Russia, Serbia confirm UN’s main rile in Kosovo

Russia and Serbia want the UN Security Council to ensure more constructive handling of the Kosovo problem and giving the UN mission there a more preferential status compared to other organizations working in Serbia's breakaway province.

Moscow and Belgrade made their position clear during Friday's meeting by the Security Council, which heard a quarterly report by UN chief Ban Ki-moon.

Much to some countries' disappointment, the report contained no constructive ideas for improving the situation in Kosovo, whose pro-Western ethnic Albanian administration made a unilateral independence declaration on February 17, 2008. The decision widened even further the yawning rift between the region's Serbian and Albanian communities resulting in numerous clashes, most of them in the divided city of Kosovska-Mitrovica international peacekeepers were forced to move in to end. The Serbs regularly boycott local elections and refuse invitations to serve with local administrations and police.

It is against this alarming backcloth that the UN Secretary General urged Belgrade and Pristina to delay decision on the region's political status for the sake of what he described as "regional cooperation". He also urged Belgrade to show more flexibility on the sensitive issue of Kosovo taking part in international organizations and forums - an approach that is roundly rejected by Belgrade which sees continued dialogue as the only acceptable way to a mutually-acceptable compromise.

A few days ago Kosovo Prime Minister Hasim Thaci said his government was working a new strategy to the region's predominantly Serb-populated north with an eye to "consolidating the Kosovo state in 2010".

Serbian President Boris Tadic who attended Friday's meeting, dismissed this unilateral action as an "unnecessary and dangerous provocation aimed at implementing by force provisions of the so-called Ahtisaari Plan, in violation of a pertinent resolution by the UN Security Council. Russia's deputy UN envoy Igor Shcherbak fully concurred warning against attempts to push through what he described as "dangerous concepts", which ride roughshod over Security Council Resolution 1244 and stoke up tensions in Kosovo.  "The UN mission in Kosovo remains the main guarantor of security in the region," the Russian diplomat said.

Meanwhile, the Kosovo authorities insist that their region's independent status is already a done deal and further talks on status could only ignite a new conflict.  Belgrade, for its part, pins high hopes on the International Court in The Hague to decide on the legality of the region's unilateral independence declaration.

Even though Pristina has already joined the World Bank and a number of other international organizations, it is still being denied much-needed membership of the United Nations where only 65 of 192 member state have officially recognized the self-proclaimed Balkan state.