Sletzinger: Kosovo's UDI is a bad precedent, the US should pull out quickly
Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence is a bad precedent and the US, which were all the time a part of the problem - not of the solution - must pull out as soon as possible, says Martin Sletzinger, director for Eastern studies at Washington's Woodraw Wilson institute.
(KosovoCompromise Staff) Tuesday, January 19, 2010
"The carving out of Kosovo from Serbia is a bad precedent, but this was not a problem for our official policy. The argument was that if 90 percent of the population wants to secede, let them do that. We will see if this logic applies in a few decades when parts of Texas, Florida or California become in large majority Hispanic and decide that they do not want to be ruled anymore by the capitals of these states", Sletzinger says.
"In any case, the US were all the time a part of the problem, not a part of the solution. In my view, we should pull out from Kosovo and very quickly. We should assure military support, but politically we should give up everything to the Europeans, since the US dirtied their hands by not treating all the actors in the Kosovo case equally", he added.
Sletzinger argues that the US were never an unbiased player in the Kosovo case.
"At first, we were saying that we were not necessarily for independence, that we were neither pro-Albanian nor anti-Serb, but in reality, everything that we have done since the 1990s - including the negotiations processs - shows that the US were in favor of Kosovo's independence, that they were pushing allies to recognize Kosovo", says the director at Washington's institute.
