Serbia’s president said on Saturday that his country stands ready to participate in talks with its breakaway province of Kosovo, but that it would never recognize the new country’s secession.
Serbian President Boris Tadic’s stand does not auger well for the success of negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina, which the EU hopes to mediate. Kosovo insists that it will not discuss anything that would alter its status as an independent nation.
Two weeks ago, the UN General Assembly adopted a Serbian resolution calling for talks between the two sides to start.
Under US and EU pressure, Serbia agreed to water down its original draft — which described Kosovo’s secession as “unacceptable” — and replaced it with a new text, which simply acknowledged an international court ruling that Kosovo’s declaration of independence in 2008 was legal.
EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton has met with both Tadic and Kosovar Prime Minister Hashim Thaci on the sidelines of this year’s UN General Assembly to lay the groundwork for the talks.
Thaci reportedly reiterated to Ashton that the talks could only deal with issues between two sovereign states and that Pristina would not agree to discuss its status as an independent country.
In his address to the UN General Assembly on Saturday, Tadic described the resolution as “status neutral” and welcomed the EU’s readiness to facilitate the dialogue between Serbia and Kosovo.
However, he noted that Serbia’s position remains unchanged.
“The unilaterally declared independence of Kosovo will not be recognized by Serbia implicitly or explicitly,” Tadic said.
Serbia considers Kosovo the cradle of its statehood and religion.
The upcoming talks are of critical importance to Kosovo. Although 70 UN member states have recognized it as an independent state, it still lacks the support needed to join the UN. Russia and China could use their veto as permanent members of the Security Council to block Kosovo’s membership.
The talks are also vital for Serbia, which is seeking to join the EU. Twenty-two of the bloc’s 27 members already have recognized Kosovo and it is unlikely that Serbia’s candidacy could proceed without a resolution to the dispute.
Kosovo came under UN and NATO administration after a 1999 NATO-led air war halted former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic’s crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists there. However, the Security Council resolution that established the interim UN administration left Kosovo’s final status in question.
Kosovo’s predominantly ethnic Albanian leadership declared independence from Serbia in February 2008, with strong backing from the US and major EU nations. The Serbian government, strongly supported by Russia, insists that Kosovo is still legally bound by the Security Council resolution and the UN — at Moscow’s insistence — still retains overall authority in the nation of 2 million people.
In a related development, Bosnian President Haris Silajdzic criticized the leadership of his country’s Serb entity, saying their intransigence was hindering Bosnia’s progress and destabilizing the Balkans.
“Our collective resolve to prevent the escalation and opening of fresh wounds in Bosnia is being tested again,” Silajdzic told the General Assembly.
Since its 1992-1995 civil war, Bosnia has consisted of two fairly autonomous mini-states — one for Bosnian Serbs and the other shared by Bosnian Muslims and Roman Catholic Croats.
Because of the ethnic and religious divisions, Bosnia barely functions on a federal level, primarily because Bosnian Serbs do not want to transfer any of the powers of their mini-state to the central government. This is a key obstacle standing in the way of Bosnia’s EU membership.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
US president-elect Donald Trump is not typically known for his calm or reserve, but in a craftsman’s workshop in rural China he sits in divine contemplation. Cross-legged with his eyes half-closed in a pose evoking the Buddha, this porcelain version of the divisive US leader-in-waiting is the work of designer and sculptor Hong Jinshi (洪金世). The Zen-like figures — which Hong sells for between 999 and 20,000 yuan (US$136 to US$2,728) depending on their size — first went viral in 2021 on the e-commerce platform Taobao, attracting national headlines. Ahead of the real-estate magnate’s inauguration for a second term on Monday next week,
‘PLAINLY ERRONEOUS’: The justice department appealed a Trump-appointed judge’s blocking of the release of a report into election interference by the incoming president US Special Counsel Jack Smith, who led the federal cases against US president-elect Donald Trump on charges of trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat and mishandling of classified documents, has resigned after submitting his investigative report on Trump, an expected move that came amid legal wrangling over how much of that document can be made public in the days ahead. The US Department of Justice disclosed Smith’s departure in a footnote of a court filing on Saturday, saying he had resigned one day earlier. The resignation, 10 days before Trump is inaugurated, follows the conclusion of two unsuccessful criminal prosecutions
RSS