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Three years on, it's time to talk peace
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STOCKHOLM There is no doubt that my friend Michael Steiner, as head of the UN administration, is doing an excellent job in working for decent and democratic standards in Kosovo. But this is no way negates the need to deal also with the different status issues in the region, including the future of Kosovo.
Not only are the internal tasks of establishing standards in Kosovo complicated by the uncertainty of the status of the area, but there is also the risk that this will continue to generate uncertainty from Bosnia to Macedonia. As any seasoned Balkan observer knows, everything impacts on everything in this region.
Steiner stresses, in reply (IHT Views, July 24) to a column of mine (July 10), how difficult these issues are. I couldn't agree more. But my point is that they risk becoming even more difficult by being neglected. It is simply naive to believe that they will go away. They have to be sorted out.
Since I wrote, a report from the U.S. Institute for Peace has joined the call for an international dialogue on where to go with the status of Kosovo. With a resolution necessary in at most a couple of years, it is high time for the European Union, the United States and Russia to sit down and discuss where to go. At the end of the day, the issue rests with the UN Security Council.
And at the end of the day there has to be a rapprochement between Belgrade and Pristina. Any durable peace has to meet the minimum demands of both, and is unlikely to meet the maximum demands of either. But neither the initial rapprochement nor the eventual peace agreement can be achieved without a clear international facilitation based on a clear international policy.
It is more than three years since the end of the war over Kosovo - time to start discussing the peace. The writer, a former prime minister of Sweden, was special UN envoy in the Balkans from 1999 to 2001. He contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.
Not only are the internal tasks of establishing standards in Kosovo complicated by the uncertainty of the status of the area, but there is also the risk that this will continue to generate uncertainty from Bosnia to Macedonia. As any seasoned Balkan observer knows, everything impacts on everything in this region.
Steiner stresses, in reply (IHT Views, July 24) to a column of mine (July 10), how difficult these issues are. I couldn't agree more. But my point is that they risk becoming even more difficult by being neglected. It is simply naive to believe that they will go away. They have to be sorted out.
Since I wrote, a report from the U.S. Institute for Peace has joined the call for an international dialogue on where to go with the status of Kosovo. With a resolution necessary in at most a couple of years, it is high time for the European Union, the United States and Russia to sit down and discuss where to go. At the end of the day, the issue rests with the UN Security Council.
And at the end of the day there has to be a rapprochement between Belgrade and Pristina. Any durable peace has to meet the minimum demands of both, and is unlikely to meet the maximum demands of either. But neither the initial rapprochement nor the eventual peace agreement can be achieved without a clear international facilitation based on a clear international policy.
It is more than three years since the end of the war over Kosovo - time to start discussing the peace. The writer, a former prime minister of Sweden, was special UN envoy in the Balkans from 1999 to 2001. He contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.
