BALKANS: EU Leaders Agree Common Stance

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

David Cronin

BRUSSELS, Jul 25 2007 (IPS) - Top European Union politicians stated their determination to maintain a unified stance on Kosovo this week as they analysed the latest twists in the saga of the disputed territory.

The EU’s foreign ministers urged the authorities in Serbia and Kosovo to make a final effort towards resolving their outstanding differences in imminent talks scheduled to last around 120 days.

These talks have been prompted by the impasse last Friday (Jul. 20) at the United Nations Security Council, where Russia threatened to veto a resolution on implementing the plan for Kosovo put forward by UN envoy and former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari. His blueprint offered the prospect of an internationally supervised independence from Serbia to Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians, who comprise 90 percent of its two million inhabitants.

Olli Rehn, the European commissioner handling relations with the western Balkans, lamented Jul. 23 how despite other areas of common ground, Belgrade and Pristina, the capitals of Serbia and Kosovo, in previous talks about Kosovo, “couldn’t agree on one sentence concerning the definition of status.” Kosovo has been under UN administration since 1999.

The EU institutions have signalled that they wish to see both Kosovo and Serbia integrated into the Union as full members. Yet there appears no prospect of what diplomats call Serbia’s “European perspective” being realised if it continues to claim control over Kosovo.

Should the Union, then, take matters into its own hand and decide to formally recognise Kosovo’s independence?

Alain Délétroz from the International Crisis Group, which studies how conflicts can be resolved, believes that this step should be considered if Russia continues to block efforts to have the Kosovo issue settled at the UN level.

The question of Kosovo has historically been a hugely emotive one in Serbia. During the 19th century, the Serbs’ defeat by Turks at the battle of Kosovo Field in 1389 was invoked to whip up passions in the struggle for freedom from the Ottoman Empire.

Nonetheless, Délétroz suggests that the broad-based ruling coalition in Belgrade would be willing to accept Kosovo’s independence. “The political class in Serbia wants to get rid of this problem,” he told IPS. “But nobody wants to be seen to be the one to give Kosovo away. They want the international community to make the decision for them.

“The Serbs never came up in seven years, almost eight years now, with a clear-cut project of reintegrating Kosovo. This is a clear way of showing they are not serious.”

The Ahtisaari plan is designed to give guarantees to Serbs and other minorities in Kosovo that they will enjoy a large degree of autonomy over their own affairs, especially in health, education and the selection of local police chiefs.

The European Union’s Institute for Security Studies in Paris has warned that failure to implement this plan with the backing of a UN resolution would have a domino effect. Kosovo’s Albanians could declare unilateral independence (their Prime Minsiter Agim Ceku has threatened to do so in November), in turn prompting the Serbian minority concentrated in the north-eastern city of Mitrovica to seek either the partition of Kosovo or union with Serbia.

Violence from some quarters is inevitable once any declaration of independence is made, according to seasoned observers of Balkans affairs.

The EU’s unity on Kosovo could also unravel if a solution remains elusive.

While most of the EU’s 27 states may favour recognition of an independent Kosovo, a significant number of them – Spain, Greece, Cyprus and Slovakia – are opposed to doing so, unless it is explicitly authorised by the UN. Some of these governments are worried that recognition would give succour to communities within their own countries with secessionist aspirations.

Over the coming months, then, Kosovo could prove the thorniest issue for the EU’s nominally common foreign and security policy since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The difficulties are compounded by Russia’s obdurate position. Relations between Moscow and some of the Union’s most populous countries have been prickly lately over matters ranging from food safety to linguistic rights in the Baltic states. Earlier this month, ties with Britain reached a nadir, as Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s government decided to expel four Russian diplomats in protest at Russia’s refusal to extradite a suspect in the murder of Alexander Litvienko, the former spy poisoned in London last November.

Russia has protested that granting independence to Kosovo could have a knock-on effect for so-called frozen conflicts in the Caucasus and Moldova. All four of the ‘statelets’ under dispute – South Ossetia, Transdnestria, Nagorno-Karabakh and Abhakia – lack an internationally agreed status.

Katinka Barysch, chief economist at the London-based Centre for European Reform, says that while Moscow’s concerns should not be dismissed by the EU, “the main reason why Russia is being difficult over Kosovo is probably, once again, to provoke divisions in the West.”

“Russia’s unyielding stance on Kosovo could push the EU into disarray, which would presumably not cause much sadness in the Kremlin,” she said. “As EU governments mull over the difficult situation in Kosovo, it is imperative that – whatever they do, they try to maintain a common front. A united EU stance will in itself strengthen the EU’s ability to influence Kosovo and Russia.”

Serbia’s own efforts to join the EU were put on ice last year when the Union suspended talks with Belgrade over a proposed ‘stabilisation and association agreement’. The EU’s decision was taken in protest at how Belgrade was not cooperating fully with the International Criminal Tribunal on the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. The tribunal’s two most wanted men, Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, both of whom are accused of orchestrating some of the most heinous crimes in Bosnia during the 1990s, remain at large and have been reported to be hiding on Serbian soil.

Last month, the EU agreed to resume talks in response to the formation of a new government in Belgrade and after winning assurances from the tribunal that Serbian authorities are not hampering its work.

Still, David Gowan, a retired British diplomat, says that much soul-searching will be required in Serbia if it is to adhere to the EU’s stipulations on respecting human rights and democracy. He feels that there has been no probing of the atrocities attributed to the late Serbian despot Slobodan Milosevic, whose strong-arm tactics in Kosovo led the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) to bomb his country in 1999.

When working in Kosovo that year, Gowan saw the corpses of men and boys executed by the Serbian military. Many had been half incinerated or bulldozed into the ground.

“This evidence is rarely discussed in Serbia and often denied outright,” he said. “Serbs refer to the 1999 events as ‘NATO aggression’, implying that it was unprovoked and wrong. Few appear aware of the morally repugnant nature of Milosevic’s activities in Kosovo, and too many Serbs seem to assume that ethnic Albanians do not matter. Such attitudes cannot be reconciled with the values on which the EU is based. Serbs need to embark on an enlightened and objective assessment of their relations with Kosovo, past and present.”