EU credibility in jeopardy if it fails to ensure a stable future for Kosovo

IN the coming months, a fundamental decision will be made that will challenge the capacity of the international community, particularly Europe, for conflict resolution.

The issue is Kosovo’s status — the last unresolved piece of the bloodstained Balkans puzzle. For Serbs and Albanians alike, Kosovo is a place haunted by history. But the world must not allow their freighted narratives about the past to cloud our actions to build a better future.

In the 1990’s, following its atrocities in Bosnia, Slobodan Milosevic’s Serb regime abolished Kosovo’s long-standing autonomy, suppressing the rights of the province’s overwhelming Albanian majority. NATO decided to intervene this time, before Milosevic’s forces could again devastate one of the ethnic groups of the former Yugoslavia.

Following NATO’s intervention, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1244, placing Kosovo under UN administration,

Now the time has come to resolve Kosovo’s status permanently. Otherwise, the stability that the UN has brought to Kosovo, and the region, will not last.

Unemployment is now running at over 40% in Kosovo and breeds political volatility. Without access to sovereign lending from the World Bank or the IMF, Kosovo’s economy will continue to stagnate.

Resolving Kosovo’s status is also a necessity for the province’s Serb minority, who continue to live in uncertainty, not knowing whether to look to Belgrade or Pristina for protection of their rights.

The UN Special Envoy for the Kosovo Future Status Process, former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, has now, after 14 months of intensive negotiations with Belgrade and Pristina, presented his settlement proposal to the Security Council. Mr Ahtisaari’s bold proposal, which recommends Kosovo’s independence with initial supervision by a strong international civilian and military presence, is the only viable option for the international community, and for Europe in particular.

Reintegrating Kosovo into Serbia is not tenable. Under UN administration, since June 1999, legitimate Kosovar institutions for managing domestic affairs have been created. With these institutions in place, Kosovo’s people expect greater self-government.

Sadly, Belgrade’s vision of Kosovo returning to Serbian rule — albeit with autonomy — ignores these realities. Indeed, Serbia has no viable strategy for integrating Kosovo’s two million people into Serbian political institutions and public life.

However, relations between Kosovo’s Albanian majority and Serb minority remain uneasy. Therefore, international supervision of Kosovo’s independence will be critical to ensure that it fulfils its obligations under the settlement proposal.

What is now required is the will to adopt and implement Mr Ahtisaari’s plan. In the coming weeks, the Security Council will decide Kosovo’s status, but it is the EU that will have to co-exist with both Kosovo and Serbia.

In fact, Kosovo’s fate is intertwined with the EU’s own. If the EU is divided on an issue lying at its geographic heart — and at the heart of its interests — its credibility as a foreign policy actor on matters beyond its borders will suffer dramatically. And only a united EU can bring Russia on board for a harmonised policy towards the Balkans.

This means that the EU cannot leave Serbia to its own devices, either. The EU must make it clear that it is ready to support Serbia in realising its European aspirations. European security is hinged on Serbian integration, just as Serbian aspirations hinge on the EU.

But the price of the EU’s support cannot be changed: the major war criminals Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic must be delivered to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague.

Serbia has a bright future with the EU, but getting there requires that it break with its own past — on both Kosovo and the atrocities of the Milosevic era.