Russia's case on Georgia territories: Like Kosovo or not?

Tuesday, after invoking Kosovo to recognize two separatist republics, Russia changed its tack.

By Robert Marquand | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the August 28, 2008 edition

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Paris - In the wake of Russia's recognition of two separatist Georgian republics Tuesday, Moscow is moving swiftly in another war – how to define and present its legal case to the world. One chief area of this battle is Kosovo, the Serbian province that declared its independence in February – something Moscow had long warned would "legitimize" the separation of territories such as South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia.

Yet hours after Russia recognized the independence of those republics Tuesday, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov turned the tables. Taking a new legal tack, he called any parallels between Kosovo and Georgia "irrelevant," and offered an interpretation of events that essentially makes Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili a worse war criminal than former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic.

Despite strong warnings from then-President Vladimir Putin leading up to Kosovo's declaration of independence, the US and 20 of 27 European Union nations have since recognized Kosovo's new status.

Now, much of the world's media is explaining how Kosovo led to Russian tanks in Georgia. This week, Russia recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia, something that took the West a nine-year process of careful negotiation, minority rights clauses, and statebuilding to do in Kosovo partly because of due diligence over Russian warnings about a "Kosovo precedent."

Russia looking for China's backing

Yet ahead of Thursday Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting in Tajikistan – where Moscow hopes to get Chinese acceptance of its acts in Georgia – it is trying to portray its intervention in Georgia as moderate and humane, and that of the West in Kosovo as brutal and "inhumane."

"Drawing parallels [between Kosovo and Georgia] is irrelevant," Mr. Lavrov said, "and the difference is evident between Belgrade's policy towards Kosovo and how Saakashvili's regime behaved towards South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

"The conflicts were halted in different ways – through the ruthless inhumane bombardment of Belgrade in the case of Kosovo, and without punishing Tbilisi for its attacks on Sukumi [Abkhazia's capital]," he said.

Significantly, Lavrov added that Russia will not recognize Kosovo. In interviews with the Russian press on Tuesday, Sergei Romanenko, a senior scholar at the Russian Academy of Sciences, said this inconsistency is a problem for Russia since, "a 'no' to the independence of Kosovo and a 'yes' to the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia [is a stand] that does not elicit trust" from other powers, in an essay posted on polit.ru.

Closer examination of Kosovo events

The new Russian legal shift comes as Moscow's ardently stated rhetoric and emotion over the West's acceptance of Kosovo statehood is being more closely examined.

The dispute is quiet but bitter: Moscow has long made a strong legal case for Serbia's territorial integrity and sovereignty. US and EU diplomats say the Kosovo case is unique, an "accommodation" that emerged out of a long and often reluctant process involving specific moral and strategic circumstances – resulting in a new principle of "humanitarian intervention."

"In Kosovo, the West decided to make the rules on what humanitarian intervention meant, said that it had the power to do so, and decided not to stand by legal arguments in the middle of a genocide," argues James Hooper, a former US diplomat who worked with Gen. Wesley Clark in Kosovo.

Russia's new position is partly seen as helping smooth relations with Belgrade, whose claims on Kosovo have been left in the lurch by Moscow's recognition of separtists territories in the Caucasus, say diplomats. After a decade of ardent legal purity on Serbia's territorial integrity at the UN and other global groupings, Russia has suddenly changed those rules in Georgia – putting Serbia in the awkward position of having to choose between Russia and Europe, that has untold consequences for the new Serbian government.

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