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The Government of the Republic of Serbia

In the service of citizens

Direct negotiations on future status of Kosovo the only right way to sustainable solution

22 September 2007

Belgrade, Sept 22, 2007– Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said today in an interview to daily “Vecernje Novosti” that direct negotiations on the future status of Kosovo are the only way to find a sustainable solution.

He said that previous talks were not direct talks since they focused on technical issues, while the status, which is the point of the negotiations and key to all other questions, has been neglected.

According to him, the status can be solved very easily if international order is respected, as well as the UN Charter which guarantees territorial integrity to every country, including Serbia.

What do you expect next week, after the meeting in New York:

- I expect that we will finally start talking about the status and that is when the power of Serbian arguments compared to Albanian ones will be much more visible. However, judging by the position of Albanians in London, they want to discuss not the question of Kosovo’s status within Serbia, but the post-status “good neighbourly relations”. This already shows what direction the talks will take. It is up to the new mediating “troika” to focus the talks on the right topic and that is the province's status.

Can Serbian arguments be stronger than Albanian:

- Our arguments are based on the firm legal foundation – the UN Charter. We offer a solution for the Albanian ethnic minority in Kosovo and that is the highest level of autonomy.

What are the points of touch between the positions of Belgrade and Pristina, since the Serbian side presented five crucial points of its programme in London, and the Albanians only one:

- Our position is that Serbia cannot be an exception to rules that are applied everywhere in the world. We offer the Albanian minority to decide about its future on all issues, but we will not let them interfere into the essence of our state, and that is its integrity and sovereignty.

Your opinion on the Albanian story of "good neighbourly relations”, which is another name for independence:

- The Albanian proposal which treats Serbia and Kosovo-Metohija as two equal political entities is in line with their stubborn insistence on independence. Such a position is supported by one part of the international community. However, it shouldn’t be forgotten that this position was already once rejected by the UN Security Council (SC). And if it was once examined and rejected by the UN, the same will happen the next time.

Since that proposal will not be put before the UN Security Council again, do you think that another strategy will be used this time – one-sided recognition of Kosovo’s independence:

- Those who advocate the idea of independent Kosovo understood that they cannot realise that idea legally, through a new UN resolution. Permanent members have the right to veto and Russia took the principled stance that it will not allow that international law and the UN Charter are violated. So now there is a real danger that they will try to achieve their goal outside the Security Council. That is clear from the statement of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon who said that the new process of negotiations would begin, but that the report would be delivered to him on December 10. So the scenario might be the following: since the two sides allegedly failed to reach an agreement by December 10, it is not possible to go to the Security Council again, so the solution is one-sided proclamation of Kosovo’s independence.

What can Serbia do to prevent that scenario:

- At this moment the most important is to point to the devastating consequences of such violence which has never been recorded in the history of the United Nations. And we are constantly doing that. The US always repeat that if Serbia doesn’t manage to convince the Albanians by December 10 to accept substantial autonomy, then Ahtisaari's plan would have to be applied. So Kosovo Albanians understood that they only have to wait for the given period to pass and prove that it is impossible to reach a compromise. But the problem is that one side, the Serbian, advocates the respect for the law, while the other, the Albanian, advocates its violation, with the help of great powers.

Do your warnings have any effects in the world since Europe is still divided on this issue and the warnings not to make one-sided moves are rather mild:

- They do, because it is obvious that it is not that easy to convince the entire European community that international law should be harshly violated. That is why I don’t believe that the position of the US will be unanimously supported in Brussels. The European Union is based on principles whose foundation is the UN Charter. So everything boils down to the same and that is that this question must be decided in the Security Council because everything else would be violation of principles on which the United Nations are based.

Has Russia assured Serbia that it will support it after December 10:

- Russia is determined that international law must be respected. The fact is that Kosovo-Metohija has become an international topic which cannot be avoided at any important meeting. The idea was to snatch away Serbia’s territory quickly, silently and in the dark, without anyone noticing it. But we managed to turn on the light on the big world stage and open up a big debate. We made a big move which must give results.

Is December 10 the end of the negotiations, or only a date when the negotiating “troika” is supposed to deliver the report to the SC:

- The realistic danger is that on December 10 Albanians will proclaim independence. If we read carefully the statement of Ban Ki-Moon, it can be concluded that December 10 is the deadline for submitting the report and not the end of the world. But Albanians clearly state that they will proclaim independence. The US officials don’t even hide that they support them in that intention.

Washington undoubtedly stated that if no agreement is made, Ahtisaari’s plan should be activated again on December 10:

- The moment Ahtisaari's plan was rejected in the SC, that is, when the US failed to turn it into a resolution, it ceased to exist. But the idea to use Ahtisaari’s plan as a basis for one-sided proclamation of independence shows that implementation of Annex 11 of this plan is more important than the fate of Serbia and of the ethnic Albanian minority in the province. Annex 11 is crucial.

Does Serbia have a unique response in case Albanians declare independence on December 10:

- Generally speaking, Serbia will not accept that decision. Kosovo-Metohija will remain the integral part of Serbia. We will do everything to help Serbs in Kosovo keep the faith that they are still part of Serbia, that the state has not given up on them. Not only symbolically, but in practice as well.

How will Serbia achieve that:

- All state institutions will treat Serbs from Kosovo as equal citizens of Serbia with full rights and we will do everything that their life conditions are not different from those of other Serbian citizens.

Is there a possibility that Serbian forces return to Kosovo to protect the Serbian people there:

- The part of Resolution 1244 that envisages return of Serbian forces to the province, as well as the one concerning the return of the displaced and safety of the remaining Serbs, have never been realised. Therefore, not even the existing document has been realised in its most important part, and they already want to make a new one. I believe that international forces in Kosovo will complete their mission, although that has not been the case so far.

Are there plans to send the Serbian army to Kosovo-Metohija in case of proclamation of independence:

- Right now we are thinking how to prevent the one-sided proclamation. If that occurs, links with our people there will in no way be broken.

What position will Serbia take towards the states that recognise independence:

- I believe that we must single out the main actor without whom there wouldn‘t be the story about independence at all. That is the NATO. The discussion has been opened on the gist of Ahtisaari’s plan and its Annex 11, which deals with unlimited military power of NATO in Kosovo-Metohija. And before Ahtisaari, NATO bombed Serbia, then entered with its forces a part of its territory, and now it wants to be the supreme power in Kosovo-Metohija through one-sided independence and enforcement of Annex 11.

Is that connected with Serbia’s accession into the EU:

- It is not connected in any way. We never bring into question Serbia’s European integration. Besides, several EU member states are not part of the NATO. That is not a condition. After all, the people will have to say what they think about that organisation. We had too many victims in Serbia’s wars so as to make new victims, by joining NATO, for someone else’s interest and in other continents. Serbia has suffered enough so as to take part in confrontations all around the world and have more victims. It is completely certain that not a single Serbian soldier will go to Iraq or Afghanistan. “Partnership for Peace” is the right measure of cooperation with the NATO and Serbia should establish the policy of military neutrality.