Kosovo’s final status: Asking the unanswerable

Date: 15/02/03

Will Kosovo stay part of Serbia? Aargh!

FOR three-and-a-half years, since NATO-led forces kicked Serbia's administrators out of the disaffected, mainly Albanian-inhabited province of Kosovo and handed it over to the United Nations, progress has been slow but steady. Serb politicians in Belgrade, their capital, seemed quietly reconciled to the province's loss. The question of Kosovo's “final status” - as an independent ethnic-Albanian country or as an autonomous part of Serbia or as something else - was not a burning one.

But suddenly it is becoming so. In the past few weeks, Zoran Djindjic, Serbia's prime minister, has declared that Kosovo is drifting towards independence and that this must stop. He has demanded talks on its final status. Serb police and soldiers, he says, must be allowed back in. The UN resolution which ended the 78-day bombing in 1999 of what was still then Yugoslavia made provision for this, but the UN has repeatedly told the government in Belgrade that the time for such a move is not ripe. The province's 1.8m ethnic Albanians, who make up a good 95% of the present population, would see the return of any Serb security forces as an attempt to reimpose Serbian authority - and would violently oppose it.

Matters became trickier earlier this month, when the old Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was replaced by a new and looser union, to be called simply Serbia & Montenegro, whose constitution declares Kosovo an integral part of Serbia. Ethnic Albanians in Kosovo's parliament have responded by planning to make a declaration of independence, while Kosovo's beleaguered ethnic Serbs in Kosovo have organised a union of Serb municipalities - and say that, if Kosovo becomes independent, its ethnically Serb northern area should secede and join Serbia proper. But if that failed to happen, Serbs in Kosovo might emulate their ethnic brethren in Bosnia and create a “Serb republic” within Kosovo. American and European policymakers are annoyed by Mr Djindjic's recent suggestion that, if Kosovo voted for independence, the Serbs in Bosnia might follow suit.

One reason Mr Djindjic is pandering to Serb nationalists is because the Americans have threatened sanctions against Serbia unless his government arrests General Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb commander during the bloody war, and delivers him and two others indicted for war crimes to the UN's war-crimes tribunal in The Hague. If Mr Djindjic did so, many Serbs would be furious. The Serbs' leading ultra-nationalist, Vojislav Seselj, who says he has himself been indicted, would ensure that Mr Djindjic became even more unpopular than he is already.

In any event, the UN administration in Kosovo is worried by new threats of violence, this time from a previously shadowy group called the Albanian National Army (ANA). Unlike previous Albanian groups, it has a cell structure, making it ideal for penetration by groups of criminals keen to exploit violent disorder. This week seven ethnic Albanians from southern Serbia, close to Kosovo, were charged with terrorism. Unless it is checked, the ANA may stir up violence in Kosovo, Macedonia and southern Serbia. Wise heads in Kosovo's UN administration think this is not the moment to attend to Kosovo's final status. But it is becoming harder for them to avoid doing so.

Will Kosovo stay part of Serbia? Aargh!

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