The Kosovo Question
June 12, 2007
"We should not waste too much time in making decisions," the secretary general told reporters on Monday.
He said it was "absolutely necessary that the Security Council should take a fair and sound judgment on this by endorsing" UN mediator Martti Ahtisaari's plan for Kosovo's "supervised independence."
Ban was briefing reporters on his recent foreign trip, including stops in Panama, Spain and Germany where he attended the G8 summit last week.
During a visit to Albania Sunday, US President George W. Bush called for speedy moves to give Kosovo independence, saying the days of "endless dialogue" were over despite the outright hostility of Serbia and its ally Russia.
"We need to get moving, and the end result is independence," he noted.
But Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said Monday that his country was "rightfully outraged over the US policy on Kosovo" and insisted Washington had no right to give away Serbian territory.
No more delays
US State Department spokesman Tom Casey, however, urged the Security Council on Monday to move quickly.
"There is a resolution that is tabled at the UN," Casey said. "I expect those discussions to move forward. I expect there will be a vote on it."
Department spokesman Sean McCormack played down the prospect of a Russian veto.
"Nobody wants it to get to that point," McCormack said. "Nobody wants to see a veto."
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov last month said a veto would be a last resort.
"I hope a veto will not be necessary," Lavrov said after a meeting of foreign ministers of the Group of Eight industrialized nations in Potsdam, Germany.
Rising tensions
Some political analysts hope Moscow would at least abstain from voting on Kosovo in the council, although they said it was unlikely given the rising US-Russia tensions over a planned US missile defense system in Eastern Europe.
"If there is a veto, the most likely outcome is a unilateral declaration of independence," said Stephen Sestanovich of the Council on Foreign Relations.
"I would expect that Washington will recognize Kosovo and that at least a majority of EU countries will as well, but I don't know that you would get the EU as a collective body to do so, and that starts looking awkward, Sestanovich said. "That starts creating some problems."
Facing a Basque separatist movement on its own soil, Spain is concerned about the implications of Europe recognizing Kosovo's independence outside the UN framework.
The issue is up for discussion by the contact group for Kosovo -- the United States, Britain, Germany, Italy and Russia -- when it meets on Tuesday in Paris.
No immediate plans
Meanwhile, UN diplomats said the Security Council had no immediate plan to take up a revised draft resolution put forward by Britain on May 31 that would reaffirm support for the UN plan for Kosovo.
The new draft, sponsored by the United States, Belgium, Britain, France, Italy, Slovakia and Germany, calls for "full implementation" of the provisions contained in the Ahtisaari plan.
Though technically a Serbian province, Kosovo has been UN-run since the end of the NATO assault in mid-1999.
Some 10,000 ethnic Albanians died and hundreds of thousands fled Kosovo during the 1998-1999 conflict between Serbian government troops and ethnic Albanian separatists.