Translated material
Balkan Taiwan
Resolution on Kosovo removed from UN Security Council agenda
By sending six draft resolutions of the UN Security Council on granting independence to the Serbian region of Kosovo to the basket in four months, Russia demonstrated that a quick solution to the problem (while ignoring Belgrade’s position), which Western countries insisted on, turned out to be an illusion. Despite open support from the United States and the European Union, supporters of the region’s independence were never able to force the UN Security Council to adopt the resolution they needed. Under the threat of an imminent Russian veto, the issue of recognizing Kosovo's independence was removed from the vote last Friday. Thus, all participants in the discussion saved face - Moscow did not have to veto, and the Security Council avoided voting on a dubious document establishing the dismemberment of the Serbian state.Now everything will have to start all over again. On Wednesday, July 25, in Berlin, diplomats from the countries that are members of the Contact Group (Russia, the United States, Great Britain, Germany, Italy and France) will be able to discuss the Kosovo realities “from scratch.” They will not be burdened either by decisions of the UN Security Council or by the recommendations of the special envoy of the UN Secretary General Martti Ahtisaari , who advised granting Kosovo independence under international supervision.
The authors of the final, in their own words, draft resolution on granting independence to the Serbian region of Kosovo (without the consent of Belgrade) themselves withdrew the document from the vote. This happened after Russia's permanent representative to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, confirmed that a solution that was not supported by both sides of the Kosovo conflict - Serbia and the authorities of the Kosovo autonomy - was unacceptable for Moscow. Russia “is not ready to either support the adoption of this resolution or abstain from voting on it” - these words of the Russian diplomat clearly indicated that the resolution would not be adopted.
“What happened was exactly what the Russian Federation insisted on, which from the very beginning opposed the adoption of any resolutions by the UN Security Council that would lead to the declaration of independence of Kosovo without the consent of Belgrade, that is, without a successful negotiated solution to the status problem,” This is how Mr. Churkin commented on the results of the debate on Kosovo in the UN Security Council that began in mid-March. Active and even aggressive diplomacy within the walls of the UN Security Council allowed Russia to return to the Balkans, leaving behind 15 years of concessions and hesitations on issues of settlement in the space of the former Yugoslavia.
True, this victory does not mean the victory of the entire campaign. French Permanent Representative to the UN Jean-Marc de la Sablière, in a statement on behalf of the authors of the draft resolution, again mentioned both the “Ahtisaari plan” and the desire to fit a new round of negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina within 120 days. He called for negotiations between Serbs and Albanians to be “time-limited,” and called the special envoy’s proposals in advance “the basis for any subsequent discussions.”
The Russian Foreign Ministry did not agree with this interpretation: “We urge you to draw the right conclusions from the previous stage of the status process. New rounds of negotiations should not be limited in time.” On Smolenskaya Square they insist that “only the verdict of the UN Security Council can be legitimate.” The Russian Foreign Ministry warned that “attempts to bypass the UN in Kosovo affairs will run counter to all international agreements on Kosovo, will destabilize the Balkans, and stimulate separatists around the world.”
In Serbia they don’t want to hear about Martti Ahtisaari and his proposals at all. “There is still a lot of work ahead, but now we can already talk about the failure of the disastrous political process started by Mr. Ahtisaari,” Slobodan Samardzic, Minister for Kosovo and Metohija in the Serbian government, said in an interview with Vremya Novostei. In his opinion, “the withdrawal of the last draft resolution of the United States and the European Union from voting means that the “Ahtisaari plan” is finally outlawed.” The fact that consultations on the status of Kosovo are being transferred from the Security Council to the Contact Group does not at all detract from the role of the UN, the Serbian minister believes. “The Contact Group operates under the wing of the UN, and it is the UN Security Council that will ultimately approve the status of Kosovo,” Mr. Samardzic is confident.
However, American Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently confirmed that Kosovo “one way or another” will gain independence from Serbia . And the head of the Kosovo government, Agim Ceku, said that now “the only way left is a bilateral or even better coordinated recognition of Kosovo’s independence with the participation of our international partners.” The UN Mission in Pristina is also convinced of the inevitability of a unilateral declaration of independence for Kosovo. In a conversation with a Vremya Novostei correspondent, its representatives said that this plan is unofficially called “Plan B” (Plan A was the name given to the failed UN Security Council resolution).
The implementation date for Plan B will be November 28, when Kosovo's neighbor Albania celebrates its national holiday - Flag Day. On November 28, 1912, in the Albanian city of Vlora, leaders of Albanians from all over the Balkans proclaimed the creation of the Albanian state as a union of all Albanians, including those from Kosovo, Macedonia and Montenegro. There is no better day to declare an independent Kosovo and resuscitate the program for creating a great Albania. In addition, Kosovo is due to hold general elections at the end of November. “The parties and politicians in power in the province today must by this time declare the self-determination of Kosovo. Otherwise, they will lose power overnight,” warn UN representatives in Pristina.
In this case, Kosovo will try to do without a UN Security Council verdict. Apparently, local separatists and their Western associates chose the third path, deciding to ignore not only the UN Security Council, but also the Contact Group. As Andrei Shemyakin, deputy director of the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, noted in a conversation with a Vremya Novostei correspondent, “the refusal of the UN Security Council to vote on the new resolution does not change anything. The 120-day negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina will become an operetta theater, since the Albanians, in principle, will not agree on anything with the Serbs. After all, the West has already promised them independence.” In addition, the 120 days allotted for negotiations will expire around November 25th. And then no one will stop the Kosovo Albanians from celebrating Albanian Flag Day on November 28 with a declaration of their independence.
Most likely, by the end of the year, Kosovo will de facto have the same status as Taiwan or the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC). “They are not recognized by the UN, but individual countries recognize them. Independent Kosovo has been guaranteed recognition by the United States and some EU states,” Mr. Shemyakin is confident. And this promises even brighter prospects for the Albanian separatists than for the Taiwanese and Turkish Cypriots. Taiwan is now recognized by more than twenty countries, but the decline in status is obvious, because back in 1971, Taipei occupied Beijing's seat at the UN. The TRNC, formed in 1983, still has diplomatic recognition only from Turkey. Kosovo, according to unofficial information from the UN Mission in Pristina, is recognized by about 60 states of the world already in the first week after the declaration of independence.