EU OBSERVER EU
01.04.2007 - 09:22 CET | By Andrew Rettman, Ekrem Krasniqi and Lucia Kubosova

EUOBSERVER / BREMEN - A small group of EU states has splintered from the EU and US position that the UN should swiftly give "supervised independence."

Slovakia, Romania and Greece raised objections to the so-called Ahtisaari plan for Kosovo independence at an informal meeting of EU foreign ministers in Bremen, Germany at the weekend, with diplomatic sources also saying that Spain and Italy harbour reservations about the Kosovo blueprint.

"I have underlined - as has been already expressed by the Slovak parliament - that in further negotiations we have to take into consideration the legitimate interests of both parties, Belgrade and Pristina," Slovak foreign minister Jan Kubis told EUobserver on Saturday (31 March).

"When we talk about splitting countries up, the map of Europe could change every year," Spanish foreign minister Alberto Navarro said, AFP reports.

Slovakia and Italy are members of the UN's 15-strong security council group that will decide Kosovo's fate.

The German EU presidency played down the split, which concerns EU states lying close to Serbia or with separatists of their own, as in Spain. "I know there are differences between member states," German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said. "I don't conclude that support for the Ahtisaari plan is falling away."

UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari last Monday recommended the UN should give Kosovo the right to a flag, an army and a constitution as well as the freedom to apply for membership of international institutions like the UN and EU, amid a string of safeguards for ethnic Serbs living in the region.

An EU "special representative" would retain veto powers over certain Pristina government decisions, with 13,000 NATO troops and up to 1,500 EU police and judicial officers to help keep the peace in a scheme set to cost the international community €1.5 billion between 2008 and 2010.

The EU and US have officially backed Mr Ahtisaari's plan, with US diplomat Nicholas Burns calling for a UN security council resolution by late May. But Serbia and Russia have rejected the idea, with EU top diplomat Javier Solana adding that China may also have "difficulties" when it comes to the UN vote.

The EU splinter group's position appears to have points in common with the Serbian and Russian line, that any Kosovo solution must be a negotiated one with both Belgrade and Pristina's approval.

Russia has called for a UN fact-finding mission composed of the 15 UN security council ambassadors or their "number twos or threes" to visit Kosovo to see if ethnic Serb rights are being upheld in line with previous UN resolutions, such as the right of return for Serb refugees who fled during conflicts in the late 1990s.

About 1.8 million ethnic Albanians and 200,000 ethnic Serbs live in Kosovo, with the biggest Serb community found in the northern Mitrovica region and the rest living in isolated pockets, such as the small community centred around the 16th century Serb orthodox Gracanica monastery, near Pristina.

Level of mistrust is 'huge'

"I have been to some of these places," Russia's ambassador to the EU, Vladimir Chizhov, told EUobserver on Friday. "There are about 60 people living [in Gracanica] and Swedish [NATO] soldiers are taking them to the local market, every day, with armoured personnel carriers...The level of mutual mistrust is huge."

"What is particularly dangerous is to have a superficial solution, that could see the real conflict boiling underneath and that could explode again at some point," he added, saying that Moscow sees the Ahtisaari plan as a "basis for further negotiations, a bad basis" but not as the basis of a new UN resolution.

The Russian diplomat suggested the EU and US are moving too fast in a strategy that risks "serious destabilisation" of the Western Balkans.

"Everybody agrees the status quo cannot last forever. But look at Northern Ireland, how long it took Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams to sit at the same table - 30 years, and they speak the same language."

Mr Chizhov also said that Serbia may accept limited autonomy for Kosovo that would give it the right to join some international institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund, but not to have a seat at the UN or its own army.

"I would prefer Kosovo to serve as a positive precedent, should a solution be found of a tense autonomy, something short of independence, a confederation or whatever," he said. "[The EU] should be careful not to rock the boat so much that it turns upside down."

Ethnic Albanian group to protest U.N. plan on Kosovo, demand release of jailed leader

Associated Press: Saturday, March 31, 2007 6:00 AM

PRISTINA, Serbia-An ethnic Albanian group called a protest Saturday to demand the release of its jailed leader and oppose the U.N. plan on Kosovo's future.

The activists from a group calling itself Self-Determination planned a march in Kosovo's capital, Pristina. Saturday's demonstration is the latest in their opposition of the plan drafted by U.N. envoy Martti Ahtisaari.

Ahtisaari proposed independence from Serbia, initially supervised by the international community. However, the group says his plan falls short of granting the province full independence by limiting Kosovo's sovereignty and offers many concessions to Kosovo's Serb minority, dividing the province along ethnic lines.

The plan will be put up for debate next week at the U.N. Security Council, which will have the final say over the province's fate.

There, the proposal faces an uncertain future. Russia supports Serbia, which wants the province to remain within its borders, and has implied it could use its veto power at the council if Belgrade's interests are not addressed.

The United States and the European Union back the plan.

In their last protest nearly a month ago, several thousand demonstrators chanted anti-U.N. slogans and called for self-determination. In February, two demonstrators were killed after U.N. police fired rubber bullets when the group's supporters trying to break through a police barricade and reach a government building.

Albin Kurti, the leader of the group, was arrested then and is still in pretrial detention. He went on a hunger strike last week.

Ethnic Albanian leaders, who demand independence from Serbia, have endorsed the U.N. proposal, while Serbia rejected it insisting to keep the province within its borders.

Kosovo has been administered by a U.N. mission since mid-1999. The province is patrolled by 16,500 NATO-led peacekeepers.

There have been tensions in the province following the unveiling of a U.N.

proposal. Police are investigating three explosions that took place in Kosovo's Serb-dominated north in one week and an explosion near a 14th century Serb Orthodox monastery in the western part of the province.

Serbs dig out their dead in Kosovo

By GARENTINA KRAJA, Associated Press Writer
Sun Apr 1, 12:39 PM ET

PEC, Serbia - Dragica Besovic and her sister-in-law were back in Kosovo last week on a sad and macabre mission: to dig up their dead relatives and rebury them by her new home in Serbia.

Dressed in black and deeply wrinkled, Besovic fled Kosovo in 1999. Fear drove the 77-year-old Serb away, but it also drew her back — fear that if the mostly ethnic Albanian province gains independence as expected later this year, Serb-haters will unearth her relatives' remains and scatter the bones.

Dozens of Serb families are exhuming their dead, reflecting the deep mistrust and unhealed scars of war that bedevil Western efforts to forge a multiethnic society in Kosovo.

"I came into the world here, and this is where I aged," Besovic said, choking back tears as gravediggers in white overalls dug up her husband, Milivoje, who died nine years ago.

"What else am I supposed to do?" she asked.

The question takes on added urgency Tuesday, when the U.N. Security Council is expected to review a proposal to grant Kosovo internationally supervised independence — a roadmap bitterly opposed by Serbia, which regards the province as the cradle of its nationhood.

Most of Kosovo's Serbs fled after NATO bombing stopped Slobodan Milosevic's brutal 1998-99 crackdown on separatists. An estimated 10,000 ethnic Albanians were killed, more than 1 million lost their homes, and 2,000 are still missing.

When the war ended, some Albanians sought to avenge their dead by targeting Serbs. About 200,000 Serbs and other minorities fled, and only about 100,000 remain, most in small, isolated enclaves.

Besovic's sister-in-law is Dusanka Ivanovic, 60. She was here to exhume her brother — Besovic's husband — along with her father and uncle. The two women watched as the remains were stuffed into white plastic bags, sealed into coffins and loaded into a van for the 140-mile journey to Kraljevo, in Serbia.

Uniformed Kosovo police officers and municipal officials stood at a respectful distance.

Although the Security Council is divided over the Kosovo blueprint — backed by the United States and the European Union but opposed by Russia — many Serbs appear resigned to the province becoming independent.

"Maybe the politics of the West are like this: It will be the way they say it will. They don't ask me or you," said Ivanovic, 60.

In the western Kosovo town of Pec, the Serbs are gone and the rundown Serbian Orthodox cemetery reflects the contempt the ethnic Albanians feel toward their former rulers.

Some Serb graves have been desecrated. Jagged chunks of black and white tombstone marble and blobs of old candle wax lie among the pine needles.

Kosovo Serb woman Dusanka Ivanovic, weeps over her family  grave in Serb Orthodox graveyard before grave diggers start to  exhume them in the western Kosovo town of Pec on Thursday,  March 29, 2007. (AP Photo / Visar Kryeziu)

But despite rumors in Serbia that brought the two women back to the graveyard, there is no sign of large-scale desecration. Similar rumors sparked a brief rush to exhume Serbian bodies in Bosnia after its war ended in 1995, and it was not uncommon to see refugees transporting coffins in ragtag convoys.

Muhamet Avdyli, the ethnic Albanian who oversees exhumations and reburials in Pec, said officials received 12 requests last year. In the provincial capital, Pristina, seven sets of Serbian remains have been unearthed and taken away.

One reason there haven't been more exhumations could be cost. It can run to $1,000 per grave, and Serbian refugees aren't for the most part rich.

In Pec, Besovic and Ivanovic wept at seeing the broken tombstones, but expressed relief that the graves themselves were intact and the bones undisturbed.

Ivanovic thinks it's a shame that Serbs are demonized for the misery that Milosevic inflicted on Kosovo. "Ordinary people are never guilty," she said.

Ivanovic left Kosovo 35 years ago, and the newly emptied graves sever her last family link with the province.

But Besovic's link to Kosovo will survive. Her father and mother remain in the cemetery, because her brother did not agree to their exhumation.

AP correspondents Misha Savic in Belgrade and William J. Kole in Vienna contributed to this story.

Washington hushes up Putin's "no" on Kosovo

Politika daily, Belgrade
March 31, 2007

News from Moscow that Putin told Bush that Russia opposes an imposed solution for Kosovo and Metohija has barely received any publicity in Washington

Washington, March 30 - After a lengthy development relations between the USA and Russia have once again become strained to the point that officials and media here "don't have the time" to react to every instance of demonstrated discord between the two powers. In a tested approach to these strategic differences, news from Moscow that during a telephone conversation between presidents Vladimir Putin told George Bush that he opposes an imposed solution for Kosovo and Metohija has received - barely noticeable publicity.

The dialogue, which the Kremlin says was held upon the proposal of the White House, is represented here by agency news from Moscow in which priority to given to - considering the problem with respect to Iran and the plan for the deployment of U.S. rockets in central Europe. The two leaders also "spoke about Kosovo", said National Security Council spokesman Gordon Jondro without giving any details.

Even though it was a "summit dialogue" also omitted were detailed reports and comments regarding Putin's insistence that the new status of Kosovo and Metohija must be acceptable to both Belgrade and Pristina. Washington, like Pristina, supports Martti Ahtisaari's proposal for "the independence of Kosovo which would initially be under the supervision of the international community" while Moscow, like Belgrade, thinks negotiations should continue until a compromise is achieved and a mutually accepted solution.

The poor publicity accompanying Putin's expressions of dissent with Bush on Kosovo and Metohija could be interpreted more as a reflection of the need here not to get into new public disputes with Moscow than of the desire to put "unfinished business in the Balkans" on a back burner of Washington's rather overtaxed diplomacy. "Tension and suspicion are increasing" in relations between the two powers, and "an important source for the tense atmosphere is the U.S. support for Kosovo's independence despite Serbia's opposition and Moscow's requests for a continuation of negotiations," writes AP, quoting Dimitri Simes, the president of the Nixon Center.

In a statement for Voice of America Simes also said (on Friday) that "Russia's use of the Kosovo card is a symptom, and not a cause of problems"

(in relations with Washington) as well as that "a clash regarding a Kosovo solution may add oil to what is already burning in the unstable relations between the USA and Russia". Simes thinks that Belgrade and Moscow may accept a solution that would involve a "division" that would allow "Serbs to keep small areas in the north of Kosovo of Kosovo where they are majority which would not be under the control of the government in Pristina".

Officials in Washington are insisting on two points.First, that it is essential that a solution for Kosovo and Metohija on the basis of the Ahtisaari plan be found "by summer" of this year. Second, that "intensive consultations" are to take place with members of both the Contact Group and the UN Security Council, especially with Russia. The trend of those contacts is also suggested by accents, published and unpublished, in the talks between Bush and Putin, whose personal relations demonstrate, analysts suggest, demonstrate a greater degree of confidence than in the complex relations between the two countries they govern...