UNSC set to break Kosovo status quo

With talks between Belgrade and Pristina over Kosovo's final status set to fail, the UNSC is ready to make the decision itself by the year's end, a diplomat says.

By Ekrem Krasniqi in Brussels for ISN Security Watch (20/07/06)

If Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leaders and the authorities in Belgrade fail to reach an agreement over the status of Serbia's UN-administered province of Kosovo by the end of the year, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) will make the decision on its own, an EU diplomat told ISN Security Watch.

And Kosovo's independence looks like a done deal, especially with Russia seemingly on board at the UNSC, though not without its own game plan.

UN-mediated Kosovo status talks between Belgrade and Pristina are expected to take place later this month, but EU diplomats in Brussels have said that if the two sides failed to reach an agreement, the UNSC would step in and make it for them.

"The Contact Group prefers an agreed solution," but if that does not happen, "then the Security Council will have to take up its responsibilities," a European diplomat told ISN Security Watch on condition of anonymity.

UN special envoy for Kosovo talks, former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, is trying to organize the first high-level meeting between Kosovo and Serb leaders in Vienna on 24 July, hoping to bring in Serbian President Boris Tadic, who has already agreed to attend, and Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, who has not net responded, and their counterparts from Kosovo, Fatmir Sejdiu and Agim Ceku.

The meeting in Vienna would open the second phase of the talks on the future of Kosovo.

Since the beginning of the year, negotiations on decentralization (the creation of more municipalities for the Serbian minority and the shift of power from the central government to municipal authorities), the economy (the privatization of Kosovo's enterprises, property rights, citizens savings, pensions, etc) and culture (ensuring the cultural heritage and religious sites of Serbs) failed to bring about any significant results.

But even if partial agreement could be reached on some of these issues, there is little chance that Pristina and Belgrade would agree on dueling status proposals, and there are not any new options on the table: Kosovo's ethnic Albanians will settle for nothing less than independence, while Belgrade insists that independence is not an option and is willing to go only as far as granting the province greater autonomy.

What is most likely to happen is that the Vienna meeting will serve only as a confirmation of the failed status talks, which will allow the "Kosovo File" to be sent directly to the UNSC to decide on how best to end the status quo.

The US and Britain are pushing for the independence, with US President George W Bush saying that the solution should reflect the demand of the majority, but must also respect the rights of the minorities.

Washington says the Kosovo status chapter must be closed as soon as possible, as the status quo can no longer be maintained and any further delays keep the economy in limbo and could lead to renewed unrest among ethnic Albanians.

Implications for Belgrade

But handing the decision over to the UNSC - which is likely to result in a declaration of independence for Kosovo later this year or early next year - could be problematic.

One question Western leaders will have to answer is how to sell Kosovo's independence to the Serbian people to avoid internal instability. This comes at a time when radicals are leading the polls with a 40 percent popularity rating. Declaring an independent Kosovo would certainly give radicals a further boost and could be the downfall of the current government.

The Serbian leadership is hoping to convince the UNSC to delay its decision by a few months, at least until after elections, which are tentatively planned for the end of this year.

Serbian President Tadic, a moderate who on several occasions has acknowledged that Kosovo was moving toward independence, said after meeting with top EU officials Tuesday in Brussels that he would prefer extraordinary elections in Serbia before Kosovo's status was decided.

But over all, what Belgrade really wants is a temporary solution for Kosovo, such as "essential autonomy" inside Serbia, and a postponement of final status for up to 20 years - an idea that already has been categorically rejected by Western governments.

The question of Russia

For the West, the political implications for Belgrade seem to hold less importance than Russia's demands, however. After all, elections will come and go in Serbia and regardless, Belgrade will have to make a touch decision between holding on to Kosovo and pursuing its path of Euro-Atlantic integration.

Russia, on the other hand, would use Kosovo independence to win the backing of Western governments for independence for Georgia's breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and Moldova's breakaway region of Transdneistria.

Russian authorities have been quite vocal about the precedent Kosovo's independence could set.

At least for now, Britain and the US have maintained that a comparison cannot be drawn between Kosovo and Georgia and Moldova, but that could change as Kosovo's independence would require Russia's vote on the UNSC - a vote it is not likely to give without some assurance of a similar deal for South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transdneistria.

In Brussels, the ISN Security Watch's EU source echoed sentiments in London and Washington, saying that "all issues should be resolved according to their specifications," but he said he doubted Russia would move to bloc the UNSC vote on Kosovo's final status.

Russia's apparent readiness to accept Kosovo’s independence in light of the precedent it would set represents a marked change in Moscow's position.

Earlier, Russia had rejected the idea of independence for Kosovo as it feared it would strengthen the case for the independence of its Northern Caucasus republic of Chechnya.

But now, diplomats are cautiously optimistic that Russia will not abandon Contact Group statements saying that the solution for Kosovo "must be acceptable to Kosovo people” - a statement Western diplomats interpret as meaning "acceptable to the ethnic Albanian majority," or independence.

Observers also believe that with Russia on board - though it is not clear if Moscow's demands will be met - Kosovo independence is a done deal.

“The Russians believe that Kosovo’s independence will help their case in the three regions,” Nicholas Whyte from the International Crisis Group (ICG) told ISN Security Watch.

There have been diplomatic rumblings in Brussels that the UNSC was planning to "invite" member nations to recognize Kosovo's independence in the fall, though this has not been independently confirmed.

But if the West fails to agree on Russia's hoped-for concessions, complications could erupt at the UNSC, he suggested.

Since Moscow's change in position, the Serbian leadership has been lobbying other Contact Group members, including China, to vote against Kosovo independence. But so far, those lobbying efforts seem to have made little headway.

Regional implications

Since Montenegro's declaration of independence from the state union with Serbia in May, Bosnian Serbs have stepped up their calls for a similar right to self-determination - a call that has been categorically rejected by Western officials. The Dayton Peace Agreement that ended the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia split the country into two administrative entities, the Bosniak- and Croat-dominated Federation entity and the Bosnian Serb-dominated Republika Srpska entity.

The Serbian government has repeatedly warned that a declaration of independence for Kosovo could threaten regional stability in the western Balkans.

But EU and US officials have remained adamant that whatever the solution for Kosovo, the borders of Bosnia and Herzegovina cannot be changed.

Some also have warned of potential consequences for Serbia's internal borders, with Serbs in northern Kosovo threatening partition, which could in turn provoke the ethnic Albanian majority in the south of Serbia (Presevo Valley) to seek to join a newly independent Kosovo. Others warn that it could also incite new tensions in Macedonia (the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia), where the Albanian minority forms a quarter of the population.

The Contact Group has made it clear that an independent Kosovo could not join any parts or countries in the region, referring to northwestern Macedonia, southern Serbia and Albania.

EU boosts Kosovo independence hopes

On Monday, Kosovo's independence was boosted further when EU officials released a report to member states' foreign ministers signaled the bloc would begin to treat Kosovo as an independent state.

The report says Kosovo is to move toward the EU as an independent country from Serbia by building bilateral relations as Brussels does with other aspiring countries of the western Balkans region.

The EU’s foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, and Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said the 25-nation bloc expected Kosovo authorities to work hard on meeting the criteria set for accession. They also said Brussels should be ready to grant to Kosovo all contractual relations for this purpose.

Once the final status has been decided the EU will take over the mandate of the United Nation's Mission (UNMIK) and is to supervise Kosovo's "limited" independence, while NATO will continue to run the security mission, but with reduced troop numbers.

As such, EU member states will assume the main role in Kosovo, with a European police mission that is expected to help local authorities provide security guarantees for minorities.

Ekrem Krasniqi is ISN Security Watch’s senior correspondent at the EU, UN, and NATO in Brussels, where he has been based since 1992. Has has worked for the Kosovo weekly magazine Zeri and the daily Zëri i Ditës. Krasniqi is the founder of DTT-NET.COM press agency and serves as the outlet’s editor-in-chief.

http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?ID=16415

J. Bissett -Letters to the editor..BALAKAN REALITIES

http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20060719-081857-6783r_page2.htm

Letters to the editor

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
July 20, 2006


   New York


   Balkan realities
   Tod Lindberg is right that the EU and NATO countries should not turn
their backs on Balkan countries wishing to share in the peace and prosperity
of the new Europe. However, he is wrong to suggest that it was only Slobodan
Milosevic's "genocidal policies" that set the Balkans in flames in the early
1990s and wrong to condemn Serbian determination to maintain Kosovo as an
integral part of its territory ("Where Milosevic's butchery held sway,"
Op-Ed, July 11).
   It has become fashionable to blame Milosevic and Serbia for everything
that went wrong in the former Yugoslavia while overlooking the concerns of
the Christian Serbian population in Bosnia and in Kosovo at the grim
prospects of having to live in Muslim-dominated states.
   Alia Izetbegovic, the Muslim Bosnian leader, was an Islamist extremist
who made no attempt to hide his plans for destroying the Christian entity in
Bosnia, writing, "There can be no peace or co-existence between the Islamist
faith and non-Islamist institutions." As for Agim Ceku, the so-called prime
minister of Kosovo, the Canadian military knows what crimes he is guilty of
even if the Hague Tribunal refused to indict him.
   In 1993, Mr. Ceku commanded Croatian forces that violated a
U.N.-brokered cease-fire and overran three Serbian villages in the Medac
pocket. When the Canadians counterattacked and re-entered the burned
villages, they discovered all of the inhabitants and domestic animals had
been slaughtered. Mr. Ceku later also ordered undefended Serbian villages
shelled in violation of the rules of war, causing heavy casualties among the
civilian population.
   In 2002, Mr. Ceku was indicted by Serbia for responsibility as a Kosovo
Liberation Army commander for the murders of 669 Serbians and other
non-Albanians during the fighting that broke out in Kosovo in 1998. The
indictment includes murder, abduction, torture and ethnic cleansing of the
non-Albanian population from Kosovo. This is the man recently invited to
Washington to meet with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a meeting
obviously planned to show U.S. support for Kosovo independence.
   For many outside observers, including this writer, the continued support
by the United States for an independent Kosovo is incomprehensible. Granting
independence to Kosovo would be a serious violation of Serbia's territorial
integrity, which is one of the most cherished principles of international
law and is enshrined in the United Nations Charter. U.S. violation of this
principle would have far-reaching implications for the very framework of
international peace and security.
   Independence for Kosovo also would create a criminal and terrorist state
in the heart of the Balkans. This is not a happy prospect in today's world.
   Kosovo independence would set a precedent for other aspiring ethnic
groups for independent status and would destabilize not only the Balkans,
but many other parts of the world. It also would mark a low point in U.S.
foreign policy. It is difficult to be held up as the champion of the rule of
law, of democracy and the global war on terror, while at the same time
giving support to war criminals and terrorists.

   JAMES BISSETT
   Former Canadian ambassador
   to the former Yugoslavia
   Ottawa
                                   Serbian News Network - SNN

                                        news@antic.org

                                    http://www.antic.org/

Blind Eyes Over Kosovo

 

Blind Eyes Over Kosovo ( The American Spectator)

By Doug Bandow

 

PRIZREN, Kosovo -- Being a monk is never easy. But Brother Benedict, a friendly 29-year-old with the ever-present beard that characterizes Orthodox Christian clerics, cheerfully welcomed three foreign visitors to his humble abode.
 
The original Monastery of the Holy Archangels was destroyed in the 16th Century by the invading Turks. Four centuries later the Orthodox Church constructed a small church, residence, and workshop among the ancient ruins. Two years ago a mob of 600 descended from Prizren, just 1.5 miles away, burning down the buildings and destroying anything that remained. Earlier they wrecked churches, the presiding bishop's residence, a seminary, and private Serbian homes in town.

Although the monastery was nominally guarded by German soldiers serving in the international Kosovo Force (KFOR), most of them packed up when the crowd began crossing the shallow creek separating the monastery from the road. They took the monks along but left the buildings and contents unprotected; a few remaining soldiers played tourists, photographing the monastery's destruction. This shocking behavior was the norm on a day of violence around Kosovo. Complained Rachel Denber of Human Rights Watch: "In too many cases, NATO peacekeepers locked the gates to their bases, and watched as Serb homes burned."

Since then the Church has built a small two-story building on the site of the workshop, where Brother Benedict and five other monks worship, eat, and sleep. The site is now surrounded by barbed wire, though Brother Benedict has little confidence in his supposed protectors. After the monastery's destruction the German commander downplayed a mob attack on one of his units as it guarded a German TV crew. After the monks publicized the incident, their "protectors" left them isolated for two weeks. Even now the KFOR soldiers refuse to escort the monks to buy food in Prizren, suggesting instead that they turn to the Kosovo Police Service -- which includes many former Kosovo Liberation Army guerrillas. Instead, the monks drive substantially further to the nearest Serbian community for supplies.

Unfortunately, any Serb who travels outside of few remaining enclaves does so at his own risk. At the quasi-border dividing Serbia from Kosovo (which nominally remains part of Serbia), drivers routinely replace their Serbian license plates with ones marked Kosovo to disguise their identities. To do otherwise would risk not only their cars but their lives.

Even foreigners are at risk. Some British tourists recently were roughed up and their car was destroyed because the vehicle had been rented in Belgrade. Had they been Serbian their lives probably would have been forfeited. More than 900 Serbs have been murdered since the allies took control and ethnic killings continue in the territory. But you will look long and hard to find an ethnic Albanian jailed for committing the crimes.


HIGHLIGHTING THE PLIGHT OF THE MONKS at the monastery, as well as other Christians in Kosovo, is a delegation led by Bishop Artemije (Radosavljevic) of Raska and Prizren, which is visiting the U.S. this week at the invitation of the Religious Freedom Coalition. The visitors are hoping to slow the apparent administration rush to grant independence to Kosovo.

Kosovo is an unpleasant bit of unfinished business that the West would prefer to forget. A fair and sensible resolution is well nigh impossible, especially since the behavior of Washington and NATO has been truly disgraceful. Far from creating a tolerant democracy, the allies have presided over one of the largest episodes of ethnic cleansing in the Balkans. And if the U.S. continues on its present course, virtually everyone expects the ethnic majority to complete the job in just a few more years, if that long.

Like most of the Balkans, the problem of Kosovo goes back centuries. Serbian identity is rooted in both Kosovo's military history, particularly the 1389 defeat by the Turks in the Battle of the Blackbirds, and spiritual significance, represented by ancient churches and monasteries.

Over the years history was unkind to the Balkans, torn by conflict as the Ottoman Empire declined and in both World Wars, and then mostly dominated by communist regimes until the end of the Cold War. During the 1980s the territory (in Yugoslavia) enjoyed substantial self-rule and resulted in ethnic Albanian mistreatment of Serbs (behavior covered in the New York Times, among other publications). Roughly two decades ago Slobodan Milosevic launched his grab for power with a speech in Kosovo that played upon Serb nationalism. Then it was Albanians who suffered, leading to an increasingly bitter guerrilla war and NATO military intervention in March 1999.

The 78-day air war never made sense. Over the years most European states had mirrored Yugoslavia in fighting to suppress secessionist movements.

Although the conflict was ugly, it was nothing compared to the simultaneous humanitarian disaster in Sierra Leone, which killed a quarter of a million people but was ignored in the U.S. and Europe. Moreover, it was NATO intervention that sparked the worst Serbian crackdown and the mass Albanian exodus.

In any case, Western officials, starting with American Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, developed policy in a dream world. They thought that a couple days of bombing would bring Belgrade to heel, completely missing the nationalism that animated most Serbs, even democrats and human rights advocates. Worst, the allies believed that they would be able to concoct a multi-ethnic Kosovo in which Albanians and Serbs would join hands singing Kumbaya around communal campfires. In fact, having used their American-supplied air force to eject the Serb military units, the victorious ethnic Albanians saw no need to compromise.

After the war -- under the occupation of the West -- the Albanian community kicked out a quarter million Serbs, Roma, Jews, and non-Albanian Muslims. Over the next five years isolated Serbs were killed, beaten, and kidnapped. Even Serbian enclaves were vulnerable to drive-by shootings.

Although Serbs disappeared from much of Kosovo -- roughly 40,000 in the capital of

Pristina turned into about 120 mostly terrified elderly residents today -- around 100,000 remain, with many concentrated in the north, around the town of Mitrovica. In March 2004 a series of coordinated riots and assaults broke out, killing 19 people, injuring about 1,000 more, displacing 4,000 Serbs, destroying 36 churches and monasteries, torching numerous homes and farms, and despoiling cemeteries. (All told, about 150 churches, monasteries, and seminaries have been destroyed since 1999. "They destroy them, we rebuild them," commented one determined Church member.) With good reason many Serbs called the March violence Kristallnacht, after the infamous Nazi assault on Jews the presaged the eventual attempt to exterminate the entire people.

Human Rights Watch's Rachel Denber observed that "This was the biggest security test for NATO and the United Nations in Kosovo since 1999, when minorities were forced from their homes as the international community looked on. But they failed the test." The events two years ago resulted in much hand wringing, but little else. No one was prosecuted and jailed for their crimes. Today many Serb refugees remain in small camps, unemployed and living in containers turned into homes.

The Albanian political leadership includes guerrilla leaders almost certainly guilty of atrocities. No one denies the explosion of organized crime, including sex trafficking, in Kosovo, which has been called the "black hole" of Europe. Radical Islam, too, may be on the rise -- more than 200 mosques have been built since 1999, and some unashamedly fly the Saudi Arabian flag. "Sex, crime, terrorism, it's all there," opines one U.S. diplomat stationed in Belgrade.


AS A POLITICAL ENTITY, KOSOVO is less ready for independence today, based on its commitment to a multi-ethnic republic with human rights guarantees, than when it was "liberated" in 1999. Warns Joseph Griebowski of the Institute on Religion and Public Policy, "the present record of rule of law, protection of the rights of religious and ethnic minorities, and the return/resettlement of internally displaced people by the Provisional Authority of Kosovo -- all of which are indispensable for democratic governance -- have been gravely unsatisfactory."

So what to do? Final (or future) status negotiations have begun under the tutelage of UN Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari, and it is obvious that officials in the West would like to take credit for their "success" in Kosovo, run a victory lap, and go home. The U.S. and Europeans have been pressuring the Serbs to voluntarily yield Kosovo and collect EU membership as their reward. Tod Lindberg of Policy Review reflects the conventional wisdom when he argues that "Serbia needs to decide whether its future is Western integration or instead a return to dead-end nationalist politics." Some Europeans have spoken of finding a win/win, or at least win/no lose, solution.

However, it doesn't exist. Roughly two million ethnic Albanians now live in Kosovo -- it's hard to know how many for sure, since the local authorities have no incentive to prevent a large in-migration, further strengthening their hold over the land. Understandably, none of them want to live under Serbia.

But Serbs, no less than Americans and Europeans, want to amputate historic lands from their country. On his visit last week Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica indicated that independence was not an option, instead offering "the greatest possible autonomy." Belgrade may not be able to prevent the allies from dismembering a sovereign nation, but it will not acquiesce in the act.

Moreover, no sane Serb (or Roma) in Kosovo wants to live under Albanian rule. Indeed, the Serbs who now dominate Mitrovica, north of the Irba River and close to the rest of Serbia, probably would forcibly resist Albanian rule. Even the Crisis Group, which remains dedicated to the mythical ideal of a multi-ethnic Kosovo, admits that the allies would have to make integration happen, somehow (the group suggests -- and I am not making this up, to quote humorist Dave Berry -- a PR campaign.)

Allied officials continue to talk in grand terms. Last year Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns told Congress that "Failure to secure a multi-ethnic Kosovo would be a failure" of years of effort. Yet the likely result of full independence is clear. A top U.S. official told me on my visit that he figures not a Serb will remain within five or ten years after independence, or even the status quo. That is, granting Kosovo independence means completing the process of ethnic cleansing that started seven years ago. Worse, since the West has been in charge, granting independence means ratifying the very process that the allies went to war to prevent.


IN ORDER TO GET AROUND this rather embarrassing dilemma, Western governments are talking about conditional independence, that is, independence only after ethnic Albanians meet certain standards. Perhaps proponents of this perspective are so naive as to verge on the delusional; more likely, they are cynically maneuvering to get out of Kosovo with a minimum of public embarrassment.

After all, if things are, as claimed by Kosovo's allied occupiers, better today than in 1999 or 2004, it is mostly because so many Serbs and other minorities have fled. The easy ethnic cleansing already has been done. There is less opportunity and reason to target minorities.

However, despite all the right public promises from Albanian officials, there is little reason to believe popular attitudes have changed. Bishop Artemije sadly observed simply: "Crimes happened not just seven years ago but are happening now as we speak." One resident of a refugee camp who fled deadly mobs two years ago told me that "we see people living in our homes and sleeping in our beds talking about how good democracy is."

And if seven years of tutelage by the allies under military occupation isn't enough to teach the majority Albanian community good human rights manners, how will a few verbal promises and some corresponding paper threats do the job? Nor will any conditions be enforced. The idea that the allies would get tough and block

independence, or even return the territory to Belgrade, if the standards were not met is a fantasy. The West has done little to protect the Serbian community over the last seven years; to the contrary, the allies have allowed the Albanians to ethnically cleanse most of the land. Today the heroic humanitarian crusaders of 1999 simply want to finish the occupation, withdraw their 17,000 troops, and move on.

At the same time, conditional independence, by leaving the issue formally open while effectively dispossessing the Serbs, is likely to radicalize both parties. Ethnic Albanians have been growing impatient. The group Self-Determination! has been leading non-violent protests against UN targets (for which some demonstrators actually went to jail, in contrast to those who murdered Serbs). More ominously, there have been attacks on allied vehicles, and resentment at more years of apparent indecision could spark more serious assaults on KFOR and UN personnel. Leading Kosovar political figure Adam Demaci has threatened the allies with "violence of such dimensions that 17 March 2004 will be forgotten."

As for Serbia, detaching Kosovo is likely to bring down the Kostunica government. Waiting in the wings is the Serbian Radical Party, a populist-nationalist movement headed by Vojislav Seselj, now awaiting trial for war crimes at The Hague. The U.S. will not even allow diplomatic personnel to meet with Radical members of parliament, terming the party "undemocratic." Yet some polls show it with 40-plus percent support, putting it within easy reach of dominating a new coalition government.

What a pretty picture this all would be. Ethnic Albanians step up attacks on Serbs and begin targeting allied forces in Kosovo. Serbs in Mitrovica fortify their enclave and look north to Belgrade for support. Hard-core, anti-Western nationalists take power in Serbia. Then what?

Like so many conflicts, it was a lot easier to get into Kosovo than it will be to get out. But there's still time to draw back from the brink. The West should insist on a genuine negotiation in which a variety of options are freely considered. An allied diktat, especially one mandating independence, will not be fair. Nor will it bring the regional stability that everyone desires. Only the residents of Kosovo and the rest of Serbia can find a lasting solution.


Doug Bandow is the author of Foreign Follies: America's New Global Empire (forthcoming, Xulon). A former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is a member of the Advisory Board of the American Council for Kosovo.