KOSOVO PM PLANS TO DECLARE INDEPENDENCE IN NOVEMBER
Mark Tran
Guardian Unlimited
Friday July 20, 2007
Kosovo prime minister, Agim Ceku. Photograph: Hrvoje Polan/AFP/Getty Images
Kosovo should declare unilateral independence on November 28, the
prime minister of the UN-administered Serbian province said today.
Agim Ceku said Kosovo’s parliament should push ahead with a declaration
of independence from Belgrade because of a lack of movement at the UN.
November 28 marks Albanian independence day, a date also celebrated
by Kosovo’s 90% Albanian majority. Mr Ceku said the Kosovo parliament
should set the date in a resolution after his return from Washington
next week, where he is due to meet the US secretary of state,
Condoleezza Rice.
"It is a day of celebration," he told reporters after meeting Kosovo’s
UN governor, Joachim Ruecker. "The United Nations has failed to act."
Mr Ceku has made such statements before, mainly to placate restive
Kosovo Albanians who are increasingly impatient at the country being
run by UN bureaucrats. Observers said Mr Ceku was having to shore
up his steadily eroding credibility by maintaining that independence
was just around the corner.
The west has been trying to push through a plan drawn up by the
UN special envoy, Martti Ahtisaari, that sets Kosovo on the path
towards independence at the UN security council, but Russia, Serbia’s
traditional ally, has repeatedly blocked a UN resolution.
Faced with a threatened Russian veto, the west was set to shelve the
latest, watered-down UN resolution on the fate of the province.
Moscow rejected the latest draft UN resolution, which called for
another 120 days of Serb-Albanian talks and would mandate the EU to
take over from the UN mission. Russia said it amounted to independence
by the back door.
Kosovo has been run by the UN since 1999, when a Nato air campaign
forced out Serbian troops that were killing and expelling Albanians
in a two-year war with guerrillas.
The US has indicated that it would support a unilateral declaration,
but the 27-member EU is divided. Britain has been a strong backer of
independence, but others such as Greece and Spain are opposed.
Ms Rice yesterday again said Washington was fully committed to
achieving independence for Kosovo, despite Russia’s opposition. She
told reporters that Kosovo would get its independence "one way or
another", without specifying whether the US was prepared to recognise
Kosovo’s independence unilaterally. But even if the US does recognise
Kosovo, it has little leverage to bring along the EU countries,
apart from Britain.
In a report to the security council earlier this month, the UN
secretary general, Ban Ki-Moon, warned that if the province’s "status
remains undefined, there was a real risk that the progress achieved
by the UN and the provisional institutions in Kosovo can begin to
unravel", amid reports that former members of the Kosovo Liberation
Army (KLA) were regrouping.
Kosovo has been a source of tension between the west and Moscow,
which fears that it could set a precedent for its own separatist
problems in Nagorno-Karabakh and other Russian regions. Should Kosovo
press ahead with a unilateral declaration of independence, relations
between the west and Russia could become further inflamed.