Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Samardzic's partition proposal

Allthough Samardzic's "partition plan" has been discussed in all newspapers I haven't seen yet a complete list of what Samardzic proposes and contradicting reports keep appearing. He claims that the plan covers all Serb enclaves. It seems he felt pressured to come with the plan now because of the Eulex and other time limits surrounding Kosovo's independence declaration might bring the enclaves under direct rule from Pristina within a few months.

As Tim Judah comments, the Ahtisaari plan already provides for a considerable separation. The plan extends this to include police and judiciary - among others. I find this a useful extension. I always felt that the Ahtisaari plan was too limited for the high tension and high discrimination environment of Kosovo.

Some elements seem strange to me. For example the claim that only Serbs would serve as judges. How do they want to explain that to the Albanian villages in the north? I cannot imagine that the UN will accept such a proposal. But maybe there is something in the not published parts of the plan that deals with the rights of the Albanians.

The UN has said to study the plan and - allthough they see many unacceptable elements - seem to accept it as a basis for negotiations.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't know why the plan is not being published by media in English.

The whole plan was published by Express in Kosova over a week ago and I can tell you that Albanians were not mentiones at all.

Come on, you know that Serbs hate to mention the word Albanian. They only time they do that is when they say "Albanian separatists" or when they use the t-word.

As I have said before a partition is impossible since Serbs are a veryyy little minority and they don't have majority in any big city. They have majority only in Zvecan, Leposavic and Zubin Potok and these are what we in Albanian call "qytezë" (small town).

Even in Mitrovica they are a minority. Now they are proposing to turn small villages to cities but can you call a place with 100 people a city? Don't think so.

This plan ha been rejected by Albanians because it aims to implement apathaid in Kosova and will be rejected by UN too since it wants partition but without recognizing Kosovo(the rest that remains after mini-Serbia's have been created) as an independent country.

Wim, this was my last comment for a while(up to a year). Maybe I will come back but I don't know.

Wim Roffel said...

Hi Stories,
I will miss your comments.

If you have an English translation of the Samadzic plan I would love to publish it.

You are forgetting the 9000 Serbs who form the majority in Strpce. Due to its isolated location it is rather well suited for partition.

After the war virtually all Serbs have been driven from the big cities. And while there have been some returns to small villages the departures from the big cities have continued and in most there is hardly a Serb left. That is a strong argument in favor of separate cities for the Serbs. They have good reason to claim that the "apartheid" was created in 1999 by the Albanians.

Mrs. Trajkovic and other have said that the UN aims for a kind of frozen conflict for the moment in which the Serbs would have considerable autonomy. Given that they are divided among themselves still anything can happen. But they might aim for the Ahtisaari-municipalities with for the moment some more autonomy as Ahtisaari offers.