Byzantine Blog

Serbian Government Submits Written Amendments to Ahtisaari’s Draft

VIENNA, Austria, Feb. 21, 2007 (Source: Tanjug) — At the opening of several-day talks in Vienna on Wednesday, the Belgrade delegation submitted written amendments refuting the proposal of UN special envoy for Serbian Kosovo province Martti Ahtisaari in all elements which give Kosovo a semblance of an independent state, Belgrade delegation member Aleksandar Simic said at the end of the first part of today’s talks.

“Therefore, Kosovo province cannot have its own flag, state security service, armed forces, it cannot control its borders, cannot sign international agreements and have its own system of security and intelligence services,” Simic stated.

He set out that the future international mission in southern Serbian province cannot be deployed without Serbia’s agreement.

“On the other hand, we have left in the general principles everything that enables the Albanians in Kosovo province to enjoy the elements of essential autonomy, meaning that they can govern daily activities that are needed for the development of their specific identity, traditions, culture, education, economy,” Simic added.

“It is important that the Albanians in Serbian province should also be prepared to give the part of autonomy that Belgrade is granting to them to the Serbs that will remain in the province, and also to those who where displaced and who will return, as well as to the other non-Albanian communities that are specially threatened,” Simic pointed out.

Serbian Negotiators: No Independence in Any Form

According to the Serbian Government, Coordinator of the state team for negotiations on the future status of Kosovo-Metohija Leon Kojen said on the evening of February 21 that there are huge differences in the positions of Belgrade, the position taken in the proposal by UN Special Envoy Marti Ahtisaari, and the position of the ethnic-Albanian delegation, on the issue of the future status of Kosovo-Metohija province.

Speaking at a press conference following the first day of the new round of negotiations in Vienna on the status of Kosovo-Metohija, Kojen reiterated that Ahtisaari’s proposal is unacceptable for Serbia when it comes to the basic question, and that is independent status for Kosovo-Metohija, and it is clear that the proposal is built upon the idea of independence for the province, even though that term has not been used.

According to Kojen, Belgrade is offering Kosovo substantial autonomy within Serbia and cannot accept any kind of independence and due to that reason the Belgrade delegation today rejected all terms of Ahtisaari’s document which are connected to independence in any form.

Pristina Seems to Think It Has Gotten “Independence” Back in 1999

Leon Kojen also said that Serbian negotiating team has the “impression that Pristina thinks that the question of the status was settled back in 1999, which they reiterated today.” Serbian negotiators reaffirmed their certainty Russia and China will back Serbia when debate on the status issue reaches the UN Security Council and that Pristina’s expectation that a Security Council decision will give independence to Serbian province will not be fulfilled.

The second coordinator of the state negotiating team Slobodan Samardzic said that “the UN envoy tried to organize negotiations on the status question today, but now it is too late for that because Belgrade and Pristina received a document that has legal formulations.” Samardzic also underlined that Ahtisaari’s mandate is not to make final documents, but to give a proposal, adding that it is “unacceptable that this proposal has not been discussed at all and that the main part of the document has not been examined earlier, but only the annexes.”

“State” Created by Ethnic Cleansing and Violence Unacceptable

Member of the negotiating team Marko Jaksic disputed Ahtisaari’s document in the part referring to status. He explained that not even the NATO and KFOR troops did manage to save Serbs and other non-Albanians in Kosovo province and therefore, there is a question what will happen to Serbs in a creation made by ethnic cleansing and violence.

We believe that ethnic violence that has been taking place in the past eight years cannot be a recommendation for Albanians to get a new state in the Balkans, Jaksic stressed.

He warned that the acceptance of Ahtisaari’s proposal would first of all be an award and definitely a message to all separatist movements in the world that goals can be achieved through violence, expulsion and ethnic cleansing, and underlined that an independent Kosovo-Metohija is incompatible with the survival of Serbs in the province.