New Kosova Report

EU confident of peaceful Kosovo birth

Wednesday, 13 February 2008

Kosovo’s anticipated declaration of independence this weekend is not expected to lead to widespread violence or an exodus of Serbs from the province, say senior European Union officials.

“The signals are sufficient for us to feel reasonably confident that violence won’t unfold from either side, and that there won’t be other contingencies, such as happened in the Balkans in the past – like movements of people,” one official said.

EU governments are preparing to authorise the deployment of a law-and-order mission to ensure stability after the breakaway province’s secession from Serbia, which flatly rejects independence for Kosovo.

The law-and-order mission will comprise about 3,000 people, including 1,000 local Kosovo staff and almost 2,000 police, judges, prosecutors, customs officials and other administrators, mostly from EU states, with a few from Croatia, Norway, Switzerland, Turkey and the US.

A first wave of about 15 senior EU staff may arrive in Kosovo by the end of February. Most of the 1,500 police will get there between March and mid-June, as the United Nations operation that administers the province winds up its work and is replaced by Kosovo’s government and the EU mission, which is expected to cost €190m ($277m, £141m) in its first 12 months.

Russia not only supports Belgrade in opposing Kosovo’s independence, but has denounced the EU mission as contrary to international law and a threat to Europe’s wider security.

Britain, France and Germany are expected to declare swift recognition of Kosovo, but there is concern in some EU capitals that the law-and-order mission lacks a clear exit strategy and risks bogging down the EU in a province riddled with poverty, corruption and organised crime and lacking the status of a UN member state.

When Nato sent 60,000 troops on a security and reconstruction mission to Bosnia-Herzegovina after the 1992-95 war in that former Yugoslav republic, the soldiers ended up staying eight years, instead of one as originally planned.

“It may take a couple of years, but hopefully we won’t stay there for ever,” one senior EU official said of the Kosovo mission.

The right time to leave, the official said, would be when “we see Kosovo developing into a democratic, multi-ethnic, sustainable part of Europe ... with rule of law, and the economy starting to hum along on the basis of its attractiveness to foreign investment.

“We want to see a firm and secure place in Kosovo’s institutions for all its communities – above all the Serb community.”