- Europe has just got a new state, Kosovo, on Sunday [17 February] and the long, bloody unraveling of Yugoslavia is concluded 17 years after the first war of its dissolution broke out in Slovenia. One might ask : is it cause for celebration ?
Serbia will rail against what its prime minister calls ‘this fictitious state on Serbian territory’, and the Russian Federation for whatever reasons will support Serbs.
Balkan tensions will flare and lawyers will fret over precedent.
Close observers of the Balkan geopolitics ask themselves: is the independence of Kosovo justified ? Was it unique and unavoidable ? Was there any other way ? Milosevic lost a nationalist gamble on Kosovo a long time ago; the differences stemming from it seem unbridgeable. Further suspention in the political limbo could only damage the region inhabited mostly by Albanian population (90-95%).
When Kosovo proclaims independence the major powers - including the United States, France, Britain and Germany - are expected to recognize the new state.
European Union foreign ministers meet Monday and may agree on a ‘platform’ statement saying conditions for recognition have been met. A clear majority of the 27 European Union members - certainly no less than 20 - are expected to recognize Kosovo rapidly.
Cyprus, with its Turkish-occupied northern third, will lead the holdouts. Other EU states that are recognition-reluctant, some out of concern over separatist minorities, include Spain, Romania, Slovakia, Greece and Bulgaria.
Unanimity would be nice but broad consensus is sufficient. Thanks largely to the work of Wolfgang Ischinger, the German ambassador to Britain, the EU will be united enough. More important, the United States and Europe will march in step, not a frequent occurrence of late.
‘This has been a common endeavor illustrating the way we and Europe ought to work together,’ said Frank Wisner, the former U.S. ambassador to India who labored fruitlessly with Ischinger last year to bring Kosovo and Serbia closer. Wisner's view: ‘There was never an attempt by anyone in Belgrade to reach out to a Kosovar Albanian.’
Reaching out to Kosovo had scarcely been the Serbian thing in recent decades. Slobodan Milosevic, the late dictator, set Serbia's nationalist tide in motion on 24 April 1987, when he went to Kosovo to declare that Serbian ‘ancestors would be defiled’ if ethnic Albanians had their way.
Milosevic's quashing of Kosovo's autonomy was central to the break up of multinational Yugoslav Federation. Milosevic's heavy-handling of the Albanian minority has direct link with igniting nationalistic feelings in former Yugoslav republics from Croatia to Macedonia. It also swayed the Western public opinion in favour of Kosovars.
Albanians accounting for about 90-95 % of a Kosovo population of 2.1 million claim that they cannot be reconciled with a Serbia that suppressed, beat up, evicted and killed them until NATO's 1999 intervention. Evan some Serbian political observers admit that even if Pristina stays inside Serbia it would always be Pariah state with a simmering nationalistic tension and potential for violence under the surface.
But it must be said that so called UCK - Kosovo Liberation Army were no kittens.
They also are responsible for atrocities against the Serbian minority in Kosovo.
What will Serbia do now ? Vojislav Kostunica, the current Prime Minister, says he won't allow ‘such a creation to exist for a minute.’
That has been the nihilistic Serbian drumbeat ever since United Nations Resolution 1244 of 1999 made clear that a UN-overseen and NATO-protected autonomy in Kosovo would extend only until ‘a final settlement’. Such settlement has never been reached.
EU expects Serbia to make modest trouble but stop short of violence and cutting off Kosovo's electricity. Some of the 120,000 Serbs in Kosovo may hit the road. Serbs in the pocket north of Mitrovica may be encouraged to go for partition.
But will the recent election of a pro-Western Serbian president Boris Tadic be a force for restraint? Will U.S. and European pressure Albania? Kosovo's Prime Minister, Hashim Thaci, has been making peaceful token gestures to Serb minorities in Kosovo. Are they genuine ?
Ultimately, EU hopes that Serbia will want to move toward EU membership.
For some political cinics the whole affair smells of hypocrisy why Kosovo but not Bask country, Kurds, Transdniestria, Abkhazia, Chechenya or South Ossetia ?
Let us hope that this outcome will be positive for Serbia. Instead of dwelling on medieval battles, victory-in-defeat symbolism, shrinking borders and a poisonous culture of victimization, Serbia realizes its mistakes and in earnest starts looking forward - towards the European Union.
I welcome your opinions on that controversial matter.
I voiced mine.
Carla
PS
Molim moje sumoderatore da postuju moje osobne stavove bez obzira na njihov sadrzaj.
Ovaj prilog tice se nove POLITICKE REALNOSTI (novog geopolitickog konteksta), sa kojom svi na Balkanu moraju se suociti bez obzira na nase osobne politicke sentimente i nasu nacionalnu lojalnost.
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