The Pendulum of Horror

st draft document on a temporary political solution to the Kosovo conflict arrived in Belgrade a week ago Thursday. US envoy Christopher Hill presented the plan to Serbian President Milan Milutinovic and the leader of the ethnic Albanian negotiating team Fehmi Agani. Hill decline to tell reporters how the new document differed from the previous one, brought in November, qualified by the Belgrade authorities as "monstrous, criminal and anti-Serb".

It turned out, however, that there is a drastic difference, if the ethnic Albanian side's reaction is anything to go by. This time round, the ethnic Albanians qualified the plan as "absolutely unacceptable" and "pro-Serbian". Agani was the first to react. He had a number of objections to the plan and said that it offered the ethnic Albanians less than they had under the 1974 Constitution. The ethnic Albanian team was most annoyed with the fact that the new plan would give Serbia significant powers in Kosovo, not only through its deputies in Kosovo's future political institutions. The plan would give Serbia direct authority, as disputes in legal matters would be resolved by its Supreme Court.
"This is not acceptable even as a basis for future peace talks", Agani said, while rejecting the plan with uncharacteristic ferocity.

Adem Demaqi, the KLA political representative, was quite expectedly much more specific than his compatriot. "This new plan has surprised all of us. It is a substitutive concession to the Serbian regime. Ambassador Hill either knows nothing about the situation in Kosovo or is far too close to Milosevic", Demaqi said at a press conference on Tuesday. Demaqi asked for Hill's replacement with a mediator more acceptable for the ethnic Albanians and said that the KLA appreciates the US efforts in the Kosovo peace process, but added that Hill obviously hasn't found his feet. He also complained that the KLA had not been mentioned at all in the new plan and that it offered no guarantees that Kosovo wouldn't remain a part of Serbia after the three-year transitional period. Other ethnic Albanian political parties took the same position, while daily newspapers issued in Albanian came out with sharp and even personal attacks against Hill.

The fact that the Serbs found the new plan just as unacceptable did not prompt the ethnic Albanians to show even a bit of understanding for the US envoy.  Hence Hill went to Pristina on Wednesday to meet with the ethnic Albanian leaders and see what is left of the peace process. Having assessed that the process is not off the rails yet, he tried to give a breath of optimism to his elaboration. He said in the Pristina US Center that the process should be looked upon as a pendulum that swings one way and then the other. Bearing in mind that it is hard to find a living soul in Kosovo who doesn't believe that fighting won't start all over again as soon as the weather gets a bit warmer, it would be good if Hill's pendulum swung forward rather than sideways for a change.