Reach the UN

Russia helped Serbia gain a platform

Tomorrow, Serbian President Boris Tadic plans to dissolve parliament and call early elections for May 11. Elections to local authorities were already scheduled for this day, so the combination will help the state treasury save a lot of money. But this is the only encouraging circumstance for the Serbs. The UN Security Council, which met on Wednesday night Moscow time for closed consultations, once again demonstrated the inability of the great powers to make an agreed decision on Kosovo. Belgrade's growing alienation from the West could play into the hands of radical nationalists during early elections, and this in turn will further complicate Serbia's relations with the United States and the European Union.

Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic (pictured) , who demanded to convene a UN Security Council meeting on Kosovo, obviously did not count on a constructive solution. The main thing for him was to get a platform and repeat that Belgrade does not recognize the independence of Kosovo. In March, Russia presides over the Security Council, so the Serbian minister was able to get a platform relatively easily. True, the United States and Great Britain declared the new debate “meaningless” and tried to question the authority of Minister Jeremic due to the resignation of the entire Serbian government the other day.

Russia's permanent representative to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, insisted on holding consultations. He recalled that three weeks have passed since the unilateral declaration of independence of the Serbian region of Kosovo on February 17: “We see that in many aspects the situation is developing along the wrong path.” According to him, relations between Serbs and Albanians continue to be extremely difficult. “The situation has also become more complicated due to attempts to interfere with the work of the UN Mission in Kosovo, whose mandate is stipulated by UN Security Council Resolution 1244,” noted Vitaly Churkin.

Strange things have indeed been happening around the Kosovo UN Mission in recent days. The plan for deploying the EU civil-police mission in Kosovo, developed in Brussels, provides that by mid-June about 2 thousand EU representatives will appear in the province. Belgrade is categorically against such recognition of the region's de facto independence. Officials of the UN Mission confidentially told Vremya Novostei that “they started packing their bags last summer. After all, it was already clear then that the EU would take control of the situation in Kosovo.”

The leaders of the European Union have so far been restrained in their comments, because replacing the UN with the EU in Kosovo without a Security Council decision smacks of usurpation of power. In addition, Brussels now cannot afford to make Serbia particularly angry, because this could bring nationalists to power in Belgrade and provoke a new war in the Balkans. The Foreign Minister of Slovenia, which chairs the EU, Dimitri Rupel recently promised that the European police will not take control of the entire territory of Kosovo - UN peacekeepers will be stationed on the border line between Kosovo and Serbia. However, this symbolic concession is unlikely to appease the Serbs or stop the Albanians, who want to control all of Kosovo themselves. The leading Spanish newspaper Pais yesterday called the situation around Kosovo a “dead end” and spoke in favor of holding an international conference on the Balkans with the participation of the EU, USA and Russia.

Petr ISKENDEROV