EU’s Kosovo envoy calls for unity

The EU’s representative on an international group leading talks on the future of Kosovo will urge unity among member states at a meeting of EU foreign ministers on Friday and Saturday (7-8 September).

Fresh talks on Kosovo’s future status have so far failed to throw up a compromise. Wolfgang Ischinger will ask ministers to maintain a united front despite different views among the 27 member states on independence for the province.

Ischinger, along with his US and Russian counterparts on the Contact Group for Kosovo, is currently working on getting Serbian and Kosovan officials to negotiate directly with each other on the sidelines of the United Nations’ General Assembly which starts on 24 September in New York.

The Contact Group began the current round of talks on 10 August after Russia refused to back a UN resolution in the Security Council which would have given Kosovo supervised independence.

Last week (30 August) in Vienna talks were held separately with both sides and were described by Ischinger as "constructive and friendly". But suggestions put forward by the two sides were said by diplomats to be nothing new. The Serb government, it is understood, has suggested that in any future autonomy settlement for Kosovo, Serbia would have control over foreign affairs, defence and the country’s borders, a proposal which is not acceptable to Pristina.

The idea to partition the province along ethnic lines was also abandoned when neither side seemed interested in the prospect. "It was an idea as part of whatever solution could be acceptable but the parties have not taken it up," said one EU diplomat.

While Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Koštunica has voiced his opposition to partitioning the province, the Kosovan Albanians would be expected to give up land in Kosovo only if they got something in return.

"They might only go for partition if there was a return of land in southern Serbia where ethnic Albanians are concentrated. It would have to be a land swap and it’s hard to see a satisfactory outcome in this," said Judy Batt, a senior research fellow at the EU Research Institute in Paris.

Although talks are only a month old, Serbian officials are already demanding that the four-month deadline of 10 December be abandoned. Neither the EU nor the US wants this. "Our line has always been that the talks can’t be open-ended…we can’t go on with it forever," said the EU diplomat.

But a firm deadline without meaningful compromises signals that the process is moving closer towards a unilateral declaration by Kosovo of independence which will put EU unity under pressure. Elections in Kosovo on 17 November, announced last week, are expected to see this message spelt out to the international community. "It looks like we are drifting towards unilateralism," said Batt.

"Kosovo’s leaders will seek recognition for independence on a bilateral basis from the international community - from the US and the majority of EU states. But by 10 December those EU states which sympathise with Serbia and are alarmed by the prospect of Kosovan independence will realise that there’s not much else on the table," she added.

The EU’s representative on an international group leading talks on the future of Kosovo will urge unity among member states at a meeting of EU foreign ministers on Friday and Saturday (7-8 September).