[ALBSA-Info] {QIKSH «ALBEUROPA»} PRESS: US shift on independent Kosovo angers allies (Guardian, October 30, 2000)

[Wolfgang Plarre]

http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,389776,00.html

US shift on independent Kosovo angers allies 

Albanian nationalists are buoyed by Washington's readiness to support a
break from Yugoslavia

Ewen MacAskill in Pristina 
Monday October 30, 2000 

The US is ready to break rank with its Nato partners by conceding for
the first time that Kosovo can become independent from Serbia. 
     The shift in policy, discussed in secret talks this month between
the US special envoy, Richard Holbrooke, and US diplomats in the
Balkans, will anger Britain and other Nato members and risks creating a
rift with Russia, which retains close ties with Serbia. 
     The change of direction emerged in the Kosovan capital, Pristina,
as votes were being counted yesterday in the province's first democratic
elections. The three big Kosovan Albanian parties all stood on an
independence platform. The Kosovan Serbs almost unanimously boycotted
the elections, for local authorities. 
     The Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK), led by the moderate
nationalist Ibrahim Rugova, was sweeping to power throughout the
province, according to independent observers. The official results are
expected today. 
     Nato and the UN security council have maintained that, in spite of
the Nato-led war last year which forced Serbian troops out of the
province, Kosovo should remain a sovereign part of Yugoslavia. 
     British officials recently ruled out independence as an option,
saying that further fragmentation in the Balkans would increase
instability and that a state as small as Kosovo would be unsustainable. 
     Security council resolution 1244, passed in June last year at the
end of the war, reaffirmed "the commitment of all member states to the
sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia". 
     But a senior US official in Pristina, who spent last week with Mr
Holbrooke, has for the first time disputed the widely-held
interpretation of the resolution. 
     He said that 1244 "explicitly recognises the territorial integrity
of Yugoslavia but it does not mean Kosovo cannot be independent". 
     US government lawyers spent the past few weeks looking at the
resolution in detail and they concluded that it did not rule out
independence. 
     The US source agreed that independence was fast becoming a reality
on the ground because almost half the Kosovan Serbs had left the
province and the Kosovo Albanians were setting up their own judicial and
political system. 
     Acknowledging that few Kosovo Albanians were prepared to consider
even a loose federation with Belgrade, he said: "Kosovo will not be
pushed back into Serbia." 
     The US is unlikely to go public on its policy switch in the near
future in case it undermines Yugoslavia's new democratically elected
president, Vojislav Kostunica. 
     The loss of Kosovo, which is an important historical symbol for
Serbia, would inflame Serbian nationalist hardliners. 
     The US source ruled out partitioning the province between the
northern part, predominantly populated by Serbs, which would join Serbia
while the rest of the country, mainly Kosovo Albanians, would enter into
a Greater Albania. 
     He hoped the Kosovo Serbs and Albanians could reach an
accommodation. "They will never be friends sitting around the campfire
singing Kumbaya... but they will learn to live with one another." 
     The elections held in Kosovo on Saturday were for control of the
province's 30 municipalities, but the Kosovo Albanians treated them as a
referendum on independence. The main contenders were Mr Rugova's LDK and
the Democratic Party of Kosovo, led by Hashim Thaci, a nationalist
hardliner and former commander of the Kosovan Liberation Army, which
fought a guerrilla campaign against the Yugoslav army. 
     Mr Thaci wants Kosovo to become independent from Serbia as soon as
possible and join Albania. Mr Rugova also wants independence but at a
more cautious pace and for Kosovo to be a state in its own right, free
of both Serbia and Albania. 

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2000


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