RUSSIA SEES KOSOVO AS THE ANSWER
By Simon Saradzhyan
Staff Writer

The Moscow Times, Russia
March 29 2006

Russian officials are floating the idea of making the world’s largest
country a little bit bigger by adding a new region called Alania —
an area that would consist of a merged North and South Ossetia.

The proposed expansion hinges on Georgia’s breakaway region of South
Ossetia voting for independence — a vote that would mirror a similar
plebiscite planned for Kosovo. Russia insists that Kosovo’s vote
could be copied to resolve conflicts in separatist regions across
the former Soviet Union.

While talk of uniting the two regions into a single Russian
subject might be a trial balloon, Russia would face potentially
deep repercussions if it were to set the precedent of embracing the
supremacy of a people’s right to self-determination.

Gennady Bukayev, an assistant to Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov,
told a joint session of the leaders of South and North Ossetia on
March 22 that the federal government had agreed in principle to
incorporate South Ossetia.

The two republics would then be united into one, “the name of which
is already known to the world — Alania,” Bukayev said at the meeting
in the North Ossetian capital, Vladikavkaz, Vedomosti and Nezavisimaya
Gazeta reported.

Bukayev’s comments were received enthusiastically by the attending
officials, and he was interrupted by applause several times, said
Madina Dzhanayeva, an Itar-Tass reporter who attended the meeting,
Vedomosti reported.

Hours after Bukayev spoke, the Foreign Ministry released a statement
denying that Moscow had plans to incorporate South Ossetia, even if
the region held a referendum in the wake of the planned Kosovo vote.

Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin said in the statement on the
ministry’s web site that Bukayev had been misquoted and that Russia’s
position remained that the status of South Ossetia should be determined
within the Joint Control Commission, a group that includes South
Ossetia, Moscow and Tbilisi.

Repeated attempts to contact Bukayev through the federal government
press service were unsuccessful.

The Foreign Ministry’s attempt to contain the news failed, however,
as government officials and analysts alike began to publicly debate
how far a Kosovo precedent could propel separatist regions across
the former Soviet Union toward de jure independence.

Despite attempts by Washington, Tbilisi and Baku to present a vote
in Kosovo as a unique situation, North Ossetian President Taimuraz
Mamsurov said the unification of North and South Ossetia was
“inevitable.”

“When and how it will happen is a different issue,” he told Interfax
a day after the March 22 joint session.

Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov was only a bit more
diplomatic, saying the question of whether South Ossetia would become
part of Russia depended on the final status of Kosovo.

“We are closely watching what is happening in Kosovo. The situation
there is very similar to South Ossetia, and they are heading toward
the establishment of an independent state,” Mironov said, Interfax
reported.

“The people of North and South Ossetia are one people, even if it
[the territory] is divided. And as history shows, people like them
unify eventually,” he said.

Mironov’s position dovetails with Russia’s view that whatever status
Kosovars choose and the international community seals should be
treated as a precedent for the resolution of similar conflicts.

Ethnic Albanian and Serbian officials are currently engaged in United
Nations-mediated talks on the future of Kosovo. Albanians, who comprise
about 90 percent of Kosovo’s 2 million people, want full independence,
while Serbia and Kosovo’s Serb minority insist that Belgrade retain
some control over the province. Despite Serbia’s stance, some form
of independence appears almost certain for Kosovo, which has been run
as a UN protectorate since 1999, when NATO air strikes drove Serbian
forces out and ended a crackdown by then-Yugoslav President Slobodan
Milosevic on Albanian separatists.

President Vladimir Putin voiced Russia’s position during his news
conference on Jan. 31. “If someone thinks that Kosovo can be granted
full independence as a state, then why should the Abkhaz or the South
Ossetians not also have the right to statehood?” Putin said. Abkhazia
is another separatist region of Georgia.

“I am not saying that Russia would immediately recognize Abkhazia or
South Ossetia as independent states, but international experience has
such precedents,” he said. “I am not saying whether these precedents
are a good or a bad thing, but in order to act fairly in the interests
of all people living on this or that territory, we need generally
accepted, universal principles for resolving these problems.”

In the weeks after Putin’s remarks, officials from the separatist
governments of Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Nagorno-Karabakh have voiced
support for the argument that Kosovo could serve as a precedent,
while senior officials from Georgia, Moldova and Azerbaijan have
challenged the argument. Nagorno-Karabakh is an enclave claimed by
Armenia and Azerbaijan, while Moldova is struggling with a separatist
region of its own, Transdnestr. With the exception of Transdnestr,
all of the breakaway regions are populated by a dominant ethnic group.

Georgy Khaindrava, Georgia’s minister for conflict resolution, said
Putin’s remarks came as no surprise given Russia’s “unilateral support”
of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

“The Kosovo model is not a universal one,” said Georgian Foreign
Minister Gela Bezhuashvili.

Azeri Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov said Kosovo “must not set
a precedent, regardless of its outcome.”

Even U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Rosemary DiCarlo weighed
in, telling Kommersant that Kosovo was a unique case that had grown
out of the violent breakup of Yugoslavia.

Political experts said, however, that Kosovo’s case was not so unique
and could easily be applied to most of the frozen conflicts in the
former Soviet Union.

“How many parameters can one list to make their case unique? Is
Kosovo all that unique? I don’t think so,” said Monica Duffy Toft,
an expert on ethnic conflicts in the former Soviet Union at Harvard
University’s Kennedy School of Government.

She and Alexei Malashenko, an analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center,
said the Kosovo vote would set a precedent that the leaders of South
Ossetia, Abkhazia and Nagorno-Karabakh would rely on to strengthen
their independence bids.

“The Kosovo vote will open the floodgates, it will be a wake-up call
that the principle of territorial integrity is no longer absolute in
the tradeoff with the right to self-determination,” Malashenko said.

He and Mikhail Roshchin, a Caucasus expert at the Institute of
Oriental Studies, expressed doubt that Russia had any imminent plans
to annex South Ossetia and said Bukayev’s statement looked like a
trial balloon. “They might be probing to see what the reaction is,”
Roshchin said.

However, the statement should not have been permitted even as a trial
balloon if Russia was truly interested in absorbing South Ossetia,
Malashenko said. “They should have kept mum until after the vote and
the subsequent recognition of Kosovo,” he said.

Nikolai Silayev, a senior expert with the Center for Caucasus
Studies at the Moscow State University of Foreign Relations, agreed
the statement could have been a test and questioned the wisdom
of incorporating a willing South Ossetia. He said the economically
depressed region would become a new burden for the federal budget and
that unification of the two regions might fuel Ossetian nationalism.

Silayev said Russia would benefit most if Georgia formed a weak
confederation state with Abkhazia and South Ossetia and that state
was anchored to Russia.

Toft also questioned the viability of Russia’s position on Kosovo
being a precedent for South Ossetia, noting that Russia could face
the uncomfortable prospect of Chechnya and other Russian regions
dominated by one or two ethnic groups in the North Caucasus also
seeking independence through referendums.

South Ossetia fought and won a bloody war to achieve de facto
independence from Georgia in 1992. Since then, the region’s economy has
relied heavily on Russia for support, and its leaders have periodically
called on Moscow to incorporate the region into Russia.

South Ossetian leader Eduard Kokoity made the latest call at the
joint session in Vladikavkaz last week, saying he would ask the
Russian Constitutional Court to look into whether his region could
be “re-integrated” into Russia. He cited the 1774 Treaty of Kuchuk
Kainarji between Russia and the Ottoman Empire that made South Ossetia
part of Russia, and said no later treaty had transferred the region
to Georgia.

Both Georgia and the United States criticized Kokoity. Julie Finley,
the U.S. ambassador to the Vienna-based Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe, said the United States reconfirmed “our
unequivocal support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity
of Georgia and the peaceful resolution of both the South Ossetia
and Abkhazia conflicts based on that principle,” The Associated
Press reported.

Khaindrava, Georgia’s minister for conflict resolution, also attacked
Bukayev’s statement, calling it “absolutely irresponsible” and urging
Moscow to condemn it.

Russia officially maintains that it honors Georgia’s territorial
integrity, and it keeps a peacekeeping force in South Ossetia. But
Tbilisi has accused Moscow of supporting the region through trade,
economic aid and the distribution of Russian passports to residents.

As of 2003, 70,000 people lived in South Ossetia, with 67 percent
of them ethnic Ossetian and 25 percent ethnic Georgians, according
to Izvestia. A total of 95 percent of the residents hold Russian
passports, which Georgian officials say is a reflection of Russia’s
tacit support for the independence movement.

A similar number of residents in Abkhazia and a sizeable part of the
population of Transdnestr hold Russian passports.