Difficult times ahead for Kosovo leader Rugova

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By Alessio Vinci, Belgrade bureau chief

Moderate ethnic Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova faces a difficult political task, as he has to balance Kosovo's wish for independence with the Yugoslav president's insistence that Kosovo must remain part of the country.

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President Vojislav Kostunica has said that he is not happy with the recent elections in Kosovo because Serbs did not participate in the poll, which saw Rugova as the main winner.

Less than a month after he was sworn in as Yugoslav president, Kostunica says he is open for talks with Rugova. But a meeting between the two men is unlikely to happen anytime soon.

Politically, the two leaders stand at opposite ends as Rugova clearly wants Kosovo to become independent, while Kostunica will never agree to even discuss the issue of Kosovo's sovereignty.

The two leaders also appear not ready yet to begin a dialogue on a possible third way -- not least because this third way solution already exists in the form of the United Nation's International Protectorate in Kosovo.

President Kostunica, speaking in a recent interview with CNN, said that, for the moment, having an international presence in Kosovo is the best solution.

Any changes to the status quo, he added, would have to be linked to the return of Kosovo Serbs expelled from the province after NATO and the UN took control of the province last year.

The international community is now making giant steps to welcome Yugoslavia back into the family of nations, and Kostunica is in many ways now perceived to be the great saviour of the Balkans.

This leaves Rugova with the big problem of how to continue the struggle for Kosovo's independence.

Without a clear enemy in Belgrade -- as former President Slobodan Milosevic used to be -- Kosovo's hopes for independence are fading away, if they have not disappeared all together.

The international community, which is now administering the Kosovo entity, no longer supports the notion that Kosovo could eventually become independent.

Western leaders never openly admitted that, but many of them considered it more than just an eventuality if Milosevic had remained in power.

Although most people in Kosovo want independence -- including both moderate and hardline politicians -- there are deep divisions on how that aim can be achieved.

Rugova is known to be a moderate, and a man capable of waiting. He has fought a long and peaceful struggle against the Serbian regime, with a sort of passive resistance.

He does not believe that the Kosovo issue can be resolved anytime soon, and chances are that he will now use the same strategy again.

Rugova knows that, in any negotiations with President Kostunica, he may have to consider options short of total independence -- especially if the international community should pressure him to do so.

Rugova's recent election victory against Kosovo hardliners sent a clear message: independence is a priority for ethnic Albanians but it must not come at the expense of people's lives.

Rugova won the municipal elections against candidates from the former rebel Kosovo Liberation Army. Its leaders and commanders have apparently also lost some of the unconditional support they enjoyed from the international community, which now welcomes Rugova's pacifist approach.

The rifts between moderates like Rugova and more radical politicians -- some of them former KLA commanders -- may increase tensions in Kosovo and put thousands of NATO peacekeepers at greater risk.

NATO soldiers could soon face an internal ethnic Albanian struggle, rather than a common international enemy like Milosevic was.

Rugova, as the undisputed political leader in Kosovo, will have to deal with some difficult challenges, dealing with all sorts of players in the region.

He will, for instance, have to deal with the international community, which fought a war in Kosovo and ended it with a promise of "substantial autonomy and self-government" after a period of international supervision of Kosovo.

Rugova will eventually have to discuss the future status of Kosovo with Belgrade, and the return of 200,000 Serbs to their homes in Kosovo will most likely be a key issue on the agenda.

Serbia is no longer the international pariah state which, in the past, made things a lot easier for Kosovo politicians, who could blame just about anything on Milosevic -- and get away with it in the eyes of the West.

Rugova will continue to face internal challenges from politicians critical of his moderate policies.

Respected Kosovo Albanian figures such as Veton Surroi, a newspaper publisher and a moderate, said he was "disgusted" to see the Yugoslav flag being raised at the United Nations on the day Yugoslavia was readmitted to the world body. It is an example of how deep the wounds still are in Kosovo, even among moderates, after 10 years of Milosevic rule.

Nevertheless, the municipal elections in Kosovo and the federal elections in Serbia delivered a serious blow to extremists on all sides. And it is now up to people like Kostunica and Rugova to show the world and their own people that they can make the difference.

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