Serbian official warns of wider 'domino effect' if Kosovo gets independence

Associated Press, Sunday, June 18, 2006 9:22 AM

BELGRADE, Serbia-A Serbian government official said Sunday that granting independence to the breakaway province of Kosovo would amount to "opening a Pandora box" because it could encourage separatist movements across the world.

The government in Belgrade would agree to autonomy for the province "broader than anything seen in Europe," Sanda Raskovic-Ivic, Serbia's point person for relations with the troubled province whose status is being negotiated internationally, was quoted as telling the state Tanjug news agency.

But if the current talks, held under the auspices of the United Nations, the United States, Britain, Germany, France, Russia and Italy, eventually allow a full secession of Kosovo, "it will cause a domino effect destabilizing the entire Balkans and other parts of Europe," Raskovic-Ivic was quoted as saying.

Kosovo's ethnic Albanians took up arms in 1998 to secede from Serbia, triggering a brutal government crackdown which led to NATO military intervention in 1999 that eventually forced Serbia to hand over authority of Kosovo to a temporary U.N. administration and NATO peacekeepers.

The de facto protectorate status will likely be replaced this year with a lasting solution for the province, which Serbs vow never to give up completely.

"If you support an ethnic group to break up a country and create own state, then you open a Pandora box and it becomes very hard to explain why other (separatist) groups should not do the same," Raskovic-Ivic was quoted as saying, without naming any specific groups.

Kosovo's population of about 2 million is 90 percent ethnic Albanian. Some 100,000 Serbs remain in the province after about 200,000 of them fled in 1999.

Several meetings between Serbian and ethnic Albanian officials, held in Austria under U.N. mediation, have not produced a breakthrough.

The discussions so far focused on protection of Serbs and other remaining minorities in Kosovo against occasional ethnic Albanian attacks, but Kosovo's future status will be on the agenda when the meetings resume in July, Raskovic-Ivic said, according to the news report.

Also, the U.N. Security Council will review security in Kosovo later this month and "should not allow a bargaining with human rights and territories of sovereign states," she was quoted as saying.

Kosovo Albanians say that nothing less than full independence would satisfy their community. Raskovic-Ivic called this "a 19th century concept ... which has become meaningless because nations concede sovereignty by joining the European Union", a goal proclaimed by both Serbs and ethnic Albanians, the report said.

Under discussion are also ancient Serb monasteries and churches in Kosovo, dating back to the Middle Ages when the province was Serbia's heartland. Whatever the outcome of the talks, a number of foreign peacekeeping troops would remain to guard the heritage which was targeted in violent attacks, the official said, according to the report.