By Vesna Peric Zimonjic
BELGRADE, Nov 28 2007 (IPS)

The final round of internationally sponsored talks on the future Kosovo collapsed Wednesday in Baden, Austria. Belgrade and Pristina remained firm in their diametrically opposed positions.

For Pristina, nothing less than independence is desired. For Belgrade, nothing more than autonomy is being proposed.

“Regrettably, there has been no agreement with Serbia. Independence is the beginning and the end for the people of Kosovo,” Kosovo President Fatmir Sejdiu told reporters in Baden. “We cannot say the exact time and date when independence will be declared, but it will happen very quickly,” he stressed.

Serbian President Boris Tadic warned that Belgrade would immediately move against an independent Kosovo – diplomatically.

“We are going to annul all these decisions; we are going to use all legal and diplomatic measures to fight any such decision,” Tadic warned. “Serbia will not accept Kosovo’s independence,” he said, stressing that, “This is a very serious situation.”

The southern Serbian province of Kosovo – populated by almost two million ethnic Albanians – has had no defined status since 1999, when the United Nations administration took over. U.N. oversight began after 11 weeks of NATO bombing of Serbia in response to years of repression of ethnic Albanians. Albanians had begun an armed rebellion in an effort to obtain independence in the 1990s.

“This was the final attempt to find a negotiated solution for Kosovo,” analyst Dusan Lazic told IPS.

“Formally, these were talks between Belgrade and Pristina.” Lazic said, but, “Substantially, these were talks between the strongest players in the world who could not find a common platform that would influence the negotiating parties to come to a political solution.”

Independence for Kosovo is something that has already been promised to ethnic Albanians by the U.S. The EU will take a similar position – in the opinion of Lazic and other analysts.

Russia has already sided with Serbia.

“One cannot exclude the possibility of new kinds of negotiations, some ‘new Baden’, this time between Russia, EU and the U.S.,” Lazic said.

The possibility of some kind of international conference on Kosovo is not out of the question, according to diplomats stationed Belgrade. However, they decline to pinpoint the date or venue of such a meeting. An EU diplomatic source told IPS – insisting on anonymity – that an international conference could take place “some time early next year”.

Belgrade has prepared “action plans” in case Kosovo does proclaim independence soon.

No details leaked on the specifics of the plans except that they will be aimed at “protecting the Serbs.”

“Whole Serbia has to be unified and to show that such a unilateral move [proclamation of independence] has no meaning to us, all Serbs living in Kosovo will always remain citizens of Serbia,” Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said last weekend, after announcing the “action plans”.

Some 100,000 Serbs remain in Kosovo, mostly in the north.

After a declaration of independence Kosovo Serbs may proclaim separation from Kosovo.

This would be “due to their fear” of ethnic Albanians’ majority rule, President Tadic said in an interview with the state-controlled Radio Television of Serbia.

Tadic declined to explain how the separation would be carried out.

As there is no Serbian military or police presence in the north, speculations rose on whether the separation would involve an evacuation of refugees into Serbia proper.

Evacuation plans of this kind – much criticised by official Serbian media as a “doomsday prophecy” – do exist within the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) office in Belgrade. Sources within UNHCR told IPS they were made long ago, “in order not to see the repetition of previous chaotic scenarios.”

In 1995 a mass exodus of more than 250,000 Croatian Serbs took place from Krajina after the Croatian army overran their self-proclaimed “state” in Croatia.

The same happened in 1999 to 150,000 Serbs who fled Kosovo once the U.N. entered.

“Belgrade is once again opting for a human catastrophe which might happen once Kosovo proclaims independence,” said Sonja Biserko, head of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights.

At a recent round table titled “What next in Kosovo?” Biserko claimed, “Serb authorities simply refuse to admit that Kosovo is obviously not part of Serbia… turning the remaining Serbs in the province into hostages. Once the catastrophe occurs, it will be the government in Belgrade that is to be blamed for such event. Apart from that, it offers nothing to Kosovo Serbs.”

Another Serbian option is a trade embargo against the province – which is dependant on food and other goods imported from or via Serbia.

Serbia has also said that it may cut diplomatic ties with countries that recognize Kosovo independence. “As a responsible government – since there are indications that a number of countries would recognise an independent Kosovo – we have to be ready for the darkest scenario,” Bozidar Djelic deputy prime minister of Serbian told reporters in Belgrade.

“Serbia has to think soberly and wisely about the moves it would take,” analyst Ivan Vejvoda told Belgrade B92 Radio. Vejvoda was the foreign policy advisor to the first post- Slobodan Milosevic government of Serbia.

“Serbia should not do itself any harm when European integrations are concerned, as they are its priority, linked to its further economic development and future,” Vejvoda warned.

After a decade of isolation under Milosevic, Serbia has set integration into the EU as a top priority since 2000.

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