Daily News
NK-Related News Compiled from Reliable Sources*

“Territorial integrity does not rule out the possibility of multi-scenario resolution of the status problem and does not imply that the will of a nation can be ignored,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin says in an interview to Izvestia daily, when asked if the Kosovo precedent can be applied to Transdnestr, South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Karasin says that in the Kosovo case, unlike the collapse of the USSR and Yugoslavia and the division of Czechoslovakia, claiming independence is an autonomy within a republic of federation rather than a republic of federation. “Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transdnestr have a similar status. So, if the Western partners force Serbia to acknowledge the sovereignty of this region, they will create an obvious international legal precedent, which cannot but be projected to other frozen conflicts — and not only in the post-Soviet area but also in other regions. Some people in the West are trying to convince us that Kosovo is a unique case – a result of some unique historical circumstances. It is naive to say that the Kosovo case is unique, we can’t agree with this. Precedents come from reality and one can’t abolish them just by persistently denying them. Can anybody say to people in other autonomies that in this case we give independence, but for you this can in no way be an example?” wonders Karasin.

“Those speaking about the ‘uniqueness’ of the Kosovo case either forget or deliberately neglect that, in fact, the question is about inconsistency in approaching different conflicts, in other words, about ‘double standards.’ Such an approach undermines confidence in the international community and leads to chaos and selectivity in international relations. Of course, for Russia this is unacceptable. That’s why our position is that, even though each specific conflict is peculiar, there should be some universal settlement rules based on the generally accepted norms of the international law,” says Karasin.