Saturday, June 09, 2007

Just do it

Until about a month ago Veton Surroi, Kosovo's chief diplomat - a moderate with much respect in the world capitals - considered that the risks of going it alone were too big. Now he's become more acceptive of it.

“Kosovo cannot continue to remain hostage to Russia’s veto, nor to issues that are to do with bilateral relations between the Great Powers. Kosovo… needs its own solution”, the Unity Team said.
“We will respect the partnership, but we stand by our people and we don’t want this process to be delayed endlessly”, said Veton Surroi, a member of the Unity Team.

I'm not sure if it's because he's more confident than before, or is it just that there is no other solution left on the table. Whatever it is, declaring unilateral independence is the way to go now. We have to act swiftly and with determination while Europe takes its summer siesta. The rest will be history.

Source: BIRN

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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

What could Russia do in practice if Kosova did go ahead and was recognised by a reasonable number of nations? It might well be easier for them to recognise a fait accompli than to go along with the formal process. Do you think it's likely there'd be a significant Serbian response?

WARchild said...

All Russia can do to Kosovo is block membership to UN-derived organizations such as ITU (telecom) where it holds the veto. There are workarounds to those though. More important at the moment are EU, IMF and World Bank, where Germany, France, UK, and US can help.

Serbia is even more limited. It can try stopping trade, which would be shooting itself on the foot because it is the main exporter to Kosovo. I expect it to do this for the first two months and then nobody will really care, just like with Montenegro.

I'm not surprised that Serbia is acting this way - Serbs are Europe's spoiled bastards. That's how you commit genocide in Srebrenica and and still get away with the land to fight another day in Kosovo. Disgusting!

Anonymous said...

Announcing in advance that Serbia isn't going to break off diplomatic relations with anyone who recognises an independent Kosova suggests that the parallel you draw with Montenegro may not be too far off the mark. But if Serbia doen't kick up too much of a fuss doesn't that leave Putin looking as if he's been making a song and dance about very little?