Draft Kosovo resolution in UN today

Draft Kosovo resolution in UN today

“This does not mean voting will follow straight away, what we wish to do is acquaint the ambassadors with the somewhat modified draft, which now includes some of the objections made by other sides,” Tanjug was told earlier by an anonymous diplomatic source at the UN.

Kosovo negotiating team member Veton Surroi said Wednesday the previous consultations phase was over, as well as that there was a document that will be considered by the UN Security Council today.

Washington-based analyst Obrad Kesić said he was unaware that a new resolution would be presented to the council, adding the Albanian politicians were likely talking about the U.S.-EU resolution, with the text “perhaps changed in several sentences to be more acceptable to Russia”.

“I think this is about changing the phrasing of several sentences [in the draft resolution], since the State Department lawyers have spent some weeks now trying to come up with a resolution that would cancel 1244 and open up possibilities for Kosovo’s independence. In other words, a resolution that would give the Russians an honorable way out,” Kesić said.

However, he said chances of Russia backing down from its position on the province’s status were slim, adding that there was also little room for compromise between Washington and Moscow.

“What needs to be seen now is, which side finds this to be an important issue? Do U.S. interests tied to Kosovo matter so much that cooperation with Russia will be jeopardized? Moscow has spent much of its credibility. This has now become a serious issue for the Russians, perhaps not so much so in the beginning, but any Russian decision to back down now would be interpreted as a sign of weakness by the U.S. and Europe,” Kesić explained.

According to him, the easiest answer the United States could come up with to Russian threats of veto would be continued negotiations.

G8 clashes over Kosovo

Foreign ministers from the Group of 8 countries clashed Wednesday over the future of Kosovo after Russia warned that a UN plan paving the way for the province’s independence could encourage separatist movements in the Russian-backed regions of Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia, the AP reported from Potsdam.

During a heated discussion with the foreign ministers of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States, Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, made it clear that Moscow's goal was to hold direct talks between Serbia and Kosovo before considering the UN independence plan.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German foreign minister, publicly disagreed, saying there was a vital need for a UN Security Council resolution on Kosovo.

"We need to make it clear to our Russian partners that without a decision by the Security Council we simply won't make any progress on the western Balkans and Kosovo," said Steinmeier.

The foreign ministers were meeting for the last time before next week's summit of G-8 leaders in the north German resort of Heiligendamm where Kosovo will be one of the main issues on the foreign policy agenda.

A European diplomat who was at the meeting and who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Lavrov had compared Kosovo to Palestine. Lavrov asked the ministers why they were in such a hurry to grant independence to Kosovo while for 40 years they had failed to support independence for Palestine, the diplomat said.

Steinmeier, addressing Lavrov directly during the meeting, asked if Russia would veto any new Security Council resolution that would end the international protectorate of Kosovo.

Lavrov would not give a precise answer, according to another diplomat.

Lavrov said that if Kosovo achieved independence, then Ossetia and Abkhazia would have every reason to claim independence as well. Georgia's behavior toward the Ossetians and Abkhazians, he said, was much worse than Serbia's treatment of the ethnic Albanians of Kosovo.

France's new foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, said Kosovo was a specific case that could not be used as a precedent. He said the United Nations had not rushed into making a decision on Kosovo. Once the status of the province was finally resolved, it would bring stability to this part of the Balkans, he said.