Lloyd Evans
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Against the motion
Wolfgang Ischinger
Paddy Ashdown
Veton Surroi
The voting tells the story. Before last Tuesday’s Kosovo debate most of the audience were unsure whether we were right to recognize Kosovo’s declaration of independence on February 17th 2008. BBC Balkans expert Alan Little introduced a ‘starry panel of commentators’ beginning with Sir Ivor Roberts, a former ambassador to Yugoslavia. Sir Ivor hoped that one day the people of the Balkans would ‘stop picking at the scabs of history – but the wounds are far too fresh for that.’ He blamed President Bush for skewing the negotiations over Kosovo’s future by declaring his support for independence before the process had begun. Kosovo’s independence had ‘opened a Pandora’s box’ which might destabilise the entire region. He proposed his own plan. Partition of Kosovo between Albania and Serbia. ‘Not an easy option but the least worst.’ A spell of separation might teach either side the advantages of closer union and eventually ‘their borders will become points of distinction not division and will eventually fall off like sticking plasters.’
Wolfgang Ischinger, Chief EU representative to the Kosovo Troika Process of 2007, knows as much as anyone about the negotiations. He admitted that the Secretary General had pressurised the negotiators to reach a speedy conclusion and said it would have been unthinkable to return Kosovo to Serb rule after eight years under UN protection. ‘I cannot imagine a more immoral decision.’ He was optimistic about the future. Kosovo’s departure would help Serbia heal the wounds of its brutal recent past. ‘Far sighted and intelligent Serbs believe this,’ he said, and Kosovo’s independence wasn’t just desirable but a necessary step in cooling the fires of aggressive Serb nationalism.
Journalist and author Misha Glenny asked us to face reality. Kosovo’s independence is here to stay. The states that have recognised it won’t overturn their decision. But independent Kosovo creates more problems, regionally and globally, than it solves. Kosovo has no reliable system of self-government and many of its administrative agencies are implacably opposed to each other. The EU’s failure to compose the differences of two European territories had ‘created an atmosphere of free-for-all’ in diplomatic relations and had prompted Russia to recognise South Ossetia and Akbazia. Thanks to EU blunders, the US and Russia had seized the initiative and ‘turned the negotiation into a game of chicken,’ an exercise they were about to repeat elsewhere in the globe.
Paddy Ashdown took the historic view beginning with his experience in Northern Ireland. ‘I was one of the first soldiers to arrive and if you’d told me we’d be there for 37 years I’d have said that’s ridiculous.’ Thanks to Slobbo and his murder squads Serbia had forfeited the moral and practical right to govern Kosovo just as Britain had forfeited the right to govern Ireland in the 19th century. Losing Kosovo was the price Serbia had to pay for its misgovernment. He dismissed the analogy with Georgia as incorrect because its separatist regions had never been under UN protection. We should maintain our commitment to a multi-ethnic Kosovo and ‘hold the ring’ until the conditions for lasting peace emerge.
Dragan Zupenjevac, a diplomat and international relations expert, reminded us that Kosovo was more than a mere territory, it was ‘the cradle of Serb spirituality and statehood.’ To recognise its independence was to breach international law, to violate the UN Charter and to tear up the Helsinki Final Act which forbids ‘a change of borders in Europe without the assent of the capitals.’ That’s why barely a quarter the UN membership had recognised Kosovo. Its independence was ‘a toolkit for separatism worldwide’. The region remained unstable. The rights of Kosovan Serbs were not respected and the world had forgotten the 200,000 Serb refugees shivering in squalid shanty towns in Serbia. Some experts had suggested that Kosovo is ‘a special case’. But international law collapses it if admits exceptions. Serbia could never accept ‘the law of the jungle.’
Veton Surrai, a Kosovar journalist, praised the west for supporting the ‘noble experiment in multi-ethnic nation-building’ that is currently underway in Kosovo. As for the notion that a ‘Pandora’s box’ had been prised open, that had happened years earlier with the collapse of socialist Yugoslavia. With Kosovo and Serbia now established as partners, they could work for the next challenge, accession to the EU.
Votes
Before the debate: 275 undecided, 171 for the motion, 184 against.
After the debate: 22 undecided, 311 for, 364 against.
Not a landslide but a resounding win for supporters of Kosovo’s independence.
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