 |  |  |
| Return to: Left History: a digital archive | Return to: Say no to imperialist wars! | Return to: NATO-Yugoslav War Internet Resources |
| | |
| Return to: Left History: a digital archive | Return to: Say no to imperialist wars! | Return to: NATO-Yugoslav War Internet Resources |
PRISTINA, Serbia - Western diplomats rejected on Tuesday a Serb proposal to carve out ethnic enclaves in Kosovo to protect their people from attacks by Albanians.
The Serb proposal for so-called cantonisation of Kosovo ran counter to international efforts to create a unified, multi- ethnic Kosovo, not a segregated society, the diplomats said.
"Cantonisation is an idea that the Serbs began floating last year. I think it originated with the Academy of Sciences in Belgrade," said a Western diplomat who asked not to be named.
"The idea surfaced from time to time during last year's negotiations but was never taken seriously. Nothing has changed. We are insisting on the unity and territorial integrity of a multi-ethnic Kosovo."
Creating one or more Serb ethnic enclaves in Kosovo, which is now 99 per cent ethnic Albanian, was suggested on Saturday by Momcilo Trajkovic, head of the Serbian Resistance Movement, who declared: "The multi-ethnic Kosovo has failed."
Trajkovic advanced the idea at a U.N.-sponsored meeting of the Kosovo Transition Council, an advisory body charged with helping to build post-war institutions in Kosovo.
Bernard Kouchner, chief of the U.N. mission that administers Kosovo, told reporters after Saturday's meeting that he would study Trajkovic's suggestion but was negatively disposed.
"The Serbs have asked for cantons, a sort of partition so Kosovo would be divided up with at least one or two areas where Serbs would control their own municipal council," said Bryan Hopkinson, Director of the International Crisis Group (ICG) and a former British diplomat in the Balkans.
"One of the enclaves almost certainly would be in the north, above Mitrovica. That would give the Serbs control over much of Kosovo's most valuable mines and mineral rights," he said.
"For that reason, and because the Serbs no longer hold many cards in Kosovo, cantonisation is a non-starter. We don't want to end up with de facto partition here as we did in Bosnia. But if we rule out partition what's left?"
The pre-war population of Kosovo was about two million, 90 per cent of whom were ethnic Albanian. The other 10 per cent was mainly Serb, with some Gypsies, Moslems and other minorities.
Control of this southern Serbian province had been vested with Belgrade for nearly a decade when ethnic Albanian guerrillas began attacking Serb police and Yugoslav army units in the spring of 1998.
A year of guerrilla war and nearly three months of NATO air strikes led to the total withdrawal of Serb security forces and the exodus of all but about 20,000 of Kosovo's non-ethnic Albanian population.
So few Serbs and other minorities now remain in Kosovo that the international community is hard-pressed to create institutions -- such as a reconstituted judiciary and provincial police force -- that would be broadly representative of Kosovo's pre-war population.
U.N. sources said the U.N. could reject the cantonisation proposal as early as Wednesday. That would leave unresolved the issue of exactly how minority rights in Kosovo can be ensured.