ISN (International Relations and Security Network)

Kosovo: behind the scenes

This year, Serb and Albanian officials have been meeting ever more frequently abroad to discuss the province's options over a good bottle of wine. And while the issue of Kosovo's status is still as intractable as ever, other matters - such as the return of Serb refugees, decentralization, and security - are being discussed. An item recently mysteriously missing from the agenda, however, is the new UN chief, who seems to have been sidelined as an insignificant player in the province's future.

By Tim Judah for ISN Security Watch

When Kosovo Serb and Albanian leaders met in Pristina on Wednesday, one could almost be forgiven for thinking that something dramatic had just happened. After all, Serbs have been boycotting government institutions since the March violence that saw 4’000 Serbs driven from their homes by Albanian mobs. In fact, discreetly, Serbian and Albanian leaders and policy makers have been meeting at an ever-increasing tempo over the past few months. Indeed a number of the participants at the Pristina meeting had barely arrived home from the Greek island of Halki, where they had already been talking. What makes Wednesday’s meeting in the Kosovo capital different, though, is the fact that it is the first since March to have taken place inside Kosovo. The Halki gathering, which was organized by Eliamep, Greece’s leading foreign policy institute, was at least the eighth meeting of Serbs and Albanians to have taken place this year. Others have been held in Britain, Switzerland, Germany, and Holland.

Good practice for the future

All these gatherings have brought together Serbs and Albanians at different levels. The Pristina one included top Kosovo Albanian leaders, such as President Ibrahim Rugova, Prime Minister Bajram Rexhepi, and former guerrilla-turned party leader Hashim Thaci. The Kosovo Serbs included Milorad Todorovic, who is in charge of the return of displaced people for the Kosovo government, and Oliver Ivanovic, a member of the presidency of Kosovo’s parliament. The time was clearly ripe for this meeting at which the participants said that talks had focused on the return of displaced people, decentralization, and security in the province. However, these topics have all been the subjects of discussion at the recent meetings abroad. According to Mimoza Kusari, an advisor to Prime Minister Rexhepi, everyone agrees that the meetings abroad have been extremely valuable. “They are a good exercise for when real talks start,” she said, “it helps us to see the bigger picture”. According to Kusari, back home in Kosovo, participants and political players are generally overwhelmed with their routine daily work, and so she says, Albanians like herself only get to hear what Serbs have to say “through the media”. That is not say that just because people can talk to one another face to face in a relaxed manner problems will automatically become easier to resolve. “I’m not so optimistic,” said Kusari, taking in the early morning sun on the boat back from Halki to the nearby island of Rhodes, “when I hear Serbia’s stances.”

Real business done over wine and good food

As is so often the case in such meetings, the real business is not done in the conference room but over wine and a good meal. Alush Gashi, an adviser to President Rugova, said that since March, Kosovo Albanian political parties were “almost competing with one another now to reach out to the minorities”. But he said, addressing Oliver Ivanovic over dinner, it was essential for the Kosovo Serbs to return to parliament and the government so that business could take place. Ivanovic said that from the Serbian side it would be hard for deputies to return to the assembly without having been offered something, which could be used to justify this move to their electorate. “So, what do you want?” asked Gashi, before the two began to thrash over the issue, flipping between Serbian, Albanian, and English. As in the Pristina meeting, the subjects under discussion in Halki and the other meetings abroad have in various ways included questions such as decentralization, the return of displaced Serbs, and security in general. Among those in Halki, were Aleksandar Simic, an adviser to Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, and a man who, along with Slobodan Samardzic, (who was not in Halki, but has been present in similar meetings,) was an important figure in drafting Serbia’s recent plan for Kosovo. That plan foresees the creation of five Serbian enclaves with full territorial autonomy, which might not be so controversial, but for sections that suggest the settlement of Serbs displaced from Kosovo’s cities on land where Albanians are now the majority. “We think it will happen,” said Simic, although in general terms he added that the plan itself, which he stressed was not a prelude to the partition of Kosovo was, “an argument for negotiation”.

Status issue as intractable as ever

Following the Pristina meeting, Dragisa Krstovic, the head of the Serbian Return Coalition, said that the gathering had been held in a relaxed atmosphere and certainly that was case in Halki and the other meeting venues, too. But while it is of course good news that Serbian and Albanian policymakers and leaders can relax and talk to one another – it is important not to become lulled into believing that in this way these same people can somehow come up with a magic formula for solving the Kosovo problem. Indeed the basic long-term issue of final status is as intractable as ever. Serbs foresee either a prolonged, if changed, form of international trusteeship or some form of new arrangement with Kosovo, which would deny it full independence, or the physical partition of the territory. Kosovo Albanians will settle for nothing less than independence. In that sense the diplomats who deal with the issue are, despite the bonhomie of the recent Serbo-Albanian gatherings, pretty pessimistic about the future of the territory and some are now questioning the value of such get-to-know-you gatherings. That is not to say that they have not played a very valuable role in the past few months, but that now is the time for less wine and more work.

No time to lose

Dimitri Triantaphyllou, a senior advisor from the Greek Foreign Ministry, suggests that now is the moment for institutes like Eliamep and its counterparts elsewhere, who have been organizing similar meetings, to begin working on a coordinated series of more structured, low-profile gatherings. At these he suggests that representatives of both sides should be prevailed upon to work out what they can agree upon and then on how to implement decisions taken. “The time is ripe,” he says, “because we have no time to lose”. And on that issue he is absolutely right. On Sunday, Serbia votes in the second and final round of its presidential election. If Tomislav Nikolic, the candidate of the extreme nationalist Serbian Radical Party (SRS), wins there is no doubt that he will force other Serbian politicians into taking ever more hawkish (and hopeless) positions on Kosovo. For example, he insists that Serbian security personnel be allowed to return to Kosovo, which in a limited fashion, was agreed upon in UN Security Council Resolution 1244 of 1999, which ended the war over the province. In fact, this clause has never been implemented because everyone understands that it would be a causus belli with the Albanians. However, if Nikolic is president he will use that position to embarrass the government by calling for this – all the while having no actual power or responsibility himself. The opinion polls are suggesting that Nikolic will lose the election, but that the Radicals will, however, remain a potent force in politics and hope to increase their share of the vote in the next parliamentary elections, which may come before the end of the year.

Kosovo Albanians fed up with their leaders

Kosovo itself goes to the polls in October, and Albanians are becoming increasingly fed up with a worsening economic situation and leaders who promise independence but are unable to deliver. Under these circumstances, it is quite possible that, as was seen in March, hardliners who believe that force is the only way for Albanians to get what they want will be able to mobilize ever larger numbers and plunge the province into a spiral of violence with attacks being carried out not just against Serbs, but more and more against the UN and NATO-led forces. Last week, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced that a Dane, Soren Jessen-Petersen, was to become the new head of the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). It is perhaps a mark of the times however, that neither in private nor public, was he ever mentioned during the Halki meeting – except when participants, while relaxing, asked if any of the others had ever heard of him. The marked lack of discussion about the post illustrates to what extent the significance of the job has diminished since March. Once again, the revived Contact Group, bringing together the key international players during the Yugoslav wars, is playing a role, and a US-EU-NATO troika has been set up. The EU has appointed a special envoy, Italian diplomat Fernando Gentilini, NATO may also appoint a special envoy, and rather oddly, so has Annan himself. Although officially Kai Eide, a Norwegian, is to investigate the March events for Annan, some speculate that his future role will be to act as a broker between Kosovo and Belgrade, thus leaving Jessen-Petersen to act as a simple administrator in Kosovo.

‘Kosovo is becoming the Middle East’

But for how long will the UN be doing that job? It is with increasingly frequency that the idea of Europeanization is being discussed in such meetings as the one in Halki. Some, for example in the German parliament, have suggested that UNMIK should be wound up and replaced by an EUMIK, or that Kosovo should become a “European Trust Territory” – which would be a completely novel experiment if it ever came to pass. However, diplomats from Brussels and elsewhere have expressed caution on this, wondering aloud whether such ideas are not simply a way of buying more time when in fact Serbs and Albanians, albeit with whatever help they need, should now just bite the bullet and negotiate now on “doable” issues before dealing with final status. Still, one diplomat in Halki opined gloomily that, as far as he was concerned: “Kosovo is becoming the Middle East. The international community does not know how to resolve the issue and neither do the parties.”

Tim Judah is the author of Kosovo: War and Revenge and The Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, both of which are published by Yale University Press.