EU should play its hand fairly

The trouble for Europe and its newest state is that independence for Kosovo means different things in different capitals. For Pristina it marks the culmination of a struggle against Serbian domination, but in Belgrade it is marked as a significant wound to the integrity of the Serbian state.

For Europe, or at least the European Union, it is a guarded success but it opens a diplomatic can of worms: what exactly are the criteria for an ethnic group to break away from a hinterland of different ethnicity? Spain and the Basque situation immediately comes to mind, but so do countries in the Middle East, like Iraq and the Kurds.

There is a silver lining in this cloud of diplomatic haze. Serbia has vowed not to use force. It has stated that its opposition to Kosovan independence will be conducted on the diplomatic front. This should be welcomed: it displays a political maturity that was absent in the break-up of the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. The EU has a strong diplomatic hand but it has to be played fairly. The road to EU membership must be open to both Kosovo and Serbia.

Moscow, too, must be part of the solution. It has a number of potential breakaway regions that may look at the Kosovo option. Brussels must assure Moscow that it will not in any way undermine the integrity of the Russian state. This is not an east-west issue and must not be allowed to deteriorate into one. Kosovo has the potential to be a flashpoint that could easily engulf other countries. The sooner economic progress dilutes the nationalistic rhetoric in the Balkans the sooner Kosovo and the troubled region will be able to join the EU. Declaring independence is one thing, fully achieving it in a peaceful manner must now be the next step.