KOSOVO: WITH ALL DELIBERATE SPEED by JEFFREY LAURENTI (MaximsNews.com, U.N.)
UNITED NATIONS - / www.MaximsNews.com, U.N./ - 23 April 2007 -- BELGRADE - Americans are only too happy to have put the Balkans out of mind. Exactly eight years ago, the United States and its NATO allies seemed trapped in an inconclusive air war against Serbia on behalf of Kosovars' resistance to Slobodan Milosevic's rule. Pentagon sources - far more willing to vent dissatisfaction with the policies of their commander-in-chief under Bill Clinton than they have been under George Bush - were bluntly blaming the Secretary of State for "Madeleine's war," and Europeans were already undermining Washington's goal of a post-war NATO protectorate by calling for a U.N. administration of Kosovo. This became the basis for the U.N. Security Council agreement weeks later to end the war, along with a fig leaf for Serbia and Russia of a nominal deference to Serb "sovereignty." Today, Kosovo is back on the international radar screen. The Bush administration, long eager to wash its hands of Clinton-era responsibility for peace-building in the Balkans, is now pressing for rapid Security Council approval of a plan, proposed by U.N. mediator Marti Ahtisaari, to recognize Kosovo's formal separation from Serbia under temporary European Union supervision. The E.U. is also behind the plan, and Britain - which holds the Security Council presidency this April - is anxious to get it approved by May, when the U.S. chairs the Council. It's not going to happen. And more realistic political decision-makers in Washington and Western Europe should be preparing an alternative strategy to win Security Council approval for Kosovo's final status. One clear impediment is that international responses to any plan pushed by Washington today are shaped by a preemptive skepticism engendered by U.S. policy in and around Iraq. Whenever the Bush administration insists immediate action is needed, other governments dig in their heels, ask "What's the rush?," and delay until they can check for themselves. American and some northern European officials warn that quick U.N. approval of Kosovo's formal detachment from Serbia is essential lest Kosovar Albanians rise up violently to assert their independence from U.N. protection. The non-Western majority of the Security Council is unpersuaded, suspecting that this argument is either scare-mongering or simple incitement. As with politics everywhere, in the Security Council timing is everything. The West is pressing Kosovo final status at a treacherous moment, just after Washington embittered the elected members of the Council by flatly rejecting South Africa's substantive amendments to the recent resolution ratcheting up nuclear sanctions on Iran. American insistence that the Council's ten elected members must not tamper with the text the five permanent members had privately hammered out only inflamed the nonpermanent members' sense of marginalization. In consequence, South Africa and other elected members are eager to demonstrate that they are relevant in the Security Council, and they see Kosovo as an opportune test case of their indispensability. Seeing Washington's haste on Kosovo as artificial, they are signaling their intent to proceed with all deliberate speed. Moreover, other elected members have smoldering complaints about breakaway groups that give them substantive pause on Kosovo. Slovakia is concerned not to encourage separatist longings among its large Hungarian minority. Indonesia still resents its eviction from East Timor, and imagines that Serbia's situation is analogous. South Africa claims to speak for African concerns that a U.N. dictate carving out an independent Kosovo from Serbia's long-recognized territory would undermine a bedrock principle of international order: that ethnic minorities do not have a right to secede from the country they inhabit to form their own state. Much as Milosevic's brutal rule may have forfeited Serbia's right to govern Kosovo, this thinking runs, the U.N. should not be sanctioning secession. Of course, Africans have established their own precedent for state division in Sudan, where the Khartoum government signed a peace accord with black rebels in the south to provide a temporary coalition government - leading to a referendum in the south on independence. The ambiguous status of a U.N. protectorate has sidestepped the Kosovo dilemma of sovereignty and secession until now, just as Taiwan has managed tolerably well in a legal twilight zone. The Chinese and Russians are delighted by the elected members' caution. They have ethnic malcontents within their own borders too, as well as sundry other interests in play with Washington. The Russians, of course, have been particularly solicitous of Serb interests since they rediscovered czarist-era ties with Serbia after the fall of communism. Though they joined in the Security Council's vote two years ago to chart a path to final status, as their relations with Washington have frayed they have resumed shilling for Belgrade, and invoke one delaying tactic after another. Already they have persuaded the elected members to insist on a fact-finding mission by Security Council ambassadors to the region, and appear to be gaining support for the view that the Council should negotiate the terms leading to final status drawing from the Ahtisaari report - and not simply "fast-track" the report for an up-or-down vote. But the Russians have no interest in restoring Serb control over Kosovo, and even the Serbs know they will never rule Kosovo again. Yet they cannot yet bring themselves to admit this reality publicly. This is not surprising; it took 25 years after World War II for a German government to acknowledge the reality - over outraged conservative opposition - that Germany's pre-war eastern territories had been permanently lost to Russia and Poland. While no Serb politician has visited or sought votes in Kosovo for eight years, they are all convinced that a rabid Serb public will oust any party that acquiesces in Kosovo's separation. Still, they seem to want the claim to Kosovo more than they want to reclaim the territory. Serb politicians - who still cannot form a government months after inconclusive parliamentary elections - would be terrified if Kosovars voted in Serbia's next parliamentary election and took their 20 percent share of seats, obstructed all legislation, and installed as Serb prime minister whoever would recognize Kosovo independence. And the last thing Serb politicians want to assume is any financial responsibility for Kosovo, the lowest-income entity in Europe and the one place on the continent with negative economic growth. The withdrawal of the U.N. mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) would instantly shrink the territory's GNP by seven percent. If Serbs were billed for a major chunk of UNMIK's accumulated costs to maintain their vestigial claim to sovereignty, many illusions would quickly fall away. Washington can afford to work patiently with the Security Council to get a broadly supported Kosovo resolution. Working the issue for a few more months will be more productive and more sustainable than a prematurely forced vote, and no one is being killed or oppressed in Kosovo to require urgent intervention. Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov has signaled readiness to deal, affirming that Russia will not be "more Serbian than the Serbs." The United States simply has too many important issues on which it needs to work with Moscow to let an artificial deadline on Kosovo poison the relationship http://www.maximsnews.com/107mnunapril23jeffreylaurentikosovobalkansbelgrade22222.htm
