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The San Diego Union-Tribune October 6, 2006 Opinion Negotiating Kosovo's final status By William Slomanson The international protectorate of Kosovo is perched in southern Serbia. Kosovo has been under military occupation since the 1999 NATO bombing campaign against Serbia's now defunct regime of Slobodan Milosevic. The United Nations previously announced its intent to end its unique governmental administration of Kosovo within the next 90 days. Kosovo has been a major financial drain, at a time when U.N. members are demanding more bang for the assessed dues buck. Serbia's government has just scheduled a new constitutional referendum for December, claiming its irrefutable right to the province. Kosovo is therein proclaimed to be an "integral part" of Serbia. The Vienna-based Contact Group leads the on-going process of resolving Kosovo's final status. Membership includes the United Nations, European Union, NATO, Russia and the United States. Tight-lipped negotiators are presumably exploring the role that the European Union might play when the United Nations departs. Unfortunately, European Union members have yet to commit the requisite degree of resources needed to kick-start all levels of Kosovar infrastructure. A patient international community should eschew temporary remedies, given the region's 400 wars in 300 years. Kosovo's currently unresolved status makes it the black hole of Europe. Its Balkan neighbors are progressing toward membership in NATO, the European Union, and other desired international linkages. As the United States National Security Strategy warns, weak states can threaten strong states. The major impediment to independence is Kosovo's historically mono-ethnic society. A number of former Serbian soldiers and governmental officials have been prosecuted in the U.N.'s regional criminal tribunal for their war crimes and genocidal acts against the Albanian population in the 1990s. Serbs switched roles in post-conflict Kosovo. They became the ethnic minority. International human rights organizations cannot guarantee their safety. The prime example is the small-scale Krystal Nacht of March 17, 2004. Nineteen Serb churches were torched. Thirty people were killed. The final status options include linkage with Albania. Sophisticated Albanian Kosovars do not favor this compromise, because of Albania's comparatively poor economic status in Europe. Another alternative is returning Kosovo to the autonomy it enjoyed in Tito's Yugoslavia, before Milosevic mounted his repressive ethnic cleansing campaign. But many Albanian Kosovars do not want to risk the remote possibility that one day, after departure of the international community, Belgrade would reinstitute repressive tactics. This ubiquitous fear lacks a solid foundation for two reasons. First, the Serbian government surrendered its former president, Milosevic, for trial by the U.N.'s regional criminal tribunal. That concession appeased the United States and its NATO allies, whose bombing was directed at his government. Second, Belgrade would not want to short-circuit its incorporation into desirable European entities. The majority Kosovar Albanian population's desired option is statehood. A growing number of Serbs, both in an out of Kosovo, see the international community's writing on the wall. They have acknowledged that Serbia's retention of Kosovo is a recipe for economic and political disaster. Kosovo is in the poorest part of Europe, and its rebellious population is nearly 95 percent Albanian. The Serbian government is no doubt negotiating for retention of the northern 15 percent to 20 percent of this province. The city of Mitrovica is Kosovo's Mason-Dixon Line. This division was parented by Serb-friendly French NATO forces, upon cessation of the 1999 NATO bombing. Parallel Serb institutions reign in this northern portion of Kosovo, where the United Nations has de jure but not de facto control. This reality is most evident by the Serbian flag at the northern edge of the Ibar River Bridge. It effectively divides Kosovo into the Serbian north and Albanian south. The civilian-policed guard shack, and the NATO installation on the river below, evince the ethnic undercurrent forcibly restrained by their presence. Such a geographical division may be a convenient Contact Group pressure point. But it would be a particularly discomforting precedent. International practice abhors geographic divisions based on ethnicity. If Vienna's negotiators were to force the Mitrovica division piece into this geographical puzzle, ethnic adversaries elsewhere would expect like treatment. For example, the international community possesses something Serbia wants. That is international recognition of Republika Srpska, the unrecognized Serb entity in the eastern half of Bosnia. Unlike the Kosovo situation, however, Bosnia's constitution expressly provides that it consist of both Bosnia-Herzegovina and this otherwise unrecognized Serbian entity within Bosnia. Balkan news reports on the Vienna Contact Group negotiations are now referring to "conditional independence" as a likely final status option. The term conditional implies that Kosovo's independence could not be complete until Kosovar Serbs and other minorities enjoy a robust existence in terms of equal opportunity education, employment and housing. During conditional independence, NATO's barbed wire fences and its soldiers would gradually disappear from the current Serb population enclaves in Kosovo. Regardless of what the Vienna Contact Group achieves, a functioning multiethnic society will be the unavoidable price tag for full independence. This cannot occur until the international community is satisfied that the majority Albanian populace has convincingly demonstrated the requisite degree of tolerance. The minority population's human rights cannot be passively inherited from the international community's occupation of Kosovo. True independence is literally in the hands of Kosovo's majority population. They have to credibly demonstrate that an independent Kosovo will not erupt into a fresh ethnic cleansing crisis, requiring yet another humanitarian intervention in Kosovo. ___________________________________________________________________________ Slomanson is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego and visiting professor at the University of Pristina in Kosovo. He is past chair of the American Society of International Law United Nations Section. 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