Serbia and Kosovo are dispatching competing armies of lobbyists to governments that so far have wavered on recognizing the breakaway province.
Serbia, which considers Kosovo the cradle of its statehood and religion, fears Thursday’s ruling by the UNs International Court of Justice (ICJ) backing the legality of the 2008 declaration of independence could lead to a wave of new recognitions.
Its best hope for preventing Kosovo admission to the UN may be vetoes by China and Russia which both have their own restive regions — a reflection of concerns in some countries that separatists will be emboldened by the development.
The US and many in the West insist Kosovo’s statehood is a special case because it is the result of a brutal Serbian ethnic cleansing campaign against Albanian separatists that led to an international administration in 1999, when NATO ejected Serb forces after a brief aerial war.
“We call on those states, who have not yet done so, to recognize Kosovo,” US State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said on Thursday. “Now is the time for them, for Kosovo and Serbia, to put aside their differences and move forward.”
Some experts say there’s no practical way to prevent other independence-minded regions from drawing inspiration from the Kosovo ruling.
“The West wants to say that this case has no precedential importance, but that’s kind of a contortionist logic,” said Dana Allin at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based think tank. “You can say that, but whether you can enforce it is hard to say.”
In its nonbinding decision announced on Thursday, the top UN court said it did not rule on the legality of Kosovo’s statehood, but only on its declaration of independence.
Regions around the world where separatists may be energized by Kosovo’s secession include Spain’s Basque country and Catalonia, Scotland, Italy’s ethnic German-populated Alto Adige and parts of Romania and Slovakia populated by restive Hungarian minorities.
South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which have declared independence from Georgia, will also be encouraged by the ruling that states that such unilateral declarations of independence are not illegal under international law. Nearby, Armenian separatists in Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabah region may seek to legitimize their secession dating back to the early 1990s.
In the Middle East, Kurdish politicians in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region have also said they will carefully study the ICJ decision. Although the US has insisted on keeping Iraq’s territorial integrity since the 2003 invasion, the Kurds have repeatedly pointed out that they have been victims of Iraqi aggression under a variety of regimes since the 1930s.
So far, only 69 countries of the 192 in the UN General Assembly, including the US and most of the EU states, have recognized Kosovo since it declared independence from Serbia in February 2008. But a number of important countries, aside from China and Russia, have refused to do so, including India, Brazil, Israel, Egypt, Indonesia and South Africa.
For Kosovo to obtain UN membership, it needs a two-third majority in the General Assembly, plus the approval by all five permanent members of the UN Security Council.
“Already this weekend, special envoys will be dispatched to 55 countries throughout the world with my letter for the presidents of states or governments,” Serbian President Boris Tadic said on Friday.
“Many countries will be under pressure to recognize Kosovo before the UN General Assembly in September,” he said. “Serbia will do its utmost so that there are the least possible such recognitions.”
Kosovo Foreign Minister Skender Hyseni said he will send requests to 121 countries around the world asking for formal recognition of Kosovo’s independence.
He said he will travel to the US over the weekend for some 60 meetings with representatives of different nations in an attempt to get more recognitions ahead of the General Assembly.
But Serbia’s Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic claimed on Friday that many countries around the world “are worried about the possible misinterpretation” of the court’s ruling.
“It’s a very dangerous precedent,” Jeremic said. “Pandora’s Box has been opened, and it must be closed before something flies out of it.”
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