Serbia's new parliament has overwhelmingly rejected a UN plan that would give virtual independence to the breakaway province of Kosovo.
Wednesday's result dooms hopes of a compromise between Serbian and ethnic Albanian officials at a final round of negotiations on the plan scheduled to start next week in Vienna, Austria. It is also means that a resolution to the dispute over Kosovo's final status will probably have to be imposed by the UN Security Council.
The 250-member parliament voted 225-15 to reject the plan, which was drafted by UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari. Four lawmakers abstained and another six were absent from the vote in the inaugural parliamentary session after last month's elections.
PHOTO: AP
Resolution
The parliament adopted a resolution saying Ahtisaari's draft "breaches fundamental principles of international law" and "illegally lays the foundation for the creation of a new independent state on the territory of Serbia."
The plan was welcomed by Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leadership. Although it does not specify that Kosovo will be independent, the UN draft sees internationally supervised self-rule for the southern province, including a flag, anthem, army, constitution and the right to join international organizations.
Serbian pro-Western President Boris Tadic told parliament that Ahtisaari's plan "essentially opens the way for an independent Kosovo, which is a violation of the essential principles of the U.N. charter, which guarantees inviolability of internationally recognized states."
Tomislav Nikolic, a leader of the ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party -- the biggest group in Serbia's new parliament -- hailed the parliament resolution, saying ``no one can create a new country on Serbia's territory without Serbia's consent.''
Future
But Kosovo Prime Minister Agim Ceku said Serbia's views would have no impact on the future status of the province.
``What matters is what the European Union and the international community are saying, and not what Belgrade is saying. That's their problem,'' Ceku said.
A few Serb politicians are not opposed to Ahtisaari's plan. Cedomir Jovanovic, of the Liberal Democrats, urged the parliament to ``accept the reality that Kosovo has not been under our control since 1999.''
Serbia lost control over the province in 1999 when NATO bombing halted former President Slobodan Milosevic's crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists and turned Kosovo into a UN protectorate.
Belgrade has offered broad autonomy for Kosovo, which it considers the medieval cradle of its statehood. But Kosovo Albanians demand complete secession.
After the final round of negotiations in Vienna, Ahtisaari plans to put his proposal before the UN Security Council by the end of next month.
Resigned
The commander of the UN police in Kosovo resigned on Wednesday, days after violent clashes between the police and demonstrators left two protesters dead and another critically injured. The commander, Stephen Curtis, a former British police officer, resigned under pressure from the mission's most senior official, Joachim Ruecker.
On Tuesday, autopsy reports showed the two had been killed by rubber-coated bullets.
Television pictures of the demonstration in the center of Pristina, the regional capital, showed members of a Romanian riot squad attached to the UN firing rubber bullets into the crowd.
A third man is being treated in a military hospital and remains in critical condition, UN officials said.
Ruecker said the commissioner's resignation "would follow the principle of political accountability."
He also appointed an international prosecutor to head the investigation into the men's deaths.
The UN is planning to withdraw from the region by the end of summer and grant the province substantial self-rule.
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late
French police on Monday arrested a man in his 20s on suspicion of murder after an 11-year-old girl was found dead in a wood south of Paris over the weekend in a killing that sparked shock and a massive search for clues. The girl, named as Louise, was found stabbed to death in the Essonne region south of Paris in the night of Friday to Saturday, police said. She had been missing since leaving school on Friday afternoon and was found just a few hundred meters from her school. A police source, who asked not to be named, said that she had been
BACK TO BATTLE: North Korean soldiers have returned to the front lines in Russia’s Kursk region after earlier reports that Moscow had withdrawn them following heavy losses Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday pored over a once-classified map of vast deposits of rare earths and other critical minerals as part of a push to appeal to US President Donald Trump’s penchant for a deal. The US president, whose administration is pressing for a rapid end to Ukraine’s war with Russia, on Monday said he wanted Ukraine to supply the US with rare earths and other minerals in return for financially supporting its war effort. “If we are talking about a deal, then let’s do a deal, we are only for it,” Zelenskiy said, emphasizing Ukraine’s need for security guarantees