Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations

Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations

Statement by Ambassador Vassily A. Nebenzia, Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the United Nations, at the Security Council meeting on Kosovo

 We would first like to thank our colleagues from Côte d’Ivoire for their principled position and for convening an urgent meeting of the Security Council at the request of Serbia and Russia in connection with the gross violation of resolution 1244 (1999), as a result of the Pristina Assembly’s adoption of a package of laws on the transformation of the Kosovo Security Force into fully fledged armed forces.

We are grateful to the Under-Secretary-General Lacroix for his briefing and assessments. We also listened carefully to Mr. Hashim Thaçi’s statement. We welcome the participation in today’s meeting of the President of Serbia, His Excellency Mr. Alexander Vučić, and we share his serious concerns about the situation in Kosovo and the illegitimacy surrounding the decision to establish the so-called Kosovo armed forces.

We are referring not only to the illegitimacy relating to the decision itself, but also with regard to the assessments of it, such as we have already heard in the references to the statement of the European Union (EU) eight, and which I think we will hear about more than once at this meeting, from those for whom international law no longer exists. They are now acting on the basis of a so-called rules-based order into which they fit any illegitimate decisions, adapting them to suit political expediency. T

oday we will hear painstaking explanations of why resolution 1244 (1999) has nothing to do with the so-called sovereign decision by the Parliament of a so-called sovereign State. As the years have gone by, we have often warned that rather than being resolved, the problems in Kosovo, alas, are accumulating.

We have constantly pointed out that the situation in the region is extremely unstable and could spin out of control at any moment. We have demanded intensive international monitoring based on the Security Council’s direction. Our calls have been ignored. They have regularly covered up for Pristina, and as a result, the situation has taken an explosive turn. Pristina’s provocative, five-year refusal to fulfil a key agreement with Belgrade on the creation of a community of Serbian municipalities of Kosovo has been compounded by other gross violations.

The decision to transform the Kosovo Security Force into the Kosovo armed forces is a blatant violation of resolution 1244 (1999), which, as the Secretary-General has again underscored, remains the fundamental international legal basis for the Kosovo peace settlement. The resolution includes a totally clear requirement that all Kosovo Albanian armed groups must be demilitarized.

The only presence on Kosovo’s territory that it authorizes is that of exclusively multinational contingents under international control. No progress is being made in Kosovo on creating conditions conducive to a political settlement. The EU mediation mission is getting no practical results. Unlawful incidents and violent raids by the Kosovo police special forces on the Serbian population in the north have become more frequent. Ensuring reliable protection for Orthodox buildings in Kosovo is a major problem, and the takeover of Serbian Orthodox Church property by Kosovars continues.

The region is still an attractive area for recruiting radicals, and terrorists from Syria and Iraq have been fleeing there. Refugees and internally displaced persons are still returning to the region at unsatisfactorily low levels. A genuine humanitarian crisis threatened when Pristina introduced punishing customs duties on goods from central Serbia.

Against that backdrop, the emergence of the Kosovo Armed Forces represents a threat to peace and security in the region through a relapse into armed conflict. Resolution 1244 (1999) is being flouted knowingly and with the support of leading Western countries as well as through their direct connivance, including through the Kosovo Force (KFOR), whose international security presence in the region is based on that same resolution.

We have been compelled to conclude that the Kosovo Force takes an exceedingly selective approach to implementing its mandate. Only a few days ago, on the pretext of ensuring security in the Serb-populated northern regions of Kosovo, KFOR conducted large-scale exercises there using dozens of armoured vehicles. What it looked like was another episode of the intimidation of Kosovo Serbs, while there have been no such exercises in Albanian areas even in cases of overt provocations and violence, such as on 7 and 8 September, when Albanian radicals blocked roads with barriers in order to prevent Serbia’s President Vučić from visiting Serbs in a village in the area. KFOR failed to respond adequately to that clear violation of freedom of movement, not to mention the fact that it involved a high-level official.

Under KFOR there has been a long-standing policy of providing systematic training for Albanian personnel in the Kosovo Security Force that exceeds KFOR’s remit. We are not talking about dealing with problems in the areas of rescue or civil defence but about training and instruction of a purely military nature. This goes on at Camp Bondsteel, among other places, which was originally established for peacebuilding purposes as part of the implementation of resolution 1244 (1999).

Its operations are totally untransparent. We insist that KFOR present the Council with a comprehensive and complete report on how Camp Bondsteel is being used, as well as on the personnel deployed there and its material and technical resources. The European Union’s position is extremely disappointing, in that on the one hand, it claims that it is an objective mediator, and on the other, it pretends to ignore the unlawful creation of a Kosovan army. The EU’s response to Pristina’s latest decision can only be called toothless. Its irresponsible, two-faced policy has crossed a dangerous line.

The emergence of a socalled Kosovo army is an existential danger to Serbs. And we can see why. Suffice it to say that the ranks of the Kosovo Security Force include more than a few former militants from the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity during the conflict, whose victims were Serbs, minorities and dissenting Albanians.

Those who committed crimes that included kidnapping people and removing their organs in order to sell them on the black market are still avoiding accountability. It is increasingly difficult to take seriously the promises we keep hearing year after year that the Kosovo Specialist Chambers for prosecuting the KLA’s crimes will supposedly ensure the triumph of justice.

What is particularly worrying is the possibility that armed Kosovo-Albanian units could invade Serb-populated areas in the north in order to enforce Pristina’s control over the entire territory of Kosovo. Such a scenario could lead to bloodshed and become a real disaster that could send the Balkans back into a period of turmoil and kill the efforts to stabilize the region that the international community has made in recent decades.

Unfortunately, we have no confidence in the international security presence’s ability and preparedness to prevent such a blitzkrieg. We have taken note of the continuing highly responsible and restrained response on the part of the Serbian leadership in urging Kosovo Serbs to remain calm and not react to provocations, as well as its efforts to reduce tensions solely by diplomatic means. However, we also believe it is essential to take extremely seriously the Serbian leadership’s message that if the Kosovo-Albanian security forces invade the north or attempt pogroms against Serbs in other parts of Kosovo, Belgrade will protect them. In our view, the international security presence bears the chief responsibility for providing that protection.

In addition, in accordance with paragraph 9 (b) of resolution 1244 (1999), the Kosovo Force is obliged to take immediate and thorough measures to demilitarize and disband any armed Kosovo-Albanian units. As for the decision on creating the so-called Kosovo Armed Forces in violation of the resolution, it should be immediately rescinded.

We hope that within the framework of its mandate, the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) will continue to play an active role in ensuring the conditions for a peaceful and normal life for all of Kosovo’s residents, protecting and promoting human rights and facilitating the political process. We also hope that the European Union will use its capabilities, including its presence in Kosovo and the mechanisms of its Stabilization and Association Agreement with Pristina, to prevent the situation from deteriorating further, and will help to enable the revocation of the Kosovo-Albanian authorities’ provocative decisions on trade tariffs and armed forces.

In conclusion, we should point to the counterproductive attempts by Pristina’s patrons to conceal the deteriorating situation in Kosovo from the international community and create obstacles to the regular consideration of the Kosovo problem in the Security Council. And that kind of policy is one of the reasons for the current crisis situation there, because it gives the Kosovo authorities a feeling that anything is permitted and no one is accountable.

The Council must continue to be focused on the situation in Kosovo. The quarterly cycle for the Secretary-General’s reports on UNMIK’s activity should be strictly observed.

We cannot exclude the possibility that if the adverse trends escalate it could be necessary to convene new emergency meetings of the Security Council. God forbid that should be the case, needless to say.

We would like to draw the Secretariat’s attention to the importance of carefully monitoring the developing situation and reporting on it to the Security Council.