No deal, yet

There are signs Serbia has decided to reject the deal on the table for northern Kosovo and ask for continued negotiations.  Deputy Prime Minister Vucic is quoted on B92.net:

“Serbia cannot accept the adding of (Albanian majority) municipalities to the four Serb municipalities (in northern Kosovo), which the Priština side said could not be recognized because of their administration, but they could be recognized when it concerned the agreement on integrated management of administrative crossings,” he noted, and added:

“Belgrade did not receive answers about the presence of security forces, nor clear answers on the issues of education, health-care and judiciary.”

According to Vučić, Belgrade is seeking “a court of appeals for Kosovska Mitrovica”.

President Nikolic is also proposing that the talks continue under the auspices of the UN, since Serbia is a member.

This amounts to a wholesale rejection of whatever the EU is proposing, which apparently includes a northern Kosovo that encompasses Albanian-majority municipalities (in addition to the 3.5 Serb-majority ones).  That is presumably intended to limit the ethnic partition dimension of whatever is agreed.  It would be amazing if the EU had not given an absolutely unequivocal rejection of the presence of Serbian security forces as well as any Serbian courts.  Issues of education and health care are amply treated in the Ahtisaari plan.  I doubt the EU has departed much from that.

It is difficult of course for either Brussels or Pristina to refuse to continue negotiations.  But that is what they should do if they want to produce a satisfactory agreement.  Continuing negotiations would only signal softness on the main issues:  Serbian security forces and judiciary.  There is no way Kosovo Prime Minister Thaci can yield on those.  But the Americans and Europeans may insist, for their own sakes.  Brussels and Washington are not good at poker.

I’m all in favor of a negotiated solution, which is the only option.  But it can’t be one that is impossible to administer, interferes with Kosovo’s ability to implement the EU’s acquis communitaire or goes beyond what Serbia would be willing to offer to the Albanians who live in majority-Albanian communities in southern Serbia.  Nor will it help the prospects for an agreement if the negotiations are moved to the UN, where the playing field is obviously uneven due to Serbian membership (not to mention the General Assembly’s vigorously nationalist Serbian president).

If Serbia follows through on today’s news reports and formally rejects what the EU is offering, Kosovo still needs to decide whether it can live with the proposal or wants to remain silent.  I haven’t seen what is on offer, so it is impossible to suggest what Pristina might do.  Accepting runs the risk that the Serbs may change their minds at the last minute, as they often do.  Rejecting runs the risk of annoying Washington and Brussels.

My guess is that we have not heard the last of this EU effort to resolve the problems of northern Kosovo.  But if in fact we are at the end of the line, Serbia should at least pay its own fare, which is no date for opening accession negotiations with the EU.  Whether Kosovo can still hope for action on the visa waiver and opening of negotiations for a Stabilization and Association Agreement is not clear to me.  I hope those issues can be decided on the technical merits, which seem to me increasingly in favor.