Serbia asks UN to block Kosovo independence
Serbia’s foreign minister has urged the UN Security Council to oppose Kosovo’s expected declaration of independence and called on the secretary-general to order that any proclamation be declared null and void.
In his address to a closed council meeting, Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic warned that independence for Kosovo would set a precedent that will echo around the globe, leading to “an uncontrolled cascade of secession”.
Mr Jeremic said Serbia does not believe that negotiations over the future status of the Serb province are exhausted – as the US and many European nations maintain – and he urged Belgrade and Pristina to work together to find a peaceful solution, with the council’s support.
“We shall never recognise Kosovo’s independence,” he said. “Not now. Not in a year. Not in a decade. Never. For Kosovo and Metohija shall remain a part of Serbia forever.”
The Security Council remains deeply divided on the future of Kosovo with Russia backing its close ally Serbia and calling for more negotiations while Britain, France and other European Union members are supporting the Kosovo Albanians.
“There were no real surprises in the meeting,” Panama’s UN Ambassador Ricardo Arias, the current council president, told reporters afterward. “Positions well known by all of us were basically reiterated.”
Britain’s UN Ambassador John Sawers said the 15-member council “was evenly divided between those who recognise that the process had come to a conclusion, and those who would have preferred continued efforts.”
Russia’s UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin disagreed, saying not a single council member except the US and EU countries “voiced clear-cut support” for an end to negotiations.
Kosovo has been under UN and NATO administration since a NATO-led air war halted former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic’s crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists in 1999.
International talks lasting 14 months failed to produce an agreement between the Serbs, who offered autonomy, and Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian leadership, which is expected to declare independence unilaterally in the coming days.
