Belgrade - Serbian and Kosovo Albanian negotiators were
headed for last-ditch, top-level negotiations Saturday in Vienna
though nobody, including the negotiators and mediator, expects any
real talks on the future of the breakaway province.
The stage was set for a dialogue when the talks started in early
2006, but the two sides have conducted monologues from the start -
the gist of them being that the majority Albanians want independence,
which Belgrade would not give.
Appointed by the United Nations to foment the Kosovo talks,
Finnish diplomat Martti Ahtisaari in February unveiled a draft plan
paving the way for Kosovo's sovereignty - even if it did not mention
it explicitly. He was aware that Serbia would not accept it.
'I have to be honest in saying that regarding the status question,
the parties remain diametrically opposed,' he said a week ahead of
the summit.
After another volley of meetings since, Ahtisaari sent a revised
plan Wednesday to Belgrade and Pristina. The changes being cosmetic,
the document was again rejected with indignation in Belgrade and
welcomed in Pristina.
'The document is unacceptable for Serbia,' a statement said
Thursday after a meeting of the state leadership, including President
Boris Tadic and caretaker Premier Vojislav Kostunica.
Serbia complained that not a single amendment it submitted to
protect its sovereignty over Kosovo was accepted. Both Tadic and
Kostunica would travel to Vienna, though clearly only to turn
Ahtisaari's plan down.
Kostunica has never stopped harping that the UN charter guaranteed
inviolable borders, and he warns that allowing Kosovo to go
independent would create a dangerous precedent in international law.
Tadic, however, had in the past warned Serbs that they may not
like the outcome of the Kosovo process.
In Kosovo, which is nominally still Serbian territory, but in
which Belgrade has had no say since NATO ousted Serbia's troops in
1999, politicians from the Albanian majority rated the plan as
'positive.'
'What we can say about the package is that it creates the essence
of the future state of Kosovo,' President Fatmir Sejdiu said.
The Kosovo political leadership would also travel collectively to
Vienna expecting - unlike their embittered counterparts from Belgrade
- to declare victory.
'We want the (future) status to respond to the reality in Kosovo
with an independent and sovereign state,' said Hashim Thaqi, an
opposition leader but part of the negotiating team.
Ahtisaari's plan was endorsed by the big Western powers
individually, as well as by the EU and NATO - as NATO Secretary
General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer reiterated Thursday in Belgrade.
At that, NATO is eager to pull out of the peacekeeping mission it
has led in Kosovo over the last 93 months, at a cost of billions of
dollars.
Belgrade is banking on the support of Russia, hoping that it would
block the measure once it reaches the UN Security Council - quickly
after the Vienna summit, according to Ahtisaari's plan.
But while Moscow has expressed some reservations regarding an
apparently imminent 'imposed solution' of a sovereign Kosovo, Serbia
provided no realistic alternative to either independence or the
expensive protectorate that the province has be since 1999.
Kosovo was the scene of an unmeasured response of Belgrade's
security forces to an Albanian insurgency in 1998-99. The bloodshed
triggered an exodus of the Albanian population and, eventually, a
NATO intervention against the now-defunct Yugoslavia.
Over the last few years, the UN administration and NATO have been
passing increasing responsibility in governing and security to local
authorities in Kosovo.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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