The EU police and justice mission aimed at helping Kosovo’s transition to independence is a form of “occupation,” Kosovo Serb leader Milan Ivanovic said Saturday.
“In essence, the mission has the characteristics of an occupation and it will be accepted neither by Serbia nor by the Serbs in Kosovo,” Ivanovic told AFP hours after Brussels approved the mission’s deployment.
European Union nations have agreed to send a 2,000-strong mission to train and mentor police, judges and customs officials in the mainly ethnic Albanian southern Serbian province which is expected to declare independence Sunday.
Ivanovic said Kosovo’s Serbs — who make up around 120,000 of the province’s 1.8 million people and want to remain part of Serbia — “will oppose this mission by all legal means.”
“The EU mission is not welcome. We will boycott it and use all methods of civic resistance,” Ivanovic said.
In Belgrade, Serbia’s Minister for Kosovo, Slobodan Samardzic, described the EU decision to send its mission to the province as “shameful.”
“The decision is shameful for the European Union as it practically recognizes the independence of Kosovo,” Samardzic told Tanjug news agency.
“With such a decision, the EU is accepting the politics of secession as a solution for solving minority issues,” Samardzic said.
Accusing the EU of following in the footsteps of Washington, Samardzic described it as an “unreliable international organization inclined to violating international law… and prone to serving US foreign policy interests.”
“That is why Serbia will have to, in the nearest future, question its relations with the European Union and its member countries which might recognize the independence of Kosovo,” Samardzic said.
Serbia, fiercely opposed to the independence for Kosovo, has warned it might recall its ambassadors from countries recognizing the breakaway province.
And Serbian nationalist Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said Thursday that by sending the mission, Brussels “is brutally violating international law and (UN Security Council) Reolution 1244.”
That resolution confirmed Serbian sovereignty over Kosovo but established the province as a UN protectorate in 1999, after NATO bombed Belgrade to end a conflict between Serbian forces and Kosovo Albanian separatist militants.
Ivanovic said the EU mission was “neither legal nor legitimate,” inisting it was “adopted against the UN chapter and fundamental principles of inviolability of borders.”
“We will continue to respect UN Resolution 1244 … Serbia is a member of the UN and not the EU and this decision is a violation of Resolution 1244,” Ivanovic said.
The EU green light for sending the mission to Kosovo does not mean that staff will be immediately despatched to the UN-run province. The EU is coordinating the deployment with the United Nations and Kosovo authorities.
In the days after Kosovo declares independence the so-called EULEX Kosovo mission will begin a 120-day countdown to taking over policing duties from the United Nations.
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Commentary: considering the mind-boggling hypocrisy of the the Empire (EU.US.NATO) and the fact that every single action taken after the declaration of independence of Kosovo will be illegal, I see no other option for the Serbs than to resist by all available means, thereby turning northern and eastern Kosovo into a second Waziristan. And make no mistake, EU cops and NATO soldiers to not have the balls to fight a Serbian guerrilla movement. I do not think that this Serbian insurrection will happen immediately, but that is where this situation is heading.
Exactly as with the Palestinians, the Empire has categorically refused any kind of meaningful negotiations with the Serbs and the results will be the same. I would add that Serbia is not ruled by an Abbas type figure, but by Kostunica who is acutely aware that his political future depends on being firm on Kosovo so I would not count on him to oppress the Serbs the same way Abbas and his goons oppress the Palestinians.
The Kosovo policy of Clinton and Bush will go down in history as a mind boggling combination of hypocrisy, imperialism, arrogance, ignorance and sheer idiocy and, in this case, the Europeans are at least as much to be blamed as the USA.
