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Kofi Annan calls for talks to begin on future of Kosovo

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan recommended to the Security Council on Friday that talks begin without delay on the future of Kosovo, with independence as an option.

"The question of independence is on the table, the question of autonomy is on the table," he told reporters in Bern, Switzerland. "We will discuss all that with Belgrade, with Pristina, with neighboring countries and other interested countries."

He said he was acting after receiving a report three days ago from his special envoy to Kosovo, Kai Eide of Norway, on the province's progress in meetings standards of democracy and minority rights.

Eide's report said progress had been made in establishing civic, judicial and legislative bodies, public services and economic structures. But it said property rights, which it identified as a key element in settling Kosovo's ethnically divided society, "are neither respected nor ensured."

Debilitating ethnic tensions remain high, with the majority ethnic Albanians doing little to reassure minority Serbs, the report said.

"The Kosovo Serbs fear that they will become a decoration to any central-level political institution with little ability to yield tangible results," the report said. "The Kosovo Albanians have done little to dispel it." Kosovo is a province of Serbia now under UN supervision.

Nevertheless, the report says, "There will not be any good moment for addressing Kosovo's future status; it will continue to be a highly sensitive political issue. Nevertheless, an overall assessment leads to the conclusion that the time has come to commence this process."

Annan said he would be naming "in a very short time" a person to lead the coming talks. "What's important," he said, "is that talks begin soon." The Security Council is to take up the question on Oct. 24, and diplomats predicted that the talks would begin before the end of the year.

Kosovo's UN governor, Soren Jessen-Petersen of Denmark, has indicated that negotiations would be conducted on a shuttle basis between Belgrade, the capital of Serbia-Montenegro, and Pristina, the provincial capital of Kosovo.

Kosovo has been run by the UN and protected by NATO peacekeepers since 1999, when a NATO bombing campaign halted Serbia's repression of ethnic Albanians, which followed an uprising by Albanian guerrillas.

Ethnic Albanians, who make up 90 percent of Kosovo's 2 million people, hope that the discussions will mark the final step toward seceding from Serbia-Montenegro, the union that joins the remaining republics of the former Yugoslavia.

Serbia is adamantly opposed. Half of Kosovo's 100,000 Serbs live in NATO-protected enclaves, and Serbian officials have argued that this is evidence that there have not been sufficient advances in minority rights.

They also point to mass rioting in March 2004, when 50,000 ethnic Albanians took part in a three-day wave of attacks on Serbs and other minorities, resulting in 19 deaths. Four thousand people were driven from their homes.
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