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RHEHNSC/NSC WASHDC
RUEAWJA/DEPT OF JUSTICE WASHDC

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 PRISTINA 000310 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPT FOR DRL, INL, EUR/SCE, NSC FOR BRAUN, DOJ/OPDAT FOR 
SEASONWEIN 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 04/07/2016 
TAGS: PREL PGOV PHUM KDEM UNMIK YI
SUBJECT: SCENESETTER FOR APRIL 14-15 VISIT OF SPECIAL 
REPRESENTATIVE FRANK WISNER 
 
REF: (A) PRISTINA 290 (B) PRISTINA 299 
 
Classified By: COM Philip S. Goldberg for reasons 1.4 b/d. 
 
¶1. (C) SUMMARY. Coming on the heels of the April 6-7 visit of 
the Contact Group and the April 3 Vienna meeting on 
decentralization, Ambassador Wisner's April 14-15 visit 
presents an opportunity to push Kosovo Albanian leaders to 
come to closure on some decentralization issues (municipal 
partnerships, asymmetrical devolution of competencies, 
selection of local police chiefs and judges) and to set the 
stage for late-April consideration of others (redrawing of 
boundaries to create new municipalities, the special case of 
Mitrovica).  Looking further ahead, Ambassador Wisner should 
push Kosovar leaders to finalize opening position papers on 
protection of the Serbian Orthodox Church and its religious 
sites, minority protections/returns, and the special case of 
Mitrovica.  He should push Kosovo Albanian authorities to 
implement a rental scheme for thousands of properties owned 
by Kosovo Serbs but occupied by Kosovo Albanians and to 
launch a "zero tolerance" initiative regarding interethnic 
crime.  Finally Ambassador Wisner should again encourage 
Kosovo Serb leaders to find their voice and should roundly 
criticize a new policy of Belgrade's Kosovo Coordination 
Council that compels Kosovo Serb public servants to reject 
salaries paid by Pristina. END SUMMARY. 
 
New Unity Team Better, But New Problem Emerging 
---------------------- ------------------------ 
 
¶2. (C) Special Representative on Kosovo Status Talks 
Ambassador Frank Wisner will find on his April 14 arrival a 
Kosovo political landscape significantly changed since his 
February visit.  Three of the five ex officio members of the 
Kosovo Albanian negotiating team (aka the "Unity Team") have 
changed -- President Fatmir Sejdiu replaced the late Ibrahim 
Rugova, new Prime Minister Agim Ceku replaced Bajram Kosumi, 
and new Assembly President Kole Berisha replaced Nexhat Daci. 
 Gone are the ego-driven spats and political infighting that 
plagued the old team and made even suiting up a road team for 
Vienna very difficult and fielding a team with real authority 
to make a deal a practical impossibility.  In its first month 
the new team has shown itself far more cooperative than its 
earlier edition both in its internal deliberations and in its 
relations with the international community.  The naming of 
the previously obstructionist Hashim Thaci (leader of the 
opposition Democratic Party of Kosovo) to lead the Unity Team 
delegation to Vienna for the March 17 UNOSEK session on 
decentralization proved to be a particularly inspired 
team-building initiative. 
 
¶3. (SBU) Although the Unity Team received solid marks for its 
March 17 performance, its grades for the April 3 follow-up 
meeting were passing only because the performance of the 
Belgrade team reportedly lowered the curve substantially. 
Going into that meeting, leaks in the Kosovo press had the 
team objecting strongly to UNOSEK suggestions in a supposedly 
confidential document that "partnerships of municipalities" 
 
SIPDIS 
might prove useful vehicles for channeling Belgrade support 
(particularly health care and education services) to Serb 
majority municipalities in Kosovo. 
 
¶4. (C) More generally, the "Political Group" that provides 
technical support to the Unity Team has lately shown serious 
fractiousness that has translated into delay in producing 
draft position papers and into working level disconnects 
between some Political Group members and staff from the 
United Nations Office of the Special Envoy for Kosovo 
(UNOSEK) in Vienna.  The immediate points of Political 
Group-UNOSEK contention involve decentralization, but 
potential irritants involving principles and pragmatics of 
religious site protection are beginning to loom as well.  The 
Unity Team's draft position paper on the preservation of 
cultural heritage sites is becoming seriously overdue. 
 
Ambassador Wisner to UNity Team: Old Irritants Are Gone; Time 
For You To Lead 
 
PRISTINA 00000310  002 OF 003 
 
 
-------------------------------  ----------------------- 
-------------------- 
 
¶5. (C) Ambassador Wisner should attempt to bring the Unity 
Team back onto the negotiating high road.  Post's soundings 
of UNOSEK and Unity Team staff make clear that Ora party head 
Veton Surroi and Ylber Hysa, his deputy, are the prime 
instigators of the objections to the UKOSEK suggestion on 
partnerships and that the two have adopted a similar hard 
line on UNOSEK bridge proposals on Serbian financial 
assistance to Serb majority municipalities and protection of 
patrimonial sites.  The latter is particularly problematic in 
that Hysa is drafting the team's position paper on cultural 
heritage.  Although we are not privy to the draft paper, we 
understand that Hysa objects to expressly recognizing the 
Serbian Orthodox Church and its patrimonial sites as 
deserving of particular protection as distinct from other 
elements of Kosovar heritage. 
 
¶6. (C) Ambassador Wisner should impress on Surroi and the 
entire Unity Team that these legalistic opbjections are as 
damaging as the ego-laced clashes that so marred the efforts 
of the previous team.  Ambassador Wisner should offer 
reassurances that UNOSEK's suggestions, however open to 
interpretation particular phrases may appear, will not 
provide vehicles for Belgrade to hold onto Kosovo and will be 
given an appropriate legal review when the working documents 
otherwise prove acceptable to the parties.  The Ambassador 
should straightforwardly inform all team members: that the 
international community did not take Kosovo from Serbia by 
military force just to later return it by the back door; that 
municipal partnerships will pose no threat to Kosovo's final 
status, once determined; and that Unity Team obstructionism, 
notwithstanding recent substantial improvements, remains the 
most serious obstacle to overt international community 
support for the Kosovo Albanian cause and to speedy 
resolution of the status issue. 
 
Highroad Map 
------------ 
 
¶7. (C) During an April 7 Contact Group-Unity Team session, 
DAS Rosemary DiCarlo took the Unity Team to task for the 
evident nothing-is-decided-until-everything-is-decide d 
approach of its negotiators in Vienna.  The DAS suggested 
that pocketing a few deals along the way would show to the 
Kosovo public that its leadership is ready to back up its 
words with actions on the ground aimed at achieving a 
multiethnic future.  Ambassador Wisner should re-inforce the 
DAS' message by suggesting elements of the decentralization 
talks that are ripe for interim accords.  Possibilities 
include the asymmetrical devolution of governing competencies 
according to municipal capacity and the local selection of 
judges and police chiefs.  The Ambassador might also mention 
to the decidedly pro-American Unity Team that local selection 
of judges is an American innovation (almost unknown in 
Europe) and that police chiefs will be selected from a pool 
of candidates all of whom will have been approved by 
Pristina. 
 
¶8. (C) Looking ahead to remaining decentralization issues and 
to the next UNOSEK agenda items, Ambassador Wisner should 
express concern to the Unity Team that the drafting of 
position papers on cultural heritage and minority 
protections/returns seem to have stalled.  Ambassador Wisner 
should explain that the international community demands very 
serious protection, much more than has been offered to date, 
for the Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC) in Kosovo and that 
protection of the SOC should not be hidden in general 
platitudes about preserving Kosovo's cultural heritage.  He 
should tell team members that the world hopes Kosovo protects 
its culture but demands that the SOC, with its tragic recent 
history in Kosovo, be afforded very special protection.  The 
Unity Team needs to understand that the SOC may be handcuffed 
by Belgrade regarding participation in these talks but that 
the international community stands ready to ensure that 
international best practices prevail to deliver a much better 
 
PRISTINA 00000310  003 OF 003 
 
 
deal for the SOC than has so far been offered by Kosovo 
Albanians.  The Unity Team could make a good start by 
assuring the ambassador that a draft law on religious 
freedom, stuck in committee, will be passed immediately. 
 
¶9. (C) Anticipating the next layer of Unity Team resistance, 
the Ambassador should make clear that the international 
community holds Kosovo's external borders to be inviolable, 
but believes its municipal boundaries to be in play and 
subject to the "generosity principle" the Contact Group has 
repeatedly urged on the Unity Team.  In this same vein, the 
ambassador should suggest the Unity Team undertake to draft a 
position paper on the special case of Mitrovica. 
 
¶10. (C) Ambassador Wisner should refer to the list of 
deliverables he suggested during his February visit and 
should single out property rights as an area with particular 
potential as an interethnic confidence builder (ref B).  Now 
that UNMIK is phasing out the Housing and Property 
Directorate (HPD), run by internationals, in favor of the 
new, PISG-controlled, Kosovo Property Agency (KPA), the 
burden of performance is shifting to Kosovars.  In 
particular, HPD left behind, by design, more than 5,000 
so-called "administered" properties in which tenants are 
allowed to stay in the residences of absentee landlords 
without paying rent.  Most of these cases involve Kosovo 
Albanians living in houses and apartments owned by displaced 
Kosovo Serbs.  A potential 11,000 additional claims involving 
agricultural and commercial properties were not subject to 
HPD jurisdiction and now must be resolved by the new KPA. 
The HPD never intended to leave nonpaying tenants in place on 
a permanent basis.  The KPA and PISG -- with assistance from 
the international community -- must now figure out how to get 
all these legalized squatters to pay market-based rents.  The 
shear number of such cases means that implementation and 
enforcement of a rental scheme will be a major undertaking. 
But fundamental rule-of-law principles demand that it be 
done. 
 
¶11. (C) The new government has made a good beginning on 
outreach to Kosovo Serbs and non-Serb minorities.  Speeches 
(especially with majority community leaders speaking in 
minority languages) and visits are important, but there must 
be more speeches from more official sources and, at the same 
time, more than speeches.  The ambassador should suggest that 
the PISG become the champions of a "zero tolerance" 
initiative on interethnic crime.  The Ambassador should call 
for unilateral initiatives to build awareness in the Kosovo 
Albanian community and confidence in the Kosovo Serb 
community, including the launching of a zero tolerance 
approach to interethnic violence (an inityiative COM has 
proposed and PM ceku has agreed to launch), the aggressive 
removal of ethnic graffiti, the establishment of a rental 
scheme for people squatting in residences owned by displaced 
persons, and more urgent restoration of Serbian Orthodox 
churches.  The rigorous Kosovo Police Service investigation 
of the recent stabbing on the bridge in Mitrovica was duly 
noted around the world.  Kosovo Albanian leaders must now 
impress on their constituents that the old tolerance of 
violence is at an end and that citizens who withhold 
information about interethnic violence are themselves 
criminally liable. 
 
Kosovo Serbs 
------------ 
 
¶12. (C) Should Belgrade persist in coercing Kosovo Serb 
public servants to forego salaries paid by Pristina (ref B), 
the ambassador should raise the matter with Kosovo Serb 
leaders, most of whom will be sympathetic to the plight of 
the Kosovo Serbs forced to chose one salary over the other. 
 
¶13. (U) Post clears this cable in its entirety for release to 
Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari. 
GOLDBERG