El International Crisis Watch insiste y hoy publica un nuevo informe sobre Kosovo en el que alerta de que la tensión y los peligros se incrementan por momentos:
Kosovo: Toward Final Status Pristina/Belgrade/Brussels, 24 January 2005: The situation in Kosovo is increasingly dangerous, threatening wide-scale unrest and even renewed war. Urgent progress must be made toward establishing Kosovo as an independent state, but only on the basis of fully guaranteed protections for its Serb and other minorities.
Kosovo: Toward Final Status,* the latest report from the International Crisis Group, examines the mounting tensions in the province and says that independence is the only solution that can dispel the gathering storm. Kosovo’s independence must come soon, but only on the basis of a number of conditions being met, and the report sets out a timeline of decisions and events that would lead to an internationally recognised Kosovo by mid-2006. «It’s time for the international community to get off the fence on Kosovo», says Nicholas Whyte, Director of Crisis Group’s Europe Program. «Everyone has delayed the issue of Kosovo’s final status for far too long. It cannot be put off any longer». Since international intervention evicted Belgrade from the province in 1999, Kosovo has been run as a UN protectorate. UN Security Council Resolution 1244, which mandates an international administration, is ambiguous on the duration of Belgrade’s technical sovereignty over Kosovo. But it does make clear that Belgrade, having violently expelled more than 700,000 Kosovo Albanians in 1999, had lost the right to administer the province, and that following a period of international administration, a political process would determine final status. Over the past five years, the final status issue has been delayed and ignored while Kosovo’s two million people continue to exist in an international limbo. The population, 90 per cent of them ethnic Albanian, will never accept a return to Belgrade rule, but the international community has yet to grasp their increasing discontent, even after the deadly rioting in March 2004. Either 2005 will see the start of a final status solution that consolidates peace and development or Kosovo may return to conflict and generate regional instability. As a first step, the six-nation Contact Group should issue as soon as possible a statement spelling out a schedule for the resolution of the status issue, with independence as the goal. This must contain some crucial ground-rules: that the protection of minority rights is the issue on which progress will most depend, and that neither Kosovo’s return to Belgrade’s rule, nor its partition, nor any possible unification of Kosovo with Albania or any neighbouring state or territory will be supported. Additional guarantees are needed to assure the Serbian side that an independent Kosovo would maintain its commitments. Internationally appointed judges should sit on Kosovo’s superior courts, and certain international parties would have the standing to ensure that key matters relating to minority rights and other agreed obligations could be brought before those courts. Kosovo would also accommodate an international monitoring presence, a «Kosovo Monitoring Mission», to report to the wider international community and recommend appropriate measures if Kosovo backslides on its obligations. The time to start this whole process is now. «International complacency on Kosovo must end», says Alex Anderson, Crisis Group’s Kosovo Project Director. «If we don’t act quickly, events could easily get out of control. The potential for renewed violence is very real». Contacts: Andrew Stroehlein (Brussels) +32 (0) 485 555 946 Jennifer Leonard (Washington) +1 202 785 1601 To contact Crisis Group media please click here *Read the full Crisis Group report on our website: www.crisisgroup.org