Portugal urges EU unity over Kosovo

Portugal urges EU unity over Kosovo

"We must not find ourselves in a situation where some choose option A and others choose option B. I think that would be disastrous for the European Union," he said.

"It's urgent that we come to a common position on Kosovo."

Russia has threatened to use its UN Security Council veto to stop Kosovo being granted "supervised independence", while Britain, France and the United States have pushed for fresh talks on the province's future over 120 days.

The EU is set to launch a major mission in the Serbian province to take over from the United Nations operation there but it needs a new UN mandate to do so.

As the process drags on, Kosovo's large ethnic Albanian majority have become increasingly impatient for independence, with some leaders threatening to declare it autonomously.

NATO, which has almost 17,000 troops in Kosovo, in particular feels that its mission could then be compromised if certain of the allies, 21 of which are EU countries, recognize independence while others do not.

"The first priority is that we act together, in the same direction," Lobo Antunes said.

EU mulls new solutions

Adoption of a new Kosovo resolution has been put on hold; the possibility of adopting two resolutions emerges as an option.

All recent unofficial announcements amount to the same – an upcoming meeting between U.S. and Russian president, George Bush and Vladimir Putin, due to take place at the beginning of July, is expected to break the Kosovo impasse.

Meanwhile, the possibility of adopting not one, but two resolutions, has been floated as an option.

The first one would define the status of an EU mission to Kosovo, while the other would pertain to Kosovo’s future status.

Ahead of the Bush-Putin meeting, all parties have dug in their heels. The U.S. reiterates that Kosovo will be independent, while Russia reaffirms it would not consent to a solution that did not result from an agreement between Belgrade and Priština.

“With this in mind, the July meeting of the two presidents may fall short of everybody’s high expectations,” British Balkan analyst Tim Judah said.

Judah believes that Western diplomats are considering new possibilities of solving the Kosovo issue, but noted that there was no consensus among the EU member states.

In an op-ed published in the Priština daily Express, he reminded that it became clear over the past several weeks Russia would indeed veto any UN resolution the end result of which was the independence of Kosovo.

In Judah’s opinion, Washington no longer speaks of bilateral recognition of Kosovo’s independence because the EU insists that it cannot send its mission to the province to replace UNMIK without a new UN resolution in place.

Several new issues have been raised in the EU circles regarding the approach that should be taken. One option is for the EU to support a strategy of adopting a resolution comprising two separate stages, Judah wrote.

According to his sources, the EU mission and the international civic office would in the first stage replace UNMIK, and the issue of Kosovo’s status would be reopened after the first year of the mission in the second stage of the settlement process, with hopes that Russia would then agree to independence.

Judah says there are diverging views of this strategy in Brussels. According to some, it is a chance to leave an impression with Kosovo Albanians that the status settlement process was in progress, while others believe this approach carries along serious risks.

According to the latter, in case an EU mission arrived to Kosovo to support what was actually continuation of a status quo, the mission would run the risk of ending in failure since it would operate in an atmosphere of hostility and dissatisfaction.

Judah stressed that these are only some ideas being considered at the moment, adding that one European diplomat has said recently that he would be happy if there were “only two ideas on the menu among 27 EU states.”

In that sense, Judah cited Kosovo Prime Minister Agim Ceku’s spokesman Borut Grgić, who said that patience of Kosovo Albanians was not the issue, rather the breakdown of the Western consensus.

“Light at the end of a tunnel can no longer be seen clearly. I hope the EU and U.S. would hold firmly to their positions just as Russia does. We had Ahtisaari, but it now seems we turned full circle, with 27 different voices,” Grgić said.