As a Model UN delegate, an enthusiast
for international relations, and, I would like to think, a somewhat
accomplished negotiator, I am always a little miffed when, like last
Monday, I am confronted with the extent to which negotiation is
undervalued. It's considered worthwhile and necessary of course, butt
simply put, in our society, negotiation is not sexy. Credit is rarely
given where credit is due. For example, Al Gore is the only Kyoto
delegate I can name. Of the people who negotiated the four plus two
treaty that reunified Germany, only Eduard Shevarnadze, the Soviet
delegate, is known to me, and only because he later served as
president of Georgia. Without researching it, I could not name anyone
present during the negotiations of the Oslo and Dayton Accords; just
to name some of the most important negotiations of my lifetime. So
naturally, when the Serbian and Kosovar Prime Ministers met for the
first time on Monday, during a meeting of the UN Security Council, it
took incredibly good luck for me to find out about it, by finding a
copy of the Vienna Currier at the Niagara Falls bus terminal (I have
no idea how it got there) and even then it was only two sentences at
the bottom of page 10.
Reading the transcript of the meeting,
in particular the social niceties spoken by the president at the very
beginning, I can only imagine the amount of work that went into
making the meeting happen. Since no one will, let me say the
following: To the diplomats from New York City, to Pristina, to
Belgrade and elsewhere, though nothing substantive was decided at the
meeting, just getting these two men in the same room a huge step in
the right direction, and I salute for it.
As for the meeting itself, it began
with a statement by General Farid Zarif, head of the United Nations
Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), followed by
statements by Ivica Dačić (Serbia), Hashim Thaçi (Kosovo), and all
fifteen members of the Council. All of what was said was fairly
routine. General Zarif described the situation in Kosovo, where the
status quo has been more less maintain, precarious calm with
continued instances of ethnically motivated violence, the Prime
Ministers made statements of mutual non-recognition and politely
accused each other of illegitimacy, the NAM and China pushed for
further negotiations, Russia supported Serbia, and the US and the EU
pushed for recognition of Kosovo's independence.
What I find far more interesting is
how these things were said. As I said earlier, the social niceties
are particularly telling. The language use by Gérard Araud, the
French representative, more less matched that of the Non-Aligned
States while speaking as President of the Council, referring to
Hashim Thaçi by his name only, but addressing him as His Excellency
the Prime Minister of Kosovo while speaking for the French Republic.
To me this suggests that the NAM, probably by simple strength in
numbers, controls the UN's political position vis à vis Kosovo.
Another interesting contrast in this
respect, is that the NAM states all thanked Hashim Thaçi for his
statement, while the Chinese representative, though making a similar
statement on all other points, merely stated that he had merely
“listened attentively to the statement made by Mr. Thaçi,”
probably wanting to placate Russia who used the same sentence, word
for word, at the beginning of their statement.
The final point that interests me, is
that Ivica Dačić insinuated that certain countries, probably the EU
and the US, have been playing political games with the UNMIK budget.
According to Prime Minister Dačić, the General Assembly
deliberately underfinanced the mission, making it necessary to rely
more heavily on the, in his opinion illegitimate, Kosovar authorities
in order to fulfil the mission's mandate.
