Interview With Nenad Stefanovic of Radio Television Serbia

QUESTION: Mr. Burns, when U.S. diplomats say that 2005 is the year of decision in Kosovo many Serbian people understand that 2005 is the year when maybe Serbia will lose Kosovo. Is the decision on Kosovo status preordained, is it written in stone already?

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Thank you. May I say first: It's been a great pleasure for me to be here in Belgrade. I have not been here in many years. I have seen significant changes here that are positive and when I met with President Tadic and Prime Minister Kostunica just this morning, we talked together about a possibility of a much improved relationship between Serbia and Montenegro and the United States of America. And we have to do that. We are all responsible for trying to elevate this relationship because, as every Serb knows, we had a very difficult time in 1999. We want, we Americans, to put that behind us. We have great respect for Serbia and Montenegro. We understand that it is the most important country in the Balkans. And we understand that the Balkans cannot be truly peaceful and democratic and stable unless we all have a good relationship with your country.

So, I want to start there before I talk about Kosovo, because that's the most important part about this relationship and what we are trying to do. The United States is seeking a real improvement in its relations with your country and with the Serb people. And we are going to work very hard. And so I told the president and prime minister that we will now begin again to extend American economic and financial assistance to Serbia. You know we had stopped that in January of this year. We had stopped all American assistance. But because of the very, very good actions that have been taken by the government, and specifically the fact that twelve Serb individuals had voluntarily surrendered themselves to the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, and given the very good statements made by the government we decided it was time to go back to normal. And so we will now have American economic assistance here. We remain the number one investor in Serbia, in terms of creating jobs in putting money in the economy, it is the United States of America.

And now we want to work on the great problems of the region which you are interested in. And we believe that as soon as Ratko Mladic is turned over to the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague for the crimes he committed in ordering the execution of 8,000 men and boys in Srebrenica in July 1995, as soon as that happens then we'll see, I think, an opening of Serbia's relations with NATO and with the European Union at NATO. We will welcome Serbia into the Partnership for Peace. We will begin to have closer military and political relations.

All this is important for Kosovo because we do face a year of decision in Kosovo. 2005 will be a year when we see the status quo change. I was in Pristina yesterday and I saw a situation that cannot be sustained. Six years after the war, the people of Kosovo have to know what their future is, and they have to know that they are in charge of their future. And so, we very much support the United Nations effort to have a process this summer which is not preordained, to answer your question, whereby the United Nations will look at the standards issue and they will determine whether the time is right for final status negotiations for future of Kosovo. Should that happen, then the United States would want to see a process whereby the Kosovar Albanians, the Kosovar Serbs, the other minority populations, and the government here in Belgrade would be involved in negotiating together.

There is no secret plan. There is no plan of the United States for the future of Kosovo. In fact, we think it is very important that we not support any potential outcome. We want to be an independent, objective friend of all sides in the negotiations and we would intend to be involved in negotiations to help the parties make progress. So I can assure you that this is an open-ended process. There is no outcome that is written, that is preordained. And it really is up to the people who live there, as well as to the government of Serbia and Montenegro, to decide the future because nothing can be imposed from the outside.

QUESTION: But some people think that there is some rush about Kosovo. Many longstanding ethnic conflicts are unsolved despite many years of negotiations. How does Kosovo qualify for such a speedy resolution?

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Well, a terrible thing happened to the Kosovar Albanian population in March in 1998, and in early 1999. Slobodan Milosevic, as you well know, tried to drive them out of Kosovo. A million people had to flee their homes. It took the intervention of the entire Western community of democracies to stop that. And the Kosovar Albanians have been living now for six years wondering what their future is. So, there is a sense of urgency to go beyond the status quo and, under a supervised process organized by the United Nations, to have an international negotiation over the future of Kosovo. I don't know what the outcome of that negotiation will be. The United States has not supported any specific outcome. But we do know this: that in order for those negotiations to succeed everyone has to be involved. And right now there is the situation where the Kosovar Serb population has chosen not to vote in the elections, not to participate in the assembly, not to involve themselves in the discussions, and frankly from our objective position, this is a great problem, because what it means is that there is no avenue for the Kosovar Serb population to have an effect, an impact on the situation. The field is dominated by the Kosovar Albanians, because the Kosovar Serbs have elected not to go on to the field. Our judgment would be that it is time for the Kosovar Serbs to become more active in the political life of Kosovo and in the negotiations.

But, let me say one more thing. When I was in Kosovo yesterday, I spent majority of the day with Kosovar Serbs. I met with the religious leadership with the remarkably courageous religious leader, Bishop Teodosje and Father Sava. I met with members of the Kosovar Serb opposition. And I also went to Obilic, and I spent a lot of time with four Kosovar Serb families. These are older people, they are very dignified people, they are very proud people. All of them had their homes burned by extremists in March 2004 and their homes are destroyed. They had built these homes thirty and forty years ago with their own hands. They are natives of Kosovo, and I visited them because I wanted to learn about their situation but I also wanted to be able to say to the Kosovar Albanians that Serbs have a right to live in Kosovo, that Serbs have always lived in Kosovo and that Serbs should be allowed to return. They should be allowed to live in safety and freedom and they should be made to feel welcome. That is not now the case. These very nice people, who were nice enough to invite me into their homes, Serbs in Obilic, said they don't feel safe, they don't feel welcome, they have been given very little assistance, they have no money to buy furniture for the homes that have now been renovated after this terrible crime in March 2004 when their homes were burned down. And so it is going to be important for successful negotiations to take place for the majority population, the Kosovar Albanians to do more to make the Serbs feel welcome, and to do more to create an environment that is tolerant of other religions and other ethnic groups. This goes for the Turkish minority, it goes for the Bosniac minority and the Roma minority, as well. So the United States is supporting the rights of the Kosovar Serbs to live in Kosovo and to be part of its future.

QUESTION: Mr. Burns, you just mentioned March 17 last year. But Serbian people believe that Kosovo's Albanians are being rewarded by the opening of status talks as early as this year. They think that Albanians are rewarded for not repeating, just for not repeating March 17 last year. Do you agree with that?

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: No, I don't agree with that criticism. The fact is that the majority population also in the past had their rights denied. In the period of the Milosevic regime, Kosovar Albanians were mistreated. They were not given their rights and there was an attempt to drive them out of the country. So you know more than I do about the complicated history of Kosovo, every Serb knows more than I know, but from my outsider's prospective I can tell you than nobody believes that the status quo on Kosovo can be maintained, that somehow you put a sheet of ice over Kosovo and nothing can change, six years after the war. There has to be a process, led by the United Nations, to give the people of Kosovo a chance to define their own future and to negotiate with each other, and not to have solutions imposed from the outside. And that means that the majority population has rights, too, and their rights need to be respected, and many of them desire independence. Many of the Serbs would not want independence, they would want autonomy, perhaps.

The United States is not going to choose between those two communities, but we are going to insist on a process where they sit down together at a table, and they sit down with the government from Belgrade, and they have the assistance of the international community, like my country, and maybe then they can decide on a peaceful, democratic outcome where all the rights of the various groups are protected. That's what we believe. We think that's fair. We think it is fair to Serbs as well as the Albanians. And we do not believe that the status quo is sustainable any longer. People need to know what their future is going to be. People need to know what kind of place their children are going to live in. That would be our wish, and that's the wish of the Secretary General of the United Nations, of all the European countries and of my country, as well.

QUESTION: The Contact Group has ruled out partition of Kosovo and return to pre-1999-status. What options are left?

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: I think it is very important that we can't go back to 1989, to 1998 or 1999. We certainly can't see partition. We certainly can't see that as a solution. The only solution is a democratic process where the future is determined based on an acceptance of tolerance of all the communities to live together. That has to be the future of the Balkans. It is the same thing with Bosnia-Herzegovina. That country has to move forward, and frankly we'd like to see the Bosnian Serbs do more on defense reform, on police reform, on being involved in separating themselves from the horrible events of Srebrenica.

There is a very important anniversary coming, July 11of this year — the tenth anniversary of Srebrenica — and we think it is important for the Serb leadership to be present at Srebrenica as many of them indicated they will be. And to speak very clearly, after the appearance of this videotape which shocked all the world, to say that Serbs stand for peace, that Serbs stand for respect of each other, which, of course, is one of the great attributes of the Serb nation, and that Srebrenica can be put behind the people of this region. There has to be reconciliation in Bosnia-Herzegovina, in Kosovo and certainly in the entire region. My country is willing to help. My country stands for that kind of progress.

QUESTION: Thank you for this interview.

UNDER SECRETARY BURNS: Thank you very much.