Don't go it alone, EU warns Kosovo

BRUSSELS: European Union foreign ministers Monday warned Kosovo against unilaterally declaring its independence, cautioning that such a move threatened to spur secessionist movements in Europe and to plunge the Balkans into crisis.

Hashim Thaci, the former Kosovo Liberation Army warrior-turned-politician, said over the weekend that Pristina would declare independence immediately after a Dec. 10 deadline. Thaci's Democratic Party of Kosovo claimed victory in parliamentary elections Saturday, and he is expected to become the province's next prime minister.

But the EU, whose 27 member governments remain divided over the province's future, is urging Pristina to proceed with caution, fearing that a unilateral declaration would cause the Serbian minority in Kosovo - who largely boycotted the elections Saturday - to align with Belgrade. They also fear that a declaration of independence by Kosovo would prompt the Serb half of Bosnia and Herzegovina, currently embroiled in a political crisis, to push for statehood.

"We need a soft landing on this issue, or we'll have a hard crash," said Carl Bildt, the Swedish foreign minister.

Serbia, which is vehemently opposed to independence for Kosovo, has offered the province broad autonomy, but Pristina does not want any agreement that falls short of full independence. The future of Kosovo has become a test case for EU foreign policy, for its relations with Moscow and Washington and for its ability to prevent ethnic strife from once again erupting in its own backyard.

EU diplomats close to the negotiations privately conceded that a declaration of independence from Kosovo was all but inevitable. But they said that they were pressing Pristina to ensure that such a declaration was coordinated with Brussels and Washington to prevent a political vacuum that could allow violence on both sides to erupt.

"We are doing all we can to persuade the Kosovars not to make a unilateral declaration," said Jean Asselborn, foreign minister of Luxembourg. "A unilateral declaration would be quite, quite bad. There's a certain explosiveness in this region."

Wolfgang Ischinger, the German diplomat mediating negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina, alongside Moscow and Washington, is to meet Serbian and ethnic Albanian leaders in Brussels on Tuesday. He said Monday that the mediators were determined to exhaust all the options, and he did not foresee negotiations continuing after a December deadline was reached.

One consideration is to offer both sides a so-called "status-neutral" agreement that would outline relations such as trade and border control between Belgrade and Pristina, without broaching the issue of independence. The rationale is that such an agreement would lock the two parties into a framework, thereby helping to foster stability on both sides.

But EU officials said they doubted that such an agreement would be accepted by Belgrade unless the EU agreed not to recognize unilateral independence for Kosovo.

Separately, the EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, said Monday that he hoped to meet with Iranian nuclear negotiators this week. He emphasized that new sanctions against Iran were being considered at the United Nations and that time for Tehran to cooperate was running out. (IHT)