An Echo of Clinton's Letter

Pristina sees the solution in independence for Kosovo and guarantees that the national and cultural rights of the Serb minority in Kosovo will be protected. On the other hand, official Belgrade and the Serbian opposition consider Kosovo to be an inalienable part of Serbia and are ready to talk only of eventual cultural autonomy for ethnic Albanians. The world powers' compromise formula foresees a solution under which Kosovo would remain within the framework of Serbia/Yugoslavia, but with a high degree of political self-management and elements of statehood. This is a bitter pillow which both sides will have to swallow if war is to be avoided.

The announcement of a compromise has brought back to the political scene extremist forces. The first to react were the leaders of the Serb resistance movement in Kosovo in the Eighties. They have organized again and alarmed the public because of the regime's insipid and unconvincing announcements that concessions might be made to the ethnic Albanians.

The situation is different today, not only because Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic's regime has changed its political course with regard to Bosnia, but also because, on the domestic and international planes, Serbia has to a large extent spent its political and military credit. And just as a rift has broken out among the Serbs over Bosnia, so is it possible that the same will happen over the question of Kosovo. It is possible to discern the outlines of a rift today between political realists who are prepared to make certain concessions and compromise and the radical current which opposes all agreements with ethnic Albanians. Milosevic is currently introducing a new wave of police repression and preparing the ground for the mass colonization of Kosovo with 100,000 Serb refugees from Bosnia and Croatia. Is this just a tactic with which he wishes to prevent the unification of the opposition on the Kosovo issue, or will Milosevic retain the same unbending and arrogant stand on Kosovo with which he started his political rise - this is something that will become clear with time. Perhaps Milosevic himself has started to believe in forecasts fatalistic to him - that it all started in Kosovo and that this is where it will all end.

A similar clash between the realists and the radical currents in the past few days has risen to the surface among ethnic Albanians. The direct cause of the clash was a letter by US President Bill Clinton to Eliot Engel and Susan Molinari, co-chairmen of the Committee on Kosovo. These two ethnic Albanian lobbyists in the US Congress asked Clinton in December what stand his Administration had with regard to Kosovo and what concrete measures it would take to resolve the problem. In his answer Clinton summed up US stands on the issue and was more specific on some topics which until now had only been hinted at, such as the list of conditions for the lifting of sanctions against Serbia/Yugoslavia. "There are a certain number of questions, including Kosovo, which I believe should be dealt with before Belgrade is free of UN sanctions and returns into the international community," said Clinton. The President then informed congressmen that the US Government would continue to send humanitarian aid to Kosovo, and that it supported the opening of a Kosovo bureau in Washington, and that there were plans for the opening of a US bureau in Kosovo, as soon as conditions for the safety of the US staff were met.

Clinton said some things which are of great importance for Kosovo. For the first time the lifting of sanctions against Serbia has officially been made, if not strictly conditional, then certainly tied to the Kosovo situation. If this is said by the president of the strongest world power, one with the right of veto in the Security Council, then it is no small thing. The decision on the opening of a bureau is also significant, all the more so because there is a similar initiative in Bonn, while the Kosovo Committee which rallies top French intellectuals is demanding of Badinter's government the opening of a Kosovo bureau in France. (The Kosovo Committee has proposed Kosovo leader Ibrahim Rugova for the Nobel Peace Prize). Clinton's letter however, contains a sentence which has stirred things up in Kosovo. He writes: "However, even though the US does not support an independent Kosovo, we are firm in our efforts at returning human and political rights to the people of Kosovo. The rejection of violence and patience in face of Serbia's repression have proved Ibrahim Rugova's courage and farsightedness." The man representing the biggest world power has said that Kosovo's independence will not be supported. This stand by the international community was known in Kosovo earlier, but it was ignored and not taken seriously. However, after Clinton's letter, it can no longer be ignored.

In the meantime, PM of the Kosovo government in exile Bujar Bukoshi said in an interview carried by the Albanian-language weekly Zeri, that: "The West still doesn't support our demand for independence". Circles close to Rugova tried to downplay the negative echo of this part of Clinton's letter with the old tactic of underscoring the positive stands in US and international politics. Bukoshi now accuses the other current in the Democratic League of Kosovo, especially its vice-president Fehmi Agani, that he is opposed to the government as an institution and that he is the man urging the autonomous option. Bukoshi claims that Agani told a DSK rally in Germany recently that the "Kosovo government had been formed for formal and symbolical reasons, in order that we might say before the world that we had our government". Agani denied this immediately.

Writing of the Bukoshi-Agani clash, the Zeri commentator concluded that the matter concerned a struggle for the number two position in the DSK and the Albanian movement, since Ibrahim Rugova remains the uncontested leader and number one man. In his article in Zeri, Agani gives a sophisticated argument on the profile of the new world order as a stage which will establish the principle of self-determination for enslaved and divided nations which had earlier been treated as minorities and left to the mercy of the states in which they found themselves.

Agani is one of those who urge an optimistic version of a new, better and more stable world order, but he also sees the solution for Kosovo in independence. He is however, more open in considering ways of achieving it. Other influential figures on the Kosovo political scene, who are not in the DLK or are its opponents, have also come forward with their views. They support a pessimistic and radical option of total and immediate self-determination. Former Communist leader from the '70s Mahmut Bakalli submitted a sharply worded article in Zeri on the current situation and strategy aimed at breaking out of the vicious circle of "inefficiency and self-satisfaction because of the political monopoly which has been created and the policy of closing and blockade". Bakalli believes that it is necessary to reject the offer of autonomy and unmask its sponsors, as a possible "opportunist formation which, using the slogan of political realism and the alleged overcoming of the difficult situation of the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, could agree to an autonomous status for Kosovo under Serbia's jurisdiction or the risk-laden option of dividing Kosovo between the Serbs and ethnic Albanians".

Academician Rexhep Qosja was even more vitriolic in an article in the weekly Koha. Well known as a radical critic of the DLK and Ibrahim Rugova's "sitting down movement", Qosja paints the current situation in very dark colors. "A policy which has exchanged the oath for independence with an oath for a false peace, one whose measure is determined by the Serbian and Macedonian armies and police, must be in a crisis". Qosja cautions of the world power's duplicity. He claims that President Clinton has greatly lowered the level of US support to Kosovo. "Unlike President George Bush, Bill Clinton does not mention the term high degree of autonomy very often. This means that our hopes were in vain." Qosja, just like Bakalli, speaks of the vicious circle of ethnic Albanian politics and the immaturity of Albanian leaders in Kosovo and in Albania: "An important issue such as our national question cannot be resolved by petty men who conduct an even pettier policy". Qosja is very critical of Albanian President Sali Berisha because he "has reduced the question of Kosovo to the level of a human rights issue". Qosja sees a way out in the setting up of an all-national Albanian council, which would have the task of carrying through the Albanian national program and controlling and correcting the current political elite.

Serbian and ethnic Albanian extremists differ vitally in one thing. Serb extremists are armed (Miroslav Solevic complained recently that the Serbs in Kosovo had been given too few arms and ammunition, only 1,000 bullets per head!), while ethnic Albanian extremists are verbal. Serbia's aggressive and war policy in Kosovo is effective (authority is maintained by arms), while the eventual entry of the Albanians in the war can only be a matter of speculation. But, when talking of politics according to the offered compromise, the temptation will be greater on the Serbian side than with ethnic Albanians. If ethnic Albanians do make concessions and agree to a dependent status for Kosovo, that does not mean that they will be abandoning the demand for independence, but that such a status will be considered a stopping point on the road to reaching the main goal. For the Serbian side, agreeing to a compromise would mean a significant and probably permanent loss of military and police control over Kosovo.