Albanian nationalists are buoyed by Washington's readiness to support a break from Yugoslavia Special report: Kosovo
Ewen MacAskill in Pristina Monday October 30, 2000
The US is ready to break rank with its Nato partners by conceding for the first time that Kosovo can become independent from Serbia. The shift in policy, discussed in secret talks this month between the US special envoy, Richard Holbrooke, and US diplomats in the Balkans, will anger Britain and other Nato members and risks creating a rift with Russia, which retains close ties with Serbia. The change of direction emerged in the Kosovan capital, Pristina, as votes were being counted yesterday in the province's first democratic elections. The three big Kosovan Albanian parties all stood on an independence platform. The Kosovan Serbs almost unanimously boycotted the elections, for local authorities. The Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK), led by the moderate nationalist Ibrahim Rugova, was sweeping to power throughout the province, according to independent observers. The official results are expected today. Nato and the UN security council have maintained that, in spite of the Nato-led war last year which forced Serbian troops out of the province, Kosovo should remain a sovereign part of Yugoslavia. British officials recently ruled out independence as an option, saying that further fragmentation in the Balkans would increase instability and that a state as small as Kosovo would be unsustainable. Security council resolution 1244, passed in June last year at the end of the war, reaffirmed "the commitment of all member states to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia". But a senior US official in Pristina, who spent last week with Mr Holbrooke, has for the first time disputed the widely-held interpretation of the resolution. He said that 1244 "explicitly recognises the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia but it does not mean Kosovo cannot be independent". US government lawyers spent the past few weeks looking at the resolution in detail and they concluded that it did not rule out independence. The US source agreed that independence was fast becoming a reality on the ground because almost half the Kosovan Serbs had left the province and the Kosovo Albanians were setting up their own judicial and political system. Acknowledging that few Kosovo Albanians were prepared to consider even a loose federation with Belgrade, he said: "Kosovo will not be pushed back into Serbia." The US is unlikely to go public on its policy switch in the near future in case it undermines Yugoslavia's new democratically elected president, Vojislav Kostunica. The loss of Kosovo, which is an important historical symbol for Serbia, would inflame Serbian nationalist hardliners. The US source ruled out partitioning the province between the northern part, predominantly populated by Serbs, which would join Serbia while the rest of the country, mainly Kosovo Albanians, would enter into a Greater Albania. He hoped the Kosovo Serbs and Albanians could reach an accommodation. "They will never be friends sitting around the campfire singing Kumbaya... but they will learn to live with one another." The elections held in Kosovo on Saturday were for control of the province's 30 municipalities, but the Kosovo Albanians treated them as a referendum on independence. The main contenders were Mr Rugova's LDK and the Democratic Party of Kosovo, led by Hashim Thaci, a nationalist hardliner and former commander of the Kosovan Liberation Army, which fought a guerrilla campaign against the Yugoslav army. Mr Thaci wants Kosovo to become independent from Serbia as soon as possible and join Albania. Mr Rugova also wants independence but at a more cautious pace and for Kosovo to be a state in its own right, free of both Serbia and Albania.