THE GUARDIAN (London)

US shift on independent Kosovo angers
allies

Albanian nationalists are buoyed by Washington's
readiness to support a break from Yugoslavia
Special report: Kosovo

Ewen MacAskill in Pristina
Guardian

Monday October 30, 2000

The US is ready to break rank with its Nato partners by
conceding for the first time that Kosovo can become
independent from Serbia.

The shift in policy, discussed in secret talks this month between
the US special envoy, Richard Holbrooke, and US diplomats in
the Balkans, will anger Britain and other Nato members and
risks creating a rift with Russia, which retains close ties with
Serbia.

The change of direction emerged in the Kosovan capital,
Pristina, as votes were being counted yesterday in the
province's first democratic elections. The three big Kosovan
Albanian parties all stood on an independence platform. The
Kosovan Serbs almost unanimously boycotted the elections, for
local authorities.

The Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK), led by the moderate
nationalist Ibrahim Rugova, was sweeping to power throughout
the province, according to independent observers. The official
results are expected today.

Nato and the UN security council have maintained that, in spite
of the Nato-led war last year which forced Serbian troops out of
the province, Kosovo should remain a sovereign part of
Yugoslavia.

British officials recently ruled out independence as an option,
saying that further fragmentation in the Balkans would increase
instability and that a state as small as Kosovo would be
unsustainable.

Security council resolution 1244, passed in June last year at the
end of the war, reaffirmed "the commitment of all member states
to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic
of Yugoslavia".

But a senior US official in Pristina, who spent last week with Mr
Holbrooke, has for the first time disputed the widely-held
interpretation of the resolution.

He said that 1244 "explicitly recognises the territorial integrity of
Yugoslavia but it does not mean Kosovo cannot be
independent".

US government lawyers spent the past few weeks looking at the
resolution in detail and they concluded that it did not rule out
independence.

The US source agreed that independence was fast becoming a
reality on the ground because almost half the Kosovan Serbs
had left the province and the Kosovo Albanians were setting up
their own judicial and political system.

Acknowledging that few Kosovo Albanians were prepared to
consider even a loose federation with Belgrade, he said: "Kosovo
will not be pushed back into Serbia."

The US is unlikely to go public on its policy switch in the near
future in case it undermines Yugoslavia's new democratically
elected president, Vojislav Kostunica.

The loss of Kosovo, which is an important historical symbol for
Serbia, would inflame Serbian nationalist hardliners.

The US source ruled out partitioning the province between the
northern part, predominantly populated by Serbs, which would
join Serbia while the rest of the country, mainly Kosovo
Albanians, would enter into a Greater Albania.

He hoped the Kosovo Serbs and Albanians could reach an
accommodation. "They will never be friends sitting around the
campfire singing Kumbaya... but they will learn to live with one
another."

The elections held in Kosovo on Saturday were for control of the
province's 30 municipalities, but the Kosovo Albanians treated
them as a referendum on independence. The main contenders
were Mr Rugova's LDK and the Democratic Party of Kosovo, led
by Hashim Thaci, a nationalist hardliner and former commander
of the Kosovan Liberation Army, which fought a guerrilla
campaign against the Yugoslav army.

Mr Thaci wants Kosovo to become independent from Serbia as
soon as possible and join Albania. Mr Rugova also wants
independence but at a more cautious pace and for Kosovo to be
a state in its own right, free of both Serbia and Albania.