Thursday, August 16, 2007

Another Limb for Kosovo?

Alan Kuperman's op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal is another variant on some of the "partition within unity plans" that are being proposed as a way to think creatively about dealing with Kosovo.

Kuperman writes:

... the U.N. plan should be modified to create a fully autonomous "Serb Republic of Kosovo-Metohija" (as Belgrade calls the province) within a Kosovo that would be recognized as independent only when the Albanians accept this provision. Russia, which until now has blocked U.N. action on Serbia's behalf, could claim a major victory and then insist that Belgrade endorse the plan, paving the way for Security Council approval.

This follows the advice Gordon Bardos gave U.S. policymakers two months ago:


During the next round of negotiations, the full range of Dayton’s ethnic power-sharing and conflict-regulating mechanisms should be considered: constitutional provisions making both Albanians and Serbs (as well as Kosovo’s other ethnic minorities) constituent peoples of Kosovo; rotating ethnic presidencies (at least for symbolic purposes); and the creation of entities or cantons with the right to "special parallel relationships" with neighboring states that Dayton provided.


The Europeans and the Russians are looking to avoid a Balkan train wreck. What is the U.S. now prepared to offer?

Comments:
Why is the notion of Daytin-type power sharing so attractive? Without the foreign occupiers, Bosnia will revert to civil war?

After WWII, there was widespread re-patriation of ethnic groups across state frontiers; ethnic cleansing by another name. That practice established the foundations of an stable European order - no more orphaned nations!

Why can't something similar be done in the Balkans? Why cant Serbiab part of Bosnia and the half of Kosovo revert to Serbia and for the other half to become part of Albania?

Why are these people in US & EU keep on insisting on these constitutional arrangements? If those worked, Yugolsavia would not have broken apart.

Kupermann is just another pie-in-the-sky dreamer; not surprising from a university professor.

Anuthing other than what I have outlined above will lead to the next war.
 
Yes but in Bosnia and now in Kosovo Europeans accept they will be there. This gives them something to do and to say why EU is more than just free trade zone. So there is self-interest in European circles for these arrangements.
 
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