Posted on 04/13/2007 7:02:40 AM PDT by oilfieldtrash
BELGRADE, April 13 (Reuters) - Serbia plans to defy the West and partition its breakaway province of Kosovo if it wins independence this year, analysts and politicians say.
And in the opinion of some Western experts, partition, a land swap or a population transfer might better reflect the realities and wishes of the ethnic groups involved than the multi-ethnic blueprint the West is so dogmatic about.
"The elephant in the room that no one wants to acknowledge is that Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo don't really want to live together in the same state," professor Steven Meyer of the National Defense University in Washington said.
"Whether we like it or not, that should be respected."
If Kosovo were allowed "a vote on what people want and who they want to live with, one would get a very different picture to what is now pushed" by the United States, the European Union and special U.N. envoy Martti Ahtisaari, he told Reuters.
The northern slice of Kosovo above the River Ibar is home to some 40,000 Serbs. About 60,000 more live in isolated enclaves to the south, surrounded by two million ethnic Albanians.
NATO allies and the European Union reject partition.
But on the ground, Kosovo is already partitioned. In terms of administration, telephone links, water and electricity, the north has no ties to the Kosovo capital, Pristina.
Kosovo laws and U.N. decrees go unheeded, and Serbs continue to use Serbian number plates and the dinar rather than the U.N.-imposed 'KS' plates and euro.
Meyer said Ahtisaari's plan "will institutionalise ethnically based municipalities on both sides", creating the base "for the Serb areas ... to declare their own independence".
Kosovo's northern triangle has been a no-go zone for Albanian leaders since the war. Plain-clothes police from Serbia patrol the divided city of Mitrovica at its gate.
And Serb sources say the government in Belgrade is quietly buying up Albanian homes in the north.
REAL GOAL: PARTITION
"If Kosovo becomes independent, Serbs in the north will declare their own separation from Kosovo," said Oliver Ivanovic, a Kosovo Serb politician courted by Western diplomats as a voice of relative moderation.
Analyst James Lyon believes Serbia has already made plans.
For now, he wrote this week in an Internet comment, Serbia is trying to delay a U.N. decision on Ahtisaari's recommendation that Kosovo be granted independence, under EU supervision.
Serbia wants its ally Russia, which has veto power on the U.N. Security Council, to stall the process so the Albanians lose patience and declare independence unilaterally, triggering a Serb exodus from the southern enclaves to the northern haven.
The West wants a U.N. decision by mid-year to end the legal limbo Kosovo has lived under since NATO bombing drove out Serb forces in 1999 to end the killing of civilians while Serbs fought Albanian separatist guerrillas.
Officially, Serbia is not interested in partitioning Kosovo, provided it is not forced to give up 15 percent of its territory, and lose land steeped in Serb history and myth.
But Belgrade, privately, knows it cannot recover Kosovo and its "real goal" is partition, Lyon said.
French soldiers of the 16,500-strong NATO peace force patrol a tense dividing line in Mitrovica, a rundown mining centre. The U.N. mission has only a minimal presence in the north, and NATO has just 600 American and German soldiers there.
Lyon predicts that if Kosovo goes independent without U.N. authority, Serbia will use U.N. Security Council resolution 1244 to nail its claim to the northern enclave it already controls.
Adopted after NATO moved in, 1244 affirms the sovereignty of Yugoslavia, a defunct state to which Serbia is legal successor.
BREAKING THE LAND SWAP TABOO
The West fears that any formal discussion of partition could trigger Albanian attacks on the Serbs in the surrounded enclaves, shattering the promise of ethnic co-existence.
It could also re-ignite unrest among ethnic Albanians on Kosovo's borders in Serbia's Presevo Valley and in Macedonia, where NATO smothered fighting in 2000 and 2001. Presevo Albanian leaders have threatened as much, in the event Kosovo is divided, and some of Macedonia's former guerrillas are still restive.
Another Balkan domino could also fall, if Kosovo's independence persuades the Serbs of Bosnia that they too can secede, and join Serbia as some of them advocate.
If the Ahitsaari plan for Kosovo independence is derailed in the United Nations, Meyer said, "people will start looking at a number of alternatives, including partition".
And if it succeeds, there is still "likely to be violence and a Serb exodus to the north".
Amitai Etzioni, professor at George Washington University, says U.N. efforts to create a multi-ethnic state have been "a complete failure, unwise and authoritarian".
"The ethnic groups are as far apart as before the war," he told Reuters. "We need separation."
Out by Christmas.
ping
This is garbage because there are deep christian orthodox roots there. The only thing “partition” means is kill all christians.
It is better than the Fat Finn plan.
Well, they needed to turn for advice not to Matti Ahtisaari, but to Vaclav Havel. Partition, if done properly, is the best possible thing, as it could involve causing hardship to the smallest number of people.
Partition will be inevitable since nether group wants to share the same state. The same thing will likely eventually happen in the British created (see the South Africa Act of 1909) macro state of South Africa which was built out of two British colonies (where the majority of the Bantu population lived) & two Boer Republics. The Boers & the Zulus are the most likely peoples to create some sort of partition. The Anglophone group in Quebec has also discussed the possibility of partition in the event of Quebec secession in the past.
If the athisaari plan was approved, the Serbs would have gotten nothing in the end and been ethnically cleansed with the UN's approval.
Well, based on published reports [if I remember correctly], Ahtisaari went to belgrade, too - and received their input. According to the reports as I remember them, that input was a maximalistic position, i.e. categorically rejecting any partition. But maybe the reports were wrong, or my memory might be playing tricks.
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