2006.07.26: July 26, 2006: Headlines: Directors - Schneider: Serbia: Century Foundation: Mark Schneider, writes: Serbia will be better off "in Europe," living in peace with a new Kosovo than futilely inciting Kosovo Serbs to challenge the final status outcome
Peace Corps Online:
Peace Corps News:
Directors of the Peace Corps:
Mark Schneider:
January 23, 2005: Index: PCOL Exclusive: Peace Corps Directors - Schneider :
2006.07.26: July 26, 2006: Headlines: Directors - Schneider: Serbia: Century Foundation: Mark Schneider, writes: Serbia will be better off "in Europe," living in peace with a new Kosovo than futilely inciting Kosovo Serbs to challenge the final status outcome
Mark Schneider, writes: Serbia will be better off "in Europe," living in peace with a new Kosovo than futilely inciting Kosovo Serbs to challenge the final status outcome
"The current Serbian leader needs to hear that if he continues to embrace the nationalism of Milosevic, he and his country will become international pariahs. If, however, he accepts the outcome of current negotiations—likely to be an independent nation limited largely by international guarantees to protect Serb minority rights—Serbia will have a future as part of the European Union and NATO." Mark Schneider, Senior Vice President of the International Crisis Group in Washington, was the second Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (El Salvador, 1966–68) to head the agency.
Mark Schneider, writes: Serbia will be better off "in Europe," living in peace with a new Kosovo than futilely inciting Kosovo Serbs to challenge the final status outcome
Balkan Choice
Morton Abramowitz, Mark Schneider,
Wall Street Journal,
7/25/2006
At yesterday's negotiations between Serbian and Kosovo Albanian leaders, Kosovars made clear that their goal is independence. Serbian President Vojislav Kostunica, earlier this month at the United Nations, spelled out his firm opposition. He needs to get a firm reply from the international community that Serbia can chose the past or the future. It can't have both.
Mr. Kostunica is carrying the late Slobodan Milosevic's message that Kosovo must remain a subordinate province of Serbia. But Milosevic is dead, the clock will not be turned back to 1999, and Serbia will have to accept an international consensus on Kosovo's final status.
The current Serbian leader needs to hear that if he continues to embrace the nationalism of Milosevic, he and his country will become international pariahs. If, however, he accepts the outcome of current negotiations—likely to be an independent nation limited largely by international guarantees to protect Serb minority rights—Serbia will have a future as part of the European Union and NATO.
During the past six years, a U.N. Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) has been administering the province after the NATO-led intervention ended Milosevic's ethnic cleansing. Now, day-to-day administration is largely in the hands of an elected provisional government. Working on meeting governance standards set by the UN—with the strong input of a Contact Group including the U.S., U.K., Russia, France, Italy and Germany—the government under Prime Minister Agim Ceku, once a feared Albanian underground military chief, has made progress.
Of course, Kosovar Albanians could help their own cause by reaching out even more to Kosovo's Serbs on issues of decentralization, protection for monasteries and refugee return. However, they met enough of the standards to get U.N. Security Council endorsement of final status negotiations led by U.N. special envoy and former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari.
After nine months of shuttling in the region from his base in Vienna, Mr. Ahtisaari yesterday put the issues and options before the Serbian and Kosovo presidents and prime ministers. The talks made little progress. Another summit meeting is likely in September. It would be nice, but no one really expects Mr. Kostunica to actually embrace the separation of Kosovo and Serbia. It may be difficult—emotionally and politically—but the experience of the past 10 years, including Milosevic's attempted ethnic cleansing, have made anything less than independence totally unacceptable to the people of Kosovo.
The U.S. and other Contact Group countries are expected to endorse Mr. Ahtisaari's final proposal before the end of the year. It almost surely will be independence with continued NATO military presence and international guarantees to Kosovo's Serb minorities. Even if Mr. Kostunica continues to stonewall, it is likely that the Security Council will adopt it. While Russia is his strongest supporter, Moscow's main concern relates less to Serbia than to the Caucasus. They see the Kosovo status settlement as setting a precedent. Though Russia wants to hold on to rebellious Chechnya, it also wants a tool to slice Abkhazia and South Ossetia away from Georgia. Russia is trying to set down a marker, unacceptable to the West, that if Serbia is forced to give up a former province, Georgia can be made to suffer similar provincial surgery, even if no historical parallel exists.
Serbia's reactions to the negotiating process thus far have gone well past the point of passive resistance. Mr. Kostunica strongly opposed independence for Montenegro which took place last month. Belgrade has pumped up the return-to-Serbia movements in the northern three Kosovo municipalities and in the adjoining divided city of Mitrovica, where 40% of Kosovo's Serbs live. Serbia has obliged Kosovo Serbs to boycott the U.N.-backed provisional government, recently making all teachers and health workers tear up their government contracts. Instead, Serbia finances parallel structures of government, through which the northern municipalities have begun raising a paramilitary force. Serbia also maintains plainclothes police in Kosovo, in defiance of the 1999 Security Council Resolution that introduced U.N. administration into Kosovo.
Belgrade's separatist support seeks to present a de facto partition on the ground to the final status negotiators, despite the Contact Group principles endorsed by the U.N. of a unified, multi-ethnic Kosovo with no partition, no boundary changes, no return to pre-1999.
The international community, particularly the leaders of the Contact Group countries, must make it clear to Serb leaders that obstructionist tactics are unacceptable. NATO forces will stay to guarantee the final status outcome, and there will be international monitoring to assure human rights are protected.
Serbia will be better off "in Europe," living in peace with a new Kosovo than futilely inciting Kosovo Serbs to challenge the final status outcome. The world's message to Mr. Kostunica should be simple: choose the future, and allow Kosovo and Serbia to join Europe.
Mr. Abramowitz is a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and a trustee of the International Crisis Group, where Mr. Schneider is senior vice president. This article originally appeared in the Wall Street Journal-Europe on July 25, 2006.
When this story was posted in July 2006, this was on the front page of PCOL:
Peace Corps Online The Independent News Forum serving Returned Peace Corps Volunteers
| Bush nominates RPCV Ron Tschetter to head PC President Bush has nominated Ron Tschetter to serve as Director of the Peace Corps. Tschetter, 64, is the president of D.A. Davidson & Co., an employee-owned investment firm based in Montana who first got involved with the Peace Corps in 1966, when he volunteered with his wife to work as family planning advisers in India. He is a former Chairman of the National Peace Corps Association.
PCOL Comment: Congratulations to the Bush administration for an inspired choice for Peace Corps Director. Ron Tschetter is not only an RPCV but was Chairman of the NPCA. Best wishes to Mr. Tschetter on his future tenure as Director of the Peace Corps. |
| Changing the Face of Hunger In his new book, Former Congressman Tony Hall (RPCV Thailand) says humanitarian aid is the most potent weapon the United States can deploy against terrorism. An evangelical Christian, he is a big believer in faith-based organizations in the fight against hunger. Members of Congress have recently recommended that Hall be appointed special envoy to Sudan to focus on ending the genocide in Darfur. |
| PC will not return to East Timor in 2006 Volunteers serving in East Timor have safely left the country as a result of the recent civil unrest and government instability. Latest: The Peace Corps has informed us that at this time, the Peace Corps has no plans to re-enter the country in 2006. The Peace Corps recently sent a letter offering eligible volunteers the opportunity to reinstate their service in another country. |
| Chris Dodd considers run for the White House Senator Chris Dodd plans to spend the next six to eight months raising money and reaching out to Democrats around the country to gauge his viability as a candidate. Just how far Dodd can go depends largely on his ability to reach Democrats looking for an alternative to Hillary Clinton. PCOL Comment: Dodd served as a Volunteer in the Dominican Republic and has been one of the strongest supporters of the Peace Corps in Congress. |
| Vasquez testifies before Senate Committee Director Vasquez testifies before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on his nomination as the new Representative to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture replacing Tony Hall. He has been the third longest serving Peace Corps Director after Loret Ruppe Miller and Sargent Shriver. PCOL Comment: Read our thanks to Director Vasquez for his service to the Peace Corps. |
| Interview with a Hit Man RPCV John Perkins says that for many years he was an "economic hit man" in the world of international finance whose primary job was to convince less developed countries to accept multibillion dollar loans for infrastructure projects that left the recipient countries wallowing in debt and highly vulnerable to outside political and commercial interests. In this exclusive interview for "Peace Corps Online," Colombia RPCV Joanne Roll, author of Remember with Honor, talks to Perkins about his Peace Corps service, his relation with the NSA, "colonization" in Ecuador, the consequences of his work, why he decided to speak out, and what his hopes are for change. |
| Peace Corps stonewalls on FOIA request The Ashland Daily Tidings reports that Peace Corps has blocked their request for information on the Volkart case. "After the Tidings requested information pertaining to why Volkart was denied the position — on March 2 — the newspaper received a letter from the Peace Corps FOIA officer stating the requested information was protected under an exemption of the act." The Dayton Daily News had similar problems with FOIA requests for their award winning series on Volunteer Safety and Security. |
| PCOL readership increases 100% Monthly readership on "Peace Corps Online" has increased in the past twelve months to 350,000 visitors - over eleven thousand every day - a 100% increase since this time last year. Thanks again, RPCVs and Friends of the Peace Corps, for making PCOL your source of information for the Peace Corps community. And thanks for supporting the Peace Corps Library and History of the Peace Corps. Stay tuned, the best is yet to come. |
| History of the Peace Corps PCOL is proud to announce that Phase One of the "History of the Peace Corps" is now available online. This installment includes over 5,000 pages of primary source documents from the archives of the Peace Corps including every issue of "Peace Corps News," "Peace Corps Times," "Peace Corps Volunteer," "Action Update," and every annual report of the Peace Corps to Congress since 1961. "Ask Not" is an ongoing project. Read how you can help. |
| RPCV admits to abuse while in Peace Corps Timothy Ronald Obert has pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a minor in Costa Rica while serving there as a Peace Corps volunteer. "The Peace Corps has a zero tolerance policy for misconduct that violates the law or standards of conduct established by the Peace Corps," said Peace Corps Director Gaddi H. Vasquez. Could inadequate screening have been partly to blame? Mr. Obert's resume, which he had submitted to the Peace Corps in support of his application to become a Peace Corps Volunteer, showed that he had repeatedly sought and obtained positions working with underprivileged children. Read what RPCVs have to say about this case. |
| Why blurring the lines puts PCVs in danger When the National Call to Service legislation was amended to include Peace Corps in December of 2002, this country had not yet invaded Iraq and was not in prolonged military engagement in the Middle East, as it is now. Read the story of how one volunteer spent three years in captivity from 1976 to 1980 as the hostage of a insurrection group in Colombia in Joanne Marie Roll's op-ed on why this legislation may put soldier/PCVs in the same kind of danger. Latest: Read the ongoing dialog on the subject. |
Read the stories and leave your comments.
Some postings on Peace Corps Online are provided to the individual members of this group without permission of the copyright owner for the non-profit purposes of criticism, comment, education, scholarship, and research under the "Fair Use" provisions of U.S. Government copyright laws and they may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner. Peace Corps Online does not vouch for the accuracy of the content of the postings, which is the sole responsibility of the copyright holder.
Story Source: Century Foundation
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; Directors - Schneider; Serbia
PCOL33778
65