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10 August 2007   Fresh discussions over the future of Kosovo appear to be little more than a stalling tactic for all involved.

By Tim Judah

The latest round of talks over the future status of Kosovo which begin with the arrival of the so-called Troika in Belgrade today are regarded as a charade by all sides. They need to pretend that they might yield a settlement when nobody believes they will, according to key diplomatic and other sources.

The Troika consists of Ambassadors Frank Wisner for the US, Aleksandr Botsan-Kharchenko for Russia and Wolfgang Ischinger for the European Union. Their mission has been mandated by the Contact Group, made up of Russia, the US, the UK, France, Italy and Germany.

Today they are due to meet the Serbian prime minister Vojislav Kostunica and the Serbian president Boris Tadic. Tomorrow, they will meet leading Kosovo Albanian politicians in Pristina. And on Sunday, they will speak with representatives of Kosovo’s minority Serb community.

The Troika mission was set up in the wake of the collapse of attempts by Western countries to push through independence for the Albanian-majority province at the United Nations Security Council on July 20.

Until then, Western diplomats had assumed that Russia would eventually drop its opposition to a plan drawn up by the UN’s special envoy Martti Ahtisaari, which envisaged independence for Kosovo. In this they proved to be wrong.

Now, say diplomatic sources, all sides must pretend that the coming talks serve the purpose of finding common ground between Serbia and the Kosovo Albanians, when all know that on the only important question – this issue of independence – this is simply not possible.

Serbia's leaders, backed for now by Russia, say that Kosovo cannot be independent, while Kosovo's Albanian leaders say they will accept nothing less.

At the outset of the Troika mission, there is not even agreement amongst its members on how long talks should last. The two Western ambassadors say the discussions should carry on for no more than 120 days, while the Russians say they have agreed to no such thing and that they should be open ended. There also appears to be no agreement on what form the talks should take.

Serbia wants direct negotiations but the diplomats have said they expect the process to at least begin with shuttle diplomacy.

Ban Ki-Moon, the UN Secretary General, has asked for a report on the talks on December 10.

As far as EU diplomats are concerned, the main purpose of all this is to buy time in which to build what they call a "critical mass" of EU states ready to recognise an independent Kosovo when the talks eventually fail.

There are three possible outcomes to the discussions, according to one EU source. The first is agreement between the parties, something which is regarded as impossible. The second possible outcome is a fruitful period of discussion in which the Russians are persuaded of the merits of Kosovo gaining independence. The likelihood of this happening "does not look great" says the source.

Hence the third option, which is that Kosovo declares independence and the US and the "critical mass" of EU states then move to recognise it.

At the heart of this US and EU thinking is a bargain with the Kosovo Albanians. The first part, according to Kosovo Albanian sources, is that they must pretend to go along with the so-called negotiations for the next few months.

The second is that legislation foreseen in the Ahtisaari plan should be adopted by the Kosovo Assembly. The third part of the deal is that when the process ends the Kosovo government should invite the EU to send a police and justice mission into Kosovo and establish an International Civilian Office, whose powers would be similar to those of the Office of the High Representative in Bosnia.

Both these missions were foreseen by the Ahtisaari plan. While they will help to stabilise Kosovo, their authority will be much less than if they had been authorised by the Security Council. The reason for this is that if they are invited into Kosovo by the government, rather than being sent by the UN, they can be asked to leave at any time.

Though it has become the "default option if nothing else happens", the EU source said that unilaterally recognising Kosovo’s independence is far less desirable than a solution agreed at the UN. For one thing, it will harden the de facto partition of Kosovo, with the Serb-inhabited north likely to sever all contacts with Pristina.

As far as Serbia and Russia are concerned, their interests in the coming talks coincide for the moment. That is that the negotiations should simply lead to more negotiations, or at least to a "frozen conflict" in the Balkans. Serbia's leaders say they are willing to give Kosovo wide ranging autonomy within Serbia.

But since the result of this would likely be a new round of violence, Serbia would rather keep the Kosovo issue unresolved for the foreseeable future.

For the Russians, two issues appear to be at stake. On the one hand, several key Russian diplomats – men like Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, and Vitaly Churkin, Russia's ambassador to the UN – want to take revenge for the humiliation they feel over Russia's failure to prevent the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999.

Sergei Karaganov, a political advisor to the Russian president Vladimir Putin, said recently: "Many in Moscow now want their American and European colleagues to pay the full price for their games in Kosovo, although they do not want to admit it publicly."

Kosovo is also a cheap and easy way for Putin to keep up pressure on the West. Russia has no troops in Kosovo and thus runs no risks if elements of Kosovo's Albanian population turn to violence.

With many "frozen conflicts" of its own in the former Soviet Union, Russia is also wary that independence for Kosovo might set a precedent for others to follow, though Western diplomats deny that this would happen.

On top of all this, Aleksei Pushkov, a pro-Putin analyst, wrote recently that if Russia were to agree to Western demands for Kosovo’s independence, this would "be perceived not as an act of partnership, but as the defeat of a competitor who surrendered to pressure."

What then can be expected from these talks? The answer seems to be not much. And as for building a "critical mass" of EU states ready to recognise an independent Kosovo without Security Council blessing, even this cannot by any means be taken for granted.

"Even the Germans are wobbling on this," says one diplomatic source. "So, at the end of this, we may be in exactly the same place we are now."

Tim Judah, a leading Balkan commentator, is the author of The Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, and Kosovo: War and Revenge. Balkan Insight is BIRN's online publication.