Serbian Premier

Published by Reuters,October 25, 2005

Serbian premier tells UN Kosovo independence is ‘inconceivable’

BELGRADE - Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica told the UN Security Council yesterday that awarding independence to Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian majority against the will of Serbia would be an “inconceivable” violation of the law.

“The dismemberment of a democratic state and the change of its internationally recognized borders against its will are options not to be contemplated,” he said in a speech broadcast live by Serbian state television from New York.

Serbia’s southern province, bordering the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Albania, has been run by the United Nations since Serb forces were ousted by NATO in 1999. The Council was expected to approve Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s recommendation that talks be launched next month on its “final status.”

“We find it inconceivable, as I am sure do the members of this august body, that solutions should be imposed against its will on any democracy, least of all solutions that threaten its internationally recognized borders,” Kostunica said.

The Serbian Orthodox Church traces its roots back 1,000 years in Kosovo, giving the area a central role in Serbian cultural history, but over 90 percent of the population today is Muslim Albanian. Belgrade accepts they must have very wide autonomy but draws the line at conceding to their demand for a sovereign state.

Kosovo’s UN governor, Soren Jessen-Petersen, says Kosovo’s “legal limbo has ceased to be sustainable.”

Serbs see independence as a reward to Albanians for taking up arms against the sovereign state, which they say would set a dangerous precedent in international law. For the Albanians, however, the issue is a people’s right to self-determination. They say Serbs lost their moral authority over Kosovo because of their harsh repression.

In a letter to the Council, Kosovo’s Prime Minister Bajram Kosumi pledged “to build good institutions, to foster the rule of law and to protect all of Kosovo’s citizens, regardless of their ethnic origin.”

“These standards take time and effort: They are not just window dressing,” he said. “More needs to be done to ensure not only that minority ethnic groups are secure, but also that they feel secure.” But he said “Kosovo’s government and the large majority of Kosovo’s people (believe) that Kosovo’s final status should be that of an independent state with the borders of Kosovo as they currently stand with neither partition nor cantonization.”



Volume 7 Number 43 - Tuesday, October 25, 2005	A Publication of the ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN LAITY