Russia: ruling won't make Kosovo independence legal

President of the International Court of Justice, Judge Hisashi Owada (C), Vice President, Judge Peter Tomka (L) and Judge Awn Shawkat Al-Khasawneh, start the court's ruling on Kosovo's unilateral secession from Serbia at the Peace Palace in The Hague July 22, 2010.

Credit: Reuters/Jerry Lampen

Thu Jul 22, 2010 11:54pm IST

By Conor Humphries

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia said on Thursday that a World Court ruling did not provide legal underpinning for Kosovo's independence from Serbia and said it would continue to lead opposition to Kosovo's quest for international recognition.

The World Court in The Hague made a non-binding ruling that Kosovo's unilateral secession from Serbia in 2008 did not violate international law, prompting Kosovo to say that its independence had been confirmed by international law.

Russia's Foreign Ministry rejected that interpretation, saying that the World Court ruling merely said that the document declaring independence did not violate international law and made no ruling on Kosovo's right to secede.

"Our position on the non-recognition of Kosovo's independence remains unchanged," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

"It is essential to note that the court gave an assessment of only the actual declaration, and specifically said it was not addressing the broader question of the right of Kosovo to secede from Serbia unilaterally," the statement said.

"In its conclusions the court did not express an opinion on the consequences of this declaration, in particular, on whether Kosovo is a state or on the legality of the recognition of the this region by a number of countries."

Russia, a historical ally of Serbia, has said it will keep Kosovo out of the United Nations and other world bodies where it has a veto.

"The legal debates about Kosovo's independence will continue," Russia's envoy to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, said in an interview broadcast on the Rossiya-24 news channel.

"We will not accept the splitting of a country that is a member of the United Nations. On principle we consider Serbia a unified whole," he said.

Russia has largely subdued a separatist Islamist insurgency in its province of Chechnya, but recognised Georgia's breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states in 2008 after a five-day war with Tbilisi.

Only three other countries -- Nicaragua, Venezuela and the Pacific island of Nauru - have followed Russia in recognising the regions, which are overwhelmingly dependent on Russia for security and economic support.

Abkhazian President Sergei Bagapsh welcomed Thursday's ruling. "The decision of the International Court once more confirms the right of Abkhazia and South Ossetia to self-rule," Interfax news agency quoted Bagapsh as saying.

"From a historic and legal point of view, Abkhazia and South Ossetia have much more right to independence than Kosovo."

Russia called for talks on Kosovo's future, but suggested that the United Nations rather than the World Court was the appropriate arbiter.

"We believe that the solution to the Kosovo problem is only possible through negotiations between the parties concerned on the basis of resolution 1244 of the UN Security Council, which, as the World Court pointed out, is the universally recognized international benchmark for legal settlement," the Foreign Ministry statement said.

(Writing by Conor Humphries; editing by Tim Pearce)

http://in.reuters.com/article/idINIndia-50330920100722

ICJ Ruling: Blow to Serbia, Boon to Tadic & Jeremic

 

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http://www.balkanstudies.org/blog/icj-ruling-blow-serbia-boon-tadi%C4%87-jeremi%C4%87

 

ICJ Ruling: Blow to Serbia, Boon to Tadic & Jeremic

By Srdja Trifkovic
Thursday, 22 Jul 2010

 

 

Ever since the U.S. intervened in Serbia's domestic politics two years ago and helped the current coalition take power in Belgrade, Boris Tadic and his cohorts have been looking for a way to capitulate on Kosovo while pretending not to. The formula was simple: place all diplomatic eggs in one basket – that of the International Court of Justice – and refrain from using any other political or economic (let alone military) tools at Serbia's disposal. On July 22 the ICJ performed on cue, declaring that Kosovo's UDI was not illegal.

It should be noted that the ICJ has only assessed Kosovo's declaration of independence; it has not considered more widely Kosovo's right to unilateral secession from Serbia. Furthermore, the ICJ has not assessed either the consequences of the adoption of the UDI, namely whether Kosovo is a state, or the legitimacy of its recognition by a number of countries.

The ICJ advisory opinion is deeply flawed and non-binding, but the government in Belgrade now has a perfect alibi for doing what it had intended to do all along.

Following the appointment of Vuk Jeremic as Serbia's foreign minister in 2007, this outcome could be predicted with near-certainty. As President Boris Tadic's chief foreign policy advisor, Jeremic came to Washington on 18 May 2005 to testify in Congress on why Kosovo should stay within Serbia. In his subsequent off-the-record conversations, however, he assured his hosts that the task was really to sugar-coat the bitter Kosovo pill that Serbia would have to swallow anyway.

Two years later another advisor to Tadic, Dr. Leon Kojen, resigned in a blaze of publicity after Austrian Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer declared, on April 13, 2007, "We are working with Boris Tadic and his people to find a way to implement the essence of the Ahtisaari plan." Tout Belgrade knew that "Tadic's people" meant—Vuk Jeremic. Gusenbauer's indiscretion amounted to the revelation that Serbia's head of state and his closest advisor were engaged in secret negotiations aimed at facilitating the detachment of Kosovo from Serbia—which, of course, was "the essence of the Ahtisaari plan." Jeremic's quest for sugar-coating the bitter pill was evidently in full swing even before he came to the helm of Serbia's diplomacy.

In the intervening three years Tadic and Jeremic have continued to pursue a dual-track policy on Kosovo. The decisive fruit of that policy was their disastrous decision to accept the European Union's Eulex Mission in Kosovo in December 2008. Acting under an entirely self-created mandate, the EU thus managed to insert its mission, based explicitly on the provisions of the Ahtissari Plan, into Kosovo with Belgrade's agreement. 

That was the moment of Belgrade's true capitulation. Everything else -- the ICJ ruling included -- is just a choreographed farce…
The ICJ opinion crowns two decades of U.S. policy in the former Yugoslavia that has been mendacious and iniquitous in equal measure. By retroactively condoning the Albanian UDI, the Court has made a massive leap into the unknown. That leap is potentially on par with Austria's July 1914 ultimatum to Serbia. The fruits will be equally bitter.

Aiding and abetting Muslim designs in the Balkans, in the hope that this will earn some credit for the United States in the Islamic world, has been a major motive of American policy in the region since at least 1992. It has never yielded any dividends, of course, but repeated failure only prompts the architects of the policy to redouble their efforts.

It is virtually certain that Washington will be equally supportive of an independent Sanjak that would connect Kosovo with Bosnia, or of any putative Islamistan, from western Macedonia to southern Bulgaria to northern Caucasus. The late Tom Lantos must be smiling approvingly wherever he is now, having called, three years ago, on "Jihadists of all color and hue" to take note of "yet another example that the United States leads the way for the creation of a predominantly Muslim country in the very heart of Europe."

In the region, the ICJ verdict will encourage two distinct but interconnected trends: greater-Albanian aspirations against Macedonia, Montenegro, Greece, and rump-Serbia (Preševo), and pan-Islamic agitation for the completion of the Green Corridor – an Islamic belt anchored in Asia Minor and extending north-westward across the Balkans into the heart of Central Europe.

Beyond the Balkans, it will breed instability in each and every potential or actual separatist hotspot, from Galilee to Kashmir, from the Caucasus to Sinkiang.

Kosovo is now an expensive albatross costing American and European taxpayers a few billion a year. It will continue developing, not as a functional economy but as a black hole of criminality and terrorism. The ever-rising and constantly unfulfilled expectations of its unemployable multitudes will eventually turn – Frankenstein's monster-like – against the entity's creator. There will be many Ft. Dixes to come, over there and here at home.

God acts in mysterious ways. Kosovo had remained Serbian during those five long centuries of Ottoman darkness, to be liberated in 1912. It is no less Serbian now, the ugly farce in Priština and at The Hague notwithstanding. It will be tangibly Serbian again when the current experiment in global hegemonism collapses, and when the very names of its potentates and servants – Boris Tadic and Vuk Jeremic included – are consigned to the Recycle Bin of history.

 

 

 

 

Kosovo judgment is chance to take fresh look at S-Ossetia, Abkhazia - deputies

Kosovo judgment is chance to take fresh look at S-Ossetia, Abkhazia - deputies

23.07.2010, 21.35

 

MOSCOW, July 23 (Itar-Tass) -- The UN Court judgment, which proclaimed legal the unilateral declaration of independent Kosovo, will enable the world to take a fresh look at sovereignty of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Federation Council members said.

"There must be no comments on court judgments. However, this judgment is another weighty argument in favor of sovereignty of South Ossetia and Abkhazia," Chairman of the Federation Council Defense and Security Committee Viktor Ozerov told Itar-Tass. "These republics had no less reasons for separating from Georgia than Kosovo had for separating from Serbia. The court judgment sets a precedent, which will enable politicians and the world public to take a fresh look at sovereignty of two Caucasian republics," he said.

"A different judgment was hardly possible, as the position of the majority of EU member countries was well known. However, we still think that the separation of Kosovo was an artificial affair," member of the Federation Council International Affairs Committee Vladimir Zhidkikh said.

In his opinion, the judgment "will not bring peace to Serbia or Kosovo, and the spot of tensions will remain in Europe."

"The court did not put an end to the Kosovo problem. Most probably, the judgment aimed to lull EU member countries that supported the proclamation of independent Kosovo," he noted.

  http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=15343946&PageNum=0

After UN court ruling, fears of global separatism

 

After UN court ruling, fears of global separatism

By DUSAN STOJANOVIC
The Associated Press
Friday, July 23, 2010; 12:55 PM

BELGRADE, Serbia -- Serbia and Kosovo are dispatching competing armies of lobbyists to governments that so far have wavered on recognizing the breakaway province.

Serbia, which considers Kosovo the cradle of its statehood and religion, fears Thursday's ruling by the top U.N. court backing the legality of the 2008 declaration of independence could lead to a wave of new recognitions.

Its best hope for preventing Kosovo admission to the United Nations may be vetoes by China and Russia which both have their own restive regions - a reflection of concerns in some countries that separatists will be emboldened by the development.

The U.S. and many in the West insist Kosovo's statehood is a special case because it is the result of a brutal Serbian ethnic cleansing campaign against Albanian separatists that led to an international administration in 1999, when NATO ejected Serb forces after a brief aerial war.

"We call on those states, who have not yet done so, to recognize Kosovo," U.S. State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley on said on Thursday. "Now is the time for them, for Kosovo and Serbia, to put aside their differences and move forward."

Some experts say there's no practical way to prevent other independence-minded regions from drawing inspiration from the Kosovo ruling.

"The West wants to say that this case has no precedential importance, but that's kind of a contortionist logic," said Dana Allin at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based think tank. "You can say that, but whether you can enforce it is hard to say."

In its nonbinding decision announced Thursday, the top U.N. court said it did not rule on the legality of Kosovo's statehood, but only on its declaration of independence.

Regions around the world where separatists may be energized by Kosovo's secession include Spain's Basque country and Catalonia, Scotland, Italy's ethnic German-populated Alto Adige, and parts of Romania and Slovakia populated by restive Hungarian minorities.

South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which have declared independence from Georgia, will also be encouraged by the ruling that states that such unilateral declarations of independence are not illegal under international law. Nearby, Armenian separatists in Azerbaijan's Nagorno-Karabah region may seek to legitimize their secession dating back to the early 1990s.

In the Middle East, Kurdish politicians in Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region have also said they will carefully study the ICJ decision. Although the U.S. has insisted on keeping Iraq's territorial integrity since the 2003 invasion, the Kurds have repeatedly pointed out that they have been victims of Iraqi aggression under a variety of regimes since the 1930s.

The ruling could also have far-reaching effects on Indonesia, where at least two provinces, Aceh and West Papua, are seeking independence.

So far, only 69 countries of the 192 in the United Nations General Assembly, including the U.S. and most of EU states, have recognized Kosovo since it declared independence from Serbia in February 2008. But a number of important countries, aside from China and Russia, have refused to do so, including India, Brazil, Israel, Egypt, Indonesia, and South Africa.

For Kosovo to obtain U.N. membership, it needs a two-third majority in the General Assembly, plus the approval by all five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council - the U.S., Russia, China, Britain and France.

"Already this weekend, special envoys will be dispatched to 55 countries throughout the world with my letter for the presidents of states or governments," Serbian President Boris Tadic said Friday.

"Many countries will be under pressure to recognize Kosovo before the U.N. General Assembly in September," he said. "Serbia will do its utmost so that there are the least possible such recognitions."

Kosovo Foreign Minister Skender Hyseni said he will send requests to 121 countries around the world asking for formal recognition of Kosovo's independence.

"The opinion of the court has created an entirely new context, and in line with this I have already started a new campaign today to animate the countries that have not recognized Kosovo yet," Hyseni told the Associated Press.

He said he will travel to the U.S. over the weekend for some 60 meetings with representatives of different nations in an attempt to get more recognitions ahead of the General Assembly.

But Serbia's Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic claimed Friday that many countries around the world "are worried about the possible misinterpretation" of the World Court ruling.

"It's a very dangerous precedent," Jeremic said. "Pandora's Box has been opened, and it must be closed before something flies out of it."

British Foreign Secretary William Hague, however, urged more countries to recognize Kosovo.

"Kosovo has been functioning as an independent State for two and a half years," he said in a statement. "I encourage other states that have not so far recognized Kosovo now to do so. Kosovo is a unique case and does not set a precedent."

The EU countries that have not recognized Kosovo are Spain, Greece, Slovakia, Cyprus and Romania - most grappling with separatism issues.

Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos said his country "respected" the U.N. court's ruling. But, he did not say whether Spain - which is faced with Catalan and Basque separatist movements - will now recognize Kosovo's independence.

Greece and Slovakia said the court's ruling won't make them change their minds.

Cyprus' foreign ministry said it remained firm in backing Serbia, reaffirming its "unwavering position to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Serbia, which includes Kosovo."

Romania has not yet officially reacted on the ruling, but the leader of its restive ethnic Hungarians, Laszlo Tokes, said they should now follow the Catalan model and hit the streets to demand more autonomy.

"Kosovo gained independence, couldn't we achieve autonomy?" he said.

Sergei Bagpash, the president of Georgia's separatist Abkhazia region, also applauded the Kosovo ruling.

"I think the decision itself will have a great influence on the efforts we are making," Bagpash told The Associated Press. "There can be no double standards."

Russia recognized the separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states after the 2008 Russian-Georgian war and has kept troops there.

In Bosnia, which was divided after the bloody ethnic war in the 1990s into two entities - a Bosniak-Croat and a Serb one - the Bosnian Serb Prime Minister Milorad Dodik said the ruling "represents a good road sign for our future," referring to the region's longtime desire to split from Bosnia.

"It's inescapable that this ruling could have implications for other territories and other peoples, but how this will play out remains to be seen," said Tim Judah, a London-based Balkan analyst and author.

"It's too early to say because the court ruled on a very narrow question, which was simply whether Kosovo's declaration was legal or not," Judah said.

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Associated Press writers Jovana Gec in Belgrade, Nebi Qena in Pristina, Slobodan Lekic in Brussels, Sylvia Hui in London, Alison Mutler in Bucharest and Christopher Toothaker in Caracas contributed to this report.

© 2010 The Associated Press

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/23/AR2010072303046.html