April 08, 2006

Trifkovic on Islam - Radio interview transcript

http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/cgi-bin/newsviews.cgi/Islam/Islam_as_the_Agent_.html?seemore=y

ChroniclesExtra! Friday, April 07, 2006

ISLAM AS THE AGENT OF REVOLUTIONARY CHANGE

The following is from an interview with Srdja Trifkovic broadcast live on April 7, 2006, on The Right Balance http://www.therightbalance.org/ (abbreviated transcript)

* The show’s presenter Greg Allen first asked Dr. Trifkovic to draw a distinction between Islamic terrorism and other varieties of the same problem: What makes Jihadist terrorism different? *

TRIFKOVIC: All other forms of terrorism use it as an instrument in pursuit of some wider objective. The Bolsheviks were blowing up banks in 1905 and assassinating political leaders, and their purpose was to undermine the structure of the system so that when the revolutionary moment comes, as it did in 1917, you go a stage further. With ETA in Spain, the IRA, Sendero Luminoso, Tamil Tigers, or the Sighs in India, you have terrorist outrages but they are not an integral part of the mindset, the world outlook of the given group. With Islam, terrorism is not only an instrument, a tool, it is also the core of policy itself. Terrorist violence is not only divinely sanctioned, it is divinely ordained. We don’t have time for the details, but suffice to say that the condoning and overt advocacy of violence both in the primary texts of Islam, such as the Kuran and the Hadith, the traditions and sayings of the “prophet,” and in more than 13 centuries of Islam’s historic practice, make that record pretty straightforward. For people to still debate the allegedly peaceful nature of Islam, its “true character,” is plainly absurd. The truth is out there and those who want to deny it are the same ones who, 50 years ago, would have been the apologists for Uncle Joe, or 30 years ago would have claimed that the bold experiment of Chairman Mao was paving the way for the future. [...]

The mindset of appeasement, even after Munich 1938, is at work. It’s not only that those who had claimed that Mein Kampf was a pacifist tract, or that Uncle Joe’s Moscow trials were an exercise in impeccable legality, are now acting as the apologists for Islam. They are actively importing the jihadist fifth column! It is the particular emphasis of my book that we need an absolute moratorium on the immigration of Muslims into both Western Europe and North America, coupled with the denial of citizenship to all practicing Muslims, the denial of security clearances, and the policy of systematic deportation of all jihadists activists. Once we realize that jihad is a political mindset and that jihadist activities—which are inherently discriminatory against women, against Jews, against so-called infidels—are a political, subversive and radically seditious activity with a revolutionary objective, i.e. turning the World of War into the World of Faith, Dar al-Harb into Dar al-Islam, then we’ll realize that the First Amendment no longer applies. To all intents and purposes Islam ought to be regarded as a violent political ideology rather than just a religious cult.

* The next question concerned the curious tendency of the Left to overlook, ignore, or even deny Islam’s mistreatment of women, homosexuals, and other “protected minorities.” *

TRIFKOVIC: The explanation is fairly simple, and we see the same syndrome all over the place. For instance in Scandinavia you have literally a rape epidemic, perpetrated by Muslim immigrants against Swedish, Norwegian and Danish women. And yet, very active, very well organized and financed feminist movements in those countries are keeping quiet—both about the epidemic itself, and about the identity of its perpetrators.

The reason is that the Left sees Islam as a de facto ally—as Marxists would say, an “objective ally”—in the destruction of the vestiges of the traditional society based upon Christianity and its moral code, and traditional cultural patterns. So what they are doing is using Islam as the battering ram and as a would-be fellow-traveler, in their grand anti-Christian, Christophobic design. They hope that once they create their brave, new multiculturalist Utopia, Islam can be tamed, that soft porn and state education will convert the Muslims’ offspring to the general multiculturalist melange.

We know they’re wrong because we know that second and third-generation Muslim immigrants in Western Europe, particularly in France and Britain, are far more radical and far more Islamic-minded than their parents and grandparents. The explanation is very simple: the tepid, non-descript multiculturalist pap that is being offered by the dominant elites cannot inspire these young men and women. They need something that gives meaning to their lives, and so they fall back upon the religion of their forefathers—and once they do that, they cannot do otherwise but turn against the multiculturalist host-society. So the Leftists are making a colossal miscalculation. Far from being the clients of their future global welfare state, the Muslims—in the Western world in particular—will be the agents of revolutionary change not only against the remnants of Christianity today, but also against the secularist, multicultural Utopia of tomorrow.

* Greg Allen’s next question concerned the difference between Islam’s basic tenets and the teaching of other monotheistic religions, Judaism and Christianity: do we all worship the same God, as some claim? *

One of the clichés that are endlessly repeated by those who seek to conceal the true nature of Islam is that Muslims “believe in the same God” as Christians and Jews. This is a severe distortion of the truth. What Muslims believe is that they know the true nature of God that Judaism and Christianity tell lies about, and have a distorted picture. The fact that Muslims share a Levantine monotheism of sorts with Judaism and Christianity only makes them more, not less antagonistic to us… The concept of an utterly transcendent Allah that cannot be “known” and doesn’t “reach out” to man or man to him. There is no “contact” with God that is essential to the Judaic and Christian tradition. In fact, the forlorn call, repeated five times a day from every minaret in the world, sounds more like the cry of an abandoned child for an absentee father.

At the practical level, the notion that Muslims award Christians and Jews some level of respect as “the people of the book” is also greatly distorted. In practice it only means that for as long as they accept the status of second-class citizens, and pay the poll tax with “the hand of humility,” their security will be guaranteed—but not their equality of rights.

At the theological level, the fundamental difference is the absence of love. It needs to be understood that Islam’s denial of the Trinity creates a completely different world outlook. “Allah begets not,” i.e. he is no Father, and “is not begotten,” i.e. he is no Son, and no one is like him, i.e. no Holy Spirit. The utterly . . . not only “monotheistic” but monistic image of the world under an unreachable, unknowable god, creates the kind of spiritual uniformity that ultimately results in both cultural and social-economic wasteland that is the Muslim world today. [ . . . ]

What is known as Islam’s “golden age” happened largely in spite of Islam, rather than thanks to it. Connecting the brief blossoming of arts and sciences in Baghdad and Cordoba with the “benevolent” influence of Islam is the same as saying that the high level of scholarship on Pushkin or Tolstoy in Moscow in the 1950s was the result of Stalinism and dialectical materialism, or that the Berlin Philharmonic under Furtwaengler was as good as it was in the late 1930s thanks to Nazism. But the true causes of squalor and corruption in the Muslim world are indeed moral and cultural, rather than economic. After that brief period of flowering its had very little to offer to the world, either in the sphere of ideas or in the sphere of material production—even though it had that unique geographic position at the crossroads of civilizations . . . The problem cannot be resolved by seeking to import Western technology and Western know-how, while retaining the old mindset. We’ve already seen it with the Ottoman Turkey in the 19th century. They’d brought in Western engineers and military officers, and doctors, to train their Muslim students, but the latter never managed to produce more than what was imparted to them.

The problem remains insoluble to this day. The Christian world’s discipline, cohesion, ingenuity and prosperity are rooted in certain aspects of the Western psyche that cannot be easily transplanted. It has a lot to do with the notion of delayed gratification as opposed to instant gratification and sensuality that is the hallmark of the Muslim world.

To post a comment go to:

http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/cgi-bin/newsviews.cgi/Islam/Islam_as_the_Agent_.writeback

************************************

Dr. S. Trifkovic, Foreign Affairs Editor
CHRONICLES, 928 N Main Street, Rockford, IL 61103, USA
voice (815) 964-5054 fax (815) 964-9403 cell (312) 375-4044
http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/cgi-bin/newsviews.cgi


Notes From Belgrade by Boba Borojevic

http://www.serbianna.com/columns/borojevic/029.shtml

Notes From Belgrade
By Boba Borojevic
 
April 8, 2006 - My last three visits to Belgrade happened to be at the time
of major events there. Massive demonstrations of some half a million people
took to the streets of Belgrade on October 5th 2000. It marked the downfall
of Milosevic’s regime and take over by Democratic Opposition of Serbia. I
believed as much as the rest of protestors who spent days and nights in the
streets of Belgrade protesting at that time, that the "October Revolution"
was going to radically transform the country for the better. The results
have been disappointing and the rest is history.
My next visit to Belgrade happened to be on September 11, 2001. The moment
I landed to Belgrade airport, I heard the news about the first terrorist
attack on the World Trade Center in New York. The Serbs' reactions to
9-11-01? Almost everyone said it was a terrible tragedy, and they meant it.
But then a lot of people would move on to a more delicate issue: What had
Americans expected, after all? Yugoslavia was one of many countries bombed
by the United States contrary to international law, with no sanction from
the United Nations. The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon will subsequently lead to ‘War on terror” and Islamic extremism in
the World, Europe, Bosnia and Kosovo.

On my third visit, I arrived in Belgrade on March 15 2006 only a couple of
minutes after the plane carrying the body of the former Yugoslav President
Slobodan Milosevic from the Netherlands touched down at the city's airport.
No government representative stood on the tarmac to meet it, only dozens of
Milosevic’s supporters and party members. The coffin, wrapped in plastic,
slid down a conveyor belt from the belly of the jet and sat untouched for a
few minutes under light snow. Milosevic’s associates approached the casket.
They placed a Serbian flag and roses over the casket of the man who once
was a popularly elected president, and quietly carried it to a commercial
hearse. Several hundred mourners lined part of the road and tossed
carnations at the hearse. Slobodan Milosevic was buried in a quiet ceremony
at his family estate in his hometown of Pozarevac on a cold winter day, on
Saturday, March 18. The funeral followed an emotional farewell in Belgrade
that drew about 150,000 followers who packed a square in front of the
federal parliament to pay their respects. They gave the former leader, a
hero's farewell and pronounced him a victim of the U.N. war crimes
tribunal, in whose custody he died on March 11.



  


Scott Taylor, Boba Borojevic and H.E. James Bissett at SANU
 
  


The funeral of the former president Slobodan Milosevic completely
overshadowed news of a major three day conference, which carried the title
Kosovo and Metohija: past, present and future, organized by the Serbian
Academy of Sciences and Arts (SANU) from 16 – 18th March. Excellent
speakers from eleven countries gave their speeches at the conference. We
heard many respected professors, diplomats, historians and journalists
speak on the theme of Kosovo, such as James Bissett, Scott Taylor, Diana
Johnston, Peter Maher, Sir Alfred Sherman, Srdja Trifkovic, academician
Kosta Mihajlovic and Stevan Karamata, Slavenko Terzic, Raju Thomas, Caslav
Ocic, Smilja Avramov, Kosta Cavoski, and many more. Their arguments as to
why Kosovo should remain part of Serbia can be categorized into four
groups:
Historical and cultural: Kosovo and Metohia historically and culturally
belong to the Serbs. Kosovo was part of Serbia as early as the Nemanjic
dynasty (12th-14th c.). Kosovo and Metohia are considered the key to the
identity of the Serbs. Kosovo is a place where the first Serbian kings were
crowned and where there are Orthodox Christian monasteries with precious
icons, listed by UNESCO as world cultural monuments.  The seat of the
independent Serbian Orthodox Church was in Pec, in Kosovo. Serbs call
Kosovo and Metohia the heart of Serbia and the cradle of the Serbian state
and nation.

Economical:  Serbia has poured a good deal of money into Kosovo and
Metohia. “For decades, significant federal resources have been set aside
for the development of Kosovo and Metohia, the reason being that all the
previous Yugoslav constitutions stipulated "more rapid development for
under-developed regions, and the most rapid for Kosovo and Metohia" as the
federation's obligation. Data for the period 1981-1988 on total
contributions and funds received by republics and autonomous provinces
according to federal regulations shows that Central Serbia (meaning
Republic of Serbia without its autonomous provinces - Vojvodina and Kosovo
and Metohja) had the largest outflow (212 billion dinars), and Kosovo and
Metohia the largest inflow (113 billion dinars). Kosovo and Metohia was
also the largest relative "winner" - receiving 12 times more of these funds
than it gave,” said Caslav Ocic in his speech. For instance, Kosovo
received 30-50% of the total investments made by the Federation's Fund for
Under-Developed Regions and the International Bank for Reconstruction and
Development. The rate of investments was always noticeably higher in Kosovo
than in Serbia or Yugoslavia, from 30 to 200%. Despite Albanian demands for
independence, Belgrade is still paying the Kosovo's international debt to
the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The bill amounts to a
total of $1.4 billion and Serbia puts aside 250 million dollars every year
in order to pay these debts back. A number of speakers at the conference
concluded that an independent Kosovo would be economically unsustainable.

Legal and Political: The aerial attacks launched by NATO against Yugoslavia
in 1999 establish the truth of the axiom: “Power tends to corrupt, and
absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely”. There is no legal sanction
whatsoever for this unilateral action by NATO, carried out at the behest of
the US. The NATO action can only be described as an arbitrary and blatant
violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a member state of
the UN, which has no legal sanction under international law.

The independence of Kosovo, which was expected by many western observers as
the most logical solution after the war in 1999 is in fact an option, which
would seriously destabilize the entire Balkans. An independent Kosovo would
not only be economically unsustainable but would generate serious security
problems for the neighboring countries. Hardly any Serb would be able to
live in an independent Kosovo. In fact, a new ethnically clean Albanian
state of Kosovo, based on Islamic law will continue to provide the breeding
ground for international terrorist groups in the Balkans. A “failed state”
of Kosovo showed to be incapable of protecting minorities and preventing
horrible atrocities to take place against the Serbian civilian population
and other minorities. ”Failed states are”, according to James Bissett
“defined as those countries whose governments have weakened to the point
where they can no longer provide adequate public services, physical
security or economic livelihood to their inhabitants. They become
attractive to terrorist organizations as safe havens and as staging grounds
for attacks on other targets.”  It remains to be seen if the Kosovo
precedent of a selective use of unilateralism and even pre-emptive military
action will be applied in the other conflict areas of the world in the
event Kosovo becomes independent.

Ideological and Civilizational: Defending Kosovo means defending Christian
civilization. An independent Albanian Kosovo will succumb to the cause of
global jihad. Kosovo’s current leaders (members of KLA) have obtained
significant aid from Islamic countries such as Iran, Afghanistan, and
Pakistan. Kosovo has become a predominantly Muslim society with the obvious
intention to wipe out any trace of Christianity there. In his speech Sir
Alfred Sherman noted that: “Governments seem helpless or unwilling to stem
the tide. Spokesmen for the EU laud this Muslim colonization as Europe and
the Muslim world as coming together, ignoring its utter one-sidedness.
Criticism of these trends is stifled as “racism”, ignoring consideration of
patriotism, national consciousness and social order. The undermining of
national homogeneity based on common values is leading to a visible social
breakdown.”

 “After almost two decades of Yugoslavia’s crisis and disintegration,”
explained Srdja Trifkovic in his speech, “too many Serbs still cherish too
many illusions about the nature of the Western beast, its hostility to
Christianity and to any form of ethnic coherence of European nations. To
the promoters of such Western pathology, those who argue that they should
be entitled to keep a territory because they feel a strong, centuries-long
historical bond to it, or because they had built lovely Christian churches
in it, or because it underpins their moral code and spirituality based on
Christian martyrdom, or because they are defending themselves against an
aggressive and resurgent Islam… are only proving the necessity of having
that territory taken away from them! The arguments advanced by Belgrade’s
distinguished professors only confirm to the luminaries of the
International Community that Kosovo should be detached from Serbia in order
to cure her from such retrograde atavisms. An ideological commitment to
neoliberal globalization has turned multiculturalism and open-ended,
predominantly Muslim immigration into two inviolable dogmas of the elite
class. Its members reject the suggestion that the shared legacy of the
European family and its common historical experiences are worthy of
preserving as such. That is why they will do their utmost to detach Kosovo
from Serbia… This important lesson is yet to be absorbed in Belgrade.”

My congratulations go to SANU for putting together a conference such as
this one. Advertisement of the conference was the only thing that was
poorly executed. We were told, however, that SANU intends to publish a book
with the materials presented at the conference, which will in a sense
represent a testimony of the time for some future generations.

Sent using cyberus.ca WebMail - http://www.cyberus.ca/


===============
Group Moderator: sorabia-owner@yahoogroups.com
page at http://magazine.sorabia.net
for more informations about current situation in Serbia http://www.sorabia.net
Slusajte GLAS SORABIJE nas talk internet-radio (Serbian Only)
http://radio.sorabia.net

Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sorabia/

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
    sorabia-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
    http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/



Western peace prevention continues in former Yugoslavia

Latest news:
http://news.google.be/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=Kosovo


Serbs still not ready to return to Kosovo politics
http://www.setimes.com/cocoon/setimes/xhtml/en_GB/features/setimes/features/2006/04/07/feature-02

EU prepares for police mission in Kosovo
http://euobserver.com/15/21349

"Kosovo still needs U.S. to help keep peace"
http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/1144399569186100.xml&coll=2


"The referendum bears great significance to the Albanians in Montenegro"
http://www.makfax.com.mk/look/agencija/article.tpl?IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=1&NrArticle=19645&NrIssue=430&NrSection=20

Independence by Minority?
http://www.tol.cz/look/TOL/article.tpl?IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=4&NrIssue=161&NrSection=4&NrArticle=16459


The  role of the Ohrid Framework Agreement and
the peace process  in Macedonia - A reality  check
http://www.transnational.org/forum/meet/2006/Vankovska_Macedonia_Check.pdf

'''''''''''''''''''''

http://www.transnational.org/pressinf/2006/pi234_PeacePrevention.html

The Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research (TFF)

Western peace prevention continues in former Yugoslavia

PressInfo # 234

March 9, 2006

By Jan Oberg, TFF director


If you believe that Western politics should serve as a model of decency, fairness and principled policies, consider these topical news from ex-Yugoslavia:

. Kofi Annan's envoy on Kosovo, former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, tells Der Spiegel that Kosovo is heading for independence. In a tone that can only be characterized as arrogant, he tells the Serb side that they should know the rules of the game and know their own best interests. This simply means he is no mediator who listens to and respects all sides with a view to find a fair solution. He is an agent for powers who can dictate their solution. Is Kofi Annan concerned?

. Kosovo which was bombed off from Serbia and occupied by NATO's illegal war in 1999 thus seems lost for Serbia. Will the remaining Serbs in Kosovo run away, start a guerrilla movement, try to join Serbia? Will there be a border war at some point? While all experts agree that Kosovo's leaders have not lived up to minimum standards for human rights, tolerance and refugee returns over the last seven years, the status will now come before standards; it is the exactly opposite of what the West decided a few years ago.

. Kofi Annan's Representative, Danish diplomat Søren Jessen Petersen, running UNMIK in the province, for a second time praises a suspected war criminal. Is Kofi Annan concerned that top-level UN staff does that? Earlier it was Ramush Haradinaj, the former Prime Minister indicted in the Hague. Now it is Agim Ceku, the new PM. Denmark has enough of scandals on its desk right now, so Jessen Petersen's flirtation with ethnic cleansers perhaps doesn't add much.

. Ceku was a leading officer in the Croatian Army when - in 1995 with the help of CIA and mercenary companies - it ethnically cleansed about 200.000 legitimate Croatian Serb citizens out of Croatia. 90% of them are still refugees in Serbia, no one supporting their return. Thus, all Yugoslavia's minorities were not and are not protected by Western human rights; Serbs are not worthy victims.

From 1993, Ceku went down and helped the most extremist people in his native Kosovo to build the KLA, the Kosovo Liberation Army behind the back of Dr. Rugova, the only pacifist leader in the now chopped-up country. (I know what Ceku did because I have had him tell me the story himself). KLA and Ceku was generously assisted by the German Intelligence Service, BND and - after the US took KLA off its list of terrorist organizations - by CIA. The moderate, pragmatically non-violent Kosovo-Albanian leader Dr. Rugova, who recently passed away, was dangerous; imagine he had achieved an independent Kosovo by non-violent means: what a catastrophe for those who believe in violent intervention, bombings and occupations as roads to peace.

. Immediately after the West's UN-NATO-EU-OSCE occupation of Serbia's province, we were told that they disarmed the KLA. They didn't, and everybody knew. KLA was a leading agency in effecting about 200.000 Serbs to leave Kosovo; proportionately it was the largest ethnic cleansing in the Balkans. But it was ours, so the Western free press turned a blind eye. KLA people also orchestrated the warfare across the border in Southern Serbia, and the 8-months war in Macedonia. It's all conveniently forgotten today; it has to be since Western interests are heading for an independent Kosovo/a. It's the logical consequence of NATO's bombing in 1999. And it does not seem to bother too many that this whole process is also a violation of UN Security Council resolution 1244. With Mr. Ceku entering the scene as the West's preferred statesman, Dr. Rugova is dead in more than one sense.

. The West, NATO, the UN and lobby groups like the International Crisis Group (of which Ahtisaari has been a leading member) argued that Kosovo-Albanians should not be criticised for forcing another good 200.000 Serbs out of Kosovo in the months after NATO's KLA-assisted destruction of both Kosovo and Serbia proper. The reason? They had suffered so much under Milosevic. While there is no doubt that Albanians suffered heavily under Milosevic police-state repression in Kosovo, there is also no doubt that a) Serbia is the only country to have wiped out their old leader by non-violent means and that b) reverse ethnic cleansing is disgusting and unacceptable. Together with Serbs from Croatia and Bosnia, these Kosovo-Serbs are still living as virtually non-noticed and forgotten refugees in Serbia, there are about 500.000 of them.

. Former Kosovo PM, Ramush Haradinaj - accused of serious war crimes - has been permitted by the Tribunal in the Hague to live in Kosovo. In contrast, Milosevic's request to be granted permission to go to Russia for urgent medical treatment in Russia has been turned down.

. The West requires Serbia to deliver Karadzic and Mladic to the Hague. The problem is that both CIA and FBI have been granted access to Serbia long ago and they have not been able to locate them. What game do Western powers play when they pretend that they have not been able to arrest these two people in Bosnia or elsewhere since 1995?

. Just a few days ago, the EU decided that Montenegro, the smaller partner in today's Serbia and Montenegro, may hold a referendum on independence. Remember, EU's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, was S-G of NATO at the time, the highest civilian person behind the destruction of Yugoslavia.

The International Herald Tribune writes that the EU suggests "that Montenegro be allowed to secede from the two-state federation if 50 percent of the electorate takes part in the vote and 55 percent of voters opt for independence." Amazing indeed; a new European state can be created with only 27.5% or less that 200.000 voters behind it. And, remember, there are more Montenegrins living in Serbia than in Montenegro. So, the EU here uses a recipe for a) deep divisions or civil war inside, and b) population exchanges - Montenegrins in Serbia to Montenegro, Serbs in Montenegro to Serbia.

Furthermore, an independent Montenegro and an independent Kosovo will make the Serbs in Bosnia ask why on earth they should keep on being loyal with the independent "Dayton" Bosnia that 99% of them never voted for and which they - like all other citizens in Bosnia - was never asked to accept in a referendum.



The international "community's" peace prevention continues

Today few remember or know what happened 15-25 years ago in the Balkans. Few if any bother to see patterns and underlying structures. Few dare be politically incorrect and challenge the basic interpretations and the conflict (mis)management by the "international community" or the Balkanization of the EU and the U.S. Peace-making has become interventionism and occupation in disguise. The free Western media feel free to turn the blind eye to the absurdities and lack of principle that has become the brand of Western politics. If they did, there would be some who could point out the complete moral bankruptcy on which the above-mentioned policy initiatives are based.

Imagine that Serbia - the predictable net loser par excellence in the Yugoslav dissolution process since the 1980s - reacts to all the above by stalling, dragging its feet as they say, seeming to be uncooperative and even embittered. Imagine that these developments will make life impossible for moderates and Western-oriented actors in Serbia and play into the hands of the nationalist hardliners such as the Radical Party and that, together with other Chetnik sentiments, it wins the next election. Imagine that Serbia and its citizens turn inward, feel humiliated and become nationalist again.

Would you be reading this now
if it were not useful to you?
Get more quality articles in the future

Then all those who have understood absolutely nothing of Yugoslavia the last 15 years will ask oh-so-innocently: How come these Serbs are so stubborn? Why don't they modernize themselves and become good European like the rest? Why don't they see their own best interest which is what we offer them? How strange that they won't just give up everything they cherished - Yugoslavia, autonomy for Croatian Serbs, Republika Srpska, Kosovo, Montenegro and - who knows when in the future - Voivodina and Sandjak in exchange for - exactly, you're right - nothing!

After 15 years of conflict mismanagement the West still seems to understand none of the complexities, psychology or history here. So be sure of two things: the U.S. and various EU members have their interests and when the next Balkan crisis erupts, they will stand united with two arguments: 1) we did nothing wrong and 2) the Serbs remain the problem! Remember Ahtisaari - the UN and State Department in one - says it bluntly: it is in Serbia's best interest to play according to our rules and forget whatever interests it may have.

We have not seen the end of the suffering in former Yugoslavia. Whether sooner or in a few decades ahead, we are likely to see violence erupt again.

The Holbrookes, Ahtisaaris and Jessen-Petersens as well as those whose puppets they are will know to blame one or more local parties and never ask: did we, the international community, perpetuate the Balkan tragedy?

Perhaps with the exception of Slovenia, genuine peace is found nowhere in former Yugoslavia. If Western actors were able to learn any lessons, we would see some change in the conflict "management" policies in the region. But that won't happen, because that would amount to a recognition of the counterproductive policies pursued the last 15 years. Thus, predictably, Western peace prevention continues, and -how cruel! - innocent Balkan citizens, not the conflict mismanagers, will pay the prize.

* The PressInfo is purely critical. The constructive, principled alternatives concerning Kosovo have been presented earlier in the Kosovo Solution Series and in PressInfo 228.