INDEPENDENCE ANALYSIS; UN Security Council reports on its mission to Kosovo
What the Papers Say Part A (Russia) - May 8, 2007 Tuesday

By: Dmitri Gornostayev
Translated by: Elena Leonova

The UN Security Council will meet this week to start discussing a report from the UN mission to the Balkans. To all appearances, this trip has only exacerbated the differences between the UNSC's two chief opponents on the Kosovo issue: Russia and the United States.

Last week, UNSC members held a preliminary meeting to consider the Kosovo mission report. This was the first UNSC meeting for May, so it had a new chairman as well. Actually, he was doubly new: firstly, the chairman's seat has passed from Britain to the USA in May - and secondly, the American ambassador has been replaced. Acting envoy Alejandro Wolff has been replaced by Zalmai Halizad, finally approved by the Senate. He met his UNSC counterparts in the course of their visit to Kosovo.

"You know, everything we saw there was very different from what one reads in the newspapers," said South African envoy Dumisani Kumalo at a press conference. "Some are talking as if everything has been settled already [granting Kosovo independence from Serbia, but that's a fantasy. Having been to Kosovo, we realized how tangled the situation is. And we thank Russia for giving us this opportunity to go there and see it for ourselves. So the UNSC still needs some time to discuss everything."

Russian diplomats might thank Mr. Kumalo for speaking those words. After all, Russia's stance on this issue is as follows: not rushing the process of determining Kosovo's status until the proposed options are considered acceptable by the Albanians and the Serbs as well.

The United States, on the other hand, is rushing the UNSC, and Belgrade, and Moscow. US State Department official Daniel Fried has said openly that Russia must not use its veto in the vote on the resolution that entails granting independence to Kosovo. The Americans have long been saying that a draft of this resolution will be submitted as soon as May; but they say this unofficially, or through former diplomats like Richard Holbrook - who said the other day that if Moscow uses its veto, it would be responsible for the conflict that would break out in Kosovo. Officially, no draft resolution exists as yet; to all appearances, the USA still hopes to persuade Russia to agree to the Ahtisaari plan, which entails de facto independence for Kosovo.

Then again, the UN's discussion of the Kosovo problem will take a few more weeks, at least - unless the leaders of Kosovo suddenly decide to adopt Plan B and declare independence unilaterally (US State Department official Nicholas Burns has implied that Washington would recognize Kosovo's independence immediately). That scenario is entirely possible, since America's arguments in favor of separating Kosovo from Serbia as soon as possible have lost much of their credibility among UNSC envoys in the wake of the visit to Kosovo. Judging by off-the-record conversations at the United Nations, other countries besides South Africa are favoring continued negotiations rather than rapid independence: China, the Congo, Ghana, and Indonesia.

Source: Kommersant, May 7, 2007, p. 7

Copyright 2007 Agency WPS
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