Miscalculating Kosovo

Miscalculating Kosovo

Simon Tisdall

July 23, 2007 4:30 PM

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/simon_tisdall/2007/07/miscalculating_kosovo.html

Exactly how far Russia will go in defence of Serbia's rights in Kosovo
is a question of pressing importance, now UN security council
negotiations to grant consensual, conditional independence to the
breakaway province have ground to an ignominious halt.

Western countries including Britain and France - prime movers in the
1999 Nato intervention - have consistently underestimated Russian
resolve on this issue. By tabling a UN resolution, they tried to call
Moscow's bluff. But President Vladimir Putin icily stared them down. On
Friday, they blinked first.

Previous miscalculations over Kosovo nearly caused a physical
collision in June 1999, when Russian paratroopers made an overland dash
to occupy Pristina airport,
thereby pre-empting Nato's peacekeepers. General Wesley Clark, Nato
supreme commander, ordered 500 British and French troops to bar their
way.

A clash was narrowly avoided, in part because the British General Sir Mike Jackson, Kosovo force commander, reportedly told Gen Clark: "I'm not going to start the third world war for you."

The Russians were not wholly in the wrong. They had played a decisive role in cajoling the then Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic,
to withdraw his troops. In return they expected to police their own
sector, most likely the ethnic Serb minority-dominated areas of
northern Kosovo. When that was denied them, they felt cheated - and
reacted accordingly.

A Russian commander, General Leonid Ivashov, later told the BBC
that thousands of crack troops, including several battalions of
paratroopers, were on two-hour standby at Russian airbases, poised to
fly in if the confrontation with Nato escalated.

Looking at the latest chapter of the Kosovo saga, it seems obvious
that Mr Putin, emboldened by Russia's economic and political
resurgence, was always unlikely to take a softer line than his weak,
discredited predecessor, Boris Yeltsin. If anything, he could raise the
stakes yet further.

If really pushed, Moscow has a range of options. It could strengthen
traditional political and military cooperation with Serbia's new
government and support for Kosovo's Serb minority. It may finalise
its withdrawal from the 1990 conventional forces in Europe treaty,
potentially raising tensions across eastern Europe and the Balkans.

The Kosovo stand-off is already being conflated with the row over proposed US missile defence
installations in Poland and the Czech Republic. Retaliatory Russian
missile deployments and retargeting along its western flank and in the
Kaliningrad enclave are another possible part of a more broadly
disquieting flux.

Sharpening disagreement may also encourage Serb nationalist and
irredentist forces, barely beaten back at the last general election,
and deepen Belgrade's EU ambivalence. In theory, Serbia hopes to sign a
stabilisation and association agreement with Brussels in October - a
first step to full membership.

But Vojislav Kostunica, Serbia's prime minister, warned that the EU
was not everything. "The offer is like this: if you want Europe, you
can forget Kosovo. If you want Kosovo, you can forget Europe. Things
cannot be like that. It's indecent," he said last week.

"The grabbing of 15% of Serbia's territory and the formation of
another Albanian state in the Balkans would represent legal violence
and would have serious consequences," a joint Russia-Serbian statement said. The 1999 UN resolution recognising Kosovo as part of Serbia should be upheld.

Nor would Belgrade countenance attempts to cut a deal via the
six-country Kosovo Contact Group, said Serbia's president, Boris Tadic.
Only the security council could decide status issues. In an echo of
Iraq, Russia's foreign ministry said: "Attempts to bypass the UN will
contradict all international agreements on Kosovo, destabilise the
Balkans and encourage separatists the world over."

Serbia says it simply wants talks without preconditions or
assumptions. Yet far from seeking to calm matters in the wake of their
UN debacle, it is as though the US and its partners have grown deaf as
well as dumb. Echoing President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, the US
secretary of state, insists: "We are committed to an independent Kosovo
and we will get there one way or another".

Suggestions that Washington may ultimately override objections and
unilaterally recognise Kosovan statehood have encouraged the province's
ethnic Albanian majority leaders to toy with a declaration of
independence in November - and fuelled grassroots tensions on both
sides.

Amid rising concern that the Bush administration, with west European
connivance, is acting irresponsibly, even recklessly, Ms Rice will
follow a meeting with Kosovan leaders today with talks with Serbia's
foreign minister in Washington later this week. The Contact Group,
which includes Russia, is also due to meet in Berlin tomorrow (weds).

But all this is so much whistling in the dark. The fundamental
disagreement on Kosovo's future, dating back to the summer of 1999,
remains entrenched. And history suggests there may be more grave
miscalculations to come

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