Kosovo:  Dialogue of the deaf

Top Serbian and Kosovo Albanian delegations will meet on the fringes of the UN General Assembly in New York on Friday September 28 to discuss the vexed issue of Kosovo.  The chances that they will achieve anything are zero.

Belgrade has promised "almost complete" autonomy for its runaway southern province, which has been under UN administration since NATO intervention ended Serb rule. Last week, Serbia's minister for Kosovo, Slobodan Samardzic, said Belgrade was offering "the highest level of autonomy on offer anywhere in Europe, maybe even in the world."

But the Albanians want complete freedom from Belgrade: they are not going to New York to ask permission for independence, but to offer good-neighbourly relations between two separate states.

Samardzic has described Kosovo's position within Serbia as "loose integration", with Kosovo's Serb minority and ethnic Albanian majority living "parallel lives".  Kosovo would be "self-governing" politically and economically; Serbia would manage foreign policy and border control and -- crucially –- "reserve its rights" on military issues, albeit not necessarily exercising them.

In fact, security arrangements in the Serb vision of Kosovo are the deal-breaker.  Belgrade insists on sovereignty.  Throughout the UN administration, the Serbs' constant complaint has been that NATO has been unable to guarantee the safety of Serbs still in Kosovo, and protect religious and historical sites dear to them.  Once Serb rule returned -- however it was dressed up -- Belgrade would use force in response to a breakdown of law and order involving fellow Serbs, as happened in March 2004.  Samardzic's dream would rapidly collapse into a nightmarish reprise of the pre-1999 struggle.

 

Rearguard action

The Albanian strategy is clear: patiently go along with negotiations, expecting them to fail, and achieve independence in the end.  The Serbs' aim is to appear reasonable while being the opposite:  it is clear to most non-Serbs that after their heavy-handed conduct in Kosovo, the Albanians cannot trust them again. 

The Serbs cannot surrender Kosovo because for them, it is the medieval cradle of their national identity.  However, the status quo is not an option:  as an international protectorate, Kosovo would remain in limbo, taking no responsibility for its own affairs and without a functioning economy; fighting could even break out again. 

The likely outcome -- a unilateral declaration of independence -- will be neither neat nor problem-free, and a bad precedent will have been set, with Western recognition or acceptance disdaining international law when it suits.  Yet 2 million Albanians are entitled to say who should rule them. Having resorted to violence after trying peaceful resistance in the early 1990s, they cannot compromise.