Puteti citi un interviu foarte interesant cu ministrul sarb de externe, Vuk Jeremic, aici.

De la Reuters (*)

PRISTINA, April 9 (Reuters) – Kosovo adopted a state constitution on Wednesday, which will come into force in mid-June when the United Nations completes a handover of powers to the newly independent country and its EU overseers.

Parliament deputies endorsed the text without a vote, almost two months after the 90-percent Albanian majority declared independence from Serbia with Western backing.

The constitution declares Kosovo a secular republic, “an independent, sovereign, democratic, unique and indivisible state”.

Kosovo expresses its determination “to build a future … as a free, democratic and peace-loving country that will be a homeland to all of its citizens”, the text reads.

The constitution will come into force on June 15, when the U.N. mission that has run the former Serbian province since 1999 is due to hand over its remaining powers to Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian leaders and new EU-led police and supervisory missions.

But questions remain over how the transition will proceed, after Serb ally Russia last year blocked the adoption of a U.N. Security Council resolution endorsing the EU takeover and a U.N. plan for independence.

The U.N. mission says it is “awaiting instructions” from headquarters in New York, but is certain to remain in some form under current U.N. Security Council resolution 1244.

Kosovo already runs most of its own affairs, but the constitution also creates a Foreign Ministry, Defence Ministry, security force, constitutional court and intelligence agency.

The text includes extensive provisions for the protection of the Serb minority, under the U.N. plan for “supervised independence” that was rejected by Russia but backed by Kosovo Albanians and the major Western powers.

Pentru textul documentului, aici (*).

The European Union has given its blessing to Kosovo’s constitution, saying it is in line with the international standards that Pristina committed itself to when declaring independence from Serbia on 17 February.

“Kosovo will have a modern constitution guaranteeing full respect of individual and community rights, including those of Kosovo Serbs,” Pieter Feith, an EU special representative who is chairing an International Civilian Office there, was cited as saying by AP.

He added: “On this basis, I believe the government and all the citizens of Kosovo can move ahead to build a sustainable, multi-ethnic society that is a home for all.”

Restul aici (*).

Despre Kosovo s-a scris mult.

Citeam ieri un comentariu cam insipid (*). Tot ieri un comentariu, aparut in The Guardian, exprima cateva puncte valabile.

A postmodern declaration

Kosovo’s sovereignty is a fiction: real power lies with EU officials backed by western firepower

There seemed to be no immediate consequences when, in 1908, Austria annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina. Vienna was in clear violation of the 1878 Treaty of Berlin, which it had signed and kept Bosnia in Turkey, yet the protests of Russia and Serbia were in vain. The following year, the fait accompli was written into an amended treaty. Six years later, however, a Russian-backed Serbian gunman exacted revenge by assassinating the heir to the Austrian throne in Sarajevo in June 1914. The rest is history.

Parallels between Kosovo in 2008 and Bosnia in 1908 are relevant, but not only because, whatever legal trickery the west uses to override UN security council resolution 1244 – which kept Kosovo in Serbia – the proclamation of the new state will have incalculable long-term consequences: on secessionist movements from Belgium to the Black Sea via Bosnia, on relations with China and Russia, and on the international system as a whole. They are also relevant because the last thing the new state proclaimed in Pristina on Sunday will be is independent. Instead, what has now emerged south of the Ibar river is a postmodern state, an entity that may be sovereign in name but is a US-EU protectorate in practice.

The European Union plans to send some 2,000 officials to Kosovo to take over from the United Nations, which has governed the province since 1999. It wants to appoint an International Civilian Representative who – according to the plan drawn up last year by Martti Ahtisaari, the UN envoy – will be the “final authority” in Kosovo with the power to “correct or annul decisions by the Kosovo public authorities”. Kosovo would have had more real independence under the terms Belgrade offered it than it will now.

Those who support the sort of “polyvalent sovereignty” and “postnational statehood” that we already have in the EU welcome such arrangements as a respite from the harsh decisionism of post-Westphalian statehood. But such fictions are in fact always underpinned by the timeless realities of brute power. There are 16,000 Nato troops in Kosovo and they have no intention of coming home: indeed, they are even now being reinforced with 1,000 extra troops from Britain. They, not the Kosovo army, are responsible for the province’s internal and external security.

Kosovo is also home to the vast US military base Camp Bondsteel, near Urosevac – a mini-Guantánamo that is only one in an archipelago of new US bases in eastern Europe, the Balkans and central Asia. This is why the Serbian prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, speaking on Sunday, specifically attacked Washington for the Kosovo proclamation, saying that it showed that the US was “ready to unscrupulously and violently jeopardise international order for the sake of its own military interests”.

In order to symbolise its status as the newest Euro-Atlantic colony, Kosovo has chosen a flag modelled on that of Bosnia-Herzegovina – the same EU gold, the same arrangement of stars on a blue background. For Bosnia, too, is governed by a foreign high representative, who has the power to sack elected politicians and annul laws, all in the name of preparing the country for EU integration.

As in Bosnia, billions have been poured into Kosovo to pay for the international administration but not to improve the lives of ordinary people. Kosovo is a sump of poverty and corruption, both of which have exploded since 1999, and its inhabitants have eked out their lives for nine years now in a mafia state where there are no jobs and not even a proper electricity supply: every few hours there are power cuts, and the streets of Kosovo’s towns explode in a whirring din as every shop and home switches on its generator.

This tragic situation is made possible only because there is a fatal disconnect in all interventionism between power and responsibility. The international community has micro-managed every aspect of the break-up of Yugoslavia since the EU brokered the Brioni agreement within days of the war in Slovenia in July 1991. Yet it has always blamed the locals for the results. Today, the new official government of Kosovo will be controlled by its international patrons, but they will similarly never accept accountability for its failings. They prefer instead to govern behind the scenes, in the dangerous – and no doubt deliberate – gap between appearance and reality.

· John Laughland is the author of Travesty: the Trial of Slobodan Milosevic and the Corruption of International Justice