PREVIEW: Serbia braces for Kosovo diplomatic showdown

By Boris Babic Mar 9, 2007, 2:55 GMT

Belgrade - Serbian and Kosovo Albanian negotiators were headed for last-ditch, top-level negotiations Saturday in Vienna though nobody, including the negotiators and mediator, expects any real talks on the future of the breakaway province.

The stage was set for a dialogue when the talks started in early 2006, but the two sides have conducted monologues from the start - the gist of them being that the majority Albanians want independence, which Belgrade would not give.

Appointed by the United Nations to foment the Kosovo talks, Finnish diplomat Martti Ahtisaari in February unveiled a draft plan paving the way for Kosovo's sovereignty - even if it did not mention it explicitly. He was aware that Serbia would not accept it.

'I have to be honest in saying that regarding the status question, the parties remain diametrically opposed,' he said a week ahead of the summit.

After another volley of meetings since, Ahtisaari sent a revised plan Wednesday to Belgrade and Pristina. The changes being cosmetic, the document was again rejected with indignation in Belgrade and welcomed in Pristina.

'The document is unacceptable for Serbia,' a statement said Thursday after a meeting of the state leadership, including President Boris Tadic and caretaker Premier Vojislav Kostunica.

Serbia complained that not a single amendment it submitted to protect its sovereignty over Kosovo was accepted. Both Tadic and Kostunica would travel to Vienna, though clearly only to turn Ahtisaari's plan down.

Kostunica has never stopped harping that the UN charter guaranteed inviolable borders, and he warns that allowing Kosovo to go independent would create a dangerous precedent in international law.

Tadic, however, had in the past warned Serbs that they may not like the outcome of the Kosovo process.

In Kosovo, which is nominally still Serbian territory, but in which Belgrade has had no say since NATO ousted Serbia's troops in 1999, politicians from the Albanian majority rated the plan as 'positive.'

'What we can say about the package is that it creates the essence of the future state of Kosovo,' President Fatmir Sejdiu said.

The Kosovo political leadership would also travel collectively to Vienna expecting - unlike their embittered counterparts from Belgrade - to declare victory.

'We want the (future) status to respond to the reality in Kosovo with an independent and sovereign state,' said Hashim Thaqi, an opposition leader but part of the negotiating team.

Ahtisaari's plan was endorsed by the big Western powers individually, as well as by the EU and NATO - as NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer reiterated Thursday in Belgrade.

At that, NATO is eager to pull out of the peacekeeping mission it has led in Kosovo over the last 93 months, at a cost of billions of dollars.

Belgrade is banking on the support of Russia, hoping that it would block the measure once it reaches the UN Security Council - quickly after the Vienna summit, according to Ahtisaari's plan.

But while Moscow has expressed some reservations regarding an apparently imminent 'imposed solution' of a sovereign Kosovo, Serbia provided no realistic alternative to either independence or the expensive protectorate that the province has be since 1999.

Kosovo was the scene of an unmeasured response of Belgrade's security forces to an Albanian insurgency in 1998-99. The bloodshed triggered an exodus of the Albanian population and, eventually, a NATO intervention against the now-defunct Yugoslavia.

Over the last few years, the UN administration and NATO have been passing increasing responsibility in governing and security to local authorities in Kosovo.