Friday, Jan 28, 2005
EU's indecision over Kosovo
By Simon Tisdall
Time may be running out and Kosovo could see a return to violence.
KOSOVO COULD descend into renewed violence within weeks unless the European Union takes urgent action, senior diplomats and international experts warned in Brussels this week. But continuing EU indecision over the breakaway province's demand for independence from Serbia, coupled with the ethnic Albanian majority's failure to embrace reform and respect Serb minority rights, are paralysing plans to launch "final status" talks this year.
Five years after NATO ejected Serbian forces and imposed an international administration, the United Nations and the United States are still lacking an exit strategy. Serbia, meanwhile, wants its territory back.
In an attempt to show willingness, Olli Rehn, the EU's enlargement commissioner, met Kosovan leaders in Pristina this week. Mr. Rehn said the EU would raise the issue when President George W. Bush visits Europe next month. But according to Erhard Busek, who heads the international stability pact to promote democracy and development in south-east Europe, the EU must take the lead.
"Kosovo is a European issue and we Europeans have to get our act together," Mr. Busek said. "If Kosovo goes wrong, we in Europe will be first to face the consequences of migration and organised crime."
With unemployment approaching 60 per cent, a disastrous lack of foreign investment, and with 50 per cent of the population aged 25 or under, "there is a huge social problem — a time bomb in the making."
Chris Patten, the former EU External Relations Commissioner, said economic stagnation, inter-ethnic tensions, and the potential for violence were linked and threatened the entire region.
"There has been considerable progress in south-east Europe since 1999, but there is a danger of the whole process unravelling in Kosovo unless we grasp some nettles," Lord Patten said.
"Time is running out," said Gareth Evans, a former Australian foreign minister and president of the International Crisis Group (ICG), an independent conflict prevention organisation. A timetable leading to independence next year must be rapidly set in train, Mr. Evans said.
An ICG report published this week said alternatives to independence such as Kosovo's re-absorption into Serbia & Montenegro, partition, or unification within a "greater Albania" would only increase regional instability. Pointing to last March's upsurge in violence, it said too much time had already been wasted.
"The political capital of the UN mission in Kosovo is all but exhausted. Reintroduction of violence into the equation has raised the very real possibility the process may be decided by brute force rather than peaceful negotiation.
"The Kosovo Albanian political establishment cannot be relied upon to act as a moderating force if, by mid-2005, the international community does not begin a process which clearly appears to be leading to some form of independence," the report said.
Yet unless ethnic Albanians make a genuine commitment to reform and overcome their "victim mentality," an independent Kosovo could become just another failed state.
Serbia's military and police have "contingency plans" to exploit new violence against Kosovo's Serbs by intervening in support of partition or unilateral secession, the ICG report warned. An explosion could come within weeks if, as is widely predicted, Kosovo's Prime Minister, Ramush Haradinaj, a former Kosovo Liberation Army commander, is indicted by The Hague war crimes tribunal. If charged, Mr. Haradinaj has promised to go peacefully. His supporters are unlikely to follow suit.
— © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
Copyright © 2005, The Hindu.