http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20061006/news_lz1e6slomanso.html
The San Diego Union-Tribune October 6, 2006
Opinion
Negotiating Kosovo's final status
By William Slomanson
The international protectorate of Kosovo is perched in southern Serbia.
Kosovo
has been under military occupation since the 1999 NATO bombing campaign
against
Serbia's now defunct regime of Slobodan Milosevic.
The United Nations previously announced its intent to end its unique
governmental administration of Kosovo within the next 90 days. Kosovo has
been a
major financial drain, at a time when U.N. members are demanding more
bang for
the assessed dues buck. Serbia's government has just scheduled a new
constitutional referendum for December, claiming its irrefutable right to
the
province. Kosovo is therein proclaimed to be an "integral part" of
Serbia.
The Vienna-based Contact Group leads the on-going process of resolving
Kosovo's
final status. Membership includes the United Nations, European Union,
NATO,
Russia and the United States. Tight-lipped negotiators are presumably
exploring
the role that the European Union might play when the United Nations
departs.
Unfortunately, European Union members have yet to commit the requisite
degree
of resources needed to kick-start all levels of Kosovar infrastructure.
A patient international community should eschew temporary remedies, given
the
region's 400 wars in 300 years. Kosovo's currently unresolved status
makes it
the black hole of Europe. Its Balkan neighbors are progressing toward
membership
in NATO, the European Union, and other desired international linkages. As
the
United States National Security Strategy warns, weak states can threaten
strong
states.
The major impediment to independence is Kosovo's historically mono-ethnic
society. A number of former Serbian soldiers and governmental officials
have
been prosecuted in the U.N.'s regional criminal tribunal for their war
crimes
and genocidal acts against the Albanian population in the 1990s. Serbs
switched
roles in post-conflict Kosovo. They became the ethnic minority.
International
human rights organizations cannot guarantee their safety. The prime
example is
the small-scale Krystal Nacht of March 17, 2004. Nineteen Serb churches
were
torched. Thirty people were killed.
The final status options include linkage with Albania. Sophisticated
Albanian
Kosovars do not favor this compromise, because of Albania's comparatively
poor
economic status in Europe. Another alternative is returning Kosovo to the
autonomy it enjoyed in Tito's Yugoslavia, before Milosevic mounted his
repressive ethnic cleansing campaign. But many Albanian Kosovars do not
want to
risk the remote possibility that one day, after departure of the
international
community, Belgrade would reinstitute repressive tactics.
This ubiquitous fear lacks a solid foundation for two reasons. First, the
Serbian government surrendered its former president, Milosevic, for trial
by the
U.N.'s regional criminal tribunal. That concession appeased the United
States
and its NATO allies, whose bombing was directed at his government.
Second,
Belgrade would not want to short-circuit its incorporation into desirable
European entities.
The majority Kosovar Albanian population's desired option is statehood.
A growing number of Serbs, both in an out of Kosovo, see the
international
community's writing on the wall. They have acknowledged that Serbia's
retention
of Kosovo is a recipe for economic and political disaster. Kosovo is in
the
poorest part of Europe, and its rebellious population is nearly 95
percent
Albanian.
The Serbian government is no doubt negotiating for retention of the
northern
15 percent to 20 percent of this province. The city of Mitrovica is
Kosovo's
Mason-Dixon Line. This division was parented by Serb-friendly French NATO
forces, upon cessation of the 1999 NATO bombing. Parallel Serb
institutions
reign in this northern portion of Kosovo, where the United Nations has de
jure
but not de facto control. This reality is most evident by the Serbian
flag at
the northern edge of the Ibar River Bridge. It effectively divides Kosovo
into
the Serbian north and Albanian south. The civilian-policed guard shack,
and the
NATO installation on the river below, evince the ethnic undercurrent
forcibly
restrained by their presence.
Such a geographical division may be a convenient Contact Group pressure
point.
But it would be a particularly discomforting precedent. International
practice
abhors geographic divisions based on ethnicity. If Vienna's negotiators
were to
force the Mitrovica division piece into this geographical puzzle, ethnic
adversaries elsewhere would expect like treatment. For example, the
international community possesses something Serbia wants. That is
international
recognition of Republika Srpska, the unrecognized Serb entity in the
eastern
half of Bosnia. Unlike the Kosovo situation, however, Bosnia's
constitution
expressly provides that it consist of both Bosnia-Herzegovina and this
otherwise unrecognized Serbian entity within Bosnia.
Balkan news reports on the Vienna Contact Group negotiations are now
referring
to "conditional independence" as a likely final status option. The term
conditional implies that Kosovo's independence could not be complete
until
Kosovar Serbs and other minorities enjoy a robust existence in terms of
equal
opportunity education, employment and housing. During conditional
independence,
NATO's barbed wire fences and its soldiers would gradually disappear from
the
current Serb population enclaves in Kosovo.
Regardless of what the Vienna Contact Group achieves, a functioning
multiethnic
society will be the unavoidable price tag for full independence. This
cannot
occur until the international community is satisfied that the majority
Albanian
populace has convincingly demonstrated the requisite degree of tolerance.
The
minority population's human rights cannot be passively inherited from the
international community's occupation of Kosovo. True independence is
literally
in the hands of Kosovo's majority population. They have to credibly
demonstrate
that an independent Kosovo will not erupt into a fresh ethnic cleansing
crisis,
requiring yet another humanitarian intervention in Kosovo.
___________________________________________________________________________
Slomanson is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego
and visiting professor at the University of Pristina in Kosovo. He is
past
chair of the American Society of International Law United Nations
Section.
He can be reached via e-mail at bills@tjsl.edu.
© Copyright 2006 Union-Tribune Publishing Co. o A Copley Newspaper Site
Serbian News Network - SNN
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Hidden Manipulators: Who is Behind the "Kosova Independence" Campaign?
September 20th, 2006The Balkans conflicts of the 1990s saw a massive revival and resurgence of US and Western media propaganda and infowar techniques. The "new" advocacy journalists recalled the "yellow journalism" of William Randolph Hearst, who helped induce the US to engage in the imperialistic or colonial war in Cuba in 1898, the Spanish-American War. This marked the emergence of the US as an expansionist global imperial and colonial power, like Britain, France, Spain, and Germany had been. Hearst was credited with manufacturing or "furnishing" the war in Cuba.
Frederic Remington, his correspondent in Cuba, reported that nothing was happening in Cuba, that all was quiet. He told Hearst that there would be no war. In a famous dispatch back to Remington, Hearst told Remington to stay: "You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war."
This was the same policy pursued in Kosovo. US correspondent Anna Husarska admitted that this was the policy. She explained and detailed the strategy in this article:
http://diac.cpsr.org/cgi-bin/diac02/pattern.cgi/public?pattern_id=349
Anna Husarska said: For a decade, Albanians living in Kosovo have complained about their lack of an independent state, "yet they don't do anything about it. No grafitti, no signs, no demonstrations."
While Kosovar Albanians profess pacifism, Anna Husarska explained, that should not prevent them from waging literary activism. "Ultimately, the passivity of this movement made it impossible for journalists to cover the problem because nothing was happening."
That, indeed, was the problem. Nothing was happening. The Albanians were not killing Kosovo Serb civilians and were not murdering Kosovo Serb and Kosovo Albanian policemen. "Nothing was happening" in Kosovo. Husarska was convinced that pacifism and peaceful change were useless, not even Albanians wanted to create a Greater Albania, an "independent Kosova". Like William Randolph Hearst, who developed "advocacy journalism", Husarska understood that war was needed, that NATO bombs were needed, that US "humanitarian intervention" was needed. But first, the Albanians had to start burning down Serbian Orthodox Churches and killing Serbian policemen and civilians in Kosovo. How else do you manufacture or "furnish" a war?
Before Hearst, John L. O'Sullivan perfected the use of the media to advance political and military agendas. O'Sullivan was a journalist who propounded the concept of "manifest destiny" to advocate the US annexation of Texas and the Oregon territory in 1845, territory that did not belong to the US. He developed the subtle symbiosis of the media and the military and political sector working in tandem before Hearst and Husarska. He believed that the US had a "divine mandate" from "Providence" to expand and take over territory "in defence of humanity" and to spread the concept of the "universality of freedom and equality". President George W. Bush's globalist universal crusade to spread "democracy" and "freedom" owes more to O'Sullivan's manifest destiny than it does to Vladimir Ilyich Lenin or Leon Trotsky. It is home-grown, Made in the U.S.A.
What is remarkable is that Husarska reveals that the Kosovo conflict is actually about separatism and secession, about creating an "independent state" by means of force and violence. Internationally recognized borders were no longer respected. Secession and separatism were now promoted by Husarska and the ICG as valid and legitimate. Secession and separatism were the exact same things the Bosnian Serbs and Krajina Serbs were seeking. There was an obvious double-standard and inconsistent approach. Husarska and the ICG decided what separatist movements were valid and legitimate and which were not. Naturally, proxies, clients, and surrogates were the separatists and secessionists they suppported and backed and advocated for. We can get your "independent state" for you.
Husarska let slip that the Kosovo crisis was about creating an "independent state". The problem was: How do you "furnish" or manufacture a war that would create an "independent Kosova". This is a Freudian slip. But, in fact, Husarska has no intention of concealing her motives and agenda. The mask comes down. There is nothing about "humanitarian intervention" or "genocide" or "human rights" now. Nothing about "repression" and "oppression". The goal was an ethnically pure, ethnically cleansed, "independent Kosova". That was always the real reason all along. She is a news reporter and she worked for the International Crisis Group (ICG), whose Chairman Emeritus Martti Ahtisaari planned to honor and commemorate Finland's Nazi SS troops in 1999 when he was the President of Finland. How can you be a news correspondent and a member of a quasi-government and quasi-corporate militant, advocacy "think tank"? Isn't there a blatant conflict of interest that is both unethical and unprofessional? The bias and prejudice and hidden agenda are obvious.
"Nothing was happening" in Kosovo. That soon changed. Husarska and the ICG then stepped in with an example of how the free media and the free press work in the "free world". Of course, we have all seen this before. William Randolph Hearst led the way in 1898. The "Kosova independence" campaign is not a spontaneous or natural phenomenon. It was manufactured or "furnished" from without and is not an indigenous movement. It is a totally manufactured and "furnished" movement with its origins outside of Kosovo. The 1878 League of Prizren genesis of the Greater Albania ideology requires a foreign sponsor to succeed, whether the outside sponsor is fascist Italy under Benito Mussolini or Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler or Habsburg Austria-Hungary under Emperor Franz Joseph or Ottoman Turkey under Sultan Abdul Hamid II. The Greater Albania ideology is not new and does not change. Only the outside, foreign sponsor changes. The only issue is that of outside, foreign sponsorship. Who is pulling the strings in this absurd puppet show?
On the first day of his visit to the USA His Grace Artemije, Bishop of Raška and Prizren, together with other members of his delegation, consisting of Prof. Miroljub Jevti?, Mr. Dragan Veli? and Protos Simeon, Abbot of the Monastery of Banjska, visited Mr. Pat Robertson, Protestant pastor and Christian activist, who is closely involved in social, political and spiritual happenings in America today. Pat Robertson is well-known in the entire United States of America for his speeches, lectures, commentaries and answers to various questions which define American culture and civilization of this day. 
