[ALBSA-Info] {QIKSH «ALBEUROPA»} PRESS: Is Serbia's Victory Kosovo's Loss? (New York Times, 29 Oct 2000)

[Wolfgang Plarre]

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/29/weekinreview/29ERLA.html

Is Serbia's Victory Kosovo's Loss?

By STEVEN ERLANGER

PRAGUE -- The fall of Slobodan Milosevic is a disaster - at least for
Kosovo's hopes for independence. The election in Belgrade of the
apparently reasonable, legally minded Serb, Vojislav Kostunica, has
spoiled that dream, and consequently, Kosovo has become a more explosive
place, providing a further test for Western troops and diplomacy.
     NATO bombed Yugoslavia for 78 days last year to save Kosovo's
Albanians and drive Serbian authorities out of the province, hoping that
Mr. Milosevic himself would be collateral damage. Albanian refugees
returned and Kosovo became a Western protectorate, managed by the United
Nations and patrolled by NATO-led troops, who watched without much
concern as half the province's Serbian population and nearly all of its
Gypsies were expelled or fled.
     In Western eyes, Mr. Milosevic's undeniable awfulness (politicians
and diplomats cheerfully called him "evil" and "the Hitler of the
Balkans") justified nearly anything that happened in Kosovo - revenge in
the pursuit of liberty was no vice. There has been much tut-tutting
about the organized efforts of some Albanians to pursue independence by
driving the non-Albanian minority from Kosovo, but few arrests by
Western troops unwilling to confront the majority and risk casualties.
     The United Nations administrator of Kosovo, Bernard Kouchner, liked
to say that he saw his job as preparing Kosovo for independence, meaning
independence from Mr. Milosevic, as if the Serbs themselves were
incapable of acting on their own revulsion. A number of senior American
officials privately shared this view.
     But Mr. Kouchner was going - or talking - way beyond his brief. In
the United Nations Security Council resolution that ended the war and
governs Mr. Kouchner, there is no discussion, let alone promise, of
independence for Kosovo. Resolution 1244 "reconfirms the commitment of
all member states to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia," of which Kosovo remains a part. Kosovo
is promised only "substantial autonomy and self-government" after a
period of international supervision.
     Saturday's local elections in Kosovo, although subject to a boycott
by Kosovo's Serbs, constitute an important first step in building
institutions of self-government, and they will be followed in the spring
by elections for some form of legislature. But those institutions, as
well as the province's status are provisional, "pending a final
settlement," as the resolution says. And that settlement is to be
negotiated, under international auspices, between Kosovo's "provisional
democratic self-governing institutions" and Belgrade.
     While Mr. Milosevic ruled, such negotiations were "impossible to
imagine," a senior Western diplomat said. But in Mr. Kostunica, a
constitutional lawyer who vows to defend Serb interests, Kosovo's
Albanians have the interlocutor of their nightmares.
     "For a long time, everyone fell into a bad habit, which was to
ignore anything that came out of Belgrade because it had the Milosevic
tag on it," the diplomat said. "Everything he articulated was by
definition bad, because he articulated it. For 10 years, we let everyone
behave badly because they could say, well, Milosevic behaves worse. But
the election of Kostunica is a blow to extremists of all kinds in the
region - Albanian as well as Serb."
     That means the quiet slide toward independence in Kosovo is over
just as surely as in Serbia's sister republic, Montenegro, whose
president, Milo Djukanovic, also bet on Mr. Milosevic remaining in
power. But while Montenegro is clearly torn between those who favor ties
to Serbia and those who don't, some 95 percent of Kosovars are now
thought to be ethnic Albanian, and few admit to any hope other than
independence.
     Few Serbs in Kosovo, however, let alone those 100,000 or so who
want to return and cannot, currently believe they can be safe in an
independent Kosovo. And Mr. Kostunica has already made clear that he
will press, over time, for the safe return of Serbs - a goal American
envoy James C. O'Brien assured him in their first meeting that
Washington supported.
     Mr. O'Brien also confirmed Washington's support for Resolution
1244, which could not be changed in any event without the support of all
permanent members of the Security Council, including Belgrade allies
Moscow and Beijing.
     So the situation in Kosovo is likely to become more explosive, not
less, ensuring the need for NATO troops to remain for a long time to
come. The reason? Independence is likely to become not just a dream
deferred, but denied. And as the contradiction between Western verbal
encouragement for Albanian self-determination and its opposition to
independence becomes clear, the potential for violence against NATO
troops will grow.
     The same may be said of Albanian politicians. All of them, from the
more moderate, pacifist Ibrahim Rugova, leader of the Democratic League
of Kosovo, to the former Kosovo Liberation Army leader Hashim Thaci,
support independence. But with Mr. Kostunica as a negotiating partner,
politicians like Mr. Rugova are going to have to consider options short
of independence. And that could place their own lives at risk.
     The newly altered landscape is precisely what makes Republican
presidential candidate George W. Bush's recent promise to pull American
soldiers out of Balkan peacekeeping duties so wrongheaded, says Ivo
Daalder, a Balkans expert and a senior fellow at the Brookings
Institution. "Kosovo was an American-led war with an American-dominated
outcome, so to pull out now, when the Albanians feel under the most
pressure since the end of the war, is likely to increase the overall
risk to all troops there," he said. "It would be viewed by the Europeans
and the Albanians as a betrayal."
     Veton Surroi, an Albanian moderate and newspaper publisher, once
said that Kosovar Albanians wouldn't be governed from Belgrade even if
the Serbs elected Mother Teresa to replace Mr. Milosevic, an echo of
quip by Richard Holbrooke, United States ambassador to the United
Nations. The Albanians would want independence "even if Thomas Jefferson
were running Serbia," said Mr. Holbrooke.
     Mr. Kostunica is neither, but he will insist on Belgrade's rights
under Resolution 1244. Ultimately, the future of Kosovo must be resolved
between Belgrade and Pristina, the Kosovo capital. This will doubtless
prove difficult, but the prospect of democratic leaders in both cities
opens up a far more realistic landscape than the current imperial
protectorate.
     "Serbs and Albanians don't get along," said one senior diplomat.
"Fine. But there are a lot of options, and the good news is that we can
start discussing those options intelligently, with elected
representatives, and they can talk for a long time. That has to be
better than what we have now, which is no implementation of 1244 and
Kosovo as a member of NATO forever."
     NATO forces can't leave Kosovo until the Serbs and the Albanians
negotiate a solution, he said, or there will be another war. "The Serbs
have to buy into any solution, or it's hopeless," he said. "Sooner or
later, the Albanians will realize that."

Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company


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