It is not accidental that the western diplomats who refer to Kosovo as “the unique case” that has nothing to do with either the Transdniester Republic, Abkhazia, South Ossetia or Nagorno Karabakh, are trying to avoid detailed subject-matter discussions of the “uniqueness” of the Kosovo situation. The author of this article has had enough reasons to conclude this, talking both officially and in private with officials at the EU and NATO headquarters, as well as with people at the UN Mission for Kosovo’s temporary administration. As a rule, Western officials tend to reduce the problem to declarations of the complexity of the historical roots of the Kosovo problem and the impossibility for Serbs and Albanians to live side by side in a state they share.
But whenever a western vis-a-vis hears anything about the doubts of the “unique character” of the Kosovo conflict we express in this article as well as information about the anti-Abkhazian and anti-Ossetian ethnic mopping-up operations the regular Georgian army was involved in in the 1990s, they immediately get bored and do their best to quit the conversation. Only a few recall the role of the UN civil administration in Kosovo. According to some officials at the NATO headquarters in Brussels (who insisted on hiding behind the screen of anonymity as people unauthorized to comment on the future status of the province), “the uniqueness” of the Kosovo case boils down to the fact that unlike the situation with the post-Soviet space, the UN mission is there. But then similar missions were in their time enacted in Namibia and East Timor, and both territories later turned from the UN mandate territories into sovereign states.
The transformation of the status of Namibia and East Timor as the UN wards was very real. But not all the truth was told. The international representation there was introduced in the conditions of the factual occupation by the neighbouring countries, correspondingly South Africa and Indonesia. The Kosovo case is totally different. The UN mission was installed in a sovereign state, the Union Republic of Yugoslavia (URY). Yugoslavia exists no longer, but it its place at the United Nations automatically became Serbia’s. In other words the goal of the international presence was not putting an end to occupation but rendering assistance to the normalisation of the situation in the province, which according to Resolution 1244 dated June 10, 1999 of the UN Security Council was recognized as a part of the URY. Therefore, the UN mandate does not give anyone the right to change Kosovo’s international legal status.
As soon as the West acknowledges Kosovo’s independence proclaimed by the Albanian separatists, the problem would automatically move onto a principally new plane. The destiny of all the self-proclaimed states in the contemporary world will be an issue on the international agenda. Should the United States and the EU decide to unilaterally acknowledge Pristina, they would deprive themselves of the right to have a say in the settlement of the conflicts in the Transdniester Republic, Abkhazia and South Ossetia as unbiased middlemen. That would give Russia the aces unbeatable by either Javier Solana, or Condoleezza Rice, or Gordon Brown who are so fond of delivering lectures on objectivity and legality to Russia.
The United States, NATO and EU are gradually stepping into a trap, the keys to which will be Russia’s. It was not Moscow that launched the mechanism of reviewing the principles of the present-day world order. But it can and should speak its mind in the new situation. Not only Serbs are awaiting it. Other nations that are tired of impunity and hypocrisy are also in that number.
It is time for the Russian diplomacy to come up with its response, the acknowledgement of independence of key Russia’s allies in the post-Soviet space.
Former US Ambassador to Belgrade William Montgomery said that a “coalition of the countries of goodwill” should be established to recognise Kosovo’s independence unilaterally.
What should Moscow do under the circumstances?
First, it should not give up its demand to look for a compromise solution concerning the Kosovo status.
Second, to continue blocking the draft UN Security Council the resolution on the province’s independence or its division in disregard of Belgrade’s opinion, thus forcing the “coalition” of the supporters of the Albanian separatists to act of their own accord.
By the time the United States and the EU countries have decided to unilaterally recognise Kosovo’s independence (mid-December of 2007) Russia should form its own coalition of goodwill nations, and the Russian answer to the recognition by the West of unilateral self-determination of Kosovo should be a refusal to continue acting within the framework of the current inefficient formats of settlements of the conflicts in the Trans-Dniester Republic, Abkhazia, South Ossetia (and, according to some experts in Nagorno Karabakh) and the official recognition by Russia and its allies of the sovereignty of the self-proclaimed republics of the former USSR.
The situation on the Eurasian space would not be de-stabilized after that, as neither Georgia, nor Moldova or Azerbaijan would seek a war with Russia, nor do they have the resources for forcing the re-integration of territory which they never controlled in the first place, and which was only ever shared with them within the Soviet Union's borders.
See also:
» The coming independence of Kosovo and the steps Russia should take [1]