Associated Press: Saturday, February 10, 2007 5:48 AM

MUNICH, Germany-President Vladimir Putin said Russia, a veto-wielding member of the U.N. Security Council, will not support any international plan to resolve Kosovo's status that is not accepted by both Serbia and the province's ethnic Albanian majority.

"Only the Kosovars and Serbs can resolve this," Putin told a forum of the world's top security officials on Saturday. "Let's not play God and try to resolve their problems."

SEVILLE. Feb 9 (Interfax) - If independence is granted to Kosovo, it will entail serious negative consequences, Russian Deputy Prime Minister, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said.

"Moves toward sovereignty for Kosovo in the absence of a decision acceptable to all parties, including Serbia, is extremely dangerous," Ivanov said at an informal NATO-Russia Council meeting in Seville on Friday.

"It is dangerous not only for the region, but for the whole of Europe, including Transdniestria, Abkhazia and South Ossetia," he said.

RIAN, Russian Federation, 09/02/2007 14:15

SEVILLE, February 9 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's defense minister said granting independence to the Serbian province of Kosovo may set a dangerous precedent, triggering disintegration of other states across Eurasia.

"This may spark a chain reaction and open up Pandora's box," Sergei Ivanov said during a meeting with his German counterpart, Franz Josef Jung, in advance of a Russia-NATO Council meeting in the southern Spanish city of Seville.

Earlier this month, the United Nations mediator on Kosovo's future status, Martti Ahtisaari, unveiled his Kosovo settlement plan, containing an implicit proposal to give independence to the predominantly ethnic Albanian region, which has been a UN protectorate since 1999. Belgrade has rejected the plan, saying it is willing to grant Kosovo broad autonomy, but that it will never let the province secede from Serbia.

Ivanov said: "It all depends on how we approach the principle of territorial integrity. We can approach it from the point of view of the current political situation, or take territorial integrity as an inviolable principle."

"If hypothetically we suppose Kosovo is given independence, people in other unrecognized regions will wonder, 'So why not us as well?'"

Officials in Moscow have repeatedly indicated that if Kosovo is granted sovereignty, the international community should also recognize as independent the separatist regions in the former Soviet Union, notably Georgia's Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and Moldova's Transdnestr.

However, Germany's defense minister reiterated his support for Ahtisaari's Kosovo settlement plan, saying all sides concerned should join forces to push the plan through the 15-nation UN Security Council before the end of March.

But a senior member of the lower house of Russia's parliament warned on Friday against rushing the issue.

Konstantin Kosachev, head of the State Duma international affairs committee, said that Russia, as a veto-wielding member of the Council, may block the plan if it is put to a vote hastily, without first agreeing it with the sides directly involved in the conflict.

Speaking after a meeting with Frank Wisner, the U.S. State Secretary's special representative on Kosovo, the Russian lawmaker said that according to Washington, further delays in determining the province's status will lead to economic degradation and new ethnic clashes.

But Kosachev said that the plan should not be considered by the UN Security Council until "all the sides involved in the conflict accept it."

"So long as there is no acceptance, a hasty vote on the issue at the UN Security Council will provoke Russia and possibly China to use their veto power, which will have highly negative implications both for a settlement in Kosovo, and for the global geopolitical situation as a whole," Kosachev said.

He also said that Ahtisaari's plan contradicts the guiding principles elaborated by the six-power Contact Group on Kosovo, which, along with Russia, includes the United States, Britain, France, Italy and Germany.

"One indispensable condition for making progress on Kosovo would be to achieve standards in the protection of human rights and rights of ethic minorities, with the rights situation being far from perfect," he said.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried, who is a top official responsible for U.S. policy in the region, told a news conference earlier this week that Russia has been instrumental in securing strong safeguards for the Serb community in Kosovo, a region with a 90% ethnic Albanian population.

Fried said Russia has been a productive and full-fledged member of the Contact Group right from the start, and that it has been continually pushing for safeguards of Kosovo Serbs' rights to be consolidated in the final plan for the province's status.

He said the UN envoy's plan will ensure guaranteed seats in Kosovo's parliament for Serbs and other minorities as well as the protection of Serb churches, monasteries and other religious and cultural sites in the province, seen by the Serbs as the cradle of their culture and statehood.

Fried said Ahtisaari's proposal is "a very strong plan, which will, among other things, give strong, enforceable guarantees to the Serbian community... strong guarantees to the Serbian monasteries and their lands, including protection zones to make sure that their lands are not encroached upon, and other guarantees which make a kind of mono-ethnic state or an extreme nationalistic state much more difficult, if not impossible."

The U.S. official said Washington backs Ahtisaari, who "is looking for a fair solution" in Kosovo.

"The status quo is not sustainable, and we cannot go back to the situation of 1999," he said.

Russia warns Kosovo independence could spark 'chain reaction' among separatist regions

Associated Press: Friday, February 09, 2007 9:54 AM

SEVILLE, Spain-Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov issued a strong warning Friday that granting independence to Kosovo could spark a "chain reaction" among other breakaway regions in Europe and the former Soviet Union.

Ivanov spoke before holding planned talks with his NATO counterparts, who have backed a plan drawn up by U.N. envoy Martti Ahtisaari proposing internationally supervised statehood for the separatist Serbian province.

Russia has long expressed reservations about Kosovo's separatist aspirations, and Ivanov's comments underscored differences between Russia and the West. The issue of Kosovo's status will be discussed next month at the U.N. Security Council.

"If we imagine a situation where Kosovo achieves independence, then other people, people living in regions that are not recognized, will ask us: "Are we not as good as them?" Ivanov told reporters.

"This concerns obviously the post-Soviet space, but also regions in Europe,"

he said. "This can create a chain reaction ... we must be careful not to open Pandora's box."

In a later news conference, Ivanov also raised a number of issues showing differences with the Western allies, including U.S. plans to station missile defense facilities in central Europe and long running disputes over a Russian base in Moldova and the failure of NATO nations to ratify a conventional-arms limitation treaty.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates repeated U.S. reassurances over the proposed missile installations.

"There's clearly no danger to Russia," he said.

However Ivanov dismissed U.S. assurances that the installations would be meant to deal with a potential threat from Iran or North Korea.

"Look at the map," he said. "Any expert can prove the fact that the trajectory of missiles (from Iran or North Korea) will be very far from Poland and the Czech Republic."

He repeated warnings that Russia would develop a "strategic system" that would surpass any anti-missile system, but insisted Moscow would not get drawn into a new arms race with the U.S.

Ivanov stressed Russia's willingness to help NATO's military in Afghanistan including by reviewing Afghanistan's US$10 billion (€7.7 billion) debt to Russia. But he acknowledged a five-year cooperation agreement between the former Cold War foes was not making much progress.

"We have reached a plateau, we are a bit stuck," he said. Ivanov, tipped as a possible successor to President Vladimir Putin, proposed a Russia-NATO meeting in June in St. Petersburg to plot closer cooperation over the next decade.

NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer restated Western support for Ahtisaari's recommendations on Kosovo, after Slovak President Ivan Gasparovic broke ranks with the alliance by criticizing the U.N. envoy's report as unfavorable to the Serbs and called for postponement of a final settlement.

"There is full support for President Ahtisaari's proposals and there is support for the timelines," de Hoop Scheffer said. "The position as far as the allies are concerned has not changed."

Moscow has often warned that Kosovo's status will serve as precedent for other nations with similar cases, including several breakaway provinces in the ex-Soviet Union. The Kremlin has hinted that, were Kosovo to gain independence, two pro-Russian rebel regions in Georgia and a breakaway province in Moldova, which enjoy Moscow's tacit support, could follow suit.

Serbian officials also have warned that an independent Kosovo could also serve as a precedent for independence movements elsewhere, notably in Spain's Basque Country or Catalonia.

Kosovo has been under U.N. and NATO administration since a 78-day NATO-led air war that halted a Serb crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists in 1999.

Ethnic Albanians, who make up 90 percent of Kosovo's 2 million people, are seeking independence from Belgrade. But Serbia and Kosovo's Serb minority say the province is the heart of Serbia's ancient homeland and should remain within its borders.

Source: Agence France-Presse (AFP)
Date: 09 Feb 2007

KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Serbia, Feb 9, 2007 (AFP) - More than 7,000 Serbs in the divided northern Kosovo town of Mitrovica protested Friday against a UN envoy's plan for the future status of the province.

"If independence is imposed on us, Serbs have the right to self-determination in the province, as well as in Montenegro and Bosnia,"

said local Serb leader Milan Ivanovic.

The Serb National Council leader was addressing protestors who gathered in the main square on the northern side of the river Ibar, which splits Mitrovica's mainly Serb north from its Albanian-dominated south.

The demonstration was held a week after UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari unveiled his proposal for the future status of Kosovo, which offers the province self-governance, a constitution, security force, anthem and flag.

Ahtisaari drafted the plan after the failure of Kosovo status talks last year between Kosovo Albanian and Serbian leaders, who remain firmly entrenched in their respective positions of for and against independence.

Ivanovic stressed that "compromise is the only solution" and that "Kosovo cannot be an exception."

He announced that Kosovo Serbs would continue to express their opposition to Ahtisaari's plan in the coming weeks, including a demonstration in Belgrade scheduled for February 27.

Following the speech, the demonstrators moved towards the main bridge linking the two sides of the town chanting, "This is Serbia" and "We're not giving up Kosovo," before dispersing.

The local police force monitored the rally, which ended without incident.

Mitrovica has become a symbol of Kosovo's inter-ethnic tensions since the end of a 1998-1999 war between forces loyal to then Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic and separatist ethnic Albanian guerillas.

Its northern side has since become home to around 20,000 Serbs, while its south has around 80,000 ethnic Albanians.