Own goal
Serbian President Boris Tadic is apparently prepared to skip a summit of Central and Southeastern European leaders in Warsaw Friday and Saturday because Kosovo’s president will be present and treated as an equal.
I of course understand Tadic’s domestic political problem. He doesn’t want to be seen acknowledging Kosovo’s sovereignty, which Belgrade continues to contest. He and Foreign Minister Jeremic seem almost in a competition to see who can move more aggressively in the nationalist direction. The Foreign Minister has come out strongly for withdrawal of the international community High Representative from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Tadic was pleased the other day to tell Serb school children from Kosovo that Serbia is their country.
This despite the fact that Serbia’s delegation to the EU-hosted talks has met with the Kosovo delegation at a symmetrical table, where rumor has it they will soon be able to announce modest progress on issues like mutual recognition of documents and customs stamps. Tadic needs that, in order for Serbia to gain EU candidacy status for Serbia before calling elections. Kosovo in the meanwhile will try to gain entry into the visa waiver program, whose technical requirements it claims to have fulfilled.
So there appears to be at least some limited progress on practical issues, but Serbia is unwilling to take the next step. Atifete Jahjaga is the constitutionally elected president of Kosovo. Whatever Kosovo’s status, she is clearly its legitimate leader. Tadic needs to learn to make this distinction: between recognizing Kosovo as sovereign and independent, and accepting its leader as its legitimate representative. He should take the advice of Sonja Licht, president of the Foreign Policy Council at the Serbian Ministry of Foreign Affairs:
I personally believe that the time has come that the policy of the Government is reconsidered in order that more creative solution is found. That solution has to respect the fact that the circumstances have changed in the meantime. We have started dialog with Kosovo and accepted it as a side in negotiations. More courageous and determined steps are necessary.
Tadic’s refusal to go to Warsaw is an own goal. The Americans will certainly want to think more than twice before inviting Tadic to Washington if he is unwilling to join President Obama for this group summit in Warsaw.
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And what exactly is an invite to Washington worth these days? Enough to throw away political and diplomatic leverage on matters of prime domestic importance? When the US Ambassador to Kosovo contributes nothing except stale warnings about “war and destruction” if the north of Kosovo were to receive special status?
This is crunch time for Kosovo. Negotiations have opened a door for some form of more stable settlement with the remaining outstanding issue being the north. Meanwhile, Pristina is threatening local control of the northern police and EULEX and KFOR appear again to be looking at use of force to brush aside obstacles. Perhaps Tadic believes this is no time to be giving anything away simply for face time with the US president.
And other countries will be boycotting too. So maybe it is a US problem in inviting Kosovo?
An invitation to a meeting with the US president is still seen as something worth having, it seems from an article in Blic today. The paper reports “intensive bilateral efforts” are being – were being? – made to arrange such a meeting, since the involvement of the US is thought to be crucial to solving the Kosovo problem. This according to the former Serb ambassador to France, who was interviewed on the brouhaha.
Serbia’s announcing in advance that the presidents of Slovakia and Romania would not attend gave newsmen in the respective capitals a chance to question their governments about a move – lack of move – that they might have preferred to have left unmentioned, or attributed to planning conflicts or some such diplomatic dodge. The president’s office in Romania announced, when questioned, that Basescu would not be attending, but there is still time for pressure, domestic and international, to be brought to bear.