Serbia rejects UN Kosovo independence plan.

Most of Kosovo has been purged of Serbs and other minorities under the watchful eye of the UN mission. There are only a few Serb enclaves remaining. It is hard to see that the Serbs can keep Kosovo as part of Serbia but there could be continuing trouble if Russia vetoes the UN plan as it might well do.


UN mediator briefs Security Council on Kosovo independence
Published: Tuesday April 3, 2007



The Security Council met behind closed doors Tuesday to hear UN chief mediator Martti Ahtisaari detail his contentious plan to grant supervised independence to Kosovo.

The 15-member body also agreed to meet informally and separately later in the day with Serbian Prime Minister Vojislac Kostunica as well as Kosovo's ethnic Albanian president Fatmir Sejdiu ahead of further consultations.

Ahtisaari's recommendations for the future status of the Albanian-majority province have already been endorsed by Kosovo Albanians, the European Union and the United States.

But his plan, unveiled last week, is strongly opposed by Belgrade and Moscow, a veto-wielding, permanent council member.

The council, which must approve Kosovo's future status, will not make any decision nor adopt any resolution during Tuesday's closed-door consultations, diplomats said.

"My sense is that it is too early to speak about a resolution," Russian Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin told reporters.

But his French counterpart Jean-Marc de La Sabliere made it clear that the Ahtisaari plan was the only viable option for Kosovo.

"We should not delay ... It would be very risky," he added. "To keep the status quo is not an option."

"What is at stake is the stability of Europe. This is the completion of the process of the breakup of the former Yugoslavia," the French envoy said.

Diplomats, however, said the discussions on Kosovo were likely to last for weeks before a decision on whether to endorse the Ahtisaari plan is made.

They added that before that happens, the council was likely to undertake a fact-finding mission to Kosovo and Belgrade as requested by the Russian delegation.

Kosovo has been administered by a UN mission since mid-1999, after a NATO bombing campaign ended the brutal crackdown by Serbian forces against the province's ethnic-Albanian majority.

Meanwhile, NATO warned on Monday that it would not tolerate any violence in Kosovo ahead of the UN consultations.

"No one should have illusions that violence or threats of violence could in any way be an element in the final solution" to the status of the ethnic Albanian majority province, said NATO chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.

Some 10,000 ethnic Albanians died and hundreds of thousands fled Kosovo during the 1998-1999 conflict.

"Independence is the only option for a politically stable and economically viable Kosovo," Ahtisaari said in his latest report, hailed by Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leaders who represent 90 percent of the province's two million people.

He made it clear that in the initial phase, international supervision of an independent Kosovo would be required.

Under the scheme, the province would adopt a constitution within 120 days of its new status being confirmed, by which time the mandate of the current UN mission in Kosovo would end.

General and local elections would be held within nine months of the new status being introduced.

An international civilian representative, who would be a European Union representative, would oversee the implementation of the plan while having no direct role in administering Kosovo.

He would be aided by a NATO-led military mission and an EU police force which would "monitor, mentor and advise on all areas related to the rule of law."

That international supervisory role "would come to an end only when Kosovo has implemented the measures set forth in the settlement proposal," the UN mediator added.

However, Serbia, which views Kosovo as the cradle of its civilization, remained bitterly opposed to its proposed independence.

And Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has warned that Ahtisaari "will fail" if he pursues his current plan for Kosovo.



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