U.S. Seeking to Speed Up Talks on Kosovo (urged by Holbrooke, Voinovich)

[DeepModem Mom]

New York Times:
U.S. Is Seeking to Speed Up Talks on Kosovo's Status
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
Published: May 21, 2005


WASHINGTON, May 20 - The Bush administration, opening an initiative to stabilize the troubled Balkan states, is seeking to speed up talks to grant greater independence for Kosovo in return for strides by the Kosovo government to protect the rights of Serbs and other minorities, State Department officials have announced.

As part of the effort, R. Nicholas Burns, under secretary of state for political affairs, will travel in the coming week to Europe and to the Balkan region to meet with officials about Kosovo and various steps that the United States wants the leaders of Serbia and Bosnia to take.

Mr. Burns said Wednesday that the eventual goal was to heal one of the largest remaining wounds from the cold war in Europe. Kosovo has remained a United Nations protectorate as part of the deal ending the ethnic wars in the mid-1990's that followed the breakup of the former Yugoslavia....

***

Some State Department officials acknowledged that the nearly intractable ethnic hatreds in the Balkans have been a side issue for the Bush administration....Clinton administration officials, particularly the former United Nations ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke, have suggested that the Bush administration was averse to trying to build on an achievement of the Clinton years, namely the bombing of Serbia and the setting up of Kosovo as a semi-independent protectorate.

A senior State Department official gave credit to Mr. Holbrooke for pressing the need for greater involvement in the Balkans and also to Senator George V. Voinovich, an Ohio Republican who is of Serbian and Slovenian descent....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/21/politics/21kosovo.html