or missile defence in Europe.
Kosovo offers a further opportunity.
Even if the Europeans support the Ahtisaari plan, many of them do
not support its imposition against the will of Serbia - the only way it
can be implemented.
If the Russians block and the Europeans crumble, the Kosovo
Albanians, fed up waiting, are likely to declare independence anyway
and invite international recognition. The Americans may recognise, the
British follow suit, a few more Europeans, too. EU fissures will be
laid bare. The Serbs may seize on the confusion to partition Kosovo,
grabbing the northern sliver of the province that they already control.
Ethnic cleansing and violence will be inevitable, accompanied by
international disarray.
It is not clear at all what Russia's interest may be in triggering
such mayhem, nor is it clear what interest Russia has in Kosovo at all.
It won't be the third world war, but there is a lot at stake.
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ian_traynor/2007/03/ian_traynor_the_standoff_thoug.html
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