Independence for Kosovo means trouble, Serbia says
By Douglas HamiltonTue May 30, 11:21 AM ET
Granting independence to Serbia's southern province of Kosovo against the will of Serbia would destabilize the Balkans, Serbia-Montenegro Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic warned on Tuesday.
The United Nations is mediating talks on Kosovo's future status, which Western diplomats say are likely to conclude with a form of independence by the end of the year. Serbia is adamantly opposed to such an outcome.
"I am very afraid of the possible imposed solution against the will of Belgrade of turning Kosovo into a state," Draskovic told a news conference. "The whole region would inevitably face turbulence."
The warning comes in the wake of Montenegro's vote on May 21 to end its union with Serbia, which the European Union last year opposed, fearing further fragmentation in the Balkans.
On Monday there were signs its fears were not unjustified. Serb nationalists seeking independence for the Bosnian Serb republic from Bosnia said the Montenegro referendum was a precedent and possible template for their own campaign.
The demand was quickly rejected by Western officials, who warned that major powers would not tolerate any threat to Bosnia's integrity as a state. Bosnian Serb premier Milorad Dodik was chastised for seeming to consider the idea.
NO LEGAL PARALLEL
Legally, the cases of Kosovo, Montenegro, and the Bosnian Serb Republic are different.
Montenegro's vote for independence dissolved what was left of Yugoslavia, destroyed by war in the 1990s. Montenegro was one of six federal republics with a legal right to secession, which it retained in the looser Serbia-Montenegro union that was formed with EU encouragement in 2003.
If nationalist feelings were aroused, Draskovic warned, the legal distinctions might be ignored.
Dodik's office on Tuesday again blamed the media for playing up remarks by him linking Kosovo and the Bosnian Serb Republic. An aide it was a "theoretical" comment and the issue was closed.
But after talks with the Serb member of Bosnia's tripartite presidency in Sarajevo on Monday, it was the turn of Kosovo Serb leader Milan Ivanovic to insist there was a clear parallel.
"How can a national minority be given the right to self-determination but a 'constituent people' a solution which is less than that?" Ivanovic demanded, referring to the Albanians of Kosovo versus the Serbs of Bosnia.
Kosovo has been policed by NATO's largest peacekeeping force and run by the United Nations since 1999, when a bombing war by the alliance drove Serb forces out to halt killings and ethnic cleansing by Serbs in their war against Albanian separatists.
Its population of 2 million is 90 percent Albanian. They are impatient after years in limbo and want independence this year.
Serbia is offering Kosovo Albanians a 20-year deal under which it would retain control over foreign policy, borders and customs, human rights, monetary policy and religious sites.
Western diplomats say the Serbian government is in denial, unable or unwilling to grasp the realities of the Kosovo situation and the will of 90 percent of its people.
But Draskovic said granting independence could bring ultranationalists to power and turn Serbia against the EU.
"The European lights in Serbia may be extinguished only by a forcible decision to declare an internationally recognized state of Kosovo within ... the borders of Serbia," he said.
Creating "yet another Albanian state in the Balkans" was a dangerous scenario that Serbia hopes will be "thwarted" at the last minute, he said.
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