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The Government of the Republic of Serbia

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Ahtisaari’s proposal means de facto sovereignty for Kosovo

Belgrade, 3 February 2007

Standing Advisor at the Serbian negotiating team for talks on Kosovo-Metohija’s future status and Director of the Institute for Federalism in Fribourg, Switzerland, Thomas Fleiner said that with his proposal UN Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari is giving sovereignty to Kosovo-Metohija de facto, abolishing borders determined by UN Security Council Resolution 1244.

Author: federalism.ch

In an interview to the Tanjug agency, Fleiner said that this means that every country will have the right to acknowledge the province as an independent and sovereign country, adding that since Serbia must oppose such a resolution, it will find itself in a very unfavourable position in the international community.

He stated a number of objections to the draft resolution Ahtisaari presented yesterday in Belgrade and Pristina sticking solely to, as he said, principles of international law.

Fleiner pointed out that unlike the procedures applied in other cases when such documents were to be finally adopted, in his proposal Ahtisaari did not envisage the referendum.

The UN should respect the Constitution of Serbia as one of its members and ensure that in the process of resolving Kosovo’s status, the procedure applied should be corresponding to the ones applied in the process of adopting constitutional amendments, said Fleiner. He also recalled the case of Cyprus when both sides were able to adopt the UN document.

According to Fleiner, Ahtisaari’s proposal does not take into consideration Serbia’s constitution or respects it. Moreover, it does not even mention that in case the proposal is adopted, the Constitution of Serbia should be altered, he added.

He said that in Switzerland such a situation would necessarily imply that a double referendum be held on interested territories, as well as constitutional referendum on the territory of entire country.

Ahtisaari’s document often refers to the rule of law, however the rule of law should be respected when it comes to the proposal’s implementation procedure, which would not be the case here because the document does not say that it could be implemented only after amendments to the Serbian Constitution are adopted, explained Fleiner.

However, Fleiner said that the document contains important solutions regarding decentralisation which are of great interest to the Serbs in the province. Many of these solutions were proposed by the Belgrade negotiating team, he added.

Fleiner also warned that the implementation of such complex and difficult solutions demands appropriate legal regulations and administrative process, whereas in this case there are no guarantees that these solutions will be implemented.

Everyone knows that the Serb community in Kosovo is against the proposal. Why is their interest disregarded now if it is said that it will be respected and taken into count once Kosovo is an independent state? This is highly contradictory, said Fleiner.

He also said that it does not say anywhere what legal status the document itself will have – will it be a constitution, an agreement or a decision by the Security Council? He added, though, that the latter is most likely.

However, if the document is an agreement by the Security Council, it would pose a problem because there are no grounds in the UN Charter to give the Security Council the authority to influence the constitutional structure of any country.

In other words, the paper offers constitutional provisions. Constitutional amendments may be passed for every constitution, but since amendments would not have any effect on this document due to the veto of certain member countries, the document would be legally valid for ever, concluded Fleiner.