Separatist fears stoke opposition to Kosovo move

LONDON (Reuters) - The fear of many states around the world that the precedent of Kosovo's independence could fuel separatist demands within their own borders is driving their opposition to its breakaway from Serbia.

The list of countries refusing to recognize Kosovo's sovereignty reads like a global A-Z of separatist strife. Spain, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Sri Lanka and China all oppose Sunday's unilateral move by Kosovo to declare independence.

An even longer list of states in Europe and the Balkans are decidedly underwhelmed about acting as midwife to a new state in a region with a history of instability and conflict since the bloody breakup of the former Yugoslavia in 1991.

"All these countries are extremely worried about the precedent that this creates inside their own country," said Jonathan Eyal, director of International Security Studies at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).

"I'm in Romania at the moment, and the ethnic Hungarians who are part of the (governing) coalition, are now demanding, on the basis of the Kosovo precedent, that Romanians will give autonomy to their minorities as well," he said.

"This could collapse the government here, so this has very serious implications."

Spain, beset by separatist concerns in its Basque and Catalonia regions, said it would not recognize a move by Kosovo that "does not respect international law".

Fellow EU members Greece, Cyprus, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania have indicated they will not follow Britain, France and United States in recognizing Kosovo.

EU PARALYSIS?

Dana Allin, senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) said that was part of a "constructive abstention" approach tacitly agreed within the EU.

The bloc agreed on Saturday to send 2,000 police, justice and civil administrators to supervise Kosovo and help build up its institutions.

"If these guys had really wanted to they could have stopped it, I suppose -- at a catastrophic cost in terms of EU coherence and unity," he said.

Erhard Busek, the EU special coordinator for the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe, suggested some were using the issue for domestic political purposes.

"The Kosovo question is being played up as a global political issue, which it isn't," he told Austrian state broadcaster ORF. "To put it bluntly: if you don't recognize Kosovo, does that solve the Basque problem in Spain? No!"

RUSI's Eyal said many EU states were worried about recognizing a declaration of independence that had not been agreed by the former state authorities or approved by the United Nations.

Divisions in the EU, now muted for fear of throwing the bloc into disarray, could burst into the open if the mission in Kosovo ran into trouble: "It could paralyse the European Union," Eyal said.

On the global stage China is likely to side with fellow permanent UN Security Council member Russia to block any move at the world body that smacks of recognition of Kosovo.

Beijing, an emerging player in the world economy, considers self-ruled Taiwan as a renegade province and faces demands for independence or greater autonomy from Tibetans.

It shares a deep antipathy to separatism with Russia, which has been battling Chechen rebels since the mid-1990s.

Eyal said the West was vulnerable to Russian charges of double standards, having urged Moscow to abide by international law only to ignore it when the rules proved inconvenient.

"The Russians are getting closer to the Serbs, which allows them to return to some influence in the Balkans," Eyal said.

"And they are the real winners because if the Kosovo precedent is used, the Russians can also recognize ethnic Russian enclaves in places such as Georgia or Moldova. What's good for Kosovo is good for other places as well," he said.

Georgia is riven by separatism in its Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions. "I can tell you that we are not looking at the recognition of Kosovo's independence," Georgian Foreign Minister David Bakradze said on Monday.

(Additional reporting by Vienna, Brussels, Sofia, Kiev and Bucharest bureaux; editing by Andrew Roche)