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Kosovo

Expected Council Action
For most of June, action on Kosovo took place outside the Council at the G8 Summit and in bilateral and group discussions. A new draft resolution was circulated towards the end of the month, and consultations among Council members were taking place at ambassadorial level.

It seems, at press time, that action on the draft will not be taken in June. The issue is therefore likely to enter a decisive phase during July, especially after the summit between US President George Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin on 1-2 July. The Council could vote on a resolution that would either move the process forward or out of the Council, depending on the outcome of the vote.

The report of the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) will likely be presented to the Council in early July.  It appears that it will take second place to the resolution, but the future of UNMIK is a key issue.

Key Recent Developments
At the beginning of June, a softened draft resolution on Kosovo was circulated to the Council by the European members and the US.   The first draft had been distributed in early May.  The new draft “supported” rather than “endorsed” the proposal by Marti Ahtisaari, the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for the Future Status Process, for internationally supervised independence for Kosovo. The resolution also asked the Secretary-General to appoint a special envoy to report on the situation of displaced people in the region. However, Russia rejected the draft stating that it did not address its main concerns, particularly the need for more negotiations.

In early June expectations were high that high-level meetings during the G8 Summit might break the impasse. But there was no breakthrough. French President Nicolas Sarkozy proposed that the Council allow a period of six months for negotiations on the understanding that at the if there was no movement, Ahtisaari’s proposal would take effect at the end of this period. This was similar to a suggestion made earlier by Panama in the Council. 

In mid-June, US President Bush on a visit to Albania said that Kosovo should be given independence “sooner rather than later.” The Albanian Kosovars, who had been dismayed by Sarkozy’s suggestion of a six-month postponement, were delighted with Bush’s declaration. Serbia reacted strongly, saying that the US had no right to give away Serbian territory.

The issue of independence for Kosovo provoked various proponents in similar situations to reassert their claims for independence. In early June the Abkhazians and South Ossetians adopted a joint statement stating that they have as much right to independence as Kosovo. The Transdniester Republic, Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Nagorno-Karabakh in mid-June signed a similar joint declaration on principles for “just settlement” of their respective situations. 

A subset of the Contact Group on Kosovo consisting of Germany, the US, France, Italy and UK (known as “The Quint”) met on 12 June and confirmed their support for a UN resolution based on Ahtisaari’s proposal. On 18 June, the EU foreign ministers reiterated that an Ahtisaari-based resolution would provide the basis for a future EU presence and underlined the necessity of “rapidly finding a solution.” Macedonia and Albania also gave support for the Ahtisaari proposal.

Some voices began cautioning against a quick decision on Kosovo. Carla Del Ponte, the Prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, on 19 June warned the Council that any decision on independence for Kosovo might be better postponed until Serbia had arrested wanted war criminals.  

On 20 June the co-sponsors of the resolution-the US, France, UK, Belgium, Italy and Slovakia-circulated a new draft to the Council.  The new text provided for a 120-day period for the two parties to reach agreement on Kosovo’s final status. Significantly, the resolution does not seek to endorse or approve Ahtisaari’s conclusions. In particular there is nothing in it which could be seen as an explicit endorsement of his conclusion about independence. Instead its operational effect is simply to implement the detailed change in governance structures and associated safeguards. But these do not of themselves confer independence. The resolution would take effect after 120 days “unless the Security Council expressly decides otherwise after conducting an evaluation.” 

Russia’s immediate reaction was that this draft was also unacceptable as the period for negotiations did not provide sufficient incentive for the two parties to negotiate seriously and that the Council should not take a decision now on something that would happen in four months. Serbia’s prime minister called for the resolution to be withdrawn.

The Council held its first informal consultations on the resolution on 15 June. Russia made it clear that it rejected the current text.

Options
The Council’s three main options are:

• Continuing negotiations on the current draft resolution with the intention of modifying in the hope that consensus will be reached. While this is a possible option, it would require the co-sponsors to further soften elements of the current resolution, perhaps by including language which states that nothing in the resolution changes the legal status of Kosovo, but equally that nothing in the resolution diminishes the capacity of the people of Kosovo to act under the governance structure established.

• Putting the current draft resolution to vote. This option may result in a veto by Russia and possibly China. This seems likely to prompt Kosovo to declare unilateral independence, a situation likely to be recognised quite quickly by many key players.  A major issue would remain regarding resolution 1244, which established UNMIK in 1999, and UNMIK itself, which would remain officially the administering authority.  In dealing with UNMIK there are several possible options: the Council decides to withdraw UNMIK, or the Secretary-General draws down UNMIK and it basically ceases functioning. The Secretary-General could act based on his security assessment of the situation post-independence.

•  If it seems clear that a veto is inevitable if the resolution is put to a vote, an option is simply not to table the resolution and allow Kosovo’s future status to be decided outside the Council (which would have many of the same repercussions, as described above, as a veto).

Other possible options for the Council include:

• As an interim measure adopt a bare-bones resolution that simply implements the governance parts of Ahtisaari’s package including those that concern the future EU presence and the protection of minorities, and decide to revisit the wider issues in six months.

Key Issues
The key issue is whether to seek further efforts to revise the resolution to avoid a Russian veto.  While a number of Russia’s concerns have been accommodated in the latest draft, Moscow does not seem ready to engage in serious discussions on the text. What is still unclear to most Council members is exactly where the red lines are for Russia.

A related issue is whether in making the resolution more acceptable to Russia it will become too ambiguous to implement.

A unilateral declaration of independence and possible violence is still an issue. Related issues include possible efforts by the Serbian population in Kosovo to declare independence in northern Kosovo. 

A major issue is the future of UNMIK if Kosovo declares independence in the absence of a Council resolution overtaking 1244, which established the mission. UNMIK would face the prospect of being in limbo unable to exercise its mandate and in a potentially hostile environment. 

Council and Wider Dynamics
There has been great fluidity in Council dynamics on this issue.  For most of June non-permanent members were content to remain on the sidelines and let the Europeans and US discuss elements of the new draft resolution with Russia. This was a reversal of previous months when they were insistent on being part of all Kosovo discussions.

There has been little or no shift in Russia’s position. It continues to push for further negotiations between the parties, but does not address the question of how to avoid the inevitable failure of such negotiations.  China’s position appears to have hardened.

European members and the US have worked closely on the resolution and are united on the current draft. However, differences may be emerging. US Undersecretary of State Nicolas Burns has said that the US will support a unilateral declaration of independence, but the Europeans are reluctant to give up a Council-based solution. 

Over recent months a majority of Council members have made their positions clear, and although there seems to be a clear majority for accepting the resolution, some countries like Indonesia have yet to be convinced. Indonesia has made it clear that it could not accept the idea of automatically reverting to Ahtisaari’s proposal after a period of negotiations.

Other Relevant Facts

Full forecast

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