Serbia and Kosovo: Unfriendly fire

Date: 18/10/03

The first talks between Serbian and Kosovar leaders

THE actual meeting may have been something of an anticlimax. But substantive talk was not the real point of this week's encounter in Vienna between the Serbian government and leaders of the breakaway province of Kosovo. For this was the two sides' first official meeting since NATO forced Slobodan Milosevic's army out of Kosovo in 1999. The province has since had de facto independence under a UN administration, even though it is still officially part of Serbia.

Getting Kosovo's president, Ibrahim Rugova, in the same room as Serbia's prime minister, Zoran Zivkovic, was a big step. The UN billed the meeting as a “direct dialogue”, but Mr Zivkovic commented sharply that “there was no dialogue, especially not a direct one.” The three-hour meeting produced some agreements: to set up bilateral working groups on transport and communications, on the return of (mostly Serb) refugees, on missing people (mostly ethnic Albanians) and on energy.

Although the meeting was held behind closed doors, an aide to the Kosovo delegation reported later that the two sides had simply read out prepared statements. Such outside dignitaries as Javier Solana, the European Union's high representative for foreign policy, Chris Patten of the European Commission, and Lord Robertson from NATO, added little beyond a certain gravitas to the proceedings.

Until the moment that the delegations arrived, it was unclear even who would be there. Kosovo's prime minister, Bajram Rexhepi, decided not to come, saying that he had no mandate from the Kosovo assembly. The Serbs took umbrage at the lack of ethnic Serb representatives from Kosovo, and at one point said they would not come either. In the end both Mr Zivkovic and his deputy responsible for Kosovo, Nebojsa Covic, arrived, but only after a game of brinkmanship, in which their aircraft landed in Vienna minutes before the talks were due to begin.

In press conferences after the meeting, Mr Zivkovic reminded Mr Rugova sourly that, although this was their first meeting since 1999, Mr Rugova had always managed to find time to meet Mr Milosevic. The Serbs also asserted that Kosovo was a province of Serbia and Montenegro; the Kosovo delegation retorted that “the independence of Kosovo is an irreversible process.” The talks do at least constitute a tentative first step towards final-status negotiations over Kosovo, which some western governments would now like to see started as soon as possible.

Michael Steiner, the previous head of the UN interim administration mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), was always reluctant to move in this direction, fearing that even raising the issue of Kosovo's final status could be explosive. His mantra of “standards before status” sounds sensible, but given the appallingly low standards prevalent in Kosovo's institutions, it has proved a recipe for delay.

As Adem Demaci, a veteran Kosovar nationalist, put it, “as long as none of us is politically accountable for our own institutions, they will remain weak and corrupt, and we will never see independence.” Nexhat Daci, president of the Kosovo assembly, added that “without full responsibility and competences, the Kosovo government cannot take responsibility in its hands.” The new head of UNMIK, a Finnish diplomat named Harri Holkeri, seems to many to be gradually backing away from the “standards before status” position, even if there is still no talk of timetables for negotiations.

Elections are likely in both Kosovo and Serbia next year, and neither side's politicians see many voters from making compromises. With both sides using this week's talks to solidify their maximalist positions, Mr Holkeri needs to pull something novel from the hat if he is to achieve more than a few working groups.