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O 191458Z MAY 06
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TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 6134
INFO RUEHZL/EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE PRIORITY
RUEKJCS/JOINT STAFF WASHINGTON DC
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RUEKJCS/SECDEF WASHDC
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RUEKJCS/JCS WASHDC
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RUEHVEN/USMISSION USOSCE 5232
RUCNDT/USMISSION USUN NEW YORK 0690
RUEHBS/USEU BRUSSELS

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 PRISTINA 000437 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPT FOR DRL, INL, EUR/SCE 
NSC FOR BRAUN 
USUN FOR DREW SCHEFLETOWSKI 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 05/19/2016 
TAGS: KDEM PGOV PHUM PINR PREL YI
SUBJECT: KOSOVO SCENESETTER FOR MAY 21-23 VISIT OF SPECIAL 
REPRESENTATIVE FRANK WISNER 
 
Classified By: COM PHILIP GOLDBERG FOR REASONS 1.4 (B) AND (D). 
 
¶1. (C) SUMMARY. Ambassador Wisner's visit finds Kosovo 
Albanian final status negotiators struggling to cope with the 
new shuttle phase of talks on decentralization.  They are 
quickly learning that they are not as well prepared for the 
give-and-take of bargaining as they were for developing broad 
policy positions.  Insisting they had put forward their best 
offer on decentralization at the May 4-5 Vienna session, as 
urged by Ambassador Wisner, the Pristina negotiators were 
frankly miffed when UN Deputy Special Envoy Albert Rohan 
later called their proposal a good basis for discussion 
rather than a bankable deal.  The proposal they are putting 
together for next week's first Vienna session on preservation 
of cultural and religious sites apparently will be a 
forward-leaning reflection of several weeks of direct 
discussions with Kosovo-based leaders of the Serbian Orthodox 
Church.  The Kosovo Albanian leaders realize they must bear 
down on Vienna topics and Standards implementation as the 
end-game approaches, but they are also acutely aware that the 
Kosovo Albanian public is deeply frustrated with seven years 
of post-war political limbo.  Ambassador Wisner should urge 
Kosovo Albanian negotiators to give the Ahtisaari team a good 
deal more on decentralization and trust the USG to ensure 
that Ahtisaari will respect Council of Europe best practices 
and Pristina red lines.  Wisner should impress on them that 
the best way to ease social unrest is for leaders to 
demonstrate a pragmatic capacity for self-rule and thereby 
allow the international community to swiftly move the final 
status process to conclusion.  Wisner should particularly 
invite Pristina leaders to proactively implement newly 
transferred competencies in the new ministries of interior 
and justice and in the new Kosovo Property Agency. END 
SUMMARY. 
 
¶2. (C) Special Representative on Kosovo Status Talks 
Ambassador Frank Wisner will find on his May 21-23 visit a 
Kosovo Albanian leadership needing from him more or less 
equal measures of praise, swift kicks, and guidance.  The 
governing coalition that came into power on March 10 
(following the January 21 death of President Ibrahim Rugova) 
has produced a revamped Kosovo Albanian final status 
negotiating team (a.k.a., the "Unity Team") that continues to 
earn solid grades for its engagement in the Vienna-based 
final status process and for its outreach to Kosovo 
minorities.  In Vienna, Pristina negotiators tabled a serious 
proposal on decentralization that contemplates creation of 
four additional Serb-majority municipalities (vice 18 
proposed by the Belgrade delegation) and is about to table a 
proposal on the preservation of cultural heritage and 
religious sites that they preview as forward-leaning. 
 
Decentralization: Make The Makings of a Deal 
-------------------------------------------- 
 
¶3. (C) For all its effort, however, the Unity's Team owes its 
good name more to comparisons to its dysfunctional 
predecessor than to any achievements of its own.  Ambassador 
Wisner should impress on Pristina negotiators that their 
performance has gotten them a tryout in the big leagues where 
the international community will judge them by their success 
in making deals like a real government, not by their 
willingness to show up for meetings and table position 
papers.  Wisner should acknowledge that their 
decentralization offer shows real movement on their part but 
stress that it's time to close a deal rather than quibble 
over cadastral zones, population estimates, and the like.  He 
should suggest they take advantage of the closing of the 
highly publicized formal decentralization talks to quietly 
work with the Martti Ahtisaari/Rohan team to bring the 
Pristina offer into full conformity with the 2004 Council of 
Europe Charter for Local Self-Government. 
 
¶4. (C) Rohan played the bad cop during a May 18 visit, 
clearly informing Pristina negotiators that they will have to 
 
PRISTINA 00000437  002 OF 003 
 
 
improve on their offer.  The negotiators insisted they had 
reached the end of what they can offer without risking a 
serious public backlash.  The local press teed off on Rohan, 
alleging that he disingenuously pushed the Unity Team to make 
its best offer only to dismiss that offer when made as a mere 
starting point for discussions.  Ambassador Wisner therefore 
has available to him a good cop role that he should assume by 
explaining that Rohan is merely trying to have the Pristina 
side distinguish concessions that may be politically painful 
but doable from concessions that cross red lines into true 
incompatibility with a unitary Kosovo.  Wisner should assure 
Unity Team members, for example, that the USG stands ready to 
ensure that Belgrade will not control Serb majority 
municipalities in Kosovo, but should also make clear that the 
price of the USG assuming the role of surety is that Pristina 
remain flexible on all decentralization aspects that do not 
cross red lines.  Wisner should push the Unity Team to 
develop a presumption of acceptability for all 
Ahtisaari/Rohan suggestions on decentralization with a view 
to enlisting UN support when real deadlocks emerge. 
 
¶5. (C) In conversations with COM after Rohan's visit, Kosovo 
Albanian negotiators Hashim Thaci, Skender Hyseni, and Blerim 
Shala all said that what is at issue for them is not the 
particular new decentralization ideas that Rohan put on the 
table.  The negotiators said they could accept all Rohan's 
proposals for creating and enlarging municipalities if they 
had some idea of any further concessions that may be required 
down the road.  They said they are in a quandry about how to 
approach this new shuttle phase of talks.  Ambassaodor Wisner 
should reassure them that their bottom lines will be 
respected. 
 
The Serbian Orthodox Church -- Potential Key to the Universe 
----------------------------  ------------------------------ 
 
¶6. (C) The news on the Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC) in 
Kosovo is all good and provides a foundation for a real 
SOC-Unity Team deal on the way forward.  Since Ambassador 
Wisner's last visit, the SOC patriarchate in Pec hosted a 
two-day interfaith conference of Kosovo religious leaders, 
the Unity Team's conversation with moderate SOC leaders has 
quietly continued, UNMIK renewed the no-build protective zone 
around the Decani Monastery for another six months, KFOR 
removed its fixed checkpoint near the monastery, and the 
monastery hosted the first visit by area ethnic Albanian 
students since the war. 
 
¶7. (C) During a May 18 dinner, Pristina negotiators Ylber 
Hysa, Ardian Gjini, and Enver Hoja  previewed for poloffs and 
visitors (Ahtisaari team member and EUR/INR officer) their 
forthcoming paper on the preservation of cultural and 
religious sites.  Hysa -- the paper's primary author and 
leader of the Pristina delegation to the May 23 session in 
Vienna -- said the paper will fairly reflect SOC input but 
will not include everything the church wanted.  Proposed 
protective zones for religious sites for example, Gjini said, 
would be "measured in hectares, not kilometers."  Gjini 
praised the realism of SOC leaders in Kosovo for proposing 
fewer sites for protection than Belgrade may have wished. 
All three negotiators expressed appreciation for the church's 
delicate position with respect to the status talks.  Gjini 
particularly hoped that Bishop Teodosije Sibilic would be 
allowed to participate, saying "we could really use him 
there." 
 
¶8. (C) Ambassador Wisner should tell Pristina negotiators 
that the church's predicament gives them an additional, 
urgent reason to hold nothing back in their initial offer on 
preservation of cultural and religious sites -- the church is 
a potential ally on this issue and could even emerge as 
Kosovo Serb leaders and spokespersons generally. 
 
Standards: Not a Four-Letter Word 
--------------------------------- 
 
PRISTINA 00000437  003 OF 003 
 
 
 
¶9. (C) The international community has expended a great deal 
of effort in trying to convince Kosovo Albanian leaders that 
the Standards for Kosovo initiative still matters in the 
aftermath of a general recognition that the "Standards before 
status" policy has run its course.  The Pristina leaders, on 
the other hand, complain that the international community has 
been moving goal posts by inventing new lists of action items 
and holding the Provisional Institutions of Self-Government 
(PISG) responsible for shortcomings in UNMIK's areas of 
jurisdiction.  Ambassador Wisner should address this growing 
divide.  He should push Pristina leaders to bear down on 
Standards in all its forums, especially in Standard-specific 
working groups but, more than this, the ambassador should 
urge the leaders to become creators rather than absorbers of 
Standards action items.  Wisner should note that the PISG has 
recently been given major new responsibilities with the 
creation of the ministries of interior and justice and the 
Kosovo Property Agency and that those new responsibilities 
demand the tapping of Kosovar and international resources 
alike in developing implementation plans. 
 
¶10. (C) Ambassador Wisner should remind the Kosovo Albanian 
leadership that the Standards and their action items have 
evolved greatly since SRSG Michael Steiner first articulated 
eight "Benchmarks of Good Governance" in April 2003 which 
evolved into the eight "Standards for Kosovo" in December 
2003 and inspired the 482-action items of the "Kosovo 
Standards Implementation Plan" of March 2004 and the December 
2004 list of 92 "Priority Action Items."  These compilations, 
the ambassador should point out, were never meant as formulas 
for independence but illustrations of how mature governments 
function, particularly how they treat their minorities.  He 
should invite the Pristina leaders to become full partners 
with the international community in directing the future 
course of the Standards process by assigning themselves new 
tasks in keeping with their new responsibilities. 
 
¶11. (C) Ambassador Wisner should refer to the most recent 
international community efforts, led by the United States, to 
keep the Standards process dynamic as competencies are 
transferred.  These action ideas include: address outstanding 
war-related agricultural and commercial property claims and 
institute a rental scheme for residential properties whose 
owners remain displaced by the war; complete all 
reconstruction of property damaged in the 2004 riots; develop 
and fund a transportation strategy for minorities; and 
conclude a second mobile phone license tender.  The 
ambassador should then invite the Kosovo Albanian leaders to 
suggest action items of their own. 
 
¶12. (U) USOP clears this message in its entirely for release 
to United Nations Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari. 
GOLDBERG