Kosovo is enough for everyone

Russia helped the UN and EU find a common language

Next week, the European Union's civilian police mission will begin work in Kosovo, giving the international presence in the province a new look that better suits modern realities. Supreme control over the situation in the field of security, law and order, protection of human rights, protection of national minorities and cultural and historical monuments will remain with the UN office. Current issues - socio-economic problems, assistance to administrative, police, judicial and customs services - will be dealt with by more than two thousand EU mission employees.

Both organizations do not hide their satisfaction with the decisions taken the night before in New York at the UN Security Council meeting on Kosovo. The head of the UN mission, Italian Lamberto Zannier, confirmed that his organization “remains the main international guarantor of the rule of law in Kosovo.” Deputy British Permanent Representative to the UN Karen Pearce is convinced that “the right path has been taken towards greater UN-EU cooperation in Kosovo.”

The report of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on the change in the structure of the international presence in the region was balanced. Igor Shcherbak, First Deputy Permanent Representative of Russia to the UN, who participated in the meeting, said that Moscow supported the Secretary General’s proposals, “taking into account the fact that Serbia gave its consent to the conditions for the deployment of the EU law enforcement mission set out in the report, welcomed the Secretary General’s report and asked the Security Council to approve it.” . The Russian diplomat confirmed that Moscow’s position on Kosovo remains unchanged: “The unilateral declaration of independence of the region, its recognition by some states, runs counter to the norms of international law, primarily the UN Charter and decisions of the Security Council, including resolution 1244.”

“The results of the Security Council meeting will contribute to more orderly, coordinated with Serbia, international activities in Kosovo to resolve key problems, including eliminating interethnic tensions, ensuring the rights and security of Serbs, improving the socio-economic situation, and creating conditions for the return of refugees to the region,” - the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a commentary yesterday. The decision adopted by the UN Security Council “in no way concerns the status of the region, the “quasi-statehood” of which, as emphasized during the discussion, only destabilized the situation,” they said on Smolenskaya Square.

“The content of Ban Ki-moon’s report and the decisions adopted on it by the UN Security Council indicate the failure of the EU’s original plan for Kosovo,” Pavel Kandel, head of the department of ethnopolitical conflicts at the Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences, noted in an interview with Vremya Novostei. “The EU mission, as was hoped in Brussels, should simply take over the functions of the Kosovo UN mission. As a result, oversight of the region would shift from the UN to the EU, in which neither Russia nor Serbia have voting rights. And to speed up such a transformation, attempts were made to make decisions bypassing the UN at the level of agreements between the office of the UN Secretary General and officials in Brussels. However, thanks to the efforts of Russia and Serbia, this illegal scenario did not pass,” says VN’s interlocutor.

The principled position of Moscow and Belgrade made it possible to make Ban Ki-moon's proposals on Kosovo more balanced. In particular, reference to the plan of the former special envoy of the UN Secretary General Martti Ahtisaari to grant independence to the region under the supervision of the international community has been excluded from the mandate of the EU mission. In addition, the supremacy of UN Security Council Resolution 1244 of June 10, 1999, which states respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Serbia, was confirmed. The rights of Kosovo Serbs in the police, judicial and customs spheres were significantly expanded. According to the head of the Serbian Foreign Ministry, Vuk Jeremic, who took part in the meeting, “absolutely everything that Serbia insisted on was included in the Secretary General’s report, and the EU mission will work under the wing of the UN on the basis of strict neutrality on the issue of Kosovo’s status.”

In Pristina, the Security Council's decisions were reacted with poorly concealed irritation. Kosovo President Fatmir Sejdiu and Prime Minister Hashim Thaci said they "take note" of Ban Ki-moon's report. According to them, the Kosovo authorities will cooperate with the EU mission, but are disappointed by its “status-neutral” nature. The head of the Kosovo Foreign Ministry, Skender Hyseni, who participated in the meeting in New York, spoke even more harshly, emphasizing that Pristina rejects the plan of the UN Secretary General “as unacceptable and contrary to the constitution of Kosovo” as an independent state.

Petr ISKENDEROV