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CALMY-REY
RECONFIRMS SWISS POSITION FOR KOSOVOS INDEPENDENCE
(All Kosovo dailies) All dailies report that Swiss Foreign Minister Michelin Calmy Rey will pay a visit to Kosovo as of 29 July to continue the debate about Kosovos status. Zeri reads that Minister Calmy Rey told Swiss newspaper 24 Heures, Discussing of Kosovos independence is in Switzerlands interest. Stability in Kosovo is very important for Switzerland because 1/10 of Kosovo population lives there. In addition, Koha Ditore reads that the Swiss Minister told 24 Heures and Tribune de Geneve that her country keeps helping Kosovo. According to her, the Kosovo issue should move ahead so that progress is reached there. Defending the decision of her Government, Calmy Rey stated, Our Government was not hasty when it requested independence for Kosovo. We should throw the rock before the others. Sometimes someone from the top should express what the majority think. HOW WILL EIDES REPORT BE APPROVED, WHICH AFFECTS BEGINNING OF KOSOVO
STATUS SETTLEMENT? Zeri writes that Norwegian Ambassador Kai Eide has become the most mentioned western diplomat in Kosovo in past few weeks. With the mandate delegated from the UN Secretary General Koffi Annan in June this year, Kai Eide is the diplomat who has the greatest influence on the ongoing of the short-term processes in Kosovo. A positive standard evaluation would result in beginning of status negotiations, while a negative evaluation would have immediate consequences in political developments, because it will be almost impossible to maintain the fragile political and security stability in Kosovo, Zeri writes. However, the route of the approval of Eides report has not been clarified so far. Eide did not define the timeframes for the submission of the report, but it is expected that the report be ready by the end of August or early September. Ambassador Eide prepared a report on Kosovo last year, and then he submitted it to Annan, who later presented it to UN Security Council and Contact Group. This year, the importance of Eides report is much heavier, and this is why he is having extensive meetings with the Contact Group country representatives. Eide was in Moscow, then he had meetings with the Contact Group in London, and Monday this week he met with Nicholas Burns, the U.S. State Department undersecretary for political affairs. It is expected that Eides report will follow the same procedures as his last years report, and if the evaluation is positive, Annan will appoint an EU official as special envoy for status negotiations, if it is negative, everything is postponed for six months (if not longer). MOSCOW OFFICIALS HAVE IDEAS TO POSTPONE ADDRESSING OF KOSOVO STATUS
FOR SEVERAL MONTHS? The international mechanism for addressing Kosovo status will consists of one special envoy appointed by Koffi Annan, who will have three deputies, one from the U.S., one from the EU and one from Russia. Zeri sources found out that Russia has expressed its dilemmas regarding the timelines for resolving Kosovo issue. If Ambassador Kai Eides report is positive, it is expected that the international team will start efforts for understanding modalities for concluding Kosovo issue during October 2005. Russian diplomacy chief Sergej Lavrov has mentioned the possibility for having a break between the period when Eide will conclude his report and the time when the process for resolving status starts. It is not clear how long this break between two phases would be, but if everything goes as scheduled, it would be a month. Since Lavrov knows that there is going to be some time in between the processes, he probably thought of postponing the process for several months. On the other hand, the western diplomats expressed their concerns regarding this idea, highlighting the political and security risks for Kosovo and the region if the process is postponed under any justification. The SRSG Soren Jessen-Petersen, in his public statements and during his meetings with the diplomats of the Contact Group countries, including the meeting with Lavrov, whom he met a few weeks ago, insists that the Kosovo status is resolved within the agreed timeframes, otherwise the events in Kosovo will take a predictable course to some extent. |
