EU says Serbia can't rule Kosovo again
09.03.2006 - 17:42 CETSerbia should admit that it cannot rule Kosovo again, EU
enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn said while speaking about enlargement in
Athens on Thursday (9 March), Balkans agency DTT-NET.COM writes.
He
stated that Brussels expects "realism that there can be no return for Kosovo to
Belgrade's rule, and there must be willingness to ensure a sustainable
settlement that creates a stable, democratic and multiethnic Kosovo in the
European framework."
The commissioner added that the ethnic Albanian
leadership of Kosovo must reach out to the Serbian ethnic minority as a matter
of urgency.
"[Kosovo's] status can only come with standards, especially
as regards minority protection and decentralisation measures, the implementation
of which must be urgently intensified," he stated.
"The implementation
of EU standards now and not in some unspecified future - it should be the first
priority of the new government of Kosovo."
Belgrade wants to
freeze Kosovo status
Mr Rehn's words on Serbian rule are unlikely
to get a favourable reception in Belgrade, which last month proposed to the UN
that the issue of Kosovo's final status should be frozen for 20 years.
The commissioner's comment is in line with statements by senior UK
diplomat John Sawers in February that Kosovo should be
independent.
Kosovo legally belongs to Serbia but has been under UN
administration since the EU and the US intervened to stop ethnic clashes in the
region in 1999.
Pristina and Belgrade are currently in UN and
EU-sponsored negotiations on the possibility of Kosovan independence, with the
next round of talks tabled for 17 March.
Ethnic Albanians, pushing for
independence, make up 90 percent of Kosovo's 2 million-strong
population.
Tension surrounding the talks rose last week after Pristina
nominated a former guerrilla general indicted for war crimes by Belgrade, Agim
Ceku, to be prime minister.
Belgrade asked the UN to block the
appointment but the Serbian request was rejected by the international community
despite quiet concerns in Brussels about the fragility of the Kosovo peace
process.
Kosovo as universal precedent
The prospect
of Kosovan independence could also have repercussions for other separatist
states in the EU and its neighbours.
Serbian contacts told British
conservative MEP Charles Tannock in February that if Kosovo becomes independent,
the ethnic-Serb enclave of Republika Srpska in Bosnia and Herzegovina will also
call for independence.
Meanwhile, Russia is pushing the idea that the
Kosovo solution should set a universal precedent for handling Northern Cyprus
and breakaway Moldovan republic Transniestria, as well as Abkhazia, South
Ossetia and Nagorno Karabakh in South Caucasus.
"What's so
unique about Kosovo?" Russian ambassador to the EU, Vladimir Chizov
said in an interview with EUobserver on Thursday.
"There are
similarities in the international community accepting or rejecting the
self-determination of an unrecognised character, unrecognised entities. It's not
only Abkhazia and South Ossetia but also North Cyprus."
