By DPA
Stockholm : With the UN Security Council deadlocked, the European Union would forge ahead with its efforts to find a solution to the Kosovo problem, the EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said Thursday.
Rehn discussed developments in Kosovo and the Balkan region during a meeting with Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt.
Both officials told reporters they were not surprised over the outcome of a UN Security Council meeting Wednesday where differences remained strong mainly between Russia on the one hand, and the Europeans and the United States on the other.
“I am usually not an optimist or a pessimist, I am realist. You need realism now when dealing with this situation,” Rehn said.
“I regret that Russia which speaks for multilateralism, nevertheless resorted to rather unilateral action,” he added.
Bildt said work was continuing within the EU with a plan for the Kosovo’s status, saying that the future UN role was one of the issues that remained to be resolved.
Sweden is interested in a viable solution and has played a role as an aid donor and provider of peacekeeping forces to the Balkan region, Bildt said.
The 27-nation EU also faces challenges over its joint stance on Kosovo’s independence. One member state, Cyprus, is also divided.
Rehn and Bildt said it was key to start talks on Cyprus.
“We should not accept that European countries are divided,” Bildt said, adding that the division also “negatively impacted” cooperation between “the EU and NATO for instance in Kosovo, Bosnia and Afghanistan, and Turkey’s membership talks with the EU.”
Rehn said “2008 should be the year when one conducts serious negotiation for a solution to Cyprus’s division.”
The EU commissioner said that talks should commence after the Cyprus presidential elections due in February 2008.