Kosovo: Recognition Likely From U.S.
By JUDY DEMPSEY
Published: September 25, 2007
BERLIN, Sept. 24 — The United States and most of the European Union will recognize Kosovo if the Balkan province declares independence from Serbia in early December, when last-ditch negotiations end, United States and European officials said Monday.
The officials spoke as Serbian and Kosovo Albanian diplomats prepared to sit down this week at the United Nations for talks billed as part of a final effort to get agreement on the issue of Kosovo’s independence. Its future status has fueled a confrontation between the West and Russia, which has threatened to veto any Security Council resolution approving independence for Kosovo.
“The game plan is set,” said a senior European diplomat who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the matter.
The talks end on Dec. 10. “If there is no sense then that Serbia and Kosovo can agree on the province’s future, then Kosovo will make a unilateral declaration of independence,” he said, adding that “the U.S. will recognize that independence and the Europeans, as far as they can remain united, will follow too.”
On Monday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in an interview with Reuters: “There’s going to be an independent Kosovo. It’s the only solution that is potentially stabilizing for the Balkans rather than destabilizing for the Balkans.”
Illustrating the thorniness of the issue for European nations, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France said in an interview last week that Europe must stay united on Kosovo, but that Russia’s position must be taken into account as well.
“Kosovo’s independence is unavoidable in the long term,” he said, adding that Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, “must understand that no one wants to humiliate him.”
Among European countries, analysts said Greece and Cyprus could break ranks with Washington and Brussels. Greece, a close ally of Serbia, is concerned that its neighbor Macedonia, a former Yugoslav republic, could become unstable if its ethnic Albanians agitate for independence.
Cyprus, divided between the Turkish north and the Greek Cypriot south, fears the Kosovo example might be used by Turkish Cypriots.
With so much at stake for European unity, diplomats said all efforts would be made this week at the United Nations to press leaders from Kosovo and Serbia to reach an agreement. The issue is one of the last unresolved disputes left from the Balkan wars of the 1990s.
“I think it is best that we work through the United Nations Security Council,” said Ivan Vejvoda, director of the Belgrade office for the German Marshall Fund of the United States. “It would ensure full solidarity and democratic legitimacy in the region.”
While the European Union has been seeking an end to the impasse through the United Nations, it has begun losing patience with the struggle to find a consensus in the Security Council, according to European diplomats.
Mr. Putin, who wants the issue kept inside the United Nations, has opposed independence. Russia, as a permanent member of the Security Council, can veto or block any resolution calling for Kosovo to be independent.
European and American diplomats said the status of Kosovo could not be left in limbo indefinitely. Since 1999, when NATO bombed Serbian targets to stop the killing of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, the province of two million people has been under a United Nations-led international protectorate.
Wanting to end this precarious status, the United Nations last year appointed a former president of Finland, Marti Ahtisaari, to draw up a plan in which Serbs in the province would be granted a wide degree of political and cultural autonomy once Kosovo was independent from Serbia.
The European Union agreed to closely monitor the implementation of the Ahtisaari plan by replacing the United Nations protectorate there with a strong police and judicial system in which European officials would supervise Kosovo’s independence for a certain period. NATO, which has 17,000 soldiers deployed in the province, would remain.
While the Kosovo leadership overwhelmingly accepted the Ahtisaari plan, Boris Tadic, Serbia’s president, and Vojislav Kostunica, the Serbian prime minister, openly rejected it, saying they would never agree to Kosovo’s independence. Russia insisted on giving the diplomatic track another chance, which the United States and European Union accepted, but with the condition that the talks last no more than 120 days.
The Europeans appointed Wolfgang Ischinger, the German ambassador to London, to lead three envoys that includes Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko of Russia and Frank G. Wisner of the United States.
Separately, a bomb exploded in a popular area of Pristina on Monday, killing two people and wounding dozens, United Nations officials said.
The blast took place just after 2 a. m. on Bill Clinton Boulevard, shaking the city center.
The police and United Nations officials said the bombing appeared to be part of criminal dispute.
“As far as we know it’s not politically related,” said Alexander Ivanko, the chief spokesman for the United Nations mission that administers Kosovo.
Nicholas Wood contributed reporting from Ljubljana, Slovenia
Published: September 25, 2007
BERLIN, Sept. 24 — The United States and most of the European Union will recognize Kosovo if the Balkan province declares independence from Serbia in early December, when last-ditch negotiations end, United States and European officials said Monday.
The officials spoke as Serbian and Kosovo Albanian diplomats prepared to sit down this week at the United Nations for talks billed as part of a final effort to get agreement on the issue of Kosovo’s independence. Its future status has fueled a confrontation between the West and Russia, which has threatened to veto any Security Council resolution approving independence for Kosovo.
“The game plan is set,” said a senior European diplomat who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the matter.
The talks end on Dec. 10. “If there is no sense then that Serbia and Kosovo can agree on the province’s future, then Kosovo will make a unilateral declaration of independence,” he said, adding that “the U.S. will recognize that independence and the Europeans, as far as they can remain united, will follow too.”
On Monday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in an interview with Reuters: “There’s going to be an independent Kosovo. It’s the only solution that is potentially stabilizing for the Balkans rather than destabilizing for the Balkans.”
Illustrating the thorniness of the issue for European nations, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France said in an interview last week that Europe must stay united on Kosovo, but that Russia’s position must be taken into account as well.
“Kosovo’s independence is unavoidable in the long term,” he said, adding that Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, “must understand that no one wants to humiliate him.”
Among European countries, analysts said Greece and Cyprus could break ranks with Washington and Brussels. Greece, a close ally of Serbia, is concerned that its neighbor Macedonia, a former Yugoslav republic, could become unstable if its ethnic Albanians agitate for independence.
Cyprus, divided between the Turkish north and the Greek Cypriot south, fears the Kosovo example might be used by Turkish Cypriots.
With so much at stake for European unity, diplomats said all efforts would be made this week at the United Nations to press leaders from Kosovo and Serbia to reach an agreement. The issue is one of the last unresolved disputes left from the Balkan wars of the 1990s.
“I think it is best that we work through the United Nations Security Council,” said Ivan Vejvoda, director of the Belgrade office for the German Marshall Fund of the United States. “It would ensure full solidarity and democratic legitimacy in the region.”
While the European Union has been seeking an end to the impasse through the United Nations, it has begun losing patience with the struggle to find a consensus in the Security Council, according to European diplomats.
Mr. Putin, who wants the issue kept inside the United Nations, has opposed independence. Russia, as a permanent member of the Security Council, can veto or block any resolution calling for Kosovo to be independent.
European and American diplomats said the status of Kosovo could not be left in limbo indefinitely. Since 1999, when NATO bombed Serbian targets to stop the killing of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, the province of two million people has been under a United Nations-led international protectorate.
Wanting to end this precarious status, the United Nations last year appointed a former president of Finland, Marti Ahtisaari, to draw up a plan in which Serbs in the province would be granted a wide degree of political and cultural autonomy once Kosovo was independent from Serbia.
The European Union agreed to closely monitor the implementation of the Ahtisaari plan by replacing the United Nations protectorate there with a strong police and judicial system in which European officials would supervise Kosovo’s independence for a certain period. NATO, which has 17,000 soldiers deployed in the province, would remain.
While the Kosovo leadership overwhelmingly accepted the Ahtisaari plan, Boris Tadic, Serbia’s president, and Vojislav Kostunica, the Serbian prime minister, openly rejected it, saying they would never agree to Kosovo’s independence. Russia insisted on giving the diplomatic track another chance, which the United States and European Union accepted, but with the condition that the talks last no more than 120 days.
The Europeans appointed Wolfgang Ischinger, the German ambassador to London, to lead three envoys that includes Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko of Russia and Frank G. Wisner of the United States.
Separately, a bomb exploded in a popular area of Pristina on Monday, killing two people and wounding dozens, United Nations officials said.
The blast took place just after 2 a. m. on Bill Clinton Boulevard, shaking the city center.
The police and United Nations officials said the bombing appeared to be part of criminal dispute.
“As far as we know it’s not politically related,” said Alexander Ivanko, the chief spokesman for the United Nations mission that administers Kosovo.
Nicholas Wood contributed reporting from Ljubljana, Slovenia
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