Post by engers on Nov 6, 2007 10:18:24 GMT -5
PRISTINA, Kosovo: Agim Ceku, Kosovo's warrior-turned-prime minister, is used to long and treacherous journeys.
In the spring of 1999, when Ceku was in the Kosovo Liberation Army, he said, he spent several days patiently hiking by foot over rugged mountains from Albania to Macedonia to Kosovo through deep snow and enemy lines, before taking up his post as commander in the war against Slobodan Milosevic and the Serbs.
But today, Ceku, 57, a big man with a vice-grip handshake, says his patience has run out. Eight years after Serbian forces retreated from Kosovo, this poor, predominantly Muslim territory remains legally part of Serbia and under the protection of the United Nations. A Dec. 10 deadline is looming after which Kosovo has vowed to declare its independence. Diplomacy with Belgrade is reaching a dead-end, Ceku said, and Kosovo cannot delay its declaration for much longer.
"We have no more moral right to say we need more time," he said in an interview here Friday. "If Washington asks us to delay for a short time, we will wait. But if the date is much after December 10, we will say, 'let us go.' It is better to ask for an apology than for permission. The time for a decision has come."
Much is hanging on the future of this small, sometimes bedraggled piece of Balkan real estate. It has become a proxy in relations between Washington and Moscow, for Europe's ability to conduct a united foreign policy and for it to prevent another civil war on its doorstep. Pristina's willingness to put off independence for a few more weeks may give the international community some limited diplomatic breathing room. But Ceku said a diplomatic solution with Belgrade was hopeless.
In the absence of an agreement, analysts say the most likely scenario is that Kosovo will declare independence, and defacto partion will take place, with its Serbian enclaves breaking away and joining Belgrade.
On Monday, Ceku will go to Vienna for the latest round of negotiations with Belgrade, which is willing to grant Kosovo greater autonomy over its own affairs, but is vehemently against its independence from Serbia.
He said the talks, mediated by Washington, the EU and Russia, were going nowhere because Belgrade, backed by Moscow, was intent on obfuscation and delay.
"We are talking to Belgrade, but there is no point we can agree on - nothing is going to change between now and December 10," he said. "Expectations for independence are very high. People here are becoming frustrated. They are tired of waiting."
Ceku stressed his faith that United States - celebrated here with a Bill Clinton Boulevard and with a Statue of Liberty replica atop Pristina's Victory Hotel - would deliver on its promises. He said he expected Washington to coordinate recognizing an independent Kosovo, along with London, Paris and Berlin. But aides said he was privately becoming disillusioned after Washington had repeatedly proposed dates for independence, only to withdraw them. Meantime, several EU member states - - including Greece, Cyprus, and Romania - oppose recognizing Kosovo without an agreement from the UN Security Council.
"Some of them lack the courage," Ceku said.
With Washington distracted and the EU divided, fears are growing here that Serb and Albanian frustration with the process could boil over into violence. The hoarding of smuggled guns in homes across Kosovo remains an open secret. In the bustling cafes of Pristina, some Albanians talk ominously of Kosovo becoming a "Balkan Gaza" if the December deadline passes with no resolution. In the Serbian enclaves in Kosovo, meanwhile, Serbs repeatedly invoke March 2004, when rioting broke out and Albanian mobs attacked Serb minorities, killing 19 people, burning Serbian homes and injuring hundreds more.
Ceku was adamant that Serbs in Kosovo were not at risk and that tempers could be kept at bay. Many analysts here agree that Albanians are far more focused on independence than on a perceived threat of local Serbs, who make up about 6 percent of Kosovo's overall population. They argue that Albanians also realize that any recourse to violence would significantly undermine international sympathy for their independence goal.
Still, Ceku blamed Belgrade for stoking tensions by vowing to cancel the agreement that ended the 1999 war if the West recognized a unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo.
He said he did not expect Belgrade to take military action after Pristina declared its independence, but, as a former military man, he was not ruling it out. And he expressed frustration that Belgrade was telling Kosovo's Serbs to boycott upcoming parliamentary elections on Nov. 17.
"Belgrade is telling people they are in danger," he said. "They are trying to create uncertainty and to delay. But as soon as we declare our independence, the game is over." He added: "Nothing bad is going to happen to Serbs. We are committed to being a multiethnic democracy."
Ceku, a former Kosovo Liberation Army general accused of war crimes by Belgrade, may seem an unlikely champion of reconciliation. In May 1999, at the height of the war, a group of paramilitaries and police officers arrived in his home village of Qyshk, in western Kosovo, found his family home, and shot his 69-year-old father, Hasan, before setting the body on fire and shooting the remaining men in the village, according to an account Ceku gave to his aides.
But Ceku, who seldom mentions the incident, said Kosovars of all creeds needed to put the horrors of the past behind them. Shortly after becoming prime minister he was criticized by some Albanian nationalists after he addressed the Parliament in Serbian and appealed to Kosovo's Serbs to help build the new Kosovo. Ceku, whose wife is half Serbian, boasted that he routinely ate at Serbian restaurants in Kosovo. He said Kosovo's new constitution, like America's, would bestow universal rights on all its citizens.
"I was invited to make this place better, not to make revenge," he said, adding: "A winner has to be generous to the losers after a war. It is in a soldier's moral code."
Yet Ceku bristled when asked to explain the ubiquitous billboards in Pristina celebrating Ramush Haradinaj, a charismatic former KLA field commander and close aide, from whom he took over as prime minister last year after Haradinaj was indicted in The Hague on charges of war crimes.
Asked whether the glorification of Haradinaj was an unhealthy sign in a territory where ethnic divisions had so often turned bloody, he replied: "Ramush had not been indicted. His party is using him to identify itself. There is nothing illegal in that."
Observers here said Ceku, long considered a hero, was losing credibility. "Everybody loved him when he was a brave general, but now he looks out of place in his suit and tie," said Linda Gusia, 30, a sociology lecturer and sometime radio host. "No one trusts our leaders anymore because they have promised independence and every deadline has passed."
Albin Kurti, 31, a former student leader who is under house arrest in Pristina for organizing demonstrations against what he calls the United Nations "occupation" went even further. He called Ceku a "puppet" who was allowing the United Nations and the west to turn Kosovo into a colonial outpost.
He argued that Ceku could not deliver independence since, even if Pristina unilaterally declared independence in December, it would still be deemed illegal by the United Nations, where Russia has vetoed a plan calling for internationally supervised self-rule.
"Let the people decide," he said.
Ceku, who is not running in upcoming elections, retorted that he was fighting for the people of Kosovo.
He acknowledged, however, that politics had turned out to be far messier than even the toughest military battles.
"Getting to independence is my mission," he said. "But being in the military was easier than this. There is no order in politics."
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