"Am I therefore become your enemy,because I TELL YOU THE TRUTH...?"
(Galatians 4:16)

Kosovo’s New Constitution Takes Effect

PRISTINA, Kosovo-This former Serbian province’s new Constitution came into force on Sunday, an important milestone on its path toward full-fledged statehood.But a dispute over who has authority threatens to destabilize the newborn country and to plunge the Balkans into crisis.The Constitution envisions handing over executive power to the majority ethnic Albanian government from the United Nations, which has administered Kosovo since NATO intervened in 1999 to halt Slobodan Milosevic’s repression of ethnic Albanians. The province declared its independence from Serbia four months ago, the culmination of a long and bloody struggle for national self-determination.But even as Kosovo’s president, Fatmir Sejdiu, on Sunday praised the historic document before a low-key ceremony here in the capital, the introduction of the Constitution threatened to unleash tensions in a place where the international community is already struggling to maintain a fragile peace between the country’s ethnic Albanian majority of two million and its more than 100,000 Serbs.The two communities lead parallel but separate lives, with Serbs living in segregated enclaves surrounded by ethnic Albanians, creating an atmosphere of mutual suspicion, if not resentment.Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia on Feb. 17, with the backing of the United States and the European Union, and has since been recognized by some 40 countries. But Serbia and its ally Russia are vehemently opposed to Kosovo’s independence, which they regard as a reckless breach of international law. For now, Kosovo remains the poor adopted orphan of the West, its security guaranteed by 16,000 NATO troops. Whether the world community can maintain stability has become a major foreign policy test for both the European Union and the United States.Chief among the obstacles is the question of which international body has the authority to supervise Kosovo. While the Constitution calls for the European Union to take on an oversight role from the United Nations, Serbia and Russia insist that the European Union mission is illegal because it has not been approved by the Security Council.They have moved to block the deployment of a 2,200-member European Union judicial mission, leaving the United Nations at least temporarily in charge of functions like policing, and the European Union struggling to deploy police officers, judges and customs officers whose housing remains occupied by United Nations staff members.
“We now have a situation with one lame-duck authority and its successor unable to take over,” said Alex Anderson, Kosovo project director at the Pristina branch of the International Crisis Group, an independent, nonprofit organization. “This risks unraveling key institutions like the police and judiciary and undermining a fragile democracy.”Kosovo is already struggling to overcome ethnic divisions in a country where the Serb minority ekes out a life in isolated enclaves and does not recognize Pristina’s authority. Tensions were high Sunday in the divided city of Mitrovica after an unidentified man approached a police station in the city’s Albanian section on Saturday and opened fire, wounding an officer. Hours before, an unidentified man hung a Serbian flag on a mosque.Pieter Feith, the European Union’s envoy to Kosovo, said in an interview on Sunday that he was confident that the European Union would be able to deploy its police mission by October, and that the United Nations would remain in Kosovo during this transition period. But he warned that much depended on cooperation from Serbia.Serbia’s pro-Western president, Boris Tadic, is struggling to form a pro-European Union coalition government after recent elections in which his party failed to win enough seats to form a majority in Parliament.“There could be a problem in implementing our plans if we do not have acceptance in Serb communities in Kosovo,” Mr. Feith said. “Much will depend on whether we have a new government in Belgrade that is E.U.-friendly.” Efforts by the government in Belgrade to undermine the new Constitution were already apparent Sunday. Serbia’s minister for Kosovo, Slobodan Samardzic, visited Mitrovica, where he announced the creation of an elected assembly for the Serb-dominated north. That would further entrench the de facto partition of Kosovo.In Caglavica, a Serbian enclave about a mile south of Pristina where 200 Serb families live an isolated existence, Zoran Ristic, a theater director, said neither the European Union nor the Constitution would make any difference to his life.“The new Constitution may be a happy day for some people, but we have constant electricity outages, our water is cut off, and we are living in a ghetto where most people never leave,” he said. “This Constitution is just a lot of blah, blah, blah.”
By DAN BILEFSKY

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