Draft Kosovo resolution in UN today 31 May 2007 | 09:27 -> 12:26 | Source: B92,
AP BELGRADE, NEW YORK, POTSDAM -- Washington will today circulate its draft
Kosovo resolution to the UN Security Council ambassadors.
BBC reports that the United States mission with the UN has confirmed a new
draft resolution on Kosovo’s future status will be submitted Thursday. The
resolution text will in all likelihood not be significantly different compared
to the previous draft based on UN special envoy Martti Ahtisaari’s plan for the
province’s supervised independence.
“This does not mean voting will follow straight away, what we wish to do is
acquaint the ambassadors with the somewhat modified draft, which now includes
some of the objections made by other sides,” Tanjug was told earlier by an
anonymous diplomatic source at the UN.
Kosovo negotiating team member Veton Surroi said Wednesday the previous
consultations phase was over, as well as that there was a document that will be
considered by the UN Security Council today.
Washington-based analyst Obrad Kesić said he was unaware that a new resolution
would be presented to the council, adding the Albanian politicians were likely
talking about the U.S.-EU resolution, with the text “perhaps changed in several
sentences to be more acceptable to Russia”.
“I think this is about changing the phrasing of several sentences [in the draft
resolution], since the State Department lawyers have spent some weeks now
trying to come up with a resolution that would cancel 1244 and open up
possibilities for Kosovo’s independence. In other words, a resolution that
would give the Russians an honorable way out,” Kesić said.
However, he said chances of Russia backing down from its position on the
province’s status were slim, adding that there was also little room for
compromise between Washington and Moscow.
“What needs to be seen now is, which side finds this to be an important issue?
Do U.S. interests tied to Kosovo matter so much that cooperation with Russia
will be jeopardized? Moscow has spent much of its credibility. This has now
become a serious issue for the Russians, perhaps not so much so in the
beginning, but any Russian decision to back down now would be interpreted as a
sign of weakness by the U.S. and Europe,” Kesić explained.
According to him, the easiest answer the United States could come up with to
Russian threats of veto would be continued negotiations.
G8 clashes over Kosovo
Foreign ministers from the Group of 8 countries clashed Wednesday over the
future of Kosovo after Russia warned that a UN plan paving the way for the
province’s independence could encourage separatist movements in the
Russian-backed regions of Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia, the AP reported from
Potsdam.
During a heated discussion with the foreign ministers of Britain, Canada,
France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States, Sergey Lavrov, the Russian
foreign minister, made it clear that Moscow's goal was to hold direct talks
between Serbia and Kosovo before considering the UN independence plan.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German
foreign minister, publicly disagreed, saying there was a vital need for a UN
Security Council resolution on Kosovo.
"We need to make it clear to our Russian partners that without a decision by
the Security Council we simply won't make any progress on the western Balkans
and Kosovo," said Steinmeier.
The foreign ministers were meeting for the last time before next week's summit
of G-8 leaders in the north German resort of Heiligendamm where Kosovo will be
one of the main issues on the foreign policy agenda.
A European diplomat who was at the meeting and who spoke on condition of
anonymity, said Lavrov had compared Kosovo to Palestine. Lavrov asked the
ministers why they were in such a hurry to grant independence to Kosovo while
for 40 years they had failed to support independence for Palestine, the
diplomat said.
Steinmeier, addressing Lavrov directly during the meeting, asked if Russia
would veto any new Security Council resolution that would end the international
protectorate of Kosovo.
Lavrov would not give a precise answer, according to another diplomat.
Lavrov said that if Kosovo achieved independence, then Ossetia and Abkhazia
would have every reason to claim independence as well. Georgia's behavior
toward the Ossetians and Abkhazians, he said, was much worse than Serbia's
treatment of the ethnic Albanians of Kosovo.
France's new foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, said Kosovo was a specific
case that could not be used as a precedent. He said the United Nations had not
rushed into making a decision on Kosovo. Once the status of the province was
finally resolved, it would bring stability to this part of the Balkans, he said.
View article...
Serbian News Network - SNN
[email protected]
http://www.antic.org/
