Kosovo's limbo suits both sides
Mirjana Tomic International Herald Tribune
Published: July 6, 2006
MADRID Negotiations under way in Vienna, Brussels and New York on the future political status of Kosovo are expected to end this year. While Kosovo Albanians want independence, Serbia's prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, declared during his recent controversial trip there that Kosovo "will always be part of Serbia."
Kostunica visited Kosovo on June 28, the day Serbs mark the 1389 Battle of Kosovo, when the defeat of the Serbs enabled the Ottoman Turks to invade the Balkans and stay there for almost five centuries.
When Western news media refer to Kosovo, they often remind their audience that for Serbs, it represents the cradle of Serbian civilization. They repeat what Serbian politicians tell them. But as the liberal Belgrade monthly Republika writes, Kosovo was "the heart of Serbia during Middle Ages." Today, "80 percent of the population has never been to Kosovo and has no links to the region, except for the mythology that has been consciously produced."
I am the only one among my friends and acquaintances who has actually been to Kosovo on vacation. Like most people of my generation, who attended Belgrade schools during the 1960s and early '70s, I had to memorize epic songs about the Kosovo battle and Serbian heroes. In our free time we listened to the Beatles and dreamed about visiting Western Europe. I never heard anyone say: "Let's spend our vacation visiting Kosovo."
In the absence of massive tourist demand to visit Kosovo, Yugoslavia's Communist authorities organized trips for employees and schoolchildren to visit the region. It was the only contact that most Serbs had with the "cradle of civilization."
The first time I visited Kosovo was in the late '60s. My parents took me on a tour of Serbian medieval monasteries, sources of culture and literacy before the Ottoman invasion and defenders of Christianity and tradition during the Muslim domination. Most monasteries were left to rot, but thanks to the efforts of monks and nuns, they functioned. In my early teens, Kosovo was a cultural shock: I remember veiled Albanian women in traditional costume selling food and crafts on filthy sidewalks.
Thirty years later, when I traveled to Kosovo as a journalist for a major Spanish daily and witnessed omnipresent underdevelopment, I wondered what had happened to the aid that had gone to Kosovo. According to a friend who had a leading position in the League of Serbian Communists, before Slobodan Milosevic came to power, all development aid was channeled to Kosovo Albanian Communist officials. Belgrade had no say on how it was spent.
As a reporter of Serbian origin, I did not feel welcome in Kosovo. In Albania, however, where I also went on a professional assignment, this was not the case. Our common Balkan cultural heritage created an immediate bond. My conclusion was simple: It was politics that created animosity, rather than a difference in cultural heritage.
Nowadays, after the 1999 war, deaths, expulsions, massacres and innumerable violations of human rights, the chance is small that young Kosovo Albanians and young Serbs would ever meet. If they did meet, it would be abroad. And if they became friends, they would not boast about it. A Vienna-based Albanian from Kosovo told me: "My mother's best friend is Serbian. When we go to Kosovo she has to hide it."
The Serbs who remained in Kosovo live in enclaves protected by international troops, while hundreds of thousands of Serbs, poor and rich, have emigrated from Kosovo during the past decades.
The poor live in Serbia's shantytowns; local Serbs consider them primitive. Some would like to go back, but fear prevents them. The rich, on the other hand, do not plan to return to Kosovo, where crime prospers and the electricity supply is unreliable.
Serbia's foreign minister, Vuk Draskovic, claims that the future status of Kosovo is of utmost importance for Serbia's future, but like other Serbian politicians, he does not specify why it is so important. Does Serbia's economic or political future depend on the status of Kosovo? Or would the loss of Kosovo mean that Belgrade politicians had to face the real issues affecting Serbia's population: crime, corruption, quality of education, unemployment, health care, democracy and human rights, low living standards, isolation from the European Union?
At the same time, the ambivalence about the status of Kosovo suits politicians: Serbian politicians evoke the Kosovo myth in order to postpone addressing their real problems; their Kosovo Albanian counterparts can always blame the lack of independence as the source of all evils, including unemployment, crime, corruption, crumbling infrastructure and the failing economy.
Mirjana Tomic, a freelance media consultant, lives in Madrid.
MADRID Negotiations under way in Vienna, Brussels and New York on the future political status of Kosovo are expected to end this year. While Kosovo Albanians want independence, Serbia's prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, declared during his recent controversial trip there that Kosovo "will always be part of Serbia."
Kostunica visited Kosovo on June 28, the day Serbs mark the 1389 Battle of Kosovo, when the defeat of the Serbs enabled the Ottoman Turks to invade the Balkans and stay there for almost five centuries.
When Western news media refer to Kosovo, they often remind their audience that for Serbs, it represents the cradle of Serbian civilization. They repeat what Serbian politicians tell them. But as the liberal Belgrade monthly Republika writes, Kosovo was "the heart of Serbia during Middle Ages." Today, "80 percent of the population has never been to Kosovo and has no links to the region, except for the mythology that has been consciously produced."
I am the only one among my friends and acquaintances who has actually been to Kosovo on vacation. Like most people of my generation, who attended Belgrade schools during the 1960s and early '70s, I had to memorize epic songs about the Kosovo battle and Serbian heroes. In our free time we listened to the Beatles and dreamed about visiting Western Europe. I never heard anyone say: "Let's spend our vacation visiting Kosovo."
In the absence of massive tourist demand to visit Kosovo, Yugoslavia's Communist authorities organized trips for employees and schoolchildren to visit the region. It was the only contact that most Serbs had with the "cradle of civilization."
The first time I visited Kosovo was in the late '60s. My parents took me on a tour of Serbian medieval monasteries, sources of culture and literacy before the Ottoman invasion and defenders of Christianity and tradition during the Muslim domination. Most monasteries were left to rot, but thanks to the efforts of monks and nuns, they functioned. In my early teens, Kosovo was a cultural shock: I remember veiled Albanian women in traditional costume selling food and crafts on filthy sidewalks.
Thirty years later, when I traveled to Kosovo as a journalist for a major Spanish daily and witnessed omnipresent underdevelopment, I wondered what had happened to the aid that had gone to Kosovo. According to a friend who had a leading position in the League of Serbian Communists, before Slobodan Milosevic came to power, all development aid was channeled to Kosovo Albanian Communist officials. Belgrade had no say on how it was spent.
As a reporter of Serbian origin, I did not feel welcome in Kosovo. In Albania, however, where I also went on a professional assignment, this was not the case. Our common Balkan cultural heritage created an immediate bond. My conclusion was simple: It was politics that created animosity, rather than a difference in cultural heritage.
Nowadays, after the 1999 war, deaths, expulsions, massacres and innumerable violations of human rights, the chance is small that young Kosovo Albanians and young Serbs would ever meet. If they did meet, it would be abroad. And if they became friends, they would not boast about it. A Vienna-based Albanian from Kosovo told me: "My mother's best friend is Serbian. When we go to Kosovo she has to hide it."
The Serbs who remained in Kosovo live in enclaves protected by international troops, while hundreds of thousands of Serbs, poor and rich, have emigrated from Kosovo during the past decades.
The poor live in Serbia's shantytowns; local Serbs consider them primitive. Some would like to go back, but fear prevents them. The rich, on the other hand, do not plan to return to Kosovo, where crime prospers and the electricity supply is unreliable.
Serbia's foreign minister, Vuk Draskovic, claims that the future status of Kosovo is of utmost importance for Serbia's future, but like other Serbian politicians, he does not specify why it is so important. Does Serbia's economic or political future depend on the status of Kosovo? Or would the loss of Kosovo mean that Belgrade politicians had to face the real issues affecting Serbia's population: crime, corruption, quality of education, unemployment, health care, democracy and human rights, low living standards, isolation from the European Union?
At the same time, the ambivalence about the status of Kosovo suits politicians: Serbian politicians evoke the Kosovo myth in order to postpone addressing their real problems; their Kosovo Albanian counterparts can always blame the lack of independence as the source of all evils, including unemployment, crime, corruption, crumbling infrastructure and the failing economy.
Mirjana Tomic, a freelance media consultant, lives in Madrid.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/07/06/opinion/edtomic.php
July 06, 2006
Kosovo's limbo suits both sides
Russia delays West�s date for Kosovo�s freedom
Russia delays West’s date for Kosovo’s freedom
Published: Thursday, 6 July, 2006, 12:37 PM Doha Time
By Matt Robinson
RUSSIA is frustrating the West’s plan for Kosovo independence this year, resisting US pressure and raising a risk of fresh Albanian violence in the breakaway Serbian province, senior Western officials say.
Seven years after Nato bombing drove out Serb forces and the United Nations took control, the United States and the European Union say a decision on Kosovo’s "final status" is overdue and should be made in the next six months.
Ethnic Albanians who form 90% of Kosovo’s 2mn people want independence. Dipomats expect they will get it, in a form limited for a time by EU supervision and secured by Nato, to continue protecting minority Serbs from possible attacks. But Moscow – partner of Britain, France, Germany, Italy and the US in the Contact Group on Kosovo – is in no hurry. Its view reflects concern in some EU capitals that a sudden amputation of Kosovo, on top of other recent Serb humiliations, could put Serb ultra-nationalists back in power in Belgrade.
Differences came sharply into focus in the past few days.
US Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, in Brussels on Friday as envoys met, said Washington was "confirmed in our judgment that 2006 must be the year of decision for Kosovo ... the final status talks must conclude this year".
But a senior Russian official said on Sunday that Moscow saw no need for an "artificial timeframe". Russia stood by the Contact Group’s January 30 statement which made clear that "all efforts" should be made for a 2006 settlement, but it "does not say that by all means this has to be over", he said.
"We need to find solution to many so-called technical issues related to the position of minorities in Kosovo," the Russian said. If talks produce "mutually acceptable and sustainable results" a timetable can be set, but now is "too early to prejudge" whether the process will be completed this year.
"The Russians’ focus now is on timing," said a senior Western official in Kosovo. "This is where the Contact Group will find things could become difficult."
Others say delay is too risky. Even if independence heads off a risk of renewed Albanian unrest, the UN has contingency plans in case of an exodus of half the remaining 100,000 Serbs, and Nato is braced for a Serb bid to partition the province.
While Serbia officially opposes independence, diplomats say it knows the West has made up its mind. Yet there is no sign of the "mutually acceptable" deal that Moscow wants to see.
A political source in Belgrade says Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica wants a delay to April 2007 and a face-saving formula giving Kosovo wide autonomy, years before sovereignty.
If not, ultanationalists already riding high in the polls could come to power, arguing that if Kosovo gets independence then so should the Serbs of Bosnia. A Serb secession from Bosnia would have dramatic consequences in the still turbulent Balkans.
The Albanians expect UN special envoy Martti Ahtisaari to make his recommendation to the Security Council by November and to give them the green light for independence. But it is the Council, where Russia has a veto, that must finally decide.
The Russian official said Serbia has a lot on its plate, citing its recent split with longtime sister republic Montenegro which chose independence, and the freeze on its EU membership bid over its failure to net top war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic.
Asked about fears of violence by Albanian extremists if they sense any delay in independence, the Russian said: "We don’t like to be blackmailed. If any party resorts to violence it will be very detrimental to that party in negotiations."
One Western official who now predicts a delay says any stalling longer than three or four months means trouble.
Albanians impatient over life in limbo rioted in March 2004, killing 19 people and driving out 2,000 Serbs. Belgrade said it proved Kosovo was nowhere near stability or democracy, and it would redouble the argument if violence erupted again.
Meanwhile, Serbs in north Kosovo threaten to secede in the case of independence, a move that could reignite conflict next door with the Albanians of southern Serbia and Macedonia.
After Serbia lost control of Kosovo in 1999, when Nato bombed for 11 weeks to halt the killing of Albanians in a two-year guerrilla war, it was only with EU diplomacy that a smaller insurgency was smothered in south Serbia, while Macedonia got Western help in 2001 to stifle ethnic war.
There is concern that ethnic tensions are being kept in check only by the prospect of independence for Kosovo.
"If the light goes out ... by February or March, this will be an impossible mission to manage," said the Western official. – Reuters
http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=95894&version=1&template_id=46&parent_id=26
SERBIA: Russia Hints Veto Over Kosovo
http://www.seeurope.net/en/Story.php?StoryID=61515
SERBIA: Russia Hints Veto Over Kosovo 2006-07-06 15:14:33 Russia for the first time hinted at a possibility to exercise its veto rights at the UN Security Council provided that the Western countries imposed independence for Kosovo, Belgrade's daily Politika said.
The paper says Russia presented its stands to the Contact Group members, and had for the first time mentioned the possibility to veto a resolution granting Kosovo independence.
Politika daily says at the Contact Group meeting, held on 30 June in Brussels, Russian representative put on the table an unofficial document containing four paragraphs reflecting Russia's position on Kosovo status talks.
Source: Makfax
