Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
06PRISTINA617
2006-07-24 17:30:00
CONFIDENTIAL
Embassy Pristina
Cable title:  

KOSOVO SCENESETTER FOR JULY 26-28 VISIT OF SPECIAL

Tags:  PREL KCRM PGOV PHUM UNMIK YI 
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ZNY CCCCC ZZH
O 241730Z JUL 06
FM USOFFICE PRISTINA
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 6331
INFO RUEHZL/EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE
RUEKJCS/JOINT STAFF WASHINGTON DC
RUEAWJA/DEPT OF JUSTICE WASHDC
RHEHNSC/NSC WASHDC
RHMFISS/USNMR SHAPE BE//INTAF//
RUEKJCS/SECDEF WASHDC
RHEFDIA/DIA WASHDC
RUFNPKD/USDOCO SOUTH NAPLES IT//INTAF//
RUFOADA/JAC MOLESWORTH RAF MOLESWORTH UK
RUEHNO/USMISSION USNATO 0923
C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 PRISTINA 000617 

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

DEPT FOR DRL, INL, EUR/SCE, AND EUR/SSA, NSC FOR SCHULTE,
DOJ/OPDAT FOR SEASONWEIN, EMBASSY BELGRADE PLEASE PASS TO
AMB WISNER

E.O. 12958: DECL: 07/24/2016
TAGS: PREL KCRM PGOV PHUM UNMIK YI
SUBJECT: KOSOVO SCENESETTER FOR JULY 26-28 VISIT OF SPECIAL
REPRESENTATIVE FRANK WISNER


Classified By: COM TINA KAIDANOW FOR REASONS 1.4 B/D.

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 PRISTINA 000617

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

DEPT FOR DRL, INL, EUR/SCE, AND EUR/SSA, NSC FOR SCHULTE,
DOJ/OPDAT FOR SEASONWEIN, EMBASSY BELGRADE PLEASE PASS TO
AMB WISNER

E.O. 12958: DECL: 07/24/2016
TAGS: PREL KCRM PGOV PHUM UNMIK YI
SUBJECT: KOSOVO SCENESETTER FOR JULY 26-28 VISIT OF SPECIAL
REPRESENTATIVE FRANK WISNER


Classified By: COM TINA KAIDANOW FOR REASONS 1.4 B/D.


1. (C) SUMMARY. Ambassador Wisner's visit, following almost
immediately on the so-called Elephants' Meeting between
Serbian and Kosovar senior leaders, will present an
opportunity to help shape the approach of Kosovo Albanian
leaders to what they expect will be the culmination of the
final status process. Kosovo Albanian negotiators believe
they are in virtual agreement with UNOSEK and moderate
elements of the Serbian Orthodox Church on the protection of
Kosovo's cultural and religious sites. Those negotiators
recognize that UNOSEK wants more from them on
decentralization, but believe their offer of five new
Serb-majority municipalities and the enlargement of a sixth
will form the broad outline of the final decentralization
settlement. Ambassador Wisner should urge Pristina
negotiators not to mistake Belgrade's negotiation
intransigence for a weakening of international community
resolve to realize minority rights in Kosovo. He should tell
Provisional Institutions of Self-Government (PISG) leaders
that Belgrade's stonewalling affords them an opportunity to
present themselves to the world as the true guarantors of
Kosovo Serb rights. He can point out to them that in this
new phase of the status process their challenge will be to
translate the box-checking of the Standards implementation
process into a coherent vision of a multiethnic Kosovo
future. The ambassador should impress on Kosovo Serb
leaders, especially in the north, that the international
community is committed to their welfare and remains
steadfastly opposed to any partition of Kosovo. END SUMMARY.


Kosovo Albanian Team Believes Settlement Is In Sight
-------------- --------------


2. (C) U.S. Special Representative on Kosovo Status Talks
Ambassador Frank Wisner will find on his July 26-28 visit a

Kosovo Albanian leadership that believes it has answered
every international community call for generosity in the
final status process. Early reports from the Pristina
negotiating team in Vienna, corroborated by the draft Contact
Group statement forwarded to USOP, indicate that the team
performed capably in outlining its view of an independent
Kosovo that fully protects minority rights. Notwithstanding
Belgrade negotiating intransigence, the Pristina negotiators
believe that their most recent substantive proposals come
close to emerging UNOSEK and moderate Kosovo Serb bottom
lines. On protection of Kosovo's cultural and religious
sites, Pristina negotiators will point to a deepening
relationship with Bishop Teodosije Sibalic and other Serbian
Orthodox Church (SOC) moderates that has yielded a non-public
agreement-in-principle that fourteen SOC sites warrant
protection and agreement on the dimensions of the protective
zones for seven of those sites.


3. (C) Pristina negotiators are also confident that their
recent proposal to create five new Serb-majority
municipalities and to enlarge the existing municipality of
Novo Brdo is acceptable in principle to the United Nations
Office of the Special Envoy on Kosovo (UNOSEK). They
acknowledge potentially serious differences with UNOSEK on
the competencies to be afforded municipalities. In a recent
meeting with A/DPO, negotiating team coordinator Blerim Shala
complained particularly that UNOSEK suggestions for the
transfer of competencies to municipalities regarding police,
education, and medical treatment could create institutions
that would be nonsustainable.


4. (C) Shala said he fears that enabling municipalities to
nominate all candidates for local police chiefs would be an
invitation to Belgrade to expand Serbian interior ministry
operations from northern Kosovo to every Serb-majority
municipality. (NOTE. Many ethnic Serb members of the Kosovo
Police Service in the north are widely believed to be
secretly double-hatted as Serbian interior ministry police.

SIPDIS
END NOTE.) He said the team is open to Belgrade having an
association with schools in Serb municipalities, but insisted
that Serb-language school curricula must be uniform (i.e.

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Pristina-approved) across all municipalities. Shala
contended that running hospitals and universities with the
complicated boards he said UNOSEK favors would invite chaos.
He maintained that the Pristina team is open to discussion of
all these matters but would be far more likely to enhance
offers if UNOSEK would begin to share its vision of the
bottom lines.

Distinguishing Red Lines From Tactics
--------------


5. (C) Ambassador Wisner's response to Shala and colleagues
should remind them of his primary message during his last
visit in May -- that the Albanian leaders need to know their
"red lines" delineating truly unacceptable proposals, need to
clearly articulate those red lines to UNOSEK and the
international community, and need to remain generous on
everything else. Wisner could set a cooperative tone in this
regard by reiterating a long-standing Contact Group red line
-- there will be no division of Kosovo. The recent rejection
of all ties with Pristina by the three northern
municipalities and the increasingly frequent mention, even by
some internationals, of the emerging concept of "soft
partition" have caused considerable alarm among Kosovo
Albanian leaders and their constituents.

The North -- Preventing Silence, Encouraging Engagement
-------------- --------------


6. (C) A Wisner reassurance on the partition issue would go a
long way to pre-empting a counterproductive exertion of PISG
authority in the north. (NOTE. Prime Minister Agim Ceku made
a rare visit to north Mitrovica on July 22 and, according to
Serbian press, declared that "northern Kosovo has been and
will always be a part of Kosovo." END NOTE.) The
ambassador's visit to Zvecan will present an opportunity to
motivate a key northern Serb leader (Mayor Dragisa Milovic)
to keep open communication channels with the international
community as the final status process unfolds. In early
June, the municipal assemblies of Kosovo's three northern
municipalities (all Serb-majority) issued formal declarations
cutting all ties with the PISG. The three involved mayors
agreed to separate meetings with USOP but rejected the
overtures of several other liaison offices and no-showed for
a group meeting with Pristina-based Contact Group
representatives. The mayors made clear that the
Belgrade-based Kosovo Coordination Center (CCK),the
Association of Serb Municipalities (ASM),the Serbian
National Council (SNC),and the three municipal assemblies
differ among themselves on the north only in the degree of
passion with which they reject the notion of the area
becoming part of an independent Kosovo.


7. (C) No international official will change northern Kosovo
Serb minds on final status. Ambassador Wisner, though, could
usefully urge Milovic to keep talking to us as the final
status process plays out. Our overture about increasing USG
assistance to his municipality has provided him with one
topic of conversation he seems to like. He went out of his
way during our meeting with him on July 13 to disdainfully
criticize CCK chief Sanda Raskovic-Ivic for taking him to
task about Zvecan's treatment of Serbs displaced from the
ethnically-mixed village of Svinjare after March 2004 ethnic
riots. (NOTE: Milovic wants them to go back to Svinjare; he
said Raskovic-Ivic seems afraid they would come to Serbia as
refugees if asked to leave Zvecan. END NOTE.) He also seems
unimpressed with a Belgrade-favored proposal to merge Zvecan
with north Mitrovica to form a new municipality, which would
likely lose him his job. Milovic is in our view the most
informed and savvy of the three northern mayors, although he
is no less hard-line than either of the others. His
inclination to talk to us and his disdain of much of what he
is hearing from Belgrade combine to make him potentially a
key USG interlocutor over the next several months.


8. (C) Ambassador Wisner should repeat this no-partition
message to the moderate Kosovo Serbs of the Serbian List for
Kosovo and Metohija (SLKM),who will be far more receptive to

PRISTINA 00000617 003 OF 003


it. He should also acknowledge their effort to informally
float a Belgrade-Pristina bridge proposal on decentralization
and assure them that the USG is happy to continue to take
full credit for their work product if this helps them keep an
appropriately low profile.

Standards -- This Is What All The Trench Work Was For
-------------- --------------


9. (C) Ambassador Wisner should impress on Kosovo Albanian
leaders that all the tough USG and international community
messages of the past on Standards should be about to pay off.
The often-tedious but essential work of all the working
groups can fairly be cited, not merely as a box-checking
exercise, but as the foundation of a Kosovo future wherein
minority rights are protected as a matter of course rather
than a matter of international coercion. The ambassador
should urge Kosovo policymakers to characterize at every
opportunity progress on Standards as progress towards a
multiethnic future. At the same time, Wisner should
reiterate, the working groups must not only continue but
intensify their efforts.


10. (U) Post clears this message in its entirety for release
to U.N. Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari.
KAIDANOW