Serb leader attacks EU’s stance on Kosovo

Serbia will not discuss the future status of Kosovo unless the issue of proposed independence for the breakaway province is re-opened, the Serbian President Boris Tadic has declared.

As the EU steps up its efforts to resolve the impasse on Kosovo’s future with a plan giving the province ‘supervised independence’, Tadic has warned that the Union’s tactics were flawed.

He said that a 120-day period for negotiations on the UN plan for Kosovo, as envisaged under a new UN resolution to be finalised this week, would only amount to a "delaying process" if it did not offer "real conditions" for a solution.

"Why are we going to negotiate if we know what is the final result?" Tadic said in an interview with European Voice. "We have to be encouraged all together to achieve some mutually acceptable compromise otherwise we will be in a very bad situation to negotiate."

"This is not acceptable for Serbia and for that reason I am not sure artificial limitations are going to be useful," he added. Tadic was speaking on a visit to Brussels for talks with European Commission President José Manuel Barroso and Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn last week (6 July).

But Rehn warned during a European Parliament debate yesterday (11 July) that Serbia had to adopt a "constructive attitude and realistic approach instead of repeating the set phrases" of the past.

The EU and the permanent members of the UN Security Council are trying to agree a solution for Kosovo, where the majority Albanian population seeks independence, a move strongly resisted by Serbia. A UN plan brokered by former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari and presented last February proposed supervised independence for the province. It is expected to go before the Security Council for a vote but is opposed by Russia which supports Serbia’s claim of sovereignty over Kosovo.

Agim Çeku, Kosovo’s prime minister, after talks in Brussels yesterday with Javier Solana, the EU’s foreign policy chief, said that he would not negotiate with Serbia on the future status of Kosovo, because it had been settled by the UN plan. "I think we are done, we are finished and status is almost decided. So Ahtisaari has proposed and this is not negotiable," he said.

Çeku said that Kosovo wanted independence now and that the international community could not keep waiting for a solution to come from the UN Security Council, where there is stalemate on the issue.

But Tadic warned against unilateral moves towards independence, saying that they might trigger violence. He stressed that Serbia, which waged war on the separatist province in 1999, would not instigate any violence. "Serbia is not going to make war on Kosovo," he said.

He warned that the EU would suffer if Kosovo became independent, because Serb public opinion would turn against the EU. "If Kosovo is going to become an independent country we are not going to face a stable, democratic and pro-European oriented Serbia and this is a problem," he said.

There might be a high-rate of support for EU membership in Serbia at present but this could change if Kosovan independence was forced through with EU backing, Tadic said.

He warned that enforcing an independent Kosovo would create a dangerous precedent and encourage instability. "You can see so many Kosovos - in Azerbaijan, in Georgia, Ukraine, Turkey, in all Black Sea countries". The Black Sea region was, he said, very important for Europe for stability, energy and development. "This is not a functional approach," he added.

Tadic said it was Serbia’s "national duty" and "moral obligation" to arrest and send to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague the country’s two most wanted indictees from the war in the Balkans, Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadžic. "Our duty is do everything in our powers to finalise this process," he said.

Serbia will not discuss the future status of Kosovo unless the issue of proposed independence for the breakaway province is re-opened, the Serbian President Boris Tadic has declared.