Srdja TrifkovicItaly’s political forces of all color and hue are alarmed by the possibility of Kosovo’s proposed independence even though some prefer to pretend otherwise, Alleanza Nazionale Senator Alfredo Mantica, deputy chairman of the Commission on Foreign Affairs, told me in Rome earlier this month. Mantica, a veteran politician who was Italy’s deputy foreign minister in Berlusconi’s coalition government, favors a pause of several months “to reflect on this issue, and to consider the consequences of opening what may well prove to be Pandora’s box.” Mantica has no doubt that Kosovo’s independence would establish an important precedent, regardless of various assurances from Washington and Brussels to the contrary. He fears that this precedent would have the potential to destabilize Europe: the “right to self-determination” would be invoked by every dissatisfied minority, especially in the eastern half of the Old Continent.

Alfredo ManticaSenator Mantica regrets the fact that the position of Italy in the European debate on Kosovo is weak, which reflects the lack of either principled courage or imagination within the ruling leftist coalition. In the beginning, he points out, the position of the Italian government was totally different. Initially, after the end of the intervention by NATO in 1999, that position was based on the need to devise a form of specific autonomy for Kosovo but not to consider independence as a viable option, let alone support it. The focus at that time was on the well-known “109 Standards” for Kosovo, standards concerning the respect for human rights of the Province’s minority communities, the rule of law, the return of refugees, and so on, before any “final status” could be considered.

“The problem of Kosovo was perceived in Rome as a problem of Italy’s national security,” Mantica says, “because we considered Kosovo a territory incapable of introducing the rule of law. We realized that Kosovo was a criminal would-be state whose criminality was largely directed against Italy.” And yet, today, only Slovakia, Romania, Greece and Spain are voicing unease with the proposed independence of Kosovo-and within the European Union as a whole there is no focused resistance to the U.S. position on the desirability of independence.

“We met recently with the U.N. mediator Marti Ahtisaari here in Rome,” Mantica goes on, “and he insisted that Kosovo’s independence would not set a precedent” for other countries with compact minority populations that wish to secede:

We asked him about Abkhasia, Ossetia, Transdnistria, Nagorno-Karabakh, northern Cyprus-and we found Mr. Ahtisaari very compliant with the American perspective. Neither he nor the current Italian government are taking any account of the position of Serbia. We have responded to Ahtisaari by pointing out that the current ethnic balance between Kosovo’s Serbs and Albanians is the result of the Albanians’ ethnic invasion, with only ten percent of the population being Serbian. Ahtisaari even rejected the suggestion that more time should be allowed for negotiations, saying that too much time had passed already with no new ideas on the table. I asked him personally, if the northern part of Kosovo should be allowed to remain with Serbia, or if the Serbian Republic in Bosnia, the Republika Srpska, should be able to join the Republic of Serbia. Is it not the case that Kosovo’s independence would open a host of new problems? I have also noted that the current borders of Serbia are not natural and historical but administrative-political, and that-by contrast-the current borders of Croatia have created a state far greater in geographic extent than the historical Croatia.

Senator Mantica insists that Italy should not recognize any unilateral declaration of independence of Kosovo that would seek to bypass the Security Council, “not only for legal and political reasons, but also because of the long historic ties between Italy and Serbia that hark back to World War I and before.” The pressure from the United States is strong, he says, but in Washington they cannot walk and chew gum at the same time: “Their absolute priority right now is Iraq and Afghanistan, and Kosovo is low on their list of priorities.”

When all is said and done, Manica continues, is it possible to imagine Kosovo as a functional sovereign state? He thinks not, and would therefore suggest a creative alternative: Kosovo as a province of Europe: “If we assume that all of the Balkan countries will eventually enter the European Union, it should be possible to envisage Kosovo entering Europe in a different way, like a province administered by the Union itself.” He nevertheless warns that is not in the capacity and authority of the EU to make such a decision:

Personally I hold that we are still stuck with the destructive legacy of Madeleine Albright. The policies pursued by the United States in her tenure [as Secretary of State] have helped Al Qaeda in Europe. But the same spirit is still present in Mr. Ahtisaari’s insistence that the Serbs of the Krajina are not a problem, while the Albanians of Kosovo are a problem-although in both cases the number of refugees was more or less the same.

The Italian government that agreed to NATO’s attack on Serbia in 1999 was a government of the Left, Mantica points out, just as the current government, which supports the Ahtisaari Plan is of the Left. Its prime minister at that time is now foreign minister; and it is noteworthy that this government has been notably supportive of the American position thus far. “The problem it faces is that our Parliament would not support the government if it tried to extend recognition of Kosovo’s independence that would bypass the UN Security Council,” he concludes. “It is no longer possible to steamroll decisions by asserting that Milosevic is a criminal and Tudjman or Izetbegovic is a saint.”