Serbia and Kosovo: good neighbours?

Serbia's boycott of the recent regional summit in Slovenia epitomises the mounting challenges facing regional co-operation in the western Balkans following Kosovo's declaration of independence. Though Serbia will not be formally asked by the EU to recognise Kosovo, in part because of a lack of consensus over the latter's status, the accession requirement of "good neighbourly relations" is increasingly being employed to pressure Serbia into at least de facto recognition of Kosovo's independence. With the Kosovo issue set to return to the domestic spotlight in Serbia following the international court of justice's ruling, pragmatic solutions are urgently required to ensure that regional co-operation avoids further rupture and paralysis.

Serbia has clearly indicated that it does not oppose Kosovo's participation in regional forums, provided that it is represented by UNMIK officials as "Kosovo-UNMIK", in accordance with UN security council resolution 1244 which, ultimately, continues to govern the status of the territory. The proposed alternative - "without names of states and only with names of participants" - was rejected by Serbia on the grounds that it would constitute tacit recognition of Kosovo's independence.

Entitled Together for the European Union: Contribution of the Western Balkans to the European Future, the summit, which was jointly organised by the prime ministers of Slovenia and Croatia, was largely devoid of EU representation, with Herman van Rompuy, the president of the European council, cancelling his participation at the last minute, after Catherine Ashton, the EU's high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, had earlier rejected an invitation to attend. The EU's new enlargement commissioner, Stefan Fule, left the summit early, hinting at the EU's growing scepticism towards further enlargement amid a plethora of regional disputes revolving around issues of sovereignty and territory.

The representation of Bosnia and Herzegovina - which has also not recognised Kosovo, primarily due to the stance of Bosnia's Serbs - by Nikola Spiric, the chairman of the council of ministers and a member of Milorad Dodik's Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD), meanwhile, was designed to prevent Haris Silajdzic, the Bosniak member of the country's presidency, from tacitly recognising Kosovo's independence. Accordingly, Spiric left the proceedings once it was the turn of Hashim Thaci, the prime minister of Kosovo, to speak; thereby sending "a clear message to Europe", in the words of Dodik, the prime minister of Republika Srpska.

Spain, which currently holds the rotating presidency of the EU, is planning to organise a regional summit in Sarajevo this June, which according to Miguel Ángel Moratinos, Spain's foreign minister, will be "guided by international law" and an "appreciation ... [of] all sensitive issues". Under the guise of good neighbourly relations, however, Serbia is increasingly being pressured to make further concessions with respect to Kosovo. Germany's ambassador to Serbia, Wolfram Maas, in a statement full of internal contradictions, insisted that "there are no new conditions for Serbia's further European integration, they are the same as for all other candidates. A request for Kosovo to be recognised as an independent state by Serbia was never made. However, good regional co-operation and good neighbourly relations are a part of the preconditions for membership in the EU. For us, Kosovo is Serbia's neighbour". Such views echo those made by Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, during a recent visit to Belgrade.

The Serbian government's scope for manoeuvre, however, continues to narrow as the issue of Kosovo's status once again begins to have a notable impact on Serbian domestic politics. Former prime minister and leader of the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS), Vojislav Kostunica, for instance, has repeatedly called on the government to clarify the EU's stance on Kosovo, emphasising that "the government should not be allowed, without the approval of the parliament, to enter negotiations on new agreements, especially not on implementing good neighbourly relations with Kosovo". Though largely written off following the last elections, the DSS have reached an agreement on closer co-operation with Serbia's main opposition parties - New Serbia (NS) and the Serbian Progressive party (SNS) of the former Serbian Radical party member, Tomislav Nikolic. With the SNS regularly polling neck-and-neck with President Tadic's Democratic party (DS), this agreement could lay the basis for a future coalition government that would certainly pursue a tougher stance on Kosovo.

Two key elements of the EU's accession criteria - regional co-operation and good neighbourly relations - are increasingly being applied by specific EU member states to exert greater pressure on Serbia's stance towards Kosovo. The ongoing name dispute between Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYRoM), however, demonstrates the intractability of such issues in the absence of compromises from both parties. As Slovenia and Croatia have themselves discovered, international law and arbitration provide the best means for securing such compromises, particularly where disputes over territory and sovereignty are concerned. For the sake of regional co-operation in, and by extension the European perspective of, the western Balkans, the ICJ's ruling will provide an important chance for Europe to reassert its commitment to negotiated solutions. If the EU fails to grasp this opportunity, it will face a hardening of positions that will further undermine its leverage in the western Balkans.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/30/serbia-kosovo-independence-dispute