Serbs oppose recognition of Kosovo independence

Serbs oppose
recognition of Kosovo independence

Relationship with Europe colored by
war over province

By Nicholas Wood, New York Times News Service | September
14, 2007

BELGRADE, Serbia - Eight years after it was hit by NATO
airstrikes, the former Yugoslav Defense Ministry still lies in ruins on
Boulevard Knez Milosa, a reminder of what the Serbs consider unwarranted
aggression by the West in the war over the Serb province of Kosovo.

Their anger is flaring up again as Western governments,
particularly the United States, speak of recognizing Kosovo this year as an
independent state. The governments say that in the absence of reconciliation,
doing so would help stabilize the region by officially separating the Serbs
from the Albanians who are the majority population of Kosovo.

Serbian politicians, even pro-Western ones, said they worry
that a recognition of Kosovo would introduce a new era of Serbian isolation and
hostility toward the West - leaving Europe with little sway here.

Since the war ended, in 1999, Europe has tried to integrate
Serbia into NATO and the European Union. And as a regional power, Serbia
expected an easy pathway into Europe, especially since many of its neighbors
have joined the union.

But Europe has also demanded that Serbs make a fresh start
by chasing down important war crimes suspects wanted at the tribunal for the
former Yugoslavia in the Hague. Serbia has complied only fitfully.

If Western countries do recognize Kosovo, then "we do
not need the European Union," Velimir Ilic, Serbia's minister for
infrastructure and a key political ally of the Serbian prime minister, said in
an interview. "It means they are not our friends."

He added: "It is a tough choice, but Serbia has its
pride and its integrity."

Ilic, who has a reputation as populist politician, is the
only senior government politician to issue such a statement. But others agree
that a nationalist backlash would chill relations with the West.

A widespread recognition of Kosovo "could lead to a
chain of events with unforeseen consequences, including the loss of Serbia's
European perspective," Leon Koen, the former head of Serbia's negotiating
team on Kosovo, wrote in the daily Dnevnik.

And Serbia's senior diplomat for European integration
predicted that whatever support there is among Serbs for arresting war crimes
suspects and sending them to the Hague would vanish if Kosovo were recognized.

"I can't see how anybody would be ready to support
cooperation" with the tribunal, said Milica Delevic, a reformist who is
Serbia's assistant foreign minister responsible for relations with the European
Union. "We will be in trouble."

Western governments are determined to resolve Kosovo's
future to stabilize the province and calm the ethnic Albanians who make up more
than 90 percent of the population and who largely clamor for independence. The
United States has spoken openly of recognizing Kosovo and is pushing the
Europeans to settle on a policy.

But the Europeans have painted themselves in a corner,
having pushed for a deal at the Security Council that Russia has blocked. That
leaves Europe divided just as it is trying to display a strong foreign policy.

Kosovo has been administered by the United Nations since
1999, after a NATO bombing campaign there to oust Serbia forces who had
committed widespread atrocities against ethnic Albanians.

The wartime Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, was
defeated in elections in 2000 and turned over to the war crimes tribunal in the
Hague, where he died while his trial was under way. Yugoslavia continued its
devolution, with Montenegro finally claiming independence from Serbia in May of
last year.

Meanwhile, Serbia has made faltering progress toward
membership of both the European Union and NATO.

© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper
Company.

http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2007/09/14/serbs_oppose_recognition_of_kosovo_independence/

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The Kosovo error

For wrong
reasons, Russia has imposed its will in the Security Council and has
been granted a deferment in the decision of the United Nations. The
advantage of the gained time would be essential to reframe the question
of Kosovo in accordance with the necessities and sensitivities of the
present time. Ahtisaari is not the solution.

(Javier Ruperez, Ambassador of Spain to the UN, ABC)

Friday, September 14, 2007

NATO
took military action in Kosovo from March 23 to June 10, 1999, during
78 days that seemed interminable. It was the first time in its history
the Alliance triggered a military action. It was also the first time
that it did so in a geographic space other than the one originally
described in the Treaty of Washington, which was limited to the
territory of its member states. The undertaken combat operation was not
strictly a defensive action, but it was directed against a sovereign
state, member of the United Nations, and it was conducted without
authorization from the Security Council.

The military action was
basically airborne, registering a total of 38,000 flights, of which
10,484 were bombing raids. The targets were at first of military order
and concentrated against the Yugoslav armed forces, but as the
resistance grew stronger than expected, the bombings started to target
civilian infrastructures, that were damaged seriously, and civil
victims were euphemistically described as "collateral damages". Among
them, one can remember the bombing of the seat of the Chinese Embassy
in Belgrade, which originated a bitter diplomatic conflict.

The
conduct of the conflict was not devoid of tensions within the Alliance,
but a part of the Alliance decided to go through and act within
difficult conditions and in spite of them, with the conviction that the
actions of Slobodan Milosevic, practicing a brutal policy of ethnic
cleaning against the majority population of Albanian origin, led to a
human catastrophe that was necessary to avoid whatever the cost.

The
operation was settled with a clear military and political success for
NATO. The allied Governments knew to maintain the cohesion until the
end of the process and the existing dissidences in the respective
public opinion or the opposition from Russia to the intervention never
reached significant level. NATO knew to wage the war and knew to do it
well.

Before, during and after the conflict the spokesmen of the
Alliance and of its members made an effort in stressing that the goal
of the combat operations was to prevent the annihilation of a human
group, support the return to the stability in the Balkans, but never to
favor the independence of Kosovo.

In fact the guarantee of the
territorial integrity of Yugoslavia constituted the best, in fact the
only argument that the allies had in front in Belgrade: the war was not
made to alter its borders.

The very day NATO ended its combat
operations, on June 11, 1999, the Security Council in its Resolution
1244 stated that the political solution to the crisis of Kosovo must
consider, among other ends, the respect "to the sovereignty principles
and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia".

The
same Resolution had reaffirmed the respect of "all the States members
to the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of the Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia... in the terms of the Final Act of Helsinki".
In that sense the Council echoed the declaration on Kosovo a few weeks
earlier, on May 6, which had been signed by the ministers of Foreign
Affairs of the countries members of the G-8 (the United States, Canada,
United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Japan). According to these
documents, the future of Kosovo had to be found within the framework of
a "substantial autonomy" of the Yugoslav Federation - which is today,
after the independence of Montenegro -- reduced to Serbia.

What
the UN is proposing right now, based on the proposal by former Finnish
president Martti Ahtisaari, is purely and simply the independence of
Kosovo. Unless there is vigorous reaction of the international
community, Kosovo will indeed become independent in a not-so-distant
future. This is not what the NATO airplanes fought for. This was not
the aim which the Security Council set up after the "humanitarian
intervention".

In fact, the Ahtisaari report, surely without
premeditation, endorses the policy against which the allied military
action took place in the first place, but this time with the changing
elements of the equation: before, it was a fight to save Albanians from
Serbs, and today the priority is given to Albanians, even at the cost
of vanishing of the few Serbs who still populate the territory. And the
offered reason is none other than the establishment of a failure: it is
difficult to imagine the coexistence between Serbs and Albanians. That
was already known before the beginning of the war.

The fact
that eight years of intensive international presence (UN, NATO, EU) in
the territory have passed since only to conclude that the only solution
consists of violating some of the most elementary principles of
international law, enshrined in the UN Charter, is certainly
discouraging.

In the history of Kosovo, no one was completely
innocent. The nationalistic fervor which the Serbs felt towards the old
lost battlefield was always absurd and potentially bloody, the
treatment towards the Albanian population was criminal, and the
attempts of the post-Milosevic Serbia were not enough to face the
gravity of the problem.

The Albanians take a large part of the
blame because they used their numerical advantage to lead the same
policy as the Serbs - they form armed terrorist groups, they absolutely
exclude all those who are different, they satanize the adversary.

The
reasons why Russia - the only permanent member of the Security Council
which opposed the Ahtisaari plan - took the Serbian side are also
wrong: this is not about a parochial national-cultural-religious
solidarity, but about the opportunity to create in the post-Yugoslav
Balkans a democratic coexistence and respect for racial, religious and
cultural differences. Western countries have themselves been stuck in
the policy aimed at punishing the Serbs.

But an independent
Kosovo not only harms the principle of international law that demands
respect to the territorial integrity of the States. It grants wings,
from the peak of the international community, to all the separatist
irredentisms. It means the creation of a society without shades,
composed exclusively of those of the same color, same language, same
race or same religion. It creates inevitably a new regional
instability, that will finish affecting in a serious way all the
neighbors. And it constitutes clearly a gigantic one step back in all
the efforts of the humanity to construct communities of citizens
different and free, able to coexist pacifically in spite of their
differences.

For wrong reasons, Russia has imposed its will in
the Security Council and has been granted a deferment in the decision
of the United Nations. The advantage of the gained time would be
essential to reframe the question of Kosovo in accordance with the
necessities and sensitivities of the present time. Ahtisaari is not the
solution.

(translation from Spanish by the KosovoCompromise Staff)

http://www.abc.es/20070913/opinion-la-tercera/error-kosovo_200709130258.html

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