West to grant Kosovo full sovereignty

PRISTINA: Kosovo was to be granted full sovereignty by the West yesterday, over four years since its hotly contested declaration of independence, in a celebration marred by new Serbian allegations of organ trafficking.
Western powers in the International Steering Group — which has overseen Kosovo since its 2008 unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia — are set to announce the end of supervision over the territory.
Kosovo and its two million majority ethnic-Albanian population has been under some form of international administration since a NATO bombing campaign forced then Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic’s troops out of the Serbian province in 1999.
The ISG — which consists of 23 European Union countries, the United States and Turkey — will formally announce the end of its supervision after an afternoon meeting.
Kosovo’s president Atifete Jahjaga said yesterday that Kosovo deserved to become equal with others.
“Kosovo today is a country that fulfils all the conditions to become a state with a clear Euro-Atlantic integration perspective,” she said in an address to the nation just hours before the ISG meeting.
But Serbia — which has never accepted Kosovo’s declaration of independence on February 17, 2008 — dismissed the sovereignty announcement as meaningless.
Kosovo’s independence has been recognized by some 90 countries, including most EU nations, but is rejected by Serbia, Russia and Kosovo’s own ethnic Serbs, who make up about six percent of the population, living mainly in the north on the border with Serbia.
Serbia’s top official for Kosovo, Aleksandar Vulin, said the decision to end ISG supervision was a “historic and tragic mistake.” Serbian Prime Minister Ivica Dacic stressed Belgrade would never recognize Kosovo’s independence “supervised or unsupervised,” and dismissed the ISG decision as meaningless.
The granting of full sovereignty was further marred by a Serbian prosecutor’s revelation on the eve of the ISG’s meeting that Belgrade has a former Kosovo rebel witness who allegedly took part in removing the heart of a Serb prisoner for the international black market in organs during the 1998-1999 Kosovo conflict. Kosovo’s foreign minister, Enver Hoxhaj, dismissed the revelation as “propaganda” and an attempt to “blacken a very big day for Kosovo.” Claims of organ harvesting from Serb prisoners by the KLA during and after the war are being investigated by the EU.
In 2010 a hard-hitting Council of Europe report found that a group of Kosovo Albanian rebels closely linked to Kosovo’s prime minister, Hashim Thaci, carried out organ trafficking during and after the conflict with Serbian forces.
Thaci and the Kosovo authorities have denied the claims.
On Monday Kosovo tried to look to the future, with foreign minister Hoxhaj describing full sovereignty as “a new chapter.” “We expect this act to strengthen our international position and help a lot in gaining new recognitions and becoming a full-fledged member of all international mechanisms,” Hoxhaj said.
The announcement will be attended by Prime Minister Thaci, Dutch diplomat Pieter Feith — who chairs the International Civilian Office (ICO), which will also be closed down — and a host of other international and Kosovo officials.
Top US diplomat Philip Reeker, who met with Thaci in Pristina yesterday, said the end of supervision would not mean the end of the international community’s support for Kosovo. “It is not an end to strong international engagement and assistance, including that of the United States,” he said.
The end of supervision will not affect the presence of the NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping force in charge of security or European rule-of-law mission EULEX, which was created to boost the justice system.
Kosovo is among the poorest regions in Europe, with almost half of the population jobless and poor, according to international surveys.
The Zeri newspaper warned of “many challenges ahead” as “expectations of the citizens were not fulfilled.”