Analysis: Inside the Kosovo negotiations

BERLIN, Dec. 20 (UPI) -- The European Union's representative to the Kosovo Troika says Russia -- not the United States -- carries the main responsibility for the failure of the Kosovo negotiations.

Wolfgang Ischinger was on his way to Italy for his summer holidays when his cell phone rang. On the other end of the line was German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who told Ischinger he was nominated to be the EU's man in a trio that also included a U.S. and a Russian negotiator. The trio would form the so-called Kosovo Troika asked to solve the conflict surrounding independence of the Serbian province. It was a job the German diplomat couldn't refuse, but he knew from the start he had accepted a "veritable mission impossible," Ischinger said earlier this week during a speech at the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin.

The Troika since August had tried to strike a compromise between Belgrade and Pristina after a plan for internationally monitored independence proposed by Martti Ahtisaari, the U.N. special envoy for Kosovo, failed to make it beyond the U.N. Security Council because of Russian veto threats.

Ischinger, who from 2001 to 2006 was Germany's ambassador to the United States, together with the seasoned U.S. diplomat Frank Wisner and his Russian colleague Alexander Bozan-Kharchenko, in countless meetings with Serbs and Kosovo-Albanians tried to reconcile what seemed to be irreconcilable positions. It was clear: The Kosovo conflict posed a test of the EU's ability to act. This past August the 27-member body remained divided when it comes to Kosovo's independence; several nations, including Spain and Cyprus, feared a domino effect for separatist movements inside their own borders in case of Kosovo's independence. The question was: Is a joint foreign policy by the EU on this issue even possible?

"We're doing this only for you," Wisner reminded Ischinger when they first met ahead of the negotiations.

"In 1998, we still needed the military help of NATO to end the conflict in the Balkans, we were sitting in the backseat, watching the Americans," Ischinger said. "Now, the EU was sitting at least in the passenger's seat, with one hand on the wheel."

The Kosovo issue poses one of Europe's greatest trickiest ethnic conflicts. The Serbian province, which is dominated by ethnic Albanians, for years has demanded independence from Serbia, and earlier from Yugoslavia. Kosovo has been administered by the United Nations with the help of NATO peacekeeping troops since 1999, when NATO bombing ended a bloody war between Serbian troops and Albanian rebels.

Belgrade is unwilling to grant more than autonomy to the southwestern province, which it considers the historical and spiritual cradle of the Serbian nation. Pristina argues that living under Serbian rule is no longer possible because of the repression experienced during the 1990s under the rule of Slobodan Milosevic and said it will accept nothing less than independence.

Despite the difficulty of the conflict, a window of potential success opened in the fall of 2007, Ischinger said. The diplomatic trio -- after long and sturdy negotiations with Belgrade and Pristina that had yielded nothing -- hammered out a draft treaty that would regulate Kosovo's status based on the example of the so-called German-German treaty of 1972.

At the time, NATO member West Germany and communist East Germany signed a two-page agreement that regulated the coexistence of the two Germanys and even included an article that addressed -- and shelved -- the question of German reunification. This allowed the West Germans to argue that the question of reunification was still on the table, while the East Germans could claim that it was not.

"We wrote a draft with preamble, 10 articles and closing words," Ischinger said. "We tried everything possible."

The draft was endorsed by Washington and received some goodwill in Moscow. The trio was optimistic.

But then Russia suddenly withdrew its support for the idea, and the Serbs in November at a meeting refused to deal with it.

"It is clear that it was made easy for Serbia to refuse our proposal, because Moscow wouldn't have criticized such a move," Ischinger said. "At that moment, we were at our wits' end."

Some observers say Washington is equally responsible because of President Bush's public appearance in Albania this past summer, when he said that Albanian independence was inevitable. Ischinger, however, denied that. "It is wrong to mainly blame the United States," he said, adding that Moscow, because it strongly backed Serbia in refusing all compromise proposals, was mainly responsible. Ischinger said Russia simply had not accepted the 1998 NATO expansion into the Balkans and was seeing the organization's influence there increasingly critical.

There are positives to come out of the Troika negotiations, however, Ischinger said. The EU has become more unified in dealing with Kosovo, and Serbian and Albanian representatives have closed ranks in the countless hours they spent negotiating. Moreover, Ischinger said there was no reason to believe that in case of Kosovo's independence, violence would revisit the Balkans. He added that such independence would not cause a domino effect in other regions with separatist movements because of its unique circumstances. While handing back Kosovo to Serbia after years of U.N. oversight was "absolutely unrealistic," no one in Europe has an interest in marginalizing Serbia, a country that has its best future inside the EU, Ischinger added.

So what now?

Kosovo officials have announced they will proclaim independence, probably after the Serbian presidential elections due to take place in January. Since the Troika negotiations failed, Kosovo will then proceed to an internationally monitored independent state as laid out in the Ahtisaari plan. It's up to the individual nations to recognize that independence or not. This past Friday, EU leaders agreed to form a 1,800-strong police and civilian mission that would coexist with (but ultimately replace) the ongoing U.N. mission on the ground.

"This will be the real test for the EU: Will it be able to realize this mission?" Ischinger asked. "The train for Kosovo's independence has left the station. The EU now needs to take its place in the driver's seat."