UNITED NATIONS: UN council begins considering Kosovo independence

There is "considerable support" within the U.N. Security Council for supervised independence for Kosovo, the council president said on Tuesday (April 3), but he said a vote on the breakaway Serbian province is unlikely soon. The U.N. mediator for Kosovo, Martti Ahtisaari, a former Finnish president, last week recommended supervised independence for the breakaway Serbian province -- a move fiercely opposed by Belgrade but strongly backed by the United States and European Union. Kosovo is the last major dispute following the breakup of Yugoslavia marked by bloody wars in the 1990s. Kosovo has been under U.N. administration since 1999, when NATO launched bombing raids to stop Serb forces from driving out the province's ethnic Albanians, who comprise 90 percent of the population. Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica addressed the closed meeting of the Security Council on Tuesday, while a representative of the U.N. mission in Kosovo spoke on behalf of Kosovo President Fatmir Sejdiu. Sejdiu, who did not address the council due to protocol issues, told reporters afterward that "unfortunately we have exhausted all possibilities of a negotiated agreement." Kostunica called for new talks with a new mediator. "The way that Mr. Ahtisaari has handled these negotiations, if I would look for a proper word it would be non-negotiations- something completely different from general negotiations," said Kostunica. Finally, there were no negotiations for future status, just one meeting in Vienna on the future status on the 24th of July 2006. And finally it appeared that what Mr. Ahtisaari proposed was in accordance with the position of one side, Kosovo Albanians, and not an effort to reach a compromise between the two sides." Ahtisaari brushed off the comments by the Serbian prime minister. "Perhaps he has partly contributed to what he has said because when I went to Belgrade present the first plan on the second, he was not available. I saw president Tadic. But, I totally disagree that this has been a useless exercise. Because, otherwise we couldn't have actually made the proposals that we made. Had we not gone through thoroughly the different discussions." The Ahtisaari plan would give independence to the ethnic Albanian-majority but provides for a European Union overseer, an EU police mission alongside the current 16,500-strong NATO peace force and broad self-government for the remaining 100,000 Serbs.

ITN Source | April 5, 2007

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