Byzantine Blog

U.S. State Department Shift: Kosovo Negotiations to Continue

The Kosovo talks will likely continue after December 10, a ranking State Department official said in Brussels this week, according to the Brussels-based electronic daily EU Observer.

“Whether we will have a solution on December 10 or whether the solution will follow soon after that — I think more likely the latter, it must be emphasized that this process cannot go on forever,” David J. Kramer, the U.S. deputy assistant secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs told journalists in Brussels on Wednesday.

“We have to be realistic”, said Kramer, specifying that a solution by December 10, when the mediating Troika is to submit a progress report to the UN Secretary General, “would imply that Russia had changed its position on this issue.”

“At the moment we haven’t seen a shift” from Moscow’s side, the Brussels daily said, quoting Kramer.

Quoting Kramer, EU Observer said that “Moscow fears” that a unilateral proclamation of independence by Kosovo would trigger a chain reaction in other parts of the world, but the State Dept. official insisted that this is not the case and that southern Serbian province is one off, in accordance with the position publicly taken by the U.S. State Department as a whole.

European Parliament MP: Look Before You Leap!

But however unpleasant it may be for the American lawmakers to face the reality, the fact remains that, beside Russia, China and India, many EU members — including the Western ones — also disagree with the U.S. State Department on this issue, stressing that the chain reaction Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs warned of few days ago, would indeed become a reality in case independence of southern Serbian province was imposed on Serbia.

European Parliament MP and a spokesman on foreign affairs for the British Conservative Party Charles Tannock is among the Western officials who strongly oppose disregard for the international laws and unilateral moves.

The United States government and its President George Bush are playing a dangerous game with announcements of the possibility of unilateral recognition of Serbian province’s independence, failing to take into account the consequences such move would have for the rest of the world, Tannock said in a signed article published in The Scotsman today under the title “Bush playing a dangerous game over Kosovo”.

[...] Look before you leap is as sound a principle in foreign policy as it is in life. Yet, once again, the Bush administration is preparing to leap into the unknown. Even though lack of foresight is universally viewed as a leading cause of its Iraq debacle, the United States (with British backing probable) is now preparing to recognise Kosovo’s independence unilaterally — irrespective of the consequences for Europe and the world.

Kosovo has been administered since 1999 by a United Nations mission guarded by NATO troops, although it remains formally a part of Serbia. But, with Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian majority demanding its own state, and with Russia refusing to recognise UN mediator Martti Ahtisaari’s plan for conditional independence, the US is preparing to go it alone. Instead of thinking what Ahtisaari deemed unthinkable, a partition of Kosovo with a small part of the north going to Serbia and the rest linked to the Kosovars ethnic brethren in Albania or a separate state, the US plans to act without the UN’s blessing, arguing that only an independent Kosovo will bring stability to the Western Balkans.

That argument is debatable — and the record of the Kosovar government suggests that it is wrong. But the US position is unambiguously misguided in not foreseeing that the “Kosovo precedent” will incite instability and potentially even violence elsewhere.

Why the rush to give Kosovo independence? Many serious disputes have gone unresolved for decades. The Kashmir question has lingered since 1947, the Turkish occupation of Northern Cyprus since 1974, and Israel’s occupation of the West Bank from 1967. Yet no one is suggesting that unilateral solutions be imposed in these potential flashpoints.

Nevertheless, the US — and most European Union members — argue that Kosovo’s situation is sui generis and will set no legally binding international precedent. But Russia sees things very differently. Indeed, it may seek to use this precedent to re-establish its authority over the nations and territories that were once part of the Soviet Union.

Spain and Cyprus with their worries over secessionist-minded regions, are worried by any possible precedent. Romania fears the fallout from Kosovo’s unilaterally gaining independence on neighbouring Moldova. The worry is that Russia will unilaterally recognise the breakaway Moldovan territory of Transdnistria, which Russian troops and criminal gangs have been propping up for 16 years.

Ukraine — the great prize in Russia’s bid to recapture its former sphere of influence — is also deeply anxious. It fears that Russia will encourage separatist tendencies in Crimea, where the ethnic Russian population forms a majority. (Crimea was ceded to Ukraine by Nikita Khrushchev only in 1954). Russia may decide to abuse the Kosovo precedent further to divide Ukraine’s population between Russian speakers and Ukrainian speakers.

But the biggest risks posed by unilateral recognition of Kosovo’s independence are in the South Caucasus, a region that abuts the tinderbox of today’s Middle East. Here, there is a real danger that Russia may recognise breakaway regions in the South Caucasus, — and back them more strongly than it does now [...]