| Submit your comments on this article | |
| Europe | |
| Bush Has Plan to Act on the Status of Kosovo | |
| 2005-05-18 | |
| After largely ignoring the deteriorating situation in the Balkans since President Bush was elected in 2000, the Bush administration has decided on a new strategy designed to finally settle whether Kosovo will become fully independent of Serbia, U.S. officials said. Ethnic tensions have been rising in Kosovo, which is still administered by the United Nations six years after NATO bombed Serbia over its treatment of the Kosovars. Sporadic violence has erupted between the majority Albanian and minority Serbian populations, most recently in March, as the region's status has remained in limbo. "If you freeze the situation for two or more years, you are likely to create a pressure cooker," a senior administration official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the plan has not been announced. He said the United States is signaling that it is now committed to resolving the outstanding issues in Bosnia and Kosovo. The plan, which Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns will announce in congressional testimony tomorrow and a speech Thursday, has been carefully worked out in intensive discussions with U.N. and European officials. The United Nations will shortly appoint Kai Eide, the Norwegian ambassador to NATO, to assess whether Kosovo is ready for final-status talks. Once that certification is made, probably by mid-autumn, then the United Nations will sponsor international negotiations on whether Kosovo should remain part of Serbia, become independent or achieve a hybrid status. Russia, the traditional defender of the Serbs, initially appeared to support the idea but has since expressed reservations, the official said. The administration will combine this push on Kosovo with a warning to Serbia that a normal relationship with the United States and NATO depends on the capture of the two most-wanted war criminals from the Bosnian war -- former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his military commander, Ratko Mladic. Over the past two months, the Serbian government has delivered about a dozen people to the war crimes tribunal in The Hague, but Karadzic and Mladic are crucial because they ordered the killings of nearly 8,000 Muslims at Srebrenica. Karadzic was recently spotted having lunch with his wife in southeastern Bosnia, according to reports in the region. The administration official noted that July 11 will mark the 10th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre. "We can't forget that," he said. "That is the next big step for the Serbian government. They have to face that." Richard C. Holbrooke, who in the Clinton administration was instrumental in forging the Dayton Peace Accords that ended the Bosnian war 10 years ago, applauded the initiative. "They inherited a Balkans policy they neither understood nor appreciated," the former U.N. ambassador said.
The administration's push appears to be part of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's effort to clean up the diplomatic underbrush that gathered as policymakers in Bush's first term focused on the war on terrorism. Burns also has been a key player in engineering the administration's renewed interest in Kosovo. As a former ambassador to Greece and to NATO, Burns is intimately familiar with Balkan issues. He recently traveled to Europe to line up allied support for the initiative. Bush administration officials say that they cannot predict how the multi-year process of determining Kosovo's future will end, and that the administration will not advocate a particular option. | |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #14 c'mon, zhang, think of all that goodwill we earned with the muslim world for befriending the kla... |
| Posted by: thibaud (aka lex) 2005-05-18 22:51 |
| #13 I still don't understand why we got involved in Kosovo (or Bosnia). We got the entire Eastern Orthodox world pissed off at us and are getting the blame for the hash that the UN has made of the aftermath. One thing you gotta say about Clinton - just about every foreign policy undertaking he put together was a net negative for Uncle Sam, from Mogadishu right up to the Oslo Accords. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2005-05-18 20:55 |
| #12 Holbrooke promotes Kosovo like David Essex promotes Rock On. File under Only Claim to Fame / One Hit Wonder |
| Posted by: thibaud (aka lex) 2005-05-18 17:43 |
| #11 I would leave a note that said, "Hate Oz, Hate you, took the ruby shoes and am headed back to Kansas. Cya!" |
| Posted by: mmurray821 2005-05-18 12:15 |
| #10 LOL Pappy - maybe cab fare as well? Say, a $20? |
| Posted by: Frank G 2005-05-18 11:38 |
| #9 ROFL, Pappy! Your international experience is showing, lol! *applause* |
| Posted by: .com 2005-05-18 11:23 |
| #8 Wave 'bye' at the pier? I'm all for the 'leaving a note on the dresser' myself. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2005-05-18 11:02 |
| #7 Plan? Smile. Pull our troops out of Bosnia. Wave bye-bye at the pier. Wish them well. |
| Posted by: ed 2005-05-18 10:30 |
| #6 WTF?????? "...which is still administered by the United Nations..." Why the *&^% do we have to bail this pile of ignorant, criminal pig swill out AGAIN?????? Let's see less of that good old unilateralist US and more of that resurgant wonderful soft-power from the EU and friends. I am SO sick of this!!!!!! |
| Posted by: AlanC 2005-05-18 10:26 |
| #5 I firmly believe that LLL suffer from ADD and can't keep their eye on the ball. Kosovo is a shithole BECAUSE we let the un take over administration. I don;t even think the U.S. has any sizable force near Kosovo, it's a un/eu affair. |
| Posted by: Cyber Sarge 2005-05-18 10:13 |
| #4 cbs continues to test the temperature of the tar pits. |
| Posted by: 2b 2005-05-18 09:50 |
| #3 Kosovo? |
| Posted by: Phitle Criter4927 2005-05-18 09:43 |
| #2 It's Holbrooke and WaPo, of course. I edited out some of the Holbrooke nonsense to shorten the article (a little). But he's in classic form -- everything was great when he was in charge of our foreign policy, and everything has gone to hell since. |
| Posted by: Steve White 2005-05-18 09:01 |
| #1 WTF? Since when is the deteriorating situation in Kosovo the fault of the US? Cripes, the only reason it's had any stability at all is the presence of US troops. |
| Posted by: Spot 2005-05-18 08:44 |