Radovan Karadzic, Sarajevo is not your city, and you have no right to say that it is, just as you do not have the right to say in public, even if it’s in court, that someone has dug up bones around Bosnia and brought them to Srebrenica to make a fake graveyard. This is insulting.
US, Russia Face Each Other at ICJ Over Kosovo
Belgrade | 09 December 2009 | Bojana Barlovac
For the first time in 50 years Russians and Americans faced each other directly at an international court when on Tuesday they presented two opposing views at the International Court of Justice, ICJ, on Kosovo's independence.
The two UN Security Council members head opposing blocs within the UN, with Russia vehemently opposing Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence in February 2008, and the US supporting it.
The Court's hearings on whether Kosovo's declaration of independence is in accordance with international law began 1 December, and will last until 11 December, with judges expected to deliver an opinion in a few months.
Russia's legal representative in the proceedings, Kirill Gevorgian, said that Kosovo's declaration was illegal noting the UN Security Council Resolution 1244, which guarantees Serbia's territorial integrity, is still in force.
"Resolution 1244 is still in force and for this reason, no institution can proclaim independence. Russia believes that the unilateral resolution on the independence of Kosovo is contrary to Resolution 1244 and international law," Beta news agency quoted the Russian representative as saying.
Gevorgian also noted that according to international law, Kosovars do not enjoy the right to self-determination, noting Resolution 1244 prohibits unilateral moves. He said the Resolution cannot be overturned by a decision of UN secretary-general's envoy Martti Ahtisaari to end the negotiations and recommend independence as being the only solution.
The temporary international regime in Kosovo could only have been ended by the UN Security Council, in keeping with Resolution 1244, the ambassador added.
He said that unlike Ahtrisaari, who led UN-backed talks on Kosovo's future status in 2006, the Security Council had decided to extend negotiations and that Serbia was offering an ever increasing level of autonomy to the Albanians, including membership in international organisations.
The US on the other hand, argued that international law does not regulate declarations of independence, and that Resolution 1244 "anticipated, although did not pre-determine" the independence of Kosovo as an outcome.
"There is no contradiction between the peacefully proclaimed independence of Kosovo and international law, including Resolution 1244," the US legal representative Harold Hongju Koh said.
He called on the Court to leave the Kosovo independence declaration untouched, as the expression of the will of the Kosovo people.
Koh argued that Kosovo is a “unique” case. He said legitimacy comes from the fact that Kosovo Albanians were subject to a campaign of “state-supported violence for years", which "culminated in 1999 when 10,000 Albanians were killed and about a million were displaced''. He said after lengthy negotiations on Kosovo's future status led nowhere, there was no other option for Ahtisaari but to propose conditional independence.
