Push at U.N. for Kosovo independence could bolster secessionist
demands around the world
18 May 2007 [10:20] – Today.Az
>From the jungles of Indonesia to Spain’s Basque country, separatists
of the world are drawing hope from the approach of U.N.-approved
independence of Kosovo.
"The Kosovo precedent will be important for us," said Igor Smirnov,
leader of the Trans-Dniester region that seeks to break away from
Moldova. He maintains that his tiny enclave has an even better case
for independence than Kosovo.
Another hopeful Kosovo-watcher is Iraqi Kurdistan. "It’s important
that Kosovo achieves independence through a U.N. Security Council
resolution because that will establish a legal principle which will
also some day apply to Kurdistan," said Mahmoud Othman, a senior
Kurdish member of the Iraqi parliament.
The United States and European Union, which are backing a U.N. plan to
grant "supervised independence" to the predominantly ethnic Albanian
province of Serbia, dismiss suggestions that it would encourage
separatist movements elsewhere.
But the plan is strongly opposed by Serbia and Russia, which will
settle at most for wide local autonomy.
Russian President Vladimir Putin warned in February that independence
for Kosovo would be taken as a precedent by others, including
pro-Russian breakaway provinces in the ex-Soviet republics of Georgia
and Moldova.
This issue has become a major irritant in the already strained
relations between the West and a resurgent Russia.
The latest attempt to defuse tensions foundered this week after Putin
and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice failed to find common
ground. Kosovo also figures in Russia’s wider dispute with the EU,
jeopardizing plans to create a "strategic partnership" between Moscow
and Brussels.
The author of the Kosovo plan, former Finnish President Martti
Ahtisaari, said he did not believe a precedent would be set by
granting the province independence. "No two problem areas are the
same," he said.
But in some of the four dozen territories around the world aspiring to
break free, Kosovo’s future looks set to have far-reaching effects ‘
especially if separation is engineered through a Security Council
resolution.
"Kosovo’s independence would certainly have broad and destabilizing
consequences for many other secessionist conflicts," warned Bruno
Coppieters, head of the Political Sciences Department at Brussels Free
University.
In Indonesia, it could have a powerful impact on the two
separatist-minded provinces of Aceh and West Papua, said Damien
Kingsbury, a key adviser to the separatist Free Aceh Movement.
Indonesia, which has already lost East Timor, "is always sensitive
about is sues affecting territorial integrity, so it will be very
worried," Kingsbury said.
The U.S. and EU insist Kosovo is a special case because it has been a
ward of the international community since a U.N. administration was
set up in 1999. That followed a brief aerial war during which NATO
ejected Serb forces accused of mounting a campaign of ethnic cleansing
against the 2 million ethnic Albanian inhabitants.
"A new Security Council resolution would clearly specify that this was
a unique case not applicable to other regions," Assistant
U.S. Secretary of State Daniel Fried said in a recent interview.
Fried said the Bush administration intends to sponsor the new
resolution, based on Ahtisaari’s plan. "Kosovo will be independent one
way or the other," he said.
While the European Union also insists Kosovo is no precedent, some of
its member states have their own restive regions to contend with ‘
Catalonia and the Basque country in Spain, Flanders in Belgium,
Hungarian nationalists in Slovakia and Cyprus’ breakaway Turkish
Republic.
A parliamentary spokesman for the Basque Nationalist Party, the main
party in the regional government of northern Spain’s Basque region,
sees the Kosovo plan as "a very positive development."
"We think this could be a very good precedent, and someday we could
aspire to something similar," said Josu Erkoreka.
Othman, the Kurd, said it is inaccurate to argue Kosovo is somehow
special.
"Just like Kosovo, Iraqi Kurdistan has also been under international
protection (since the 1991 Gulf War). There is no difference," he said
in a telephone interview from Baghdad.
Any move by Iraq’s Kurdish provinces to break free would create a
major political headache for Washington and invite armed intervention
from neighboring Turkey, which has its own restless Kurdish minority.
Tim Judah, a London-based Balkan analyst and author, said the Security
Council ideally should grant Kosovo independence but simultaneously
repudiate unilateral secessions elsewhere.
But he expects that "whatever the Security Council does may
nonetheless encourage some secessionist groups somewhere." The
Associated Press
/The International Herald Tribune/
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
