Ahtisaari's work in Kosovo deserves no prizes

I wouldn’t usually post twice on Kosovo in one day but I was surprised to learn (and yes it did involve me scanning one of Brian Walker’s posts on Slugger) that Martti Ahtisaari is to receive this year’s Nobel peace prize. I can only assume he is being recognised for work in Indonesia and Namibia, although I know nothing of his contribution in these places, because he certainly should not be receiving plaudits for his involvement in Kosovo.

As UN Special Envoy to Kosovo, Ahtisaari eschewed mediating between the Serbs and Albanians, instead choosing to underpin Nato’s early decision that the province would become a nominally independent protectorate. The Ahtisaari Plan put these ambitions into action, making largely symbolic allusions toward protecting minorities, which have not in the event been adhered to.

Serbia, supported by the Russians, would not support Ahtisaari’s plan for independence preferring the compromise of an autonomous Kosovo, within the sovereign state of Serbia. The US and EU insisted that his formulation was the only viable solution and refused even to countenance the notion of autonomous Serb areas within an independent Kosovo.

Ahtisaari’s influence in Kosovo did not promote compromise. He was not a mediator, as much as a means for Nato to enforce its preferred solution. If this prize rests in any degree on his work in Serbia, then it should not be awarded.

Comments

Anonymous said…
I totally agree with you.
11 October 2008 at 23:14
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Football fever in Russia

Russia Blog is getting excited about Euro 2008. Indeed it is drawing parallels between Guus Hiddink and Peter the Great in terms of successful Russo-Dutch exchanges of expertise. Meanwhile, in Moscow, fans have been taking to the streets in order to celebrate the national team’s achievements.
Read more

Stormont might not collapse but paramilitaries continue to disfigure Northern Ireland

Image
The devolved institutions in Northern Ireland are supposedly ‘teetering on the brink’ of collapse yet again.  After repeated failures to agree a balanced budget or implement welfare reform created months of uncertainty, the Executive’s future is now in doubt because the PSNI believes members of the IRA were involved in murdering a republican hit man.  Despite its apparent seriousness, this particular predicament is unlikely to bring the shaky edifice at Stormont crashing down. The IRA was supposed to have disbanded its military ‘structures’ and decommissioned its entire arsenal of weapons back in 2005.  It was on the basis of this understanding that power-sharing resumed in 2007 and the DUP entered government with Sinn Féin.  From the outset it was a fairly flimsy pretext.   Less than a year after John de Chastelain, the retired Canadian general, oversaw decommissioning, the Independent Monitoring Commission reported that the IRA retaine...
Read more

Walker loada rubbish

Former BBC employee Brian Walker has overrun Slugger O’Toole lately with countless poorly structured, poorly written posts. It is possible quickly to recognize and avoid these by subjecting each Slugger piece to a cursory inspection and identifying those which feature characteristic lack of paragraphing and a tenuous grasp on the technicalities of linking source articles. Although I generally evade Walker’s posts by this method, occasionally (and unfortunately) I have persevered and found that their content is as unrewarding as the style in which they are written. Today, for instance, I inflicted upon myself Brian’s thoughts on a mooted Fianna Fail / SDLP merger . In actual fact, he is right to welcome news that the Southern Irish party has dropped this proposal from its agenda; however, the logic by which he arrives at this conclusion is parochial nonsense. To summarise, Walker believes that pursuing realignment with larger parties, whether they are from the rest of the UK or fro...
Read more