23 March 2007

Resolving Kosovo Status Offers Region Path to Europe, U.S. Says

Draft United Nations settlement includes compromises for both sides

By Vince Crawley
USINFO Staff Writer

This is the third in a series on the future of Kosovo.

Washington – Settling Kosovo’s international status would be a major step in reuniting the Balkans with Europe and reviving the prosperity and political clout the former Yugoslav region enjoyed before the end of Cold War, U.S. diplomats say.

“Serbia has the opportunity to accelerate irreversibly its journey to a free Europe and the trans-Atlantic world,” Daniel Fried, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, said March 5 in a speech at Belgrade City Hall in Serbia.

Across the former Yugoslavia, nations are recovering from the wars of the 1990s. Slovenia is a member of NATO and the European Union (EU). Croatia and Macedonia are EU candidates.  At the November 2006 NATO Summit in Riga, Latvia, the alliance’s 26 heads of state said they intend to offer membership invitations to Albania, Croatia and Macedonia at the next summit in 2008. Also in Riga, NATO leaders offered long-sought Partnership for Peace status to Bosnia and Serbia.

“[T]he end of isolation means we have allies again,” Serbian President Boris Tadic said December 14, 2006, at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium. “This is, from my point of view, a very important sign for Serbia’s people. Right now, we are making reforms in defense sector. We are making reforms in our economy. We are doing everything in our power to create Serbia as a modern, European country.”

Kosovo, a province of Serbia whose ethnic-Albanian majority seeks independence, remains the principal unresolved territorial dispute following the violent breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Since 1999, Kosovo has been administered by the United Nations and secured by NATO. In late 2005, the United Nations initiated talks to determine Kosovo’s future status – either independence or autonomy while remaining part of Serbia.

U.N. special envoy Martti Ahtisaari of Finland is expected to make his formal recommendation to the United Nations by the end of March. News reports, based on documents Ahtisaari has submitted to the United Nations, suggest he will recommend that Kosovo be separated from Serbia, which would pose a political challenge for Belgrade’s current elected leaders. The majority of Serbs consider Kosovo to be their cultural heartland.

In a Vienna, Austria, news conference March 10, Ahtisaari’s deputy, Albert Rohan, stressed that both parties in the Kosovo process are being asked to make difficult compromises. A draft proposal made public by Ahtisaari in February would give Kosovo Serb and other minority communities a high degree of independence from Kosovo’s central government, allowing them to control their own schools and financial matters.

The Kosovo settlement is not a “solution from one side imposed on the other,” Rohan said. “If you compare the starting positions of the two sides, and then look at our proposal, you will see that our proposal is somewhere in the middle.” The Kosovar delegation repeatedly has said that the draft settlement “contains really painful compromises, which are far away from the original position.”

WIDE RANGE OF POTENTIAL POLITICAL, ECONOMIC BENEFITS

The United States and others in the international community have stressed that if both sides can accept a final settlement, resolving Kosovo’s future status almost certainly will create political and economic benefits for the entire region.

“One of the primary factors that concerns us going in [to] these negotiations is that, at the end of them, neither side emerges as a loser in the process,” U.S. Under Secretary of State R. Nicholas Burns said in November 2005, when the negotiations began. “Serbia,” Burns said, “ … is the keystone state in the Balkans. If the Balkans is going to be an area of increasing prosperity and stability, Serbia has to be a successful country.”

An important outcome of successful talks “should be the emergence of a stronger, healthier Serbia … that has the prospect of future involvement with the EU and NATO,” Burns said.

As the talks progressed for the next 14 months, many within Serbia have wondered if they are being asked to give up Kosovo as a price of admission to Europe.

“Nobody is going to try to bribe Serbia,” Fried, the assistant secretary of state, said in an interview January 16 with Voice of America. He stressed that the United States does not make decisions for the European Union. But, he added, “Every European leader that I’ve spoken to knows that Serbia deserves a stronger relationship with the European Union. That’s important. I think Serbs are beginning to understand that they have serious supporters in Europe.”

Visiting Belgrade on March 5, Fried recalled that he had lived there for three years in the 1980s while serving as U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia. “Belgrade then was a world capital where people the world over came to discuss critical matters of state,” Fried said. “The views of your leaders were sought not as courtesy, but because they were worldly men and women who looked outward to the world, beyond the parochial.”

Not only would the region benefit from resuming its ties to Europe, Fried said, but Europe and the international community would benefit from renewed participation from the capitals of the former Yugoslav republics.

In particular, Serbia’s diplomatic contacts and experience could contribute to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, Fried said. Serbia also could contribute to the “noble project” of helping to stabilize Afghanistan, he said. During the Cold War, Belgrade maintained good relations with Russia, Fried said, “yet you managed, with skill and tenacity, to keep your independence from Stalin’s Soviet Union.” Using this tradition, he said, “Serbia could also do much to help build trans-Atlantic partnership with Russia.”

Along with the unresolved status of Kosovo, Serbia also faces the issue of indicted war-crimes suspects from the Bosnian war. Bosnian Serb leaders Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic remain at large, and Belgrade authorities have acknowledged that the Serb army, in the past, provided sanctuary for Mladic.

“It is up to you to decide whether you want one day to ask to join NATO and the European Union,” Fried said. “ … Serbia could quickly conclude a Stability and Association Agreement with the EU. It would take weeks, not months. Serbia knows what is missing – it’s full cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal.”

It is the position of the United States and the international community that the current government in Belgrade is not responsible for the actions of former president Slobodan Milosevic, whose nationalist policies led to the breakup of the former Yugoslavia.

“There are some parties who speak the demagogic language of nationalism,” Fried said in his January 16 interview. “I think nationalism in that part of the world is like cheap alcohol. First it makes you drunk. Then it makes you blind. Then it kills you.”

See also "Draft U.N. Plan Would Protect Minority Groups in Kosovo" and "U.S. Believes an Independent Kosovo Would Not Set Precedent."

For more information on U.S. policies in the region, see Southeast Europe.

(USINFO is produced by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)