Side-stepping the sovereignty issue and avoiding partition requires increased autonomy for the Serbs north of the Ibar and some form of role for Serbia vis-à-vis the southern Serbs and the Serbian Orthodox Church. The Serbs would have a high degree of local self-rule within what everyone recognized as Kosovo. The Albanians would be able to take comfort in the fact that Serbia would not formally rule any part of Kosovo.

In light of recent protests, the international community and the Kosovo authorities must do more to ensure the sustainable return of Serbs and other non-Albanian minorities to Kosovo. According to UNHCR statistics, only 631 persons returned to Kosovo last year, leaving some 205,835 registered Serb IDPs from Kosovo; with some estimates suggesting that a further 20,000 Serbs remain IDPs inside Kosovo itself.

A leading Serbian expert in the field says the NATO’s use of depleted uranium ammunition in it’s aggression on Serbia has caused enormous increase in cancer rates and number of newborns with genetic malformations.

Though Serbia will not be formally asked by the EU to recognise Kosovo, in part because of a lack of consensus over the latter’s status, the accession requirement of “good neighbourly relations” is increasingly being employed to pressure Serbia into at least de facto recognition of Kosovo’s independence. With the Kosovo issue set to return to the domestic spotlight in Serbia following the international court of justice’s ruling, pragmatic solutions are urgently required to ensure that regional co-operation avoids further rupture and paralysis.

The declaration of independence by the government of Kosovo in February 2008 has given rise to the emergence of a new international group known as the “Quint.” Interestingly, it comprises all the members of the Contact Group – which apparently has disappeared – with the exception of Russia. The result has been the formation of a new group, intentionally excluding Russia, in order that it can work in harmony to assist the independent Kosovo without any objection or obstruction to its work.

Although it seems that the EU has decided to leave aside the EUSR’s northern strategy, everything it does in the north potentially raises status issues. This is especially true of EULEX. WAZ quotes an unnamed Brussels source saying that it is not enough for EULEX “to have just a symbolic presence in the north as it was until now. All 27 EU member countries support EULEX and there shouldn’t be difference in the work of EULEX between the north and south banks of the River Ibar.” But there is a difference. As the locals see it, on one side of the River it is independent Kosovo and on the other it remains Serbia.

In completing the fragmentation of Yugoslavia NATO removed a crucial impediment to its expansion into a global military force. In its place it has acquired seven new members and candidates and as many potential sites for training camps, air and naval bases, and transit points for moving troops and weapons to new war zones on three continents and in the Middle East.

Inside the Beltway, the fact that Turkey is no longer a U.S. “ally” in any meaningful sense is still strenuously denied. But as I note on Alternativeright we were reminded of the true score on March 9, when Saudi King Abdullah presented Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan with the Wahhabist kingdom’s most prestigious prize for his “services to Islam.” Erdogan earned the King Faisal Prize for having “rendered outstanding service to Islam by defending the causes of the Islamic nation.”

March 17 marked the sixth anniversary of a concerted assault against Serbs and other ethnic minorities in Kosovo that resulted in 800 Serbian homes and thirty five Orthodox churches and monasteries being destroyed, 4,000 Serbs and Roma (Gypsies) forced to flee their homes, 900 hundred people injured and 19 killed.

Only by the recognition of every victim of the war in the former Yugoslavia, as individuals, can interethnic wounds be healed. Neither theory nor practice provides a clear-cut solution for overcoming such dilemmas, but conflict transformation requires that the collectivisation of guilt be diluted in order to vanquish inter-ethnic paralysis and prevent individual victims from being denied justice purely because of their ethno-national identity.