Secret Iraqi Deal Shows Problems in Arms Orders

By SOLOMON MOORE

BAGHDAD — An $833 million Iraqi arms deal secretly negotiated with Serbia has underscored Iraq’s continuing problems equipping its armed forces, a process that has long been plagued by corruption and inefficiency.

The deal was struck in September without competitive bidding and it sidestepped anticorruption safeguards, including the approval of senior uniformed Iraqi Army officers and an Iraqi contract approval committee. Instead, it was negotiated by a delegation of 22 high-ranking Iraqi officials, without the knowledge of American commanders or many senior Iraqi leaders.

The deal drew enough criticism that Iraqi officials later limited the purchase to $236 million. And much of that equipment, American commanders said, turned out to be either shoddy or inappropriate for the military’s mission.

An anatomy of the purchase highlights how the Iraqi Army’s administrative abilities — already hampered by sectarian rifts and corruption — are woefully underdeveloped, hindering it in procuring weapons and other essentials in a systematic way. It also shows how an American procurement process set up to help foreign countries navigate the complexity of buying weapons was too slow and unwieldy for wartime needs like Iraq’s, prompting the Iraqis to strike out on their own.

Such weaknesses mean that five years after the American invasion, the 170,000-strong Iraqi military remains under-equipped, spottily supplied and largely reliant on the United States for such basics as communications equipment, weapons and ammunition, raising fresh questions about the Iraqi military’s ability to stand on its own.

Iraq’s defense minister, Abdul Qadir, defended the arms deal, saying he had followed proper contracting protocols and had informed Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki every step of the way.

Nonetheless, American commanders and some Iraqi officials criticized the Serbian arms purchase. Closer monitoring of weapons deals has been a delicate subject since a series of tainted arms purchases totaling $1.3 billion in Iraqi government funds in 2004 and 2005. Lacking electronic banking systems at the time, Iraqi officials paid for second-rate or nonexistent weapons and equipment in cash, using middlemen to ferry duffle bags stuffed with bricks of $100 bills.

That episode brought down the previous defense minister, Hazam Shalan, now a fugitive, and tarnished the reputation of the interim prime minister, Iyad Allawi. American and Iraqi officials said that the loss of so much money and time caused critical delays in the development of the Iraqi Army.

Those with knowledge of the Serbian arms deal said they knew of no specific crimes, but warned that with so little transparency and such poor oversight, problems were likely to emerge, as they did with the 2004 deal.

The Serbian deal called for the purchase of a large number of helicopters, planes, armored personnel carriers, mortar systems, machine guns, body armor, military uniforms and other equipment. It was largely negotiated by Mr. Qadir and the planning minister, Ali Glahil Baban. In response to the criticism, Mr. Qadir said he “froze” purchases of the personnel carriers and some aircraft, reducing the final contract price to $236 million. The deal was signed in March, American military officials said.

“We just want to have a mix of procedures for contracts so we can expedite our acquisition,” Mr. Qadir said, adding that “American timelines for delivery were too far away.”

Despite the criticism, some American advisers said the deal was an essential part of the Iraqi military’s learning curve and a test of the American military’s capacity to balance guidance and restraint.

“We can be very overbearing as a nation, and part of this task is a feel for this task,” said Lt. Gen. James M. Dubik, the commander of the Multinational Security Transition Command and the head of America’s security advisory mission in Iraq. “How do I impose myself enough to keep things going but back off enough to let development occur? There is an art to this.”

Diverging Accounts

American military officials and the Iraqi authorities alike point to the Pentagon’s Foreign Military Sales program as the reason the Serbian arms deal was pursued in the first place. After that, however, their versions of events diverge sharply.

Under the sales program, used by more than 100 allied nations, Pentagon officials serve as intermediaries for government-to-government defense procurements, handling administrative issues, logistics, delivery, maintenance and training. Clients sometimes get the benefit of American economies of scale, American expertise regarding weapons systems and quality control and built-in transparency and corruption safeguards. Defense contractors also benefit to some extent, because the program often channels clients to American companies that produce arms and other equipment.

American officials hoped the program would help Iraq spend more of its own money on defense. Last year, for the first time, Iraqi military expenditures of $7.5 billion surpassed the $5.5 billion in American financing for Iraq’s military. But the program is intended for peacetime, and with protocols spanning hundreds of pages, it is built more for transparency and standardization than for speed.

Beginning in late 2006, the Iraqi government deposited $2.6 billion in an account for Foreign Military Sales procurements. But by September 2007, less than $200 million worth of badly needed equipment had been delivered, and many of those items were stockpiled because of poor distribution and accountability systems. And that, the officials pointed out, was during one of the most violent periods on record.

“The problem with F.M.S. is that it didn’t deliver on time,” a senior Iraqi official said, “and this was used by some in government to say, ‘Look, this is deliberate. The U.S. is trying to keep us unarmed so that we’ll always be in need of the Americans.’ ”

General Dubik, in an interview in his office in the Green Zone, acknowledged, “There was an issue of credibility in our system.”

But there were problems on the Iraqi side as well, American military officers said. A bureaucracy used to functioning under a command economy during the reign of Saddam Hussein had little use for formal procurement protocols and was unaccustomed to such basic practices as writing detailed specifications.

“I mean literally, the Iraqis had some letters of request that said, ‘We want to buy 1,000 trucks,’ ” said Joe Benkert, an assistant defense secretary for global affairs who manages the Foreign Military Sales program.

Some critics, all of them high-ranking Iraqi and American military officials, made the more serious charge that senior Iraqi officials intentionally obstructed American-sponsored procurements because they feared the sales program would prevent them from siphoning off a share of the money. But they offered no independent corroboration.

“The defense minister is playing games,” said an official with Iraq’s Defense Ministry who spoke out because of his concern about corruption, but also spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. “He is stopping F.M.S.,” the official said. “Contracts just sat on his desk waiting for approval for six or seven months sometimes.”

American procurement experts were so mystified by some of the delays that they set up a new office to track procurements and found that many of the delays led straight back to Mr. Qadir’s desk. Mr. Qadir denied delaying contracts or making money from them.

After months of delays and an overhaul of the Pentagon procurement bureaucracy, the program increased the value of its delivered equipment to $1 billion by this February. But in the absence of a comprehensive distribution and inventory system in Iraq, much of that equipment remains locked in Iraqi storehouses, American officials said.

Mr. Qadir, who made headlines during a January visit to the United States, when he said Iraq could not take full military responsibility for itself until 2018, blamed the slowness of the Foreign Military Sales program for his decision to deal directly with Serbia. “Foreign Military Sales is a system built to provide weapons systems to a national force in a peaceful time,” he said.

A Deal in the Dark

In an interview in February in his office, Mr. Qadir, a Sunni Arab native of Ramadi, confirmed that the original Serbian deal “exceeded $800 million.”

“The thing is, we did not limit ourselves to any fixed number or fixed price,” he said.

But critics say the deal circumvented fragile anticorruption safeguards. Indeed, at Mr. Qadir’s urging Mr. Maliki abolished the national contracts committee, a mandatory review agency for all government purchases of more than $50 million.

Mr. Maliki also overrode the nation’s Supreme Economic Committee after it expressed concerns that the Serbian deal lacked guarantees of service from the Serbian government.

The deal was also supported by Iraq’s Office of the Commander in Chief, a shadowy group of Shiite advisers to Mr. Maliki that American officials accused last year of leading a purge of Sunni Iraqi Army commanders who had cracked down on Shiite militia leaders.

The same group, which rejected suggestions that it bring in Western advisers, has marginalized senior uniformed officers charged with procurement decisions and kept American officials in the dark about Iraqi financing of arms deals, according to high-ranking American officials familiar with its workings.

“It struck me as bizarre,” said a Western official with knowledge of the security ministries, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to be seen as criticizing people he was advising. “You can only explain it in two ways: a desire to avoid oversight and a desire to offer opportunities for graft and corruption.”

A high-ranking Iraqi government official who spoke on condition of anonymity, for fear of reprisals against him and others in his office, said, “We have no confidence in the Iraqi contracting process.”

“I heard about it out of the blue, that the minister of defense took a delegation to Serbia and came back and said that he had signed deals with the Serbian prime minister,” the official said. “Why Serbia? Why not Ukraine? Why not Russia? We just don’t know.”

American military officials did persuade Mr. Qadir to cancel the $200 million purchase of 30 to 40 French-made Puma helicopters, arguing that they were unsuited to Iraq’s harsh climate. The minister also decided against buying armored personnel carriers and Gazelle helicopters.

American and Iraqi military officers also questioned the wisdom of purchasing tens of millions of dollars of nonmilitary crowd control gear — batons, stun guns and plexiglass shields — usually used by police forces, and $76 million worth of mortar systems, which are too imprecise to use against guerrillas. The minister said he still intended to buy the riot control equipment, to handle crowds of Shiite pilgrims, and mortar systems, because the insurgents have them.

Critics of the deal also complained that the arms agreement thwarted the standardization of the Iraqi Army’s hodgepodge of war matériel, which includes firearms from the United States, China, the Balkans, Pakistan and Russia; 150 types of land vehicles; and a United Nations panoply of aircraft.

In Blow to Serbia, 3 Neighbors Say They’ll Recognize Kosovo

By REUTERS

BELGRADE, Serbia (Reuters) — Croatia, Hungary and Bulgaria announced Wednesday that they would recognize Kosovo, a blow to Serbia’s efforts to overturn Kosovo’s month-old declaration of independence.

In a joint statement issued in their capitals, the three countries in the region said the decision was based on “thorough consideration.” They also underlined the importance of protecting the Serbian minority in Kosovo, where more than 90 percent of the residents are ethnic Albanians.

“The government has made a decision to recognize Kosovo,” said the Croatian prime minister, Ivo Sanader. “I do understand this is a difficult one for Serbia to swallow. That’s one of the reasons we have waited until now. But I don’t expect a worsening of political and economic relations because there is no alternative to good neighborly relations.”

The Croatia Mission in Belgrade, near the United States Embassy, which was attacked and burned by Serbian protesters last month, was closed for the day behind new steel shutters.

Some Bulgarian families who were worried about security left Serbia, diplomatic officials said.

A Hungarian diplomatic official said there was concern in Budapest about potential attacks on the ethnic Hungarian minority — about 300,000 people — in the northern province of Vojvodina.

But, he said, “independent Kosovo is a reality, and recognition cannot be avoided.”

Serbia’s pro-Western foreign minister, Vuk Jeremic, acknowledged the neighbors’ decision “with sadness.”

“Countries that make this decision cannot have good ties with Serbia,” he said in Greece, a traditional ally that has not recognized Kosovo.

More than 30 countries have now recognized Kosovo. Canada announced its recognition on Tuesday, reiterating the Western case that forcing its two million Albanians to rejoin Serbia after nine years under United Nations rule was not a viable option.

In Washington, President Bush authorized the sale of weapons and other defense matériel to the government of Kosovo, a step that will almost certainly inflame Serbian and Russian officials who oppose Kosovo’s independence. In a formal notice to the secretary of state required under the Foreign Assistance Act, Mr. Bush said the sales, along with defense training and military exchanges, would “strengthen the security of the United States and promote world peace.”

Serbia’s pro-Western president, Boris Tadic, said this week that ties with Croatia would suffer further. Serbs and Croats fought a war from 1991 to 1995 over the breakup of Yugoslavia.

“We want to have the best possible relations with this country,” Mr. Tadic said. “But recognition of Kosovo is certainly not an act of good will between neighbors.”

In the Kosovo Serbian stronghold of Mitrovica, United Nations police officers returned to the base they were forced to abandon Monday in the worst riots yet over Kosovo’s independence.

NATO says the violence was orchestrated by one faction in the Serbian government. The Belgrade daily Blic on Wednesday cited officials as saying that Slobodan Samardzic, who is the minister for Kosovo and among those who advocate a tough stance, had advocated keeping tensions high.

U.N. and NATO troops clash with Serbs in Kosovo

By Branislav Krstic

MITROVICA, Kosovo (Reuters) - NATO troops came under fire during Serb riots in the northern Kosovo flashpoint of Mitrovica on Monday, in the worst violence in the territory since the Albanian majority declared independence last month.

The rioting was a challenge to the authority of NATO, the United Nations and European Union, underscoring fears that Kosovo could be heading for partition one month after breaking away from Serbia.

Reuters witnesses in the town reported hearing gunfire as hundreds of Serbs clashed with NATO peacekeepers and U.N. police. A French NATO spokesman said automatic weapons fire had been aimed at peacekeepers but gave no further details.

United Nations police were ordered to pull out after hundreds of Serbs opposed to Kosovo's independence fought back against a dawn raid to evict them from a court building they occupied last week.

Police and troops fired tear gas at protesters throwing stones and firecrackers. Cars were set ablaze and several police and NATO troops were hurt in an explosion.

"Eight French KFOR soldiers are injured with grenades, stones and molotov cocktails," said French spokesman Etienne du Fayet de la Tour. Their wounds were not life-threatening, he said.

KFOR is the U.N.-mandated NATO peacekeeping force in Kosovo, where about 120,000 Serbs remain and form a bitter minority among two million ethnic Albanians.

The raid to retake the court coincided with the March 17 anniversary of Kosovo Albanian riots against Serbs in 2004, in which 19 people were killed and hundreds of homes and churches burned in two days of chaos that caught NATO flat-footed.

It was this flare-up that pushed the West to start talks on a final status solution for Kosovo after years in limbo as an international protectorate following the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

GRIM ANNIVERSARY

"An order has been given for UNMIK police to withdraw from the north (of Kosovo) because of ongoing violent riots," a spokesman said in Kosovo's capital, Pristina.

"More than 100 people have been treated for the effects of tear gas," Mitrovica hospital director Milan Ivanovic said.

The violence started after several hundred U.N. special police backed by NATO peacekeepers stormed a U.N. court and arrested dozens of Serbs who had seized the building on Friday.

Rioters attacked three U.N. vehicles, breaking doors and freeing around 10 detainees from the raid, witnesses said.

Some U.N. vans with detainees were still in the courtyard of the compound, in a standoff with dozens of Serb protesters outside blocking their exit.

The takeover of the court on Friday was the latest effort by Serbs to assert control over policing and justice in north Kosovo following the ethnic Albanian majority's declaration of independence on Feb 17.

More than 50 court protesters were arrested and taken to prison in Pristina, a KFOR spokesman said.

"KFOR is securing the areas in the north where Kosovo Albanians live," the spokesman said, referring to a handful of Albanian communities in the Serb-dominated north.

The Kosovo Serbs, almost half of whom live in the north, reject Kosovo's Western-backed declaration of independence.

Supported by Russia, Belgrade has vowed to never accept the secession and to extend its authority over Serb areas, particularly the north.

Serbia lost control of its southern province in 1999, when NATO intervened to halt the ethnic cleansing of civilians in a counter-insurgency war, and the United Nations took over.

Kosovo's secession was backed by the United States and the European Union, which is deploying a supervisory mission to take over some of the U.N.'s tasks. Some analysts fear Serbia is now trying to partition the territory.

(Additional reporting by Fatos Bytyci, Shaban Buza; writing by Matt Robinson and Douglas Hamilton; editing by Timothy Heritage)

Serbs storm a UN courthouse in northern Kosovo

The Associated Press
Friday, March 14, 2008

MITROVICA, Kosovo: Hundreds of Serbs stormed a UN courthouse in northern Kosovo on Friday, taking control of the site and hoisting a Serbian flag to replace the one of the United Nations.

The Kosovo Serbs broke through two entrance gates and pushed aside UN riot police guarding the building, a police spokesman said. The dozens of UN police officers did not intervene.

The top UN official in Kosovo said he had ordered the police to retake the courthouse in the city of Mitrovica, and he pledged to defend his mandate as head of the UN mission, known as UNMIK.

"Those who turned to violence in North Mitrovica have crossed one of UNMIK's red lines," the UN official, Joachim Rücker, said in a statement issued Friday. "This is completely unacceptable. I have instructed UNMIK police to restore law and order in the north and to ensure that the court house is again under UN control."

He said the attackers would be prosecuted and called upon the authorities in Serbia to prevent any such incidents in the future.

Most of the protesters later left the yard of the building and the UN flag was hoisted again, UN officials said. Serb judicial workers, however, remained locked inside the courthouse, saying they would not leave.

The storming of the courthouse came as the NATO secretary general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, arrived for his first visit to Kosovo since it declared independence last month. Scheffer was to meet with Prime Minister Hashim Thaci and President Fatmir Sejdiu at the NATO headquarters in Pristina.

Sejdiu said he had urged the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the UN authorities to "react urgently and oust the hooligans from the building" and restore the UN flag.

The protest also came as Kosovo began lobbying the Islamic world for recognition on Friday, making its first major international outing at a summit meeting of Muslim states. Enver Hoxhaj, the government's minister of education, led a mission Friday at the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference, which met in Dakar, Senegal.

Kosovo is trying "to get support for our independence," Hoxhaj said.

Addressing the storming of the courthouse, a spokesman for the Kosovo police in Mitrovica said the regional UN representative was negotiating with Serb leaders to deal with the situation.

Serbs have held daily protests in front of the courthouse since Kosovo declared independence from Serbia on Feb. 17.

The protesters have been trying to take control of local institutions that have been run by the UN since the end of the war in Kosovo in 1999. The crowds have prevented international and ethnic-Albanian judges from returning to work at the court.

"We tried to negotiate, but no one wanted to talk to us," said Miodrag Ralic, one of the Serb protest leaders. "We could not wait any longer."

Serbia, which considers Kosovo its historic and religious heartland, has said that its declaration of independence was illegal under international law.

Serbia reclaims stretch of rail line in Kosovo

The Associated Press
Monday, March 3, 2008

MITROVICA, Kosovo: Serbia reclaimed control of a 50-kilometer stretch of rail line in northern Kosovo on Monday, a senior official said, in defiance of the government in Pristina.

The official, Branislav Ristivojevic, chairman of Serbia's state-owned railroad company and a senior adviser to Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, said that Serbia was restoring control over the 30-mile line "after a period of nine years."

Earlier, a few dozen Serbian railroad workers blocked passage of a freight train on the line, saying they would not work for Kosovo's rail company and demanding to be transferred to Serbia's state-owned railroad.

The surprise move is likely to increase tensions between the Serbs and Kosovo's authorities and NATO peacekeepers. It is in line with the Belgrade government's instructions to the Serbian minority to shun any contact with Kosovo's government after it declared independence two weeks ago, and to work directly with Serbia instead.

Hundreds of Serbian policemen have handed over their badges and weapons rather than submit to the authorities in Kosovo. Serbian protesters have set fire to border crossing points with Serbia and have blocked ethnic Albanians from working in courts in the northern area.

Serbia's Orthodox Church joined in the boycott Monday. Archbishop Artemije, who heads the church in Kosovo, ordered his clergy to cease all contacts with the Kosovo authorities and with the coming EU mission.

In another sign of underlying tension, a sniper attack Monday targeted an office gathering of different ethnic groups in the northern, Serb-controlled part of the ethnically divided town of Mitrovica.

Two bullets were fired at the offices, which operate on a grant from the Belgian government. No one was hurt. Wim Peeters, Belgium's top diplomat in Kosovo, condemned the attack as "a cowardly and shameful act."

It was not clear how the takeover of the rail line by Serbia's railroads would be carried out in defiance of the government in Pristina. Serbia's government has long claimed ownership of much of Kosovo's infrastructure, including power plants and rail lines.

United Nations officials, who are in charge of Kosovo's railroads, said they would discuss whether to continue running train services.

Deputy Prime Minister Hajredin Kuqi of Kosovo dismissed Serbia's move as a ploy aimed against Kosovo's independence and pledged that the authorities would protect the country's borders.

Serbia has rejected Kosovo's declaration of independence last month. Belgrade has ruled out military action to reclaim Kosovo, but has said it has a secret "action plan" to deal with the breakaway province. Officials have said Serbia will seek to retain control of Serb-dominated areas in northern Kosovo.

Serbia and its ally Russia maintain that the UN Security Council has not authorized the EU mission, which is meant to replace the UN administration that has ruled Kosovo since 1999.

The Russian Foreign Ministry protested on Monday the creation of an international group to help guide Kosovo, saying it violated UN decisions and could lead to "unpredictable consequences."

"We think the creation of the group goes against UN Security Council Resolution 1244 and internationally agreed principles" for handling Kosovo's future, a ministry spokesman said in a statement.

Serbia lodged a complaint with the United Nations against the establishment last week of the 15-nation International Steering Group for Kosovo, whose mission is to help guide Kosovo's democratic development.

The group includes the United States, Turkey and 13 other European countries - all of which have recognized Kosovo's Feb. 17 declaration of independence from Serbia.

The group appointed Pieter Feith to be its international civilian representative for Kosovo. He is also the European Union's representative in Kosovo who will oversee the authorities' compliance with a UN-sponsored deal providing broad rights for minorities.

The EU will also deploy an 1,800-strong police and justice mission to be led by a retired French general, Yves de Kermabon.

While ethnic Albanians account for nearly 90 percent of Kosovo's two million people, Serbs dominate a number of enclaves and a large part of northern Kosovo.

Serbian leaders have vowed to ignore both the EU mission and Kosovo's new government, and work only with the UN administration.

Feith has accused Belgrade of striving for a de facto division of Kosovo, leaving the northern region under Belgrade's control. Serbian officials, calling Feith's presence in Kosovo illegal, have refused to deal with him.

Declaring Something a Lot Like Dependence

By GRAHAM BOWLEY

IN the Balkans, many things did not change when Kosovo declared independence from Serbia on Feb. 17. It remains a small, poor, landlocked territory of two million people, riven by ethnic hatreds and memories of atrocities. And “independence,” despite its heroic ring, is an exaggeration. Kosovo still depends, for its very existence, on the presence of 16,000 NATO troops, both to keep order and to discourage any thoughts of reprisal by the kind of Serbian nationalists who rioted in Belgrade to protest the secession. In the background, meanwhile, there stands a resentful Russia, Serbia’s ally, whose presumptive new president, Dmitry A. Medvedev, declared to the world that Serbia and Kosovo are still “a single state.”

But from the point of view of Europe, a lot did change. A thousand miles to the north, foreign ministers from 27 European countries met in Brussels and agreed that at least some of them would go ahead and recognize Kosovo. In that action was a hint that one day the tiny, insecure and economically strapped statelet just born might one day join the European Union itself — perhaps, in the best of all possible worlds, together with its implacable enemies in Belgrade.

“I don’t know at what date, in which year,” said Bernard Kouchner, France’s relentlessly hopeful foreign minister, “but Kosovo and Serbia will be together in the European Union.”

Thus began Kosovo’s journey — no doubt long and probably full of wrong turns — toward the potential embrace of a European idea that itself was born after the horrors of World War II. Then, the logic was to bind the chief Western European powers together so inextricably that another European conflagration would be inconceivable. The idea has endured and evolved — fitfully, to be sure, in the last couple of years — and over the last decade it was extended to Central and Eastern Europe, in hopes of anchoring the struggling former satellites of the defunct Soviet Union stably within its embrace.

The ability to participate in one of the world’s two largest trading blocs has since made economic stars of at least some small states that live in the shadow of ethnic rivals and might have failed alone. Estonia, Slovenia and Slovakia come to mind. So does Ireland.

These successes showed that if its members relinquished some sovereignty to a continent-wide authority that could nurture and shield even small nations, Europe might finally have a way to extract the poison of regional conflict and allow the small to coexist confidently alongside the large.

Now comes Kosovo, even more frail, and so the idea goes a step further: that Europe’s identification as a continent has become strong enough to rewrite the definition of nationhood itself. Now, perhaps, the continent as a whole can protect at least the self-governance of national groups too small and weak to form self-sufficient states of their own.

The agony of such national groups, when contained within larger states that oppress them, has, after all, been a historic source of genocidal mayhem on the Continent. The Yugoslav breakup showed that the century-old formula for self-determination — forcing together tribes who hate each other just to make them viable states — has failed. Now, rather than let the ministates that are breaking off founder, they may have a chance to make it anyway — as wards of the whole continent.

THAT is the real meaning of Kosovo’s limited sovereignty. And with it comes the implicit promise that a shrunken but homogeneous Serbia, too, could one day get the same protection and nurturing if it agrees to play by Europe’s rules.

“The European Union has already demonstrated that it can serve as a vehicle for turning former enemies into partners,” said Charles Kupchan, a professor of international affairs at Georgetown University and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “A lot of countries cleaned up their acts because they needed to get into Europe. I think that will happen in the Balkans. It is just going to take a much longer time because the disputes run much deeper and the ethnic divide is very much alive and well.”

That is the optimistic view, at least. There are also many reasons why Kosovo’s journey to Europe may be a long one. Richard C. Holbrooke, a former United States ambassador to the United Nations and the man who brokered the Dayton peace agreement in 1995 to end the war in Bosnia, points out that one of the most troubling aspects of the aftermath of Kosovo’s declaration has been Russia’s support for ultranationalist forces in Serbia and for the Serbian government’s argument that the declaration of independence is a breach of international law.

Russia, in other words, represents an alternative future for Serbia, in opposition to Europe and the West, as it clings (at least in Serbia’s case) to the notion that territorial sovereignty and indivisibility are sacrosanct.

“This is a challenge to NATO and this is also a serious problem in U.S.-Russian relations,” Mr. Holbrooke said. “If the Russians used their influence for moderation, it would not be such a problem. The Serb body politic is deeply divided, and these are the same ‘ultras’ that caused the wars in the 1990s.” He added: “Economically, Kosovo is not viable unless it is part of a regional economic zone that embraces Southeast Europe and the Balkans.”

There are also questions about whether all of Europe is ready to embrace Kosovo. After Kosovo’s declaration, not all of the foreign ministers gathered in Brussels were willing to recognize it. Spain, Greece, Romania, Slovakia, Cyprus and Bulgaria refused, fearing it would encourage ethnic minorities to secede.

“They said, ‘There but for the grace God go we. If we acknowledge Kosovo then how do you say no to Catalonia, or the Basques?’ ” said Tony Judt, a professor of European history at New York University.

In other words, Mr. Kouchner’s dream may, in the end, be just that. Europe is still digesting the last round of enlargement, with some lingering doubts about its place in a globalizing world and questions about where its true borders lie. Not least, any further expansion to include Kosovo would carry the extra complication that the territory, like Bosnia, is a mainly Muslim state.

Still, many in Brussels are haunted by Europe’s failure to act in the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, which ended only after the United States intervened militarily. So whatever Kosovo’s ultimate prospects for joining the union, Europe is already pouring money into the territory — 1.8 billion euros between 1999 and 2006, with an expected additional 1.1 billion euros through 2010, including payments for police officers and judges to build Kosovo’s chronically corrupt judicial system.

“It is the most ambitious peacekeeping operation in Europe’s history,” said Ben Ward, who supervises the work of Human Rights Watch in the Balkans. “The E.U. has an enormous amount riding on it. There are people in Brussels who are saying again that this is Europe’s hour, who remember the last time and are very much aware of the potential risk.”

Practically speaking, according to Mr. Judt, before Kosovo could join the union, other Balkan countries would have to join first — Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Macedonia — and provide Kosovo a land connection with the rest of Europe that wasn’t through Serbia. Others even hold out hope that one day Serbia would take up Europe on its implicit promise that it, too, would be welcome in the community if it turned away from nationalism toward the mores and values of the continent.

If all of that could happen, there might then be a parallel to the successful examples of the past decade, when the European idea marked a path toward the peaceful coexistence of former enemies: Slovakia exists alongside Hungary despite the claims of Hungarian minorities in Slovakia; and the Czech Republic and Germany get along despite memories of Hitler’s torment of Czechoslovakia before and during World War II, and of the Czechs’ expulsion of Germans afterward.

“It is not a ‘happy land’ where everyone loves each other,” said Mr. Judt. “People tell you how they hate each other.” But, he adds, the hatred “has no political purchase because Europe transcends it. You can’t get much money from Brussels if you build your politics around ethnic hatred.”

Serb protesters try to storm U.S. consulate

From the Associated Press

5:57 AM PST, February 26, 2008

BANJA LUKA, Bosnia-Herzegovina — Police are firing tear gas at Bosnian Serb rioters to prevent them from storming the U.S. consulate after protests against Kosovo's independence.

A small group split from almost 10,000 peaceful protesters and was trying to reach the consulate, breaking windows of shops and throwing stones at police who have blocked streets leading to the building with armored vehicles.

Putin's Likely Successor, Pledging Support for Serbia, Signs Pipeline Deal

By Danica Kirka
Associated Press
Tuesday, February 26, 2008; A11

BELGRADE, Serbia, Feb. 25 -- Russia's likely next president, visiting the Serbian capital, pledged Monday to support Serbia in its showdown with the West over Kosovo's declaration of independence.

Dmitry Medvedev, chairman of Russia's state-controlled energy giant Gazprom, presided over the signing of a deal potentially worth $1.5 billion to route a 550-mile natural gas pipeline through Serbia.

Although that agreement was at the center of his visit, he also criticized Kosovo's declaration of independence from Serbia as well as Western support for the move. Kosovo's breaking away "absolutely" violates international rules, he said.

"Serbia needs support now," Medvedev said.

Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica on Monday demanded that the United States rescind its recognition of Kosovo and warned that "there will be no stability" until the "fake state" is annulled.

With Serbia as a political and economic partner in the Balkans, Russia has a loyal ally in the heart of Europe, reaffirming its position as a key global player. The pipeline deal also may boost Russia's influence as energy supplier to the continent.

Moscow's control of key energy routes has raised fears that it could use supply as political leverage -- rewarding countries that support its policies and threatening hardship for those that do not.

Medvedev, however, said the project, known as South Stream, and others pending with Serbia "form the foundation of energy stability for all of Europe in the future."

Medvedev is President Vladimir Putin's chosen successor. Opinion polls show him the overwhelming favorite to win Russia's presidential election March 2.

Few details about the pipeline deal were released. Analysts suggest that Serbia is giving away some of its most valuable assets to Russia at bargain-basement prices.

Medvedev also toured Serbia's oil refinery in Pancevo, just outside Belgrade, where he said that a deal to buy Serbia's state oil company, NIS, will be signed soon.

Russia has offered $600 million for a controlling stake in NIS and $730 million to modernize the run-down company. The offering price for a controlling stake, analysts say, is about one-fifth the company's market value.

Some Serbians do not welcome closer ties with Moscow, however, citing Putin's autocratic style and the refugee status that Russia granted to the widow of former president Slobodan Milosevic. Mirjana Markovic and the couple's son, Marko, are both wanted in Serbia for embezzling millions of dollars. Milosevic died in 2005.

But ties among the two countries' Orthodox churches remain strong, a point Medvedev highlighted when he joined President Boris Tadic for a visit to St. Sava Temple, the largest Orthodox Christian church in the Balkans.

The two lit candles in the Christian Orthodox tradition and were greeted by a local priest, the Rev. Luka Novakovic. "We see your arrival here as support to the Serbian nation and Serbian Orthodox Church at the time when there aren't many states and nations who support us and stand by us," Novakovic said.

Russian Candidate Denounces Kosovo

By C. J. CHIVERS

MOSCOW — Dmitri A. Medvedev, Russia’s first deputy prime minister and the presumptive successor to President Vladimir V. Putin, on Monday committed the Kremlin to long-term support in backing Serbia against an independent Kosovo.

Mr. Medvedev appeared in Belgrade, the Serbian capital, with Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica. It was Mr. Medvedev’s first significant foreign-policy appearance since he became the front-runner for Russia’s highest office, and he restated Mr. Putin’s position and made clear that it would be his own.

“We proceed from the understanding that Serbia is a single state with its jurisdiction spanning its entire territory and we will stick to this principled stance in the future,” he said, in remarks reported widely on news broadcasts in Russia.

“Serbia,” he added, faces “conditions of illegitimate actions to unilaterally recognize Kosovo.”

The United States reacted quickly to Mr. Medvedev’s statements. restating its own support for Kosovo, and made clear that in Washington’s view, its break from Serbia was final.

“We are going to continue to try to work with both the Russians and the Serbs on this but I think that it ought to be clear to everybody at this point that Kosovo is never going to be a part of Serbia again,” Tom Casey, a State Department spokesman, told reporters, according to the Associated Press.

Mr. Kostunica said on Monday that state-sponsored protests against the Kosovo’s declaration would continue until foreign governments that had recognized Kosovo changed their position.

Kosovo, a province of Serbia that had been under United Nations administration since 1999, declared its independence on Feb. 17. Russia had long objected to Kosovo’s intention to seek independence and has called the declaration both illegal and a threat to international stability.

The Kremlin has also complained bitterly that Western governments have recognized Kosovo and warned that it could increase its support for separatist regions in Georgia and Moldova, both of which have regions outside of their control that received Russian support.

In his brief visit, Mr. Medvedev struck notes emphasizing the traditional and continuing ties between Serbia and Russia. He visited St. Sava’s cathedral in Belgrade with President Boris Tadic, and an oil refinery as well, and pledged to invest in Serbia’s energy sector.

Mr. Medvedev, who is also chairman of Gazprom, Russia’s natural gas monopoly, also signed an agreement to build a section of the South Stream gas pipeline through Serbia, which will carry Russian gas through the Balkans to the Mediterranean Sea.

Mr. Medvedev has used his presidential campaign to cast himself as a progressive who wants to promote freedom in Russia. His speeches have raised questions about whether he might soften some of Russia’s image and ease some of the state’s grip on political life. His remarks on Monday, however, re-emphasized that many of his views and public positions overlap with those of his primary sponsor, Mr. Putin.

At point, for example, he placed blame for the unrest that has followed Kosovo’s declaration, and any future repercussions, on the West. “It is absolutely obvious that the crisis that has happened and is the responsibility of those who have made the illegal decision will unfortunately have long-term consequences for peace on the European continent,” he said.

Serbia Seeks Rioters Who Set Fire to the U.S. Embassy

rBy DAN BILEFSKY

PRISTINA, Kosovo — Serbia’s top state prosecutor said Saturday that the authorities were hunting for the rioters who attacked the United States Embassy and other diplomatic missions last week.

“We are collecting evidence and are identifying the culprits,” the official, Slobodan Radovanovic, said in a statement.

The police said they had arrested nearly 200 rioters involved in Thursday’s protests, in which demonstrators, outraged at American support for an independent Kosovo, stormed the United States Embassy in Belgrade and set several rooms on fire. It was the worst violence to engulf the capital since pro-democracy demonstrators overthrew Slobodan Milosevic eight years ago.

The missions of Britain, Germany, Croatia and Turkey also were attacked, while looters went on a rampage across the Serbian capital. American officials said nonessential personnel from the embassy had been relocated.

One person died and 150 were injured. The Serbian daily Blic on Saturday reported the victim was a 21-year-old student who was originally from Kosovo.

For the past six days, Serbs have demonstrated across Serbia and Kosovo in an emotional and sometimes violent outpouring of anger at what many regard as the theft, sanctioned by the West, of their medieval heartland. The Serbian government has condemned Thursdays’ attacks, calling them the work of “isolated vandals.” But Serbia’s minister for Kosovo, Slobodan Samardzic, blamed the United States.

“The U.S. is the major culprit for all troubles since Feb. 17,” Mr. Samardzic told the state news agency Tanjug, referring to the date of the declaration of independence by Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian leadership. “The root of violence is the violation of international law.”

Earlier, he said the torching of United Nations border posts in northern Kosovo by several hundred Serbian protesters reflected “government policy.” He indicated that it was part of the Serbian government’s wider goal of entrenching its control of the Serb-majority northern part of Kosovo and creating a de facto partition of the territory.

That aim seemed to be strengthening Saturday as Serbs in northern Kosovo erected a metal container and hung Serbian flags on electrical posts on a main road between Zubin Potok, a Serbian town, and Mitrovica, a city divided between ethnic Albanians and Serbs.

Meanwhile, reports were growing here that Serbian officers were deserting Kosovo’s multiethnic police force and pledging their allegiance to the government in Belgrade. The attack on the American Embassy, just days after the attacks at the border between Serbia and Kosovo, has raised alarms in the West that Serbia is fomenting violence in a campaign aimed at making international support for an independent Kosovo untenable.

The attack has been condemned by the United Nations Security Council, and the European Union has warned that a failure to stop further violence would damage Serbia’s prospects for forging closer ties.

While few Serbian analysts say they believe that Belgrade masterminded the attack during demonstrations that were meant to be a peaceful venting of anger against Kosovo’s independence, the Serbian defense minister, Dragan Sutanovac, of the Democratic Party, which supports closer ties with the European Union and Washington, has blamed nationalist politicians for encouraging the rioters.

Concerns about the government’s role also have been fanned by increasingly strident speech from other leading politicians, including Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, who helped lead the revolution that overthrew Mr. Milosevic in 2000. But in recent days, the prime minister has co-opted the nationalist language of his former nemesis.

The Serbian government is deeply split between the pro-Western president, Boris Tadic, who wants Serbia to join the European Union, and Mr. Kostunica, who is determined not to go down in history as the Serbian leader who lost Kosovo. The scenes of Serbian mobs suit Mr. Kostunica’s domestic political aim of punishing the West, analysts said.

The prime minister has been abetted by Tomislav Nikolic, the leader of Serbia’s far-right Radical Party. Mr. Nikolic had a strong showing in recent presidential elections and has adroitly exploited anger over Kosovo to argue that Serbia should look to Moscow instead.

“We will not rest until Kosovo is again under Serbia’s control,” Mr. Nikolic told the demonstrators on Thursday night as a mob gathered near the United States Embassy. “Hitler could not take it away from us, and neither will today’s Western powers.”

While few doubt that the strident language played a role in stirring the violence, leading Serbian and Western analysts say that it does not appear to have been a premeditated coordinated attack, though they have not ruled it out.

Many European and American diplomats have criticized the lack of police presence at the embassy before the attack, suggesting a degree of passive complicity.

But officials in Belgrade said that a majority of the attackers were young and drunk, and that the embassy attack did not appear to be well organized. Such a view is backed by the indiscriminate violence on Thursday, including attacks on journalists from Russia, Serbia’s most ardent supporter.

The most widely held view is that the attack was carried out by a fringe of staunch nationalists, many of them poor and from Serbia’s rural heartland, whose economic disillusionment, coupled with raw and real anger over Western backing of Kosovo’s independence, has boiled over into violent opposition to the United States and the European Union, which are viewed as the architects of the “false state.”

The rioters, analysts say, are “the losers of the transition” — those who have not benefited from Serbia’s transformation since Mr. Milosevic fell in 2000. Unemployment hovers around 21 percent, while Serbia’s annual per capita gross domestic product of about $7,400 makes it one of Europe’s poorest countries.

Misha Glenny, a prominent Balkan expert, argued that the protests had allowed Serbian nationalism and anger over the loss of Kosovo to vent itself.

Kosovo’s independence has made Serbia’s European path more difficult, he said, but attaching Serbia to the European Union will remain the dominant opinion inside the country.

Kosovo presses for independence

From Times Wire Reports

July 21, 2007

Kosovo Prime Minister Agim Ceku called on the province's parliament to declare independence from Serbia on Nov. 28. He acted after the United States and Europeans discarded a U.N. resolution on the province's future status in the face of Russian opposition.

The resolution did not call for independence, but it followed several key provisions of a supervised independence plan devised by U.N. envoy Martti Ahtisaari.

Kosovo, where 90% of the 2 million people are ethnic Albanians, has been run by the U.N. since 1999, when NATO bombs forced out Serbian troops who were killing and expelling Albanians in a two-year war with guerrillas.

U.S. Diplomat Hints at Delay for Kosovo Independence

By NICHOLAS WOOD

DUBROVNIK, Croatia, July 8 — A senior United States diplomat, speaking at a conference in Croatia over the weekend, cast doubt on a quick resolution of Kosovo’s future, suggesting that an agreement that would enable it to claim independence might not come until next year.

The assessment by Daniel Fried, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, is likely to be seen as a setback for Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian leadership. This spring, Western officials had held out hope that the future of the province, which technically remains part of Serbia, would be resolved within weeks. Mr. Fried told delegates at a conference on NATO’s enlargement in this seaside Croatian resort that he hoped Kosovo’s future could be resolved in the months leading up to the alliance’s summit meeting in Romania next April.

“I can’t give a precise date, but I suspect it will be a number of months before the Bucharest summit,” he said.

Mr. Fried’s comments are the clearest indication to date that the United States now acknowledges that it is unlikely that Russia will soon agree to a United Nations plan that would grant the province independence under supervision of a mission led by the European Union. Senior European Union politicians at the conference on Friday and Saturday also cast doubt on whether an agreement could be reached this summer.

For the past eight years, the region has been administered by the United Nations after a 78-day NATO-led bombing campaign forced Serbian security forces, accused of committing widespread atrocities against ethnic Albanians, to withdraw from the province. With increasing impatience, Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians, who make up 90 percent of the province’s population, are pressing for independence. But Russia is supporting Serbia in its opposition to independence for Kosovo.

Kosovo’s Albanian leaders had hoped that President Bush’s meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia this month might resolve the issue. But instead they left the Kosovo discussions to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov at a later date.

Western leaders and United Nations officials have also warned that further delays may ignite violence in the province.

On Thursday, Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, issued a report to the Security Council saying that if the province’s “status remains undefined, there is a real risk that the progress achieved by the United Nations and the provisional institutions in Kosovo can begin to unravel.”

And on Friday, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the NATO secretary general, said: “It is important at this moment for all to exercise restraint and calm. But I think on the other hand that we should prevent unnecessary delay in trying to find a solution.”

Despite those warnings, the emerging consensus among European and American policy makers is that the status quo will have to remain for months in the hope that Russia can eventually agree to a resolution allowing for effective independence for Kosovo. The gamble is that Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian leadership can maintain calm as long as it knows independence is not in doubt, Western diplomats here said.

“We are going to keep on working within the United Nations,” Mr. Fried said in an interview. “We are not going to be rigid and doctrinaire.” He was scheduled to meet with ethnic Albanian leaders in Kosovo on Monday.

Russia has rejected two draft resolutions in the Security Council, contending that an agreement between the Serbs and ethnic Albanians is necessary to resolve the issue. American officials have suggested that if Russia continues to reject the proposal before the United Nations, the United States could recognize Kosovo’s independence unilaterally.

But most European nations continue to seek a United Nations-sanctioned agreement.

“Britain and the U.S. thought the Russians would go along with this,” said a senior European politician with extensive knowledge of the Balkans, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of damaging the negotiations. “Now the entire strategy has blown up in their face.” But with the United States at odds with Russia over missile defense and other matters, Western officials also are conceding that the search for a resolution of the Kosovo issues may now be drawn out over many months.

“If you think that this is a passing phase in Russia, then you are dramatically wrong,” said Kai Eide, Norway’s senior diplomat and the author of a United Nations report in 2004 that first advocated Kosovo’s independence.

Mr. Fried, comparing the breakup of the Soviet Union to the breakup of Yugoslavia, of which Serbia was a part, said, “They look at Yugoslavia as a microcosm of the Soviet Union, and they hate this.”

Despite that, Mr. Eide and other European politicians said the West had to use the next year, if necessary, to find a solution that would gain Russian support. But so far, there are no alternative proposals.

Carl Bildt, Sweden’s foreign minister, said European foreign ministers recently discussed the possibility of alternative solutions that would lead to recognizing Kosovo without Security Council backing, but he said that “the consequences of going unilateral are quite severe,” and that it would be extremely difficult to find unanimous support among European Union nations.

But American and other officials warn that events in Kosovo may ultimately force Europe into taking a more resolute stance.

“If the U.N. resolution does not work out, the Europeans will have to ask themselves how much violence are they prepared to take?” one senior Western official said. At some point, he said, “hard decisions will have to be taken by the United States and Europe.”

Russia Hints at Security Council Veto of Kosovo Resolution

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says any resolution on independence for Kosovo will fail in the U.N. Security Council, unless it gains the backing of Serbia, a close Kremlin ally. As VOA Moscow Correspondent Peter Fedynsky reports, Russia has a specific interest in opposing an independent Kosovo.

Speaking after a ministerial meeting in Bishkek, the capital of Kirghizstan, the Russian Foreign Minister told reporters that his country's position on Kosovo is well known, and is backed by international law.

Any decision on Kosovo, says Lavrov, is possible only on the basis of agreement between the two sides directly involved in the matter.

Complex historical forces have pitted ethnic Albanians, who became Kosovo's majority in the 20th century, against Serbians, who trace important elements of their past to the province, where they were once the majority.

The United States and its European allies have drafted a resolution to give the two sides four months to reach agreement on Kosovo's status. If they fail to reach agreement, those allies would support Kosovo independence under international supervision.

Foreign Minister Lavrov says no U.N. resolution on the province can pass without the agreement of Serbia, a traditional Russian ally. While he did not openly say Russia would exercise its Security Council veto, he made clear that his country would do exactly that.

Moscow is dealing with a number of so-called frozen conflicts, violent intractable disputes involving ethnic minorities in and around Russia.

Vyacheslav Nikonov, the president of the Politika Foundation, a Moscow research organization, says the Kremlin does not want Kosovo to be used by secessionists in a number of areas to violate the interests or territorial integrity of Russia.

Among these areas, says Nikonov, are Moldova's Transdnistria region, as well as Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Nagorno-Karabakh in the Caucasus. The analyst adds that for residents of all those unrecognized states, Kosovo will obviously become a precedent.

In a related development, the prime minister of Abkhazia, Alexander Ankvab, was slightly injured in an attack on his vehicle as he traveled to the regional capital, Sukhumi. Abkhazia is seeking independence from Georgia, which resents the presence of Russian troops in the area. Moscow says its forces are there strictly as peacekeepers.

Last week, one of Foreign Minister Lavrov's deputies, Andrei Denisov, told the Interfax News agency that the international community needs to formulate a legally-binding document on which principle to apply in Kosovo-type conflicts, respect for a country's territorial integrity or the right of a people to self-determination.

U.S. President George Bush and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin discussed Kosovo at their meeting last week in Kennebunkport, Maine. They did not announce any breakthrough.

Kosovo Guerrilla Veterans Warn Of New War

PRISTINA, July 9, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- Veterans of Kosovo's guerrilla war have said they are ready to take up arms again if the province is not granted independence from Serbia, RFE/RL's South Slavic and Albanian Languages Service reported.

"If there is no independence for Kosovo, we will be forced to act as KLA soldiers," Faik Fazliu, the leader of the veterans of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), told RFE/RL today. "We have fought for our freedom and for an independent Kosovo."

Fazliu's statement follows an announcement published by KLA veterans in several Kosovo newspapers on July 8 calling on Kosovo's parliament to declare independence and warning international bodies running the territory -- mainly the UN -- not to block the process.

Goran Bogdanovic, a leader of the Serbian List for Kosovo and Metohija party and a member of Serbia's negotiating team in Kosovo status talks, told RFE/RL the KLA's warning shouldn't be ignored.

"This threat should be taken seriously just because it is clear that the status of Kosovo will not be resolved in a short term," Bogdanovic said. "And it is clear that Albanians would use all means to achieve their goal. They will use verbal threats, they will create excesses to gain independence promised to them by their politicians, and we, Serbs in Kosovo, see it as another wave of ethnic cleansing."

Serbia and ally Russia oppose a UN plan to grant Kosovo supervised independence.

Kosovo Issue -- Lots of Action Currently

UN WARNS PROGRESS IN KOSOVA RISKS 'UNRAVELING'...
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has warned that the situation in Kosova could regress unless a decision is reached on its final status, international media reported on July 5. A report due to be presented at the UN Security Council on July 9 says that there is "a real risk that the progress achieved by the United Nations and the Provisional Institutions in Kosovo can begin to unravel" unless Kosova's status is defined, Reuters reported. "The determination of Kosovo's future status should therefore remain a priority for the Security Council and for the international community as a whole," Ban added in the report, which has already been made public. International media reports say that UN diplomats are currently working on a fourth draft resolution aimed, according to one unnamed diplomat quoted by Reuters, "at trying to bring Russia into the process." Russia has dismissed previous resolutions, and none of its diplomats attended a meeting to review the last draft (see "RFE/RL Newsline," June 25, 26, and 28, 2007). Russia wants Belgrade and Prishtina to return to bilateral talks under a new mediator and without time constraints. Officials representing the UN and the international force in Kosova, KFOR, on July 3 described the current security situation in Kosova as "stable" and "calm," but the head of the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), Joachim Ruecker, warned the same day of possible violence unless the province's status is decided quickly, local media reported. That view was echoed on July 6 by NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, at a gathering in Dubrovnik, Croatia, of political leaders from the Balkans, Kosovar Albanian media reported. AG

...AS EU STRESSES EUROPE WILL RESOLVE KOSOVA ISSUE
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso met with Serbia's President Boris Tadic on July 6 in a bid to push forward the search for agreement on the future of Kosova, local and international media reported. While stressing that the EU does not connect Serbia's possible membership in the EU with the issue of Kosova's status, Barroso underlined that "the future of Serbia is not with Russia or the United States but with the European Union, to be blunt." Barroso's stance complemented a comment by the EU's enlargement commissioner, Olli Rehn, who in mid-May advised Serbia "to be careful...when hugging even a friendly big bear" -- a reference to Russia. Christina Gallach, a spokeswoman for the EU's foreign-policy chief, Javier Solana, raised a similar point on July 3, saying that the EU will take responsibility for deciding Kosova's future should Russia continue to reject UN resolutions. "Nobody can be a hostage of somebody else's policy and leave outstanding issues over and over again, risking the stability of the whole region," Gallach told the Serbian daily "Vecernje novosti." "Kosovo is a European issue and we have let Moscow know that we are interested in resolving that problem and consider it to be ours," Gallach said. She added that "the future of the Balkans depends on Europe and not on Russia. That is why the EU will make the decision [on Kosova's future] if necessary." Gallach stressed, though, that the EU will seek the consent of the UN Security Council. The Russian ambassador in Belgrade, Aleksandr Alekseyev, told Radio-Television Serbia on July 4 that Gallach's statement was "wrong, and that this is not the kind of language one can use when speaking to Russia." AG

SERBIA WARNS NEIGHBORS AGAINST RECOGNIZING KOSOVA...
Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic on July 6 warned Serbia's neighbors against unilaterally recognizing Kosova's independence, saying that "would cause long term instability in the region," AP and local media reported. Jeremic urged restraint to avoid "steps that would later be hard to reverse." Kosovar Albanian leaders continue to hint at the possibility of a unilateral declaration of independence, a notion that Washington initially publicly backed but from which it has since retreated (see "RFE/RL Newsline," April 18, 2007). Jeremic was speaking during a visit to Montenegro at the end of a four-day tour that also took him to Bratislava, Vienna, and Berlin for meetings with the foreign ministers of Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia. The Serbian news agency FoNet on July 6 quoted Jeremic as saying that "the Europeans have not yet decided how they will behave under conditions in which it is not realistic to expect that the UN Security Council would pass a resolution on Kosovo." The champion of Serbia's case in the UN, Russia, has so far rejected three draft resolutions on Kosova's future. AG

...WHILE MONTENEGRO STRESSES NEUTRAL STANCE
After holding talks with Serbian Foreign Minister Jeremic on July 6, Montenegro's foreign minister, Milan Rocen, said that Montenegro "will stay on the sidelines" on matters relating to Kosova, AP reported the same day. In an interview published on July 5 by the Austrian paper "Die Presse," Rocen urged the EU to show unity, saying "it would be wrong to leave it to the individual countries to decide whether to recognize Kosovo as an independent state," as "this would lead to new rifts in the region, in Europe, and in the entire world." Rocen reiterated that Montenegro's interest is in a "sustainable" solution in Kosova and he underscored Montenegro's neutral stance, saying that Montenegro is "a small country without any influence on the final status of Kosovo," is not able to "contribute to the solution of the problem," and is mainly interested in maintaining domestic political stability. Rocen said that "in the case of bilateral recognition agreements, they could not expect the small country Montenegro to volunteer to be a guinea pig. We will find a way to tell both Belgrade and Pristina our position in an appropriate manner and to maintain good relations with both of them." Montenegro has come under substantial pressure from its ethnic-Serbian parties to support Serbia's position on Kosova (see "RFE/RL Newsline," May 1, 10, and 31, and June 20 and 25, 2007). However, Rocen said that he and Jeremic "agreed the two countries' relations are substantially closer and better than the public could get the impression or than may be heard in the statements by certain political parties or leaders." Jeremic chose not to meet with leaders of Montenegro's large Serbian community, a decision that elicited angry responses from some Serbian and Montenegrin Serbian parties, the Montenegrin daily "Dan" reported on July 5. AG

KOSOVA LIKELY TO HOLD ELECTIONS IN NOVEMBER
The head of the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), Joachim Ruecker, on July 5 said that parliamentary and local elections should be held in Kosova in November, local media reported. Ruecker's proposal, which has yet to become definitive, has roused fears about the possible impact of the elections on discussions about the final status of the UN-administered Serbian province. Veton Surroi, a leader of the opposition and a member of the team negotiating Kosova's status, said that elections must not become an "excuse" to delay the decision about Kosova's status, the news service KosovaLive reported on July 5. The UN's failure to settle the question of independence for Kosova has prompted the Kosovar Albanian media and political opposition in recent weeks to question increasingly strongly the mandate of Kosova's leaders, who have repeatedly said that statehood is imminent. Ruecker did not say whether the elections will reflect recommendations made by the author of the UN's plan for Kosova, Martti Ahtisaari, which envisages new municipalities and new electoral legislation. These will be the third parliamentary elections in Kosova since 1999, when NATO forces ended the conflict between Serbian forces and ethnic-Albanian separatists. Local elections were due to be held in autumn 2006, but were postponed after local parties and UNMIK concluded that they could divert attention from bilateral talks on Kosova's status. AG