Who recognises Kosovo?

It's been nearly six months since the Serbian region of Kosovo declared its independence. At the time Kosovo's independence was a controversial issue, backed not by the entire United Nations, but instead promoted by the United States, Great Britain and Germany, while bitterly opposed by Serbia and their allies Russia.

So far though, only about one-fifth of the UN member states have recognized Kosovo as an independent nation, and most of the 43 nations that have are members of the European Union. Interestingly, even though Kosovo is a mostly-Muslim nation, countries in the Middle East have for the most part not recognized them.

Reasons given for the lack of recognition are that some nations fear such a move could inspire ethnic minorities in their own countries to push for independence, while some others with strong business ties to Russia fear that opening relations with Kosovo could hurt their standing with Moscow. Serbia still refuses to recognize Kosovo as an independent state and has set up a separate government, loyal to Belgrade, in the Serbian-populated areas in the north of Kosovo.

But at the same time Serbia, which hopes to join the European Union itself, has taken at least a small step forward by restoring diplomatic relations recently with some of the European countries it broke them off with after they backed Kosovo’s independence in February. How this situation is resolved will be another difficult problem for the EU to solve. Kosovo won’t go back to being a part of Serbia, while Serbia so far has been determined not to let what they feel is a key part of their country go.