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Question: The situation in Kosovo will be discussed in New York today. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has called for suspending negotiations on the region’s status. He suggested that to both Belgrade and Pristina, which is rather tricky, and for Serbia almost unreal. Can you comment on that? A second question: the outgoing President of Croatia, Stjepan Mesic, caused a real political storm in the Balkans the other day. He has said that if the Serb entity of Republika Srpska in Bosnia and Herzegovina scheduled a referendum for secession from Bosnia and if he were the president of Croatia, he would send the Croatian army into Bosnia and Herzegovina. Can you comment on that? Lavrov: Regarding the second question, we have consistently and strongly advocated that all parties should respect the letter and spirit of the Dayton Agreements. This excludes any calls for the use of force to undermine those agreements. With regard to the Kosovo problem and the forthcoming debate in the Security Council, we are concerned about how this situation is evolving. We are concerned that the Kosovo Albanians, Pristina are trying in every possible way to complicate the work of the UN Mission in Kosovo, operating there on the basis of a single international mandate – Security Council resolution 1244. Other international decisions on Kosovo do not exist. We very much encourage those who have influence on Pristina to prevent such attempts. Many issues of the rights of Serbs in Kosovo are not being solved now. The mission that the EU has deployed there with the consent of both Pristina and Belgrade – the Rule of Law Mission – is trying to act while increasingly ignoring the UN Mission in Kosovo. We believe this to be contrary to resolution 1244, which the EU pledged to implement. There are many problems here and these problems will be exhaustively discussed at the forthcoming meeting of the Security Council. I proceed from the fact that the UN Secretary General, as the highest official of the Organization, first of all must be guided by the decisions of the Security Council, and the basic decision on Kosovo is resolution 1244. I am confident that with goodwill a resumption of negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina is possible. The main thing is that those who patronize Pristina should not forbid it to do that, but, on the contrary, encourage its normal dialogue with Belgrade. Question: You know that Serbia has filed an application for EU membership. Voices are being heard in Europe now that the road to the EU runs through NATO. In Serbia there are also voices that would like to enter NATO. What does Russia think of this possibility? Second, Montenegro has recently decided to establish diplomatic relations with the self-declared Republic of Kosovo without awaiting a decision by the Hague Tribunal. How does Russia feel about this? Lavrov: Regarding where and through what the road leads. I would like all roads to lead, above all, to a place of worship, and only then to some secular structures, especially politico-military. We have not changed our attitude toward the ambitions of the North Atlantic alliance to enlarge. I have already mentioned a bit earlier today just what problem we see in the presence of different levels of security in Europe – the problem of dividing lines, the problem of a breach of the indivisibility of security pledge. We remain convinced that attempts to mechanically move the boundaries of the North Atlantic Alliance in breach of the obligations concerning the indivisibility of security, or, shall we say, not providing legal guarantees of indivisible security for non-members of the alliance just sow distrust and trigger unnecessary suspicion. They are counterproductive, inadequate to modern realities and the relationships that are established between the political leaders of our states. Therefore, the legal system that we propose to create will cover all states without exception, and thus will not maintain this kind of "patchwork" security architecture, which merely creates a temptation to choose between East and West, which not so long ago some European leaders publicly urged to do. With specific regard to our Serbian friends, and their uneasy relationship with NATO, in view of the bombing which occurred in 1999, we presume that decisions are made by Serbia. We know that in Serbia at a point in the past there was officially confirmed the position on Serbia's observance of military neutrality, which excludes its accession to military blocs. As far as we can tell from talking with our Serbian partners, the majority of the population of the country shares this view. On the decision of Montenegro and any other states that have recently announced recognition of Kosovo. I cannot judge them, they took these decisions themselves. We believe that the unilaterally proclaimed independence of Kosovo contradicts UN Security Council resolution 1244. Our position is well known, it is legally defensible. Those who try to claim otherwise do not act on the basis of international law, but on the basis of political expediency. http://rt.com/Top_News/2010-01-27/lavrov-media-briefing-russia.html
