Publication day: 3/6/2009
On 29 May 2009, IDC Paris organised a debate on the right of Kosovo to
secede from Serbia. The main speaker was Slobodan Samardzic, the former
Serbian minister for Kosovo, who argued that the secession was illegal and a
violation of international law. His paper is published under the section
"Research" on this web site. Two neutral experts kindly agreed to come and
reply to his arguments, Dr Eric de Brabandere of the Grotius Centre for
International Legal Studies at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands
and Professor and Dr Cedric Ryngaert of the Universityof Leuven in Belgium.
Slobodan Samardzic served as adviser to and then minister under Vojislav
Kostunica, the man who overthrew Slobodan Milosevic after contested
electrions on 5 October 2000. He therefore embodies a new spirit of
pro-Western orientation in Serbia. Yet Mr Samardzic, who is Vice-President
of Kostunica's party and a professor of political science at the University
of Belgrade, bitterly contests the way in which Serbia has been let down by
her European and American allies.
His main argument focussed on United Nations Security Council Resolution
1244 of 10 June 1999, which fixed the status of Kosovo following the NATO
bombing campaign against Yugoslavia. That resolution, he insisted, thrice
reaffirmed Kosovo's status as an integral part of the Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia of which today's Serbia is the successor state. (Kosovo, indeed,
was always part of Serbia within the Yugoslav federation.) The resolution
provided for negotiations about the future status of Kosovo and these
negotiations did indeed take place, from 2005 onwards. However, they were
broken off when the Albanian authorities in the province declared
independence in February 2008, with the support of the European Union and
the United States. He added that the period of UN administration of the
province (1999 – 2008) had been a period of systematic persecution against
the Serbs and other national minorities in Kosovo.
His two respondents were in considerable agreement with the former
minister. Eric de Brabandere said that secession was a political issue on
which international law did not necessarily have the right to adjudicate.
Not everything can be governed by international law, he argued. Cedric
Ryngaert took a different view, saying that there was a body of
jurisprudence on the right of secession and that the essential point was
that it was illegal except in cases of massive violations of human rights.
Natalia Narochnitskaya, the president of the Institute, asked what
confidence one could have in the new European Union administration of the
province when it was releasing from prison or refusing to prosecute people
convicted or suspected of war crimes. She also emphasised the long list of
desecrations perpetrated against Serb Orthodox churches in the province.
There was a strong debate after the main speakers had finished. A former
French ambassador to Croatia clearly disagreed with Mr Samardzic and Mrs
Narochnitskaya. He claimed that the status of the new EU administration in
Kosovo, EULEX, was legal because confirmed by a report of the UN Secretary
General, and he countered the allegation about the desecration of churches
saying that hundreds of mosques had been destroyed in Kosovo prior to June
1999. Mr Samardzic in turn countered both points, first by denying that the
Secretary General has the right to rescind a Security Council Resolution
(which created a UN administration) and second by claiming that the
destruction of mosques was due to NATO bombing not attacks by Serb forces.
Others who intervened included a former commander of French special forces
in Kosovo in 1999, who said that the NATO war had been based on a massive
campaign of disinformation. The audience included senior army officers,
government officials, academics and students
