Many new developments have occurred on the Kosovo front since last time I wrote, but none more important than the UN General Assembly meeting, which was held yesterday and the subsequent Serbian proposed UN Resolution on Kosovo.
What happened with this fiasco is this:
During the past month, the EU and US have been pressuring Serbia to withdraw the resolution on new status talks for Kosovo or to revise the resolution so that talking about Kosovo's status is omitted. (As a side note, Serbia does not recognize Kosovo's independence, nor will they in the near future). Serbia held firm for a while, saying that this UN debate is necessary as the Serbs in Kosovo need to be protected and that the Kosovo government does not provide adequate security for them, nor is the security of these Serbs a priority. In conjunction with the issue of Serb security, Serbia was (and still is) adamant on resolving who the proper authority should be in the North of Kosovo. The North of Kosovo consists of the Mitrovica North, Leposavic, Zvecan, and Zubin Potok municipalities; the North begins when crossing the Iber River in Mitrovica. Serbia wants a special status for the North, something where these municipalities will technically be a part of Kosovo but will have enough autonomy to govern themselves. I will get to this issue later.
Prior to September 9th, Serbia had a change of heart, and backed off on their stance to renegotiate Kosovo's status. This was seen as a concession to the EU, in hopes that this will ease Serbia's accession into the EU. Although this change supported the US's position on the matter, Serbia did not do it to appease the US. So what this means is that now Kosovo and Serbia will discuss issues dealing with how to create a peace between Kosovar Albanians and Kosovar Serbs. The important thing is that the two will be discussing the issues on the same state level, meaning Kosovo will directly communicate with Serbia as a state and Serbia will recognize this communication. Prior to this, UNMIK (the UN mission in Kosovo that was supposed to administer Kosovo until its independence, which occurred in 2008) and/or EULEX (the European Union Rule of Law mission) would act as a liaison between Serbia and Kosovo.
The UN General Assembly vote still went on on September 9th, and a joint Serbian-EU resolution was approved by the Assembly to open negotiations between the two states with the EU, led by Karen Ashcroft, as the mediator. These talks are supposed to "promote cooperation, achieve progress on the path to the European Union and improve the lives of the people." It must be noted that Kosovo has already stated that their status will not be brought up during these talks and of course, Serbia still says that it will not recognize the independence of Kosovo, yet Foreign Minister Skënder Hyseni said that “Serbia has recognized [Kosovo's independence], at least indirectly, through its positive vote on the Resolution at the General Assembly." And Prime Minister Hashim Thaci has stated that due to the positive resolution on Kosovo at the UN General Assembly, all the countries in the UN have also indirectly recognized Kosovo's independence.
On another note, I was able to see PM Thaci speak to a group at Columbia University on September 8 (before the UN debate). It was about an hour long and Thaci was diplomatic in his answers, basically saying that he was confident the UN would side with Kosovo, the economics of Kosovo are picking up with investment opportunities and contracts to Western companies (not surprising), and that they are already in the process of talks with Serbia that will EU integration and acceptance for both Serbia and Kosovo. The next steps in Kosovo for the government are to further the investigation of corruption, dismantle UNMIK and the UN administration in Mitrovica North, implement the Ahtisarri plan in the north of Kosovo, and boost the economy where possible. Most of this won't happen soon, but at least the talks are step in a positive direction for both Serbia and Kosovo as well as all Kosovars.
No comments:
Post a Comment