Guardian: Russia sees Kosovo as payback opportunity

Guardian: Russia sees Kosovo as payback opportunity

After years of getting nowhere on the central issue of Kosovo's final status, the international community is now desperately short of time.

Martti Ahtisaari, the UN special envoy, will present his plan to the Security Council on March 26. He insists a status decision cannot be delayed any longer.

Many expect a showdown at the G8 summit in Heiligendamm in June when western leaders will confront the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.

Hardline nationalists among Kosovo's ethnic Albanian Muslim majority are pushing for immediate full independence. The UN mission was attacked recently amid fears that the ethnic Serb Christian minority may again be targeted.

Anticipating trouble, NATO has sent 600 German troops to reinforce its 16,000 peacekeepers.

Tempers are also fraying in Belgrade where rival politicians, struggling to form a government after an inconclusive January election, agree on two things only: Kosovo is sovereign Serbian territory that will not be surrendered; and the UN is acting illegally.

Russia, with ethnic, religious and strategic ties to Serbia, says Belgrade's wishes must be respected as a matter of principle. But critics say Putin is using Kosovo for tactical advantage in a wider bid to reassert Russian power on the international stage.

Tony Blair's big moment in 1999 was Boris Yeltsin's moment of humiliation. Now Russia is stronger - and it's payback time.

Some analysts predict an EU split on the issue but Ahtisaari has no time for such mithering.

"If the international community wants a solution it has to be courageous enough to make a status declaration because the parties are totally incapable of doing it themselves," he said in a recent interview in London. "You have to impose a solution from above. I don't like it but that's the situation."

Suggestions that Russia, after extracting maximum advantage, would ultimately abandon the Serbian nationalists and strike a deal might not be very wide of the mark.

"Putin has never said Russia would use its veto," Ahtisaari noted. But political will, so often lacking in Kosovo since the heady, heedless days of 1999, was key to avoiding a new crisis.

"If the EU cannot do this it can forget about its role in international affairs. If we can't do this during the German presidency we should give up and admit we can't do anything."