Saudis lobby for Kosovo independence

Saudi Arabia is leading a campaign to “lobby a meaningful number of recognitions of Kosovo as an independent state” said Serbia’s Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic who is taking part at the Ministerial meeting of the Non Aligned nations in Havana, Cuba.

“We are attempting not to have any new recognitions of Kosovo even though some formidable countries are attempting to achieve that,” said Jeremic.

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal talks to Naim Ternava, Mufti of Kosovo, who asked for an establishment of a college for Arabic and Islamic studies in Kosovo.

Saudi Arabia has recently recognized Kosovo as an independent state and some sources say that Kuwait and Bahrain are planing to do the same soon. In the early 1990s, Saudi officials have meet the Chief Imam Jakub Selimoski in what was then Yugoslavia, and promised him that Saudis will do everything in their power to make Islamic enclaves in Yugoslavia – Bosnia, Kosovo and Sandzak – independent states.

Despite the Saudi efforts, Jeremic says that Serbia is enjoying wide support across the world.

“We have support of a large number of countries, and here [Havana] are present 118 states at the highest level, that is two thirds of the UN membership,” said Jeremic.

Last week, a member of the Law Faculty of University College London and the University of London, and also an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University Law Center, Ralph Wilde, said that ethnic Albanian in Kosovo “do not have the right to self-determination and Kosovo is not an independent state”.

“States that recognize Kosovo as independent are inevitably violating their obligation to respect Serbia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,? Wilde said.

Professor Wilde said that for a territory to have a legally recognized independence, an approval of the state that they are seceding from is required which Kosovo’s Albanian separatists never got. Moreover, even if such consent is secured, says Wilde, a recognized state must be “independent of foreign control”.

“Kosovo’s chief problem is that it’s not independent of foreign control. It remains under UN and NATO supervision,” said Wilde.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is set to rule on the Kosovo’s separatist declaration of independence.

Andy Sparks, who represents Britain in Kosovo, said that one of the main British arguments in favor of independence is that the recognition has contributed to the regional stability.

Sparks did not elaborate who would turn violent if the international law was followed but added that the British recognition of Kosovo is supposedly “irreversible”.

April 30, 2009
SERBIANNA

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