Mapmakers’ pens are poised

UN envoy unlikely to recommend returning Kosovo to Serbia during Vienna summit today

An ethnic Albanian man walks past graffiti reading ‘Free Kosovo’ in the ethnically divided town of Mitrovica, Kosovo, earlier this week. The UN is expected to suggest that Kosovo conduct its own foreign policy.

By Douglas Hamilton - Reuters

VIENNA – The Congress of Vienna famously redrew the map of the world in 1815 to suit the major powers bidding farewell to the Napoleonic era.

Today the Austrian capital will host the beginnings of a 21st century diplomatic carve-up,

without swords and feathered hats and on a far more modest scale, to bury the disastrous era of Slobodan Milosevic and the last vestige of Yugoslavia.

The state created in 1918 is no more. Slovenia and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) walked off in 1991. Croatia and Bosnia had to fight brutal wars with their Serb minorities, backed by Belgrade. Last year, Serbia’s sister republic Montenegro also went its own way.

But for Serbia, the next cut is the deepest. The province of Kosovo, medieval birthplace of the nation and treasury of its Orthodox tradition, is destined to slip from its sovereign territory. In a stroke, 15 percent of the land will be gone.

UN mediator Martti Ahtisaari in late 2005 was given the unenviable task of trying to reconcile Serbs and Kosovo Albanians on the future of the province, which has been run by the United Nations since NATO drove out Milosevic’s forces.

“Our fundamental objective has been to create the political, institutional, economical and societal foundations for a Kosovo in which all communities can coexist in peace,” he says.

The people of Kosovo have been mainly Albanian – therefore a demographic time bomb in the eyes of some Serbs – for decades.

Milosevic revoked Kosovo’s autonomy in 1989, triggering years of passive resistance. When armed Albanian separatists challenged Serb rule in 1998, he responded by killing innocents in a ruthless crackdown. Europe threw up its hands in horror of helplessly witnessing another Bosnia and demanded a halt.

Belgrade lost control of Kosovo after 11 weeks of NATO bombing forced Milosevic to withdraw. The Albanians, who make up 90 percent of the population of some 2 million, swore they would never trust the Serbs again and demanded independence.

It is now an open secret that when he briefs nameless officials of the six-power Contact Group behind closed doors in Vienna today, Ahtisaari will not recommend returning Kosovo to Serbian sovereignty, as Belgrade demands.

Neither will the Kosovo Albanians get instant independence.

The solution will be “acceptable to the great majority of the people of Kosovo,” according to the British Foreign Office.

It will “advocate independence for Kosovo but with limits on its sovereignty,” says German Deputy Foreign Minister Gernot Erler.

Germany, Britain, France, Italy and the United States believe the Albanians should get self-determination. The sixth member of the Contact Group, Russia, says it will not back any solution that Serbia does not accept.

Diplomats seem to think there is enough wiggle room between the two apparently irreconcilable positions to avoid a Russian veto in the UN Security Council later this year.

That remains to be seen. But much will depend on the reaction of Serbia, which held a general election last Sunday and is only just beginning talks to form a coalition government.

Ahtisaari is due to unveil his plan to Serbs and Kosovo Albanians in Belgrade and Pristina on February 2.

“My settlement proposal focuses strongly on the protection of minority rights,” he said in a speech on Wednesday. “It provides the foundations for a democratic and multiethnic Kosovo in which the rights and interests of all members of its communities are firmly guaranteed and protected... It also envisages a strong international civilian and military presences within a broader future international engagement in Kosovo.” The latter implies an international overseer, a foreign governor of the sort that has supervised Bosnia since the war ended there in 1995, with powers to keep extremists from taking control of a delicate healing process and killing the patient.

NATO and the United Nations have contingency plans in case the 100,000 Serbs living in Kosovo opt to leave, or Albanian militants turn to violence against a solution they do not like, or Serb-dominated northern Kosovo moves to secede by force.

The European Union is waiting to see if Bosnia’s restive Serb Republic will call for secession from Bosnia, arguing that it is only seeking the same right as the Kosovo Albanians.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Russia, which has been hostile to the idea of independence for Serbia’s Kosovo province, hinted late on Wednesday that it may be open to a UN plan making it independent in virtually every respect but in name.

Moscow, a Serb ally with veto power in the 15-nation Security Council, has said there can be no deal on Kosovo’s future status that does not satisfy Serbia.

Russia also has expressed concern that independence could fuel separatist drives in some former Soviet states.

But when asked on Wednesday whether Moscow could accept a plan giving Kosovo independence in everything but name, Russia’s UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin hinted at flexibility. “I sort of personally think that there are all sorts of possibilities. If the parties get into a creative discussion of the settlement, then there are all sorts of possibilities which can be there,” Churkin told reporters. Once the Ahtisaari package is put before the council, the West will seek to persuade Russia to abstain rather than veto the plan, the aforementioned diplomat said.

The West will argue that Moscow would have to pay a high political price for blocking the proposal, only to risk a possible unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo in the end, the diplomat said.