KOSOVO SCENESETTER FOR JULY 26-28 VISIT OF SPECIAL

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. PRISTINA 00000617 002 OF 003 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