Translated material
From recognition to cancellation
Kosovo's independence split the world
Yesterday the world began to react to the bomb detonated the day before by Albanian separatists in Kosovo . At the request of Russia, the UN Security Council met for an emergency meeting to discuss the declaration of independence adopted on February 17 by the Kosovo parliament. The discussion promised to be long and heated, and its results will become known only this morning, Moscow time.According to the Russian permanent representative to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, “the unilateral declaration of independence of Kosovo has no legal force.” Commenting on the balance of power in the Security Council, the Russian diplomat promised that “the struggle around the issue of the legality or illegality of decisions taken in Pristina will continue.”
However, a number of members of the UN Security Council yesterday already expressed support for Kosovo's independence. The main thing is that the new state was recognized by the United States. “Kosovars are now independent,” said President George W. Bush, who is on an African tour. He recalled that he and his government had always strived for this. “Kosovo is now a sovereign, independent state. We congratulate its citizens on this historic event,” said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. In the evening, Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica announced that Belgrade was recalling its ambassador to the United States.
Great Britain, France, Belgium and Italy also announced their readiness to recognize Kosovo's independence. But the first state to recognize Kosovo was Afghanistan. “We support the decision of the people and recognize the independence of Kosovo,” the press service of the Afghan Foreign Ministry said yesterday.
In Moscow these delights are not shared. The day before, the Russian Foreign Ministry demanded that the UN Mission in Kosovo and peacekeeping forces in the province “immediate actions to fulfill their mandates authorized by the Security Council, including the annulment of decisions of Pristina self-government bodies and the adoption of strict administrative measures against them.” And yesterday the decision of the deputies of the Kosovo parliament was condemned by their Russian colleagues. In a document entitled “On the consequences of the self-declaration of independence of the province of Kosovo (Serbia),” the State Duma and the Federation Council called this act “a violation of one of the basic principles of international law - the inviolability of the territorial integrity of states.”
Russia's position was fully supported by Serbian President Boris Tadic, who took part in the UN Security Council meeting yesterday. In a letter addressed to the UN Secretary General, he demanded that all UN members “fully respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Serbia in accordance with their international legal obligations.” President Tadic assessed the act of independence of Kosovo, adopted on February 17, as “a forcible unilateral separation of part of the territory of the Republic of Serbia.”
The Serbs living in northern Kosovo, following Belgrade, also refused to recognize the Pristina declaration of independence. “Now the Kosovo Serbs will turn to their brothers for help. The Kosovo Albanians, in turn, will move across the Ibar River, separating the northern part of Kosovo, and pogroms will inevitably begin in the region,” Pavel Kandel, an expert at the Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences, wrote for Vremya Novostey. “The Belgrade government would most readily avoid any action, but it will not be able to do so for fear of immediately losing power,” he said. - Consequently, it will have to take some measures to protect compatriots in Northern Kosovo. And NATO forces, most likely, will again go against the Serbs and at the same time turn a blind eye to the pogroms organized by the Albanians.”
According to our interlocutor, we should expect an aggravation of the situation in Macedonia, neighboring Kosovo: “The Albanians inhabiting the northwestern part of Macedonia have long believed that they live in a foreign state, and therefore will want to become part of an independent Kosovo. All this will lead to a sharp aggravation of the situation in the Balkans.” It should be taken into account, Mr. Kandel recalled, that in the region “in addition to regular governments, irregular armed groups are also strong everywhere, which are extremely difficult for the authorities to control.” “Under these conditions, Russia’s trump card is the refusal to recognize the unilateral act of independence of Kosovo and raising the question of its illegal and precedent nature at all international forums and levels,” says the expert.
Fundamental differences on the Kosovo issue remain within the European Union. The EU Council at the level of foreign ministers, which met yesterday in Brussels, was unable to overcome the differences. Spain, Greece, Romania, Slovakia and Cyprus again spoke out against recognizing Kosovo's independence. As a result, the case was referred to individual EU member states. They must resolve the issue of recognizing the independence of the Serbian region “independently, depending on national practice and legal norms,” the final statement of the Council of the European Union says.
And in order to avoid accusations of violating the territorial integrity of Serbia, the ministers included in the document a provision that the “ethnic cleansing and humanitarian catastrophe” in Kosovo that resulted from Belgrade’s actions in the 1990s took the region beyond the scope of the legal norm, which allows changing interstate borders only with consent of all parties.
Yesterday in Brussels, a number of EU countries already confirmed their intention to recognize Kosovo. In addition to Great Britain, France, Italy and Belgium, they included Germany, Ireland, Latvia, and Estonia. As the head of the German Foreign Ministry Frank Walter Steinmeier explained, “it turned out to be impossible to reach a negotiated solution on the status of Kosovo. Therefore, we cannot avoid independence now.” His French colleague Bernard Kouchner, who was the first head of the UN Mission in Kosovo, called the province's independence "a great success for Europe."
The decision to “recognize the independence of the Republic of Kosovo” was announced by Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan, who was coming to Moscow for negotiations. Ankara already recognizes another self-proclaimed state in Europe - the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which also welcomed the independence of Kosovo. Actually, Cyprus, through its Foreign Ministry, stated that it “will never recognize” Kosovo.
So Russia, with its anxiety about the region’s independence, is not alone. The Chinese Foreign Ministry also expressed “deep concern in connection with the unilateral declaration of independence of Kosovo.” At the same time, Beijing condemned the congratulations sent to Pristina by the Taiwanese authorities. The rebellious island has already announced the possibility of recognition of Kosovo. “Everyone knows that Taiwan is part of China, and it does not have any rights or appropriate status to carry out the so-called “recognition,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry recalled. The largest Muslim country, Indonesia, which is facing separatism, does not intend to recognize the region's independence.
“The main danger of what is happening in Kosovo lies in its precedent nature for the whole world,” said Alexander Konovalov, president of the Russian Institute for Strategic Assessments, in an interview with Vremya Novostei. Recalling the deployment of predominantly NATO peacekeeping forces to the region in 1999, he emphasized that “Kosovo is the first time when they came from outside in tanks with machine guns and said: we will restore order and leave. And after relative order was established, another statement followed: there will be a new country here. But if you can change some boundaries, you can change others. It is difficult to predict all the consequences, but it is already obvious that Kosovo will not become the one and only case that the West likes to talk about.”
The first people who wanted to repeat the Kosovo scenario appeared in the Balkans. The Serbian Democratic Party of Bosnia and Herzegovina demanded that the Republika Srpska, which is part of BiH, be granted independence based on the Kosovo model. In her opinion, Bosnian Serbs should receive the same rights that will be recognized for Kosovo Albanians. The Serbs propose to find out the will of the citizens through a referendum.