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The Kosovo Talks Are About Much More Than Just Kosovo

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  • The Kosovo Talks Are About Much More Than Just Kosovo

    THE KOSOVO TALKS ARE ABOUT MUCH MORE THAN JUST KOSOVO
    By Thomas De Waal

    FT
    May 10 2006 03:00

    For most people, being a state citizen is as much a reality as having
    parents, but the international order also has its orphans. If you
    are a resident of Kosovo or Turkish Cyprus or a string of post-Soviet
    territories, you are currently a second-class human being: it is hard
    to travel abroad or get an international bank transfer, and your team
    cannot even make it to the qualifying rounds of the World Cup.

    For years this has been just the way the international order
    works, but events in the Balkans are shaking things up. On May 21,
    Montenegro holds a referendum on independence. Last week Kosovo,
    which has spent years in legal limbo, held the latest round of
    United Nations-sponsored talks, which most people expect to end with
    it attaining statehood. Justifiably so - the Kosovo Albanians are
    currently being punished for having been citizens of a state that
    never properly enfranchised them. Yet independence also brings big
    responsibilities. Kosovo is being asked to prove that it will respect
    its Balkan neighbours and Serb minority, who have either fled the
    province since the 1999 war or live in fearful enclaves.

    What kind of precedent does Kosovo set for the world's unrecognised
    states? Vladimir Putin, Russia's president, has made the link to
    Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the two Caucasian territories backed by
    Moscow that broke away de facto from Georgia in the early 1990s. In
    January he said that "universal principles" must apply: "If someone
    believes that Kosovo should be granted full independence as a state,
    then why should we deny it to the Abkhaz and the South Ossetians?"

    What universal principles, western officials ask, when these conflicts
    are so different? Yet, whatever his motives are, Mr Putin's words
    deserve serious attention. The international community has now agreed
    that a separatist territoryhas the right to aspire to independence,
    even if it does not achieve it in the end. We must be clear-sighted
    about the precedent this sets: the Kosovo process should not be about
    rewarding the Albanians for loyalty to the west, but about forging
    a new democratic order in the Balkans.

    In February I visited the small breakaway territory of Abkhazia on
    the Black Sea. The scars of war are still visible on every street.

    Conflict began in 1992 with the Abkhaz fearing extinction in their
    ethnic homeland. It ended a year later with them, helped by the
    Russians, defeating the Georgians and with the flight or expulsion of
    almost all Abkhazia's large Georgian population. Since then, Abkhazia
    has lived alone and semi-destitute, linked only to Russia, and is home
    to about 100,000 Abkhaz and the same number of Russians and Armenians.

    Many outsiders make the mistake of seeing Abkhazia as a mere Russian
    puppet state. Russia certainly exploits its twilight status, but Sergei
    Bagapsh, the de facto president, was elected in defiance of Moscow's
    wishes and many Abkhaz are unhappy about creeping annexation by Moscow.

    Mr Bagapsh argues that Abkhazia had a better claim to independence
    than Kosovo: it had been forcibly incorporated into Soviet Georgia,
    he told me, and held democratic elections. One can question the
    validity of his arguments, but there is no doubting that his view is
    passionately shared: I have not met a single person in Abkhazia who
    sees their future in a return to being part of Georgia.

    Abkhazia is one of three unresolved conflicts, stuck between the
    war and peace, that is crippling the South Caucasus (the others are
    Nagorny Karabakh and South Ossetia). In each case the separatists
    argue that the world is imprisoning them inside Stalin's borders.

    They say, "We will never surrender the freedom we fought for", and the
    sovereign states, backed by the international community, respond, "We
    will never give up our territorial integrity". The result is deadlock.

    The Kosovo precedent suggests a way out by beginning a tough
    conversation about security, minorities, democracy - and potential
    independence. The democratic bar is being set high with regard to
    Kosovo and its Serbian minority. The Caucasian separatists would
    most likely fail a similar test; offered prospective sovereignty,
    small Abkhazia would immediately have to confront the issue of the
    missing 200,000 Georgian members of its population. But how much
    longer will we deny them the right to make their case? It is a very
    tricky process. But the alternative - keeping the conflicts frozen
    and whole territories as world orphans - is also unacceptable.

    The writer is Caucasus editor with the Institute for War and Peace
    Reporting; www.iwpr.net
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