Serbia Press: Kosovo plan, trap; no exit
Sun, 11 Mar 2007 19:43:51
A day after the last talks on the future of Kosovo seemingly failed, Serbian press said the West was wrong believing that it can resolve the Serbian-Albanian issue with a "take it or leave it approach."
"Playing the card of pragmatism, of an estimate that the Serbs can make less trouble than the Albanians, is a sign of lacking political skill and a trap without an exit," Belgrade daily Politika wrote in an editorial on Sunday
"The Albanians now live in five different states and a bad solution provides material for new conflicts in the Balkans," it wrote.
The paper sharply criticized NATO and the U.S. for supporting the majority Albanians' bid for Kosovo's independence.
"When NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer says in Belgrade 'we'll protect the Serbs in Kosovo,' we are of course satisfied. But as far as I can remember, NATO was founded to protect the territorial integrity of member-states," it added.
"I actually expected to hear that NATO would protect the state of Serbia, a prospective member," the commentator added. "Or will Serbia become the first exception to that rule?"
After the talks between Serbia and Kosovo's ethnic Albanians on the future of the breakaway province failed Saturday, the UN envoy in the issue, Martti Ahtisaari, is expected to send his plan for the future of Kosovo to the UN Security Council in late March.
The Albanians signaled acceptance of the plan, which sees in the future the supervised graduation to independence for Kosovo.
Kosovo has been a NATO protectorate since 1999 when the NATO-led international forces launched a bombing campaign in the area to drive out Serbian troops responsible for the killing of over 10,000 native Kosovars and displacing one million others.
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