The time to settle is now

Regular readers will find it odd that I recommend a piece by Jerry Gallucci, with whom I often disagree.  But this time he has got it mostly right.

While buying a bit of Serb credit with stabs at the EU and US as “misguided” and even “dangerous” and Pristina as “maximalist,” Jerry goes on to reject what Belgrade is asking for in the negotiations over northern Kosovo.  The Ahtisaari plan, he suggests, is adequate.

He’s right.  Belgrade is the maximalist party in this negotiation, not Pristina, which has realized from the first that reintegration of northern Kosovo will require time and patience as well as improved relations with Belgrade.

Belgrade’s bottom line, as cited by Jerry, requires satisfaction on all these criteria for the Serb association of municipalities:

• whether it would have its own powers (or carry out those given to the municipalities), executive council and assets
• whether it would operate under the law of Kosovo
• whether it would have an elected or delegated assembly
• whether it would have the power to assign and confirm places of residence, determine electoral registers and the composition of a separate court
• whether its decisions would need to be approved by Pristina
• whether there would be a “mechanism” for Serb participation in central government bodies
• whether Kosovo security services would stay out of the north.

Meeting these requirements would not only create a separate Serbian “entity” (like Republika Srpska, the Serb entity within Bosnia) but would also in essence make that entity virtually independent and give it de facto power to block Kosovo’s entry into the European Union by ensuring it could not implement the acquis communitaire on the entity’s territory.

No one in Serbia would imagine that Belgrade could or would agree to such arrangements for the Albanian-majority communities of southern Serbia.  There is no reason to expect Pristina to agree to them for Serbian-majority communities in northern Kosovo.  Kudos to Jerry for recognizing that this is a road to nowhere.

And more kudos for recognizing, albeit obliquely (the headline writer did it more directly than in Jerry’s text), that the Ahtisaari plan is adequate for purposes of protecting vital Serb interests in northern Kosovo.  The sooner Belgrade realizes that the negotiation with Pristina is about how the Ahtisaari plan is to be implemented, not about additional criteria that need to be met, the quicker it will see the EU and US plump for opening accession negotiations. Conditionality has brought the Belgrade/Pristina dialogue as far as it has come.  And it will be vital to closing the deal, no matter how much Jerry (and Belgrade) don’t like it.

Given what is happening between the EU and Cyprus, whose banks have handled (shall I say laundered?) a lot of Serb funds over the past two decades, it would be a serious mistake for Belgrade to cause any further delay.  The EU has somehow kept open the possibility of beginning accession negotiations with Serbia, despite Belgrade’s continued insistence on claiming sovereignty over all of Kosovo, growing enlargement fatigue and the euro crisis.  There is a real possibility the door will slam shut after Croatia’s entry in July.  The time to settle on the reintegration of northern Kosovo (and allow Kosovo to join the UN as well as other international bodies) is now.