Nobel peace prize laureate Martti Ahtisaari, who a few days ago was quoted by Germany's Tagesspiegel as saying that Serbia should accept its responsibility for what happened in the wars in the former Yugoslavia, has said in an interview with the Guardian that Serbia has no option but to recognise Kosovo as independent.

Ahtisaari, a former president of Finland whose career as an international mediator included serving as United Nations special envoy for Kosovo, was quoted by the Guardian as saying that Serbia would have to accept the independence of its breakaway province if Belgrade wanted its hopes of joining the European Union to succeed.

"You can't be poking the EU in the eye [while] saying you want to join EU," Ahtisaari said.

Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia in February 2008. Although there is no single EU policy on Kosovo, most EU states have recognised it as independent.

This month, EU aspirants Montenegro and Macedonia recognised Kosovo, angering their Serbian neighbour. While several commentators and media reports said that Podgorica and Skopje had taken the step to improve their EU prospects, officials in Brussels have said that recognition of Kosovo is not a precondition for EU membership.

On October 16 2008, French ambassador in Belgrade Jean-Francois Terral said that Serbia would "never" be asked to recognise Kosovo in order to become an EU member-state, Serbian news website B92 reported, quoting an interview Terral gave to daily Vecernje Novosti.

 
However, Terral said that it was necessary for Belgrade to reach some kind of agreement with Pristina, adding that there were examples in international practice that could be used to achieve this.

He said: "France believes that it would be good for Serbia to focus its efforts on EU integration, because Serbia, as the most important country in the region, belongs in the EU." French president Nicolas Sarkozy had said the same thing in talks with his Serbian counterpart Boris Tadic during their recent talks in Evian, Terral said. France currently holds the rotating presidency of the EU.

Ahtisaari, in the Guardian interview, rejected parallels between Kosovo and the territories attempting to break away from Georgia.

"We did Kosovo within the UN framework. In Georgia there was not even an attempt," he said. "You cannot go into an independent country and do whatever you like. Even if you are Russia."

On October 16, Kosovo daily Zeri quoted Ahtisaari as having told Tagesspiegel that it was wrong to consider Slobodan Milosevic and Ratko Mladic as the only people responsible for the wars in the former Yugoslavia.

"When a society acts like the Serb [society] did, then it should bear the consequences," he said. "When a dictator in a country starts to behave badly to its citizens, this carries consequences. In this case the international community has a duty to intervene."