Agree on Kosovo or EU door will close, envoy warns

The European Union’s envoy to the Kosovo talks threatened to withdraw the possibility of bloc membership from Serbia and Kosovo if they failed to reach a compromise solution on the province’s future.

Wolfgang Ischinger, who is working with diplomats from the US and Russia to restart talks between the two sides, also said that dividing Serbia’s southern province along ethnic lines – between its majority ethnic Albanians and minority Serbs – was an option if the parties agreed.

The prospects for compromise are slim, however. Kosovo’s Albanians continue to insist on full independence from Serbia, an outcome Belgrade opposes.

“Coming closer to the EU, associating themselves with the values and the constitutional beliefs of the European Union depends on their ability to reach an agreement here,” Ischinger said.

“In absence of such agreement the European door will not be as open as I’m sure everyone here in this region would hope it to be.”

Leaders in Serbia and Kosovo have said joining the EU is one of their main goals, although the prospect is still many years in the future. Serbia has rejected any notion of trading Kosovo for EU membership.

The diplomats are in the region to reopen talks after Russia threatened to block a Western-backed plan to grant Kosovo internationally supervised independence in the United Nations Security Council. Both sides in the talks have expressed doubt that an agreement will be reached.

Ischinger, however did not rule out partition of the province as an endgame to the talks, which are expected to last 120 days. A solution to the festering issue, he said, included “all options”.

“If they want to pursue any option that is fine with us,” he said.

The German diplomat also said that “if both sides repeat their classic initial positions there is little hope for compromise”.

As the latest effort – the second in as many years – got under way, negotiators on both sides remained adamant they would not retreat from their positions.

There is concern in the West and the region that Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian leaders, increasingly frustrated by setbacks and delays, might unilaterally declare independence, throwing the Balkans into new turmoil.

The talks are to be followed by a report to UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon by December 10.

Kosovo formally remains part of Serbia, although it has been under UN and Nato administration since the end of the 1998-99 war between ethnic Albanian separatists and Serb forces.

Year-long talks led by former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari failed to produce an agreement.

Ahtisaari, acting as an envoy for the UN, proposed that Kosovo become independent but retain an international presence to guarantee the rights of the Serb minority.

The US and EU member states are now trying new negotiations through the so-called Contact Group – an advisory body comprised of the US, Britain, Russia, Germany, France and Italy.