Kosovo

Kosovo must bolster its failing justice system and establish rule of law throughout the country if it is to achieve prosperity and greater international recognition.

Štrpce, one of Kosovo’s largest Serb enclaves and one of the few with good Serb-Albanian relations and economic prospects, risks falling victim to the status dispute between Belgrade and Pristina.

More than a year after Kosovo declared independence, integration of its Serb minority remains a key challenge.

Kosovo has taken first state-building steps, but the inter­national community has not met its commitments to provide adequate support.

A month has passed since Kosovo declared independence on 17 February 2008. Much has gone well, but there is a real risk, as made most evident with the violence on 17 March around the courthouse in north Mitrovica, that partition will harden at the Ibar River in the north, and Kosovo will become another frozen conflict.

Kosovo’s transition to the status of conditional, or supervised, independence has been greatly complicated by Russia’s firm support of Serbia’s refusal to accept that it has lost its one-time province.

The preferred strategy of the European Union (EU) and the U.S. to bring Kosovo to supervised independence through the United Nations Security Council has failed, following Russia’s declared intention to veto. With Kosovo Albanians increasingly restive and likely soon to declare unilateral independence in the absence of a credible alternative, Europe risks a new bloody and destabilising conflict.

The debate on Kosovo’s future status has reached a crucial point. The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has begun to consider elements of a draft resolution to determine the entity’s future, which could be put to a vote in the coming weeks. The best way of ensuring regional peace and stability and lifting Kosovo out of an eight-year-long limbo, with a tired, temporary UN administration and an undeveloped, low-growth economy, is a resolution based squarely on the plan of UN Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari.

There is growing concern that the short postponement UN Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari announced in November 2006 for presentation of his Kosovo final status proposals to take account of Serbia’s 21 January elections may not be the last delay in a process that now could extend into the second half of 2007.

The Kosovo final status process risks breaking down the further the decision is pushed back into 2007. The six-nation Contact Group that has sponsored the process must at minimum deliver timely endorsement of the settlement package that UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari should present before January’s end, and the UN Security Council must pass a resolution superseding 1244 (1999) to allow the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) to transfer its responsibilities to Kosovo’s government and pave the way for new international bodies being readied by the EU.