[AlbClub] CSM: DEADLINE NEARS FOR KOSOVA INDEPENDENCE NEGOTIATIONS

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Deadline nears for Kosova independence negotiations

Negotiations due to end Dec. 10 and Kosovars say they can't wait any 
longer for path to independence.

By Robert Marquand 
<http://www.csmonitor.com/cgi-bin/encryptmail.pl?ID=D2EFE2E5F2F4A0CDE1F2F1F5E1EEE4&url=/2007/1205/p07s02-woeu.html> 
| Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor | December 5, 2007

Deadline approaching: Kosovo Albanian Democratic Party leader Hashim 
Thaci gestures as he briefs the media in Vienna on Nov. 27. One hundred 
days of negotiations between Serbs and Kosavars that stalemated ends on 
December 10. Kosavars says they can't wait any longer for clarity and 
independence.

Deadline approaching: Kosova Albanian Democratic Party leader Hashim 
Thaçi gestures as he briefs the media in Vienna on Nov. 27. 2007. One 
hundred days of negotiations between Serbs and Kosovars that stalemated 
ends on December 10. Kosovars says they can't wait any longer for 
clarity and independence. Herwig Prammer/Reuters

 

PrisHtina, KosovA - The status of

Kosova has hung fire for nearly eight years since NATO's bombing 
campaign. Now, as a key Dec. 10 deadline approaches over this highly 
sensitive, landlocked patch of the Balkans - the 90 percent-majority 
Albanian population is on tenterhooks. The election of former guerrilla 
leader Hashim Thaçi as new prime minister last month underscores a 
sentiment stated with rising fervor and anxiety: Kosovars deserve 
independence, they won't live under Serb rule, and they can't wait any 
longer for a clear path to a settled status.

Dec. 10 ends some 100 days of negotiations between Serbs and Kosovars 
that stalemated. Here in Kosova, it is difficult to find anyone who 
doesn't link independence to nearly every economic, political, and 
psychological problem facing the former Serbian-ruled province.

>From Mr. Thaçi to the white-collar elites to the workmen now paving the 
downtown Mother Teresa Avenue with $2 million in granite from China - 
the focus is on ending the uncertainty that hangs in the air like the 
acrid smell of winter coal.

"We are not equal with the other people in the Balkans, in Europe, or in 
the world. We don't feel like Serbia should any longer being making 
decisions for our future," says Ardian Gjini, a cabinet minister. "We 
are all tired, and when leaders get tired, the situation is problematic. 
The pressure has been incredible for 20 years. There is no space left to 
compromise."

In the 1980s and 1990s, Kosovars endured Serb police-state rule until 
Albanian militias and then NATO troops drove the Serbs out. Now, after 
eight years of UN rule backed by 17,000 NATO troops, politicians and 
many observers say that justice too long delayed is justice denied.

Last week, Serb officials stated in Vienna that they would not "give up 
an inch" of Kosova.

Mr. Gjini states that further diplomacy means "nothing but net loss for 
us ... Albanians are ready to accept the Ahtisaari plan, right now."

That plan, devised by Finnish diplomat Martti Ahtisaari last year, was 
presumed to be the final word on Kosova's status - itself presumably the 
final act in settling the wrenching Balkan wars of the 1990s. Kosovars 
agreed to it, not without some bitterness. (It would institute 
"supervised independence" under the European Union, and offers minority 
rights for Serbs that Albanians say their minorities do not have in 
Serbia proper.)

But last summer, as the US and EU faced unexpected Russian and Serbian 
opposition, Kosovars agreed to a further 100 days of talks - a 
concession made easier after President Bush went to Albania in June and 
publicly promised independence for Kosova. "Ordinary Albanians have an 
almost childlike trust in the US, especially after President Bush went 
to Tirana in June," says journalist Bekim Greiçevci.

Yet always in the background here are warnings that yet another 
disappointment could bring a renewal of militia activity or riots.

"We've been in legal limbo, not knowing who owns what property, what is 
our citizenship, what enterprises are worth starting; unable to attract 
investors, let alone the World Bank or IMF," says Ilir Dugolli, with the 
Kosova Institute for Policy Research and Development. "If things don't 
clarify, the situation ... might get out of hand."

Unlike other parts of former Yugoslavia, such as multiethnic Bosnia, the 
main ethnic groups in Kosova rarely mixed. "Albanian officials told me 
recently that even if Mother Teresa [an Albanian] were the president of 
Serbia, we don't want to be part of it," says Louis Sell, a former US 
diplomat specializing in Russia and the Balkans.

For Serbians, Kosova is a spiritual homeland, central to their national 
myths and heroic stories - a kind of Jerusalem. In the past year, 
Belgrade has stoked Kosova mythology. Serbs haven't been able to visit 
Kosova since the 1999 NATO bombing, but buttressed by support in Moscow, 
the Serbs have in the past year passed a constitution describing Kosova 
as an "integral" part of Serbia. Moscow opposes any Kosova independence 
not ratified by the Security Council; the EU is reluctant to back 
independence without unanimity among its members.

As a result, Kosova's status has become increasingly sensitive for the 
US and EU leaders like France, Great Britain, and Germany. It has become 
a give and take over the definition of borders in a region pockmarked by 
ethnic enclaves, a struggle over emerging great power geopolitics and 
spheres of influence. For many Albanians, it is a simple test of patience.

"The international community thinks of Kosova as a Serb and regional 
instability issue," says Christopher Hall, president of American 
University in Kosova, a private college in Prishtina. "The real crisis 
is the unemployment and stagnation that comes as a result of the 
uncertainty over final status. I worry that this could eventually breed 
a backlash."

Quintin Hoare, former director of the Bosnian Institute in London, says 
the inability of the global community to draw a line for Kosova is 
counterproductive. "The more delay, the more extreme problems and 
positions develop in Kosova," he argues. "It's an old pattern."

The story line in Prishtina is that Kosova will declare independence, 
probably sometime in January, in consultation with the US and leading EU 
members. Russia will block this in the Security Council. But UN 
Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon will enable the act and have EU police 
replace UN troops.

Prishtina, a city of mud and new construction, swirls with speculation. 
Last month, journalist Berat Buzhala wrote that he was invited through a 
US back channel to meet a US official. The unnamed official floated the 
idea of freezing the independence process until 2020, during which time 
EU and the US would invest some $7 billion a year in Kosova. The plan 
included the guarantee that a referendum would take place in 2020, 
meaning that Kosovars would essentially be signing onto an independence 
plan.

In an interview, Mr. Buzhala gave a number of specific, concrete details 
of the meeting. Many officials here pooh-pooh the entire story.

Buzhala says the deal is the only good prospect. "The situation here is 
escalating," he says. "I'm worried what will happen if we don't get 
independence, because people are starting to think irrationally.... We 
can create an army in four hours."

This week, the city is discussing a plan by the EU to delay independence 
for weeks or months while implementing the Ahtisaari plan. That would 
buy time to convince Russia that Europeans were committed to protecting 
Serbs. A story in the International Herald Tribune stated that EU 
members were "cautiously optimistic" that new Kosova Prime Minister 
Thaçi would go along with the plan.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1205/p07s02-woeu.html

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