U.N. envoy dismisses fear of Kosovo precedent

KOSOVAREPOR
Sept 23 2006

UNITED NATIONS, Sept 22 (Reuters) – The U.N. envoy charged with
proposing a solution to Kosovo’s final status on Friday dismissed
arguments that granting the breakaway Serbian province independence
would set a dangerous precedent.

Martti Ahtisaari said after briefing the Security Council on talks
he is conducting between Belgrade and Pristina, "We would be totally
paralyzed if people would say, don’t do this because it may have an
effect on something else."

"This is a special case," the former Finnish president told reporters,
arguing that Kosovo’s history made it different from any other conflict
in the Balkans or the Caucasus.

Major powers in a six-nation Contact Group overseeing Balkan diplomacy
authorized Ahtisaari this week to propose a final status for Kosovo
widely expected to lead to U.N.-imposed independence against Belgrade’s
will by the end of this year.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Borys Tarasyuk warned Western nations
that granting independence to Kosovo, whose population is 90 percent
ethnic Albanian, could have a ripple effect from the Black Sea to
the Caucasus.

"A lot of separatist regimes in the region are waiting for a solution
of the Kosovo problem in order to undertake their action to separate,"
he said in a Reuters interview.

"Kosovo might be the precedent on which separatist regimes may take
their decisions. This may undermine the efforts of the international
community to bring settlements in Transdnestr, Abkhazia, South Ossetia
and Nagorno-Karabakh."

He was referring to so-called "frozen conflicts" in breakaway regions
of the former Soviet republics of Moldova and Georgia, where minorities
backed by Moscow are seeking to secede, as well as in Azerbaijan.

Kosovo has been in limbo under U.N. administration since 1999 when
NATO waged an air war to drive Serbian forces out of the southern
province to stop ethnic cleansing ordered by the late Yugoslav
President Slobodan Milosevic.

FULL SPEED AHEAD

Ahtisaari said the solution to any of these conflicts would need
the consent of the U.N. Security Council, where the United States,
Russia, China, Britain and France have veto power.

"This precedent discussion is perhaps more political than anything
else. It’s a reminder that somebody may in the debates in the Council
use those arguments. But I don’t think it has more importance than
that. Because otherwise it would prevent us from solving this,"
he added.

Leaders of the Bosnian Serb republic have suggested in campaigning
for an Oct. 1 election they would see independence for Kosovo as
legitimizing their own right to secede.

Western governments this week brushed aside Russian and Serbian pleas
to slow the process and allow more time for talks, and decided to
press ahead for a settlement this year.

Asked whether he feared that Serbia or the Kosovo Albanians might
walk out of the talks, Ahtisaari said he did not think they would.
"Both sides have assured me — whenever I have called them, they have
come," he said.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton told reporters,
"We think it’s important after seven years of uncertainty for Kosovo
that the people of Kosovo and Serbia and the region deserve to have
their status resolved."

Serbian President Boris Tadic, a pro-Western reformer, told the U.N.
General Assembly this week that Belgrade had offered Kosovo greater
autonomy than any other region in Europe.

But significantly he did not echo nationalist Prime Minister Vojislav
Kostunica’s insistence that Kosovo must remain forever Serbian.