STATE DEPT.: KOSOVO DOESN’T SET PRECEDENT
B92
March 6 2008
Serbia
WASHINGTON — Tom Casey says that Kosovo does not set a precedent
and should not be viewed as such.
"Kosovo’s status was implemented with a specific United Nations
Security Council resolution, which presupposed that status would be
defined at the right moment by the international community."
"That is where we are now. Kosovo is not a precedent and should not be
seen as a precedent for any other place in the world. It is certainly
not a precedent for Nagorno-Karabakh," the U.S. State Department
spokesman said.
The latest conflicts in Nagorno-Karabakh, seen as the most serious in
the past few years, according to Casey, cannot be solved by military
intervention, Voice of America reported.
Azerbaijan and Armenia blame each other for the conflict which broke
out on Tuesday along the ceasefire line.
The spokesman told reporters that the U.S. was concerned by the
violence and hoped that there would be no repeat of Tuesday’s events.
"This all shows that the two sides should, together with the so-called
Minsk Group, work on resolving the conflict. I know that problems
exist, but there is no military solution. This problem must be solved
diplomatically," he stressed.
Nagorno-Karabakh is an enclave in Azerbaijan populated by Armenians
which declared independence in 1988. A six-year conflict led to
the deaths of over 35,000 people. The Minsk Group, formed in 1992,
president over by France, Russia and the U.S., is leading diplomatic
efforts to solve the conflict.
Yerevan accuses Azerbaijan of using the post-election crisis in Armenia
to open a conflict, while Baku claims that extremist Armenians in
Nagorno-Karabakh have been encouraged by international recognition
of Kosovo’s unilateral independence declaration.
Casey said that the two could not be compared.
Holbrooke agrees
Former special envoy of the U.S. president for the Balkans Richard
Holbrooke hursday stated that the declaration of Kosovo’s independence
will not set a precedent for attempts by entities to gain independence
in other parts of the world.
Claming that it is impossible for the Cold War to get restored
over Kosovo, Holbrooke said in an interview with Russia’s daily
Nezavisimaya Gazeta that the opposed stands of Russia and the
United States regarding Kosovo might have been avoided had the
U.S. administration engaged in a long dialogue with Moscow and had
Russia introduced less tension in the process of resolving the issue.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
