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A.
Background
It is true for many international disputes that where one stands today depends from where one starts. This proposition has a particular salience in the Balkans. It is not possible in this short note on the events relating to Kosovo to start 'at the beginning', even if a beginning could be agreed upon;1 but one has to start somewhere. Since this is a cursory account and appraisal of the context of Kosovo's Declaration of Independence,2 and because some States at least have called it the last act in the disintegration of the Federal Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia, I shall start with the beginning of that process and place the date simply somewhere in 1991. It is, though, necessary to say something about the present: Kosovo has been a part of what is now the State of Serbia. Its population of about 2 million people is ethnically distinct from that of the Serb majority in the State as a whole, being about 90 per cent ethnic-Albanian. The Serb population of Kosovo, about 200,000 people (5 per cent), has several locations in Kosovo but it is mainly concentrated in the north-east, north of the Ibar river and based on the city of Mitrovica. Kosovo is a place of great cultural significance to Serbia, in particular because of the location of sites of importance to the Serbian Orthodox Church in Kosovo.
By the end of 1991, fighting between and within provinces of the Federation had begun and outside intervention to try to influence the course of events in 'Yugoslavia' had also commenced. By the end of the year, it appeared to the EU States that disintegration could not be avoided and so diplomatic attempts were made to manage the process through the device of unilateral State recognition of entities emerging in 'Yugoslavia', fixing to the recognition decisions elaborate conditions relating to external and internal aspects of the new States.3 As part of the widening of the international element of concern for events in Yugoslavia, an 'International Contact Group' of States established itself in 1994, consisting of representatives of the US, Russia, France, Germany, Italy and the UK.
The approach adopted by the EU and its members was...