Hopes dimmed for an agreement from the UN Security Council over the future of Kosovo, with Western diplomats saying negotiations were deadlocked and talks would continue in European capitals.
The council's 15 members met behind closed doors Wednesday to hear from Vojislav Kostunica, the Serbian prime minister, and Fatmir Sejdiu, the president of Kosovo.
Kostunica insisted that Kosovo, a province of Serbia that is 90 percent ethnic Albanian, should remain part of its territory. Sejdiu laid out the Kosovars' demands for quickly gaining independence, a move that would be backed by the US and key European nations.
Kostunica said the country will not recognize any declaration of independence by Kosovo.
"Will for the first time in the UN's history a decision be taken -- contrary to the will of a democratic state and, what is more, of a UN founding member -- to redraw its internationally recognized borders, to abolish its sovereignty and to amputate 15 percent of its territory?" he said in prepared remarks.
But the Kosovars say they are ready to become independent.
"We are exhausted after nearly two decades of isolation, war and political limbo," Sejdiu said. "Lack of clarity about our status has held back our economy, discouraged international investment and prevented us from accessing international financial institution lending."
British Ambassador John Sauers said afterward that the meeting "underlined just how enormous the gulf is between the two parties," and he described the current situation in Kovoso as "unsustainable."
While Russians and their close Serbian allies contended any action outside the council would be illegal, Sauers and US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad insisted the 1999 UN resolution providing for Kosovo to be administered by the UN and NATO troops also contains the legal basis to move ahead with independence.
The US and Europeans insisted the issue of Kosovo's future status is unique, and would not set a precedent for other separatists groups as Russia and Serbia claim.
Khalilzad declared the views of the two sides "irreconcilable," and he said it was time for an independent Kosovo.
"The continuation of the status quo poses not only a threat to peace and stability in Kosovo but also to the region and in Europe," he said.
Although Kosovo formally remains part of Serbia, the southern province has been run by the UN and NATO since 1999, when the Western military alliance ended former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic's crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists. Sauers recalled that the deportation of ethnic Albanians in the 1990s was the worst since World War II.
Italian Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema, whose country holds the Security Council presidency, confirmed the 15 members "did not reach any specific conclusions." But he said the council called on the parties "to maintain peace and refrain from actions that might jeopardize the security situation in the region," as they have both promised.
Wednesday's meeting focused on a recent report by US, EU and Russian mediators on two years of talks between Belgrade and Kosovo on the province's status. A four-month extension of the talks ended last month without agreement.
However, Russia said those talks yielded some progress and it called for further UN-sponsored negotiations on autonomy for the province. Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin insisted there would be more UN talks on Kosovo.
Calling himself an optimist, Churkin said Russia believes "that negotiations can continue and they can produce an outcome which will be acceptable for the two parties and which would keep stability in Kosovo and in the Balkans."
Assuming Russia again blocks action in the Security Council, the Kosovo issue will move to the EU. In that event, Sauers said, the EU will push for internationally supervised statehood for Kosovo under a plan drawn up by a UN envoy earlier this year.
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
Canada and the EU on Monday signed a defense and security pact as the transatlantic partners seek to better confront Russia, with worries over Washington’s reliability under US President Donald Trump. The deal was announced after a summit in Brussels between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. “While NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective defense, this partnership will allow us to strengthen our preparedness ... to invest more and to invest smarter,” Costa told a news conference. “It opens new opportunities for companies on both sides of the
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
CYBERCRIME, TRAFFICKING: A ‘pattern of state failures’ allowed the billion-dollar industry to flourish, including failures to investigate human rights abuses, it said Human rights group Amnesty International yesterday accused Cambodia’s government of “deliberately ignoring” abuses by cybercrime gangs that have trafficked people from across the world, including children, into slavery at brutal scam compounds. The London-based group said in a report that it had identified 53 scam centers and dozens more suspected sites across the country, including in the Southeast Asian nation’s capital, Phnom Penh. The prison-like compounds were ringed by high fences with razor wire, guarded by armed men and staffed by trafficking victims forced to defraud people across the globe, with those inside subjected to punishments including shocks from electric batons, confinement
RSS