Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
New York Times
October 8, 2008
Pg. 16
By Dan Bilefsky
PRISTINA, Kosovo — The United States will maintain its troop presence in Kosovo until at least late next year, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said on Tuesday, underlining American support for the country, which declared independence in February in defiance of Serbia and Russia.
Mr. Gates’s visit was the first by a United States cabinet member since Kosovo’s independence declaration and the first here of an American defense secretary since 2001. At a time when Russia has been seeking to assert its political and economic clout in the Balkans and the Caucasus, Mr. Gates’s presence served to reinforce American intentions in the region.
His arrival began a week of meetings with European defense ministers, during which the United States is expected to reassure allies in the former Communist bloc about their prospects for joining NATO and the West, even as Russia seeks to show former Soviet republics and satellites that doing so comes at a price.
Mr. Gates said that the United States wanted to balance the need to show Russia that its war with Georgia in August had altered Russian-American relations, with an effort to keep avenues open for cooperation on significant issues like Iranian nuclear proliferation.
“We have to figure out the right path in terms of the reality that we have to do business with Russia on important issues,” he said, “but at the same time convey the message that it can’t be business as usual after what happened in Georgia.”
After meeting with Prime Minister Hashim Thaci and President Fatmir Sejdiu, Mr. Gates pledged to maintain the level of American troops in Kosovo, where the United States has about 1,600 soldiers, part of a 16,000-member NATO peacekeeping force. He also said the United States would continue to provide Kosovo with military equipment and training.
The pledge of support was enthusiastically received in Kosovo, a pro-American country where a main street is named after Bill Clinton, and above a hotel is a copy of the Statue of Liberty.
Still, the conflict between Russia and Georgia casts a shadow. After the brief war, Russia recognized Georgia’s two breakaway enclaves, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, as independent. The Kremlin said Western support for Kosovo had given it the moral and legal right to do so.
Some analysts contend that the events in Georgia have undermined Western diplomacy in Kosovo by giving credence to those who argued that Kosovo’s independence would spur other secessionist movements in Europe and beyond. A recent report by the International Crisis Group, a research organization, said the European Union and the United States were “struggling to come to terms with Russia’s attempts to portray its support for breakaway regions in Georgia as a mirror image of what they did in Kosovo.”
At the same time, Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian leadership is showing increasing concern about Serbia’s attempt to expand its influence over the administration of the Serbian-dominated northern part of the country, which threatens to effectively partition the country.
Already, dozens of Serbian police officers have abandoned Kosovo’s multiethnic police force and pledged allegiance to Serbia, while Serbia and Kosovo’s Serb authorities have made clear that European Union police officers deployed in Kosovo will be unwelcome in the north.
Mr. Gates was emphatic that the United States opposed partitioning Kosovo. “I do not believe partition is a solution now or at any time in the future,” he said. “The United States supports the territorial integrity of Kosovo.”
Kosovo’s fragile independence could suffer a psychological blow on Wednesday, in a vote scheduled at the United Nations on a Serbian challenge to the legality of Kosovo’s independence. Serbia is seeking permission from the United Nations to request an opinion from the International Court of Justice in The Hague, which would be nonbinding but symbolic. So far, only 47 of the 192 members of the United Nations have recognized Kosovo’s independence, and Serbia is confident that it will obtain the simple majority it needs to seek the court’s legal opinion.
Vuk Jeremic, the Serbian foreign minister, expressed his hope in a recent interview that if the case were sent to the International Court of Justice, other countries would be discouraged from recognizing Kosovo, and nations that had recognized Kosovo would reconsider.
Kosovo’s stability has also been undermined by the question of which international organization has authority to supervise the territory. Kosovo’s new Constitution calls for the European Union to assume an oversight role now exercised by the United Nations. But Serbia and Russia insist that this would be illegal because it has not been approved by the United Nations Security Council, and they have moved to block it. The result, analysts said, is a messy patchwork of overlapping institutions that threatens to create a security vacuum.
October 8, 2008
Pg. 16
By Dan Bilefsky
PRISTINA, Kosovo — The United States will maintain its troop presence in Kosovo until at least late next year, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said on Tuesday, underlining American support for the country, which declared independence in February in defiance of Serbia and Russia.
Mr. Gates’s visit was the first by a United States cabinet member since Kosovo’s independence declaration and the first here of an American defense secretary since 2001. At a time when Russia has been seeking to assert its political and economic clout in the Balkans and the Caucasus, Mr. Gates’s presence served to reinforce American intentions in the region.
His arrival began a week of meetings with European defense ministers, during which the United States is expected to reassure allies in the former Communist bloc about their prospects for joining NATO and the West, even as Russia seeks to show former Soviet republics and satellites that doing so comes at a price.
Mr. Gates said that the United States wanted to balance the need to show Russia that its war with Georgia in August had altered Russian-American relations, with an effort to keep avenues open for cooperation on significant issues like Iranian nuclear proliferation.
“We have to figure out the right path in terms of the reality that we have to do business with Russia on important issues,” he said, “but at the same time convey the message that it can’t be business as usual after what happened in Georgia.”
After meeting with Prime Minister Hashim Thaci and President Fatmir Sejdiu, Mr. Gates pledged to maintain the level of American troops in Kosovo, where the United States has about 1,600 soldiers, part of a 16,000-member NATO peacekeeping force. He also said the United States would continue to provide Kosovo with military equipment and training.
The pledge of support was enthusiastically received in Kosovo, a pro-American country where a main street is named after Bill Clinton, and above a hotel is a copy of the Statue of Liberty.
Still, the conflict between Russia and Georgia casts a shadow. After the brief war, Russia recognized Georgia’s two breakaway enclaves, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, as independent. The Kremlin said Western support for Kosovo had given it the moral and legal right to do so.
Some analysts contend that the events in Georgia have undermined Western diplomacy in Kosovo by giving credence to those who argued that Kosovo’s independence would spur other secessionist movements in Europe and beyond. A recent report by the International Crisis Group, a research organization, said the European Union and the United States were “struggling to come to terms with Russia’s attempts to portray its support for breakaway regions in Georgia as a mirror image of what they did in Kosovo.”
At the same time, Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian leadership is showing increasing concern about Serbia’s attempt to expand its influence over the administration of the Serbian-dominated northern part of the country, which threatens to effectively partition the country.
Already, dozens of Serbian police officers have abandoned Kosovo’s multiethnic police force and pledged allegiance to Serbia, while Serbia and Kosovo’s Serb authorities have made clear that European Union police officers deployed in Kosovo will be unwelcome in the north.
Mr. Gates was emphatic that the United States opposed partitioning Kosovo. “I do not believe partition is a solution now or at any time in the future,” he said. “The United States supports the territorial integrity of Kosovo.”
Kosovo’s fragile independence could suffer a psychological blow on Wednesday, in a vote scheduled at the United Nations on a Serbian challenge to the legality of Kosovo’s independence. Serbia is seeking permission from the United Nations to request an opinion from the International Court of Justice in The Hague, which would be nonbinding but symbolic. So far, only 47 of the 192 members of the United Nations have recognized Kosovo’s independence, and Serbia is confident that it will obtain the simple majority it needs to seek the court’s legal opinion.
Vuk Jeremic, the Serbian foreign minister, expressed his hope in a recent interview that if the case were sent to the International Court of Justice, other countries would be discouraged from recognizing Kosovo, and nations that had recognized Kosovo would reconsider.
Kosovo’s stability has also been undermined by the question of which international organization has authority to supervise the territory. Kosovo’s new Constitution calls for the European Union to assume an oversight role now exercised by the United Nations. But Serbia and Russia insist that this would be illegal because it has not been approved by the United Nations Security Council, and they have moved to block it. The result, analysts said, is a messy patchwork of overlapping institutions that threatens to create a security vacuum.