Say Happy New Year despite many cautions

Say Happy New Year despite many cautions

2006/12/30

By John J. Metzler NEW YORK, Special to The China Post

With
the last light of 2006 fast fading, it's time again to consult the
crystal ball and see what's on the horizon for our troubled world in
the New Year. Here are a few of the issues which will dominate the
headlines in 2007.

Terrorism: Though effective counter-terrorism has
largely been successful during the past year, one can't assume Islamic
jihadists won't hit again in the USA or Western Europe. Rationalizing
the causes of extremism will not temper the white-heat hatreds of
al-Qaida terrorists toward the U.S., Canada and Europe.

Iraq:
Clearly the USA is losing the political will to sustain military
commitments in Iraq. This is not the fault of the U.S. military which
has performed admirably but has been hampered with too many political
constraints. The Democrat party controlled Congress will press for a
quick solution which will sadly lead to a flawed outcome. It's
incumbent that the Iraqis learn to assume security functions themselves
as the U.S. will begin a phase out. Still any precipitous American
pullout will embolden the radicals and ensure even wider Mid-East
instability.

Nuclear Proliferation: The dual crises in both
nuclear North Korea and soon to be nuclear Islamic Iran has jolted the
global community into awareness and trepidation, but has paralyzed
effective counter measures save for some economic sanctions on North
Korea and on Iran.

Through the quaintly titled Democratic
People's Republic of Korea has few international allies and less global
support, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il plays the role of a
wild-eyed villain and gets plenty of "space." China's game is
duplicitous. While working with regional powers such as Japan and U.S.
to manage the Korean crisis, Beijing appears to also profit from the
fact that its erstwhile comrades in Pyongyang threaten the status quo
and thus preoccupy the attention of Washington, Tokyo and Seoul.

The Islamic Republic of Iran is different. Teheran is a major petroleum
producer and thus holds an energy card and trading position with much
of Europe. Though Iran is not ethnically Arab, it does have wider
support throughout the Islamic world. While the West Europeans remain
"deeply concerned" over Iran's nuclear ambitions, those concerns and
tepid sets of sanctions will not deter the atomic ayatollahs from
single mindedly pursuing the bomb, nor Teheran's president
unambiguously declaring that "Israel should be wiped off the map."

Regional: Back to the Balkans! Kosovo, the overwhelmingly Albanian
ethnic region of former Yugoslavia should finally attain its
independence from Serbia. While Russia has delayed the process over the
past months, it appears that Moscow has little to gain from close ties
to Belgrade, but will certainly use Kosovo's status as a tradeoff for
other issues. The U.N. Security Council must approve Kosovo's future --
this is not a done deal.

Equally Gaza and the Palestinian
territories remain a political tinderbox as ruling fundamentalist Hamas
forces face off with the more "moderate" Fatah factions. Lebanon too,
after the crisis of the past summer faces renewed pressures from Syrian
backed elements trying to destabilize this small democracy.

Energy: The most dangerous development I believe is Vladimir Putin's
increasingly authoritarian Russia playing its energy cards with
neighboring countries. Natural gas price hikes and cutoffs to Ukraine
and Georgia have carried crudely implicit threats to places like Poland
and Hungary. Given that West Europe has eagerly become dependent on
available Russian energy, one has to question the political price of
dependency?

Moscow's mega-supplier Gazprom is set to become
the second largest supplier of natural gas to France. Similar deals
have been done with Italy and Germany. Already Gazprom supplies 98
percent to Slovakia, 80 percent to Hungary, 70 percent to the Czech
Republic, and 60 percent to Poland. Plainly stated, Putin is using the
energy pipeline arteries to Europe to weave a web of dependency,
coercion and control.

The United States too has a dangerous
dependence on foreign petroleum, not only from the Middle East. Events
in Venezuela, a major oil exporter, clearly point to red flags as the
recently re-elected left wing regime of Hugo Chavez will inevitably
clash with Washington.

Humanitarian: Unquestionably the
continuing humanitarian crisis in Darfur merits both the most attention
and indeed the most outrage. The Sudanese regime has continued to
hinder and hamper humanitarian assistance to the troubled region. Over
the past few years, a minimum of 225,000 civilians have died and a
further two million people have been displaced. United Nations relief
efforts have been effectively blocked by a Khartoum regime flush with
oil money and secure in its political support from Beijing.

Efforts to expand upon a small and largely ineffective African Union
peacekeeping force have been in checkmated in the U.N. Security Council
where a callous combination of Arabs and the PRC continue to block a
serious intervention force. Look for face-saving steps but Darfur
appears doomed. Some people are too polite to use the word genocide.

Nevertheless with all these cautions, I still say Happy New Year!

John
J. Metzler is a United Nations correspondent covering diplomatic and
defense issues. Metzler can be reached at jjmcolumn@att.net

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Media Cleansing: Dirty Reporting

Media Cleansing: Dirty Reporting



Date: 17 March 2006

Where: National Press

Club, Washington, D.C.

Panelists: Peter Brock, William Dorich, David Binder



Introduction



Good afternoon, my name is William Dorich, I am the publisher of GMBooks, established in Los Angeles in 1985. I am also the author of 5 books on Balkan history and religion including my 1992 book Kosovo.



When Peter Brock came to me to publish Media Cleansing: Dirty Reporting, I was thrilled but I was fully aware that this manuscript was submitted and rejected by every major publisher in the United States, revealing an ugly truth that dissenting views are not always welcome in the media or in the American publishing industry.



In the entire decade of the 1990s during the dismemberment wars of Yugoslavia not one single article was printed in the New York Times that was written by a Serbian journalist, author, scholar or political leader. The same can be said of numerous major newspapers across the nation including the Los Angeles Times in my city. Serbs were simply muzzled into silence. Thanks to Madeleine Albright and Richard Holbrook Serbs were also made Persona non grata here on The Hill and denied the right to appear before any House and Senate hearings on Bosnia including the Foreign Relations Committee.



The result, the word Serb has become synonymous with evil. I should know as I was the victim of two hate crimes and received numerous death threats for daring to defend, write and publish Serbian views.



Dr. Alex Dragnich, a Serb, is the recipient of the Thomas Jefferson Award for Outstanding Scholarship at Vanderbilt University where he taught for several decades. Dr. Dragnich is the author of ten books on Balkan history and politics and was a member of the diplomatic corp in Belgrade after the Holocaust. At the height of the Bosnian Civil War Dr. Dragnich submitted 42 OpEd articles to the New York Times... not one was reproduced yet lie after lie was published by the Times from instant Balkan "experts." Few of whom had credentials on the Balkan region.



David Binder who graces our book with a profound foreword was a member of the Washington bureau of The New York Times from June 1973 to his retirement in 1996. He continued reporting until 2004, producing numerous articles on Central and Eastern European affairs with outstanding reports that afforded unique insights into foreign policy and the Yugoslav breakup. His assignments for The Times, included posts in Germany, Belgrade (as East European correspondent) and in Washington as diplomatic correspondent. He reported on the building and fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of Communist systems in East Germany, Romania, Albania and Yugoslavia.



The admiration and respect for Mr. Binder's reporting and reputation as a journalist of our times almost five decades is without equal during what is fast becoming an era in which most journalist seem to strive to be mediocre at their craft, too many are simply recklessly irresponsible.



Who can forget Binder's opening line to the essay he wrote for The South Slav Journal in late 1995.



Quote: "A widely noted oxymoron for the last four years has been the phrase 'United States Policy Towards Yugoslavia."' End quote.



Mr. Binder graduated from Harvard University and was a Fulbright scholar at the University of Cologne. He has lectured and published articles mainly in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the former Yugoslavia, Albania, Macedonia, Romania, Hungary, Finland, Japan, Canada and throughout the United States.



He is the author of Berlin East and West (1962) and The Other German The Life and Times of Willy Brandt (1976); and co-author of New York Times books on Project Apollo the Fall of Communism and Scientists at Work.



He lives in suburban Maryland and he speaks fluent Serbo-Croatian. Can you imagine that when the war broke out in former Yugoslavia his editors sent John Bums to cover the story, a journalist who relied on Muslim translators?



Bums won half a Pulitzer for writing about the confession of an alleged Serbian rapist and killer. This Serb was found guilty by his own confession without a single victim of rape or a body of an alleged murder victim presented as evidence at his trial. It was later proven his confession was tortured out of him. John Bums claimed there was not a mark on his body.



However, John Bums and the NYT never published an article about Dr. Ljubica Toholj, gynecology professor at Belgrade University who did the physical exams of thousands of Serbian prisoners of war in which sexual torture techniques did irreparable damage to internal organs or electrical shock used on the male genitals of these prisoners which also leaves no marks on the body.



Was the American public duped about Bosnia? We should be asking what kind of justice is this at The Hague that cases against Serbs are not over tuned when Muslim witnesses have admitted that they were coached by Bosnian authorities to lie on the witness stand? What kind of justice is Carla dela Ponte promoting by keeping Serbs imprisoned for killing numerous Bosnian Muslims who turned up alive and well in Sarajevo?



The U.S. blackout of court coverage of the Hague Tribunal conveniently hides what has turned out to be lynch mob style tactics of judicial abuse yet we are told that this tribunal is the lunch pin of future international court cases involving war and genocide.



Ambassador Bissett of Canada said it best in his attack of the media and I quote: "It is not the media responsibility to influence governments to make unwise policy decisions affecting the very course of history." end quote. But that is exactly what the media did in Yugoslavia.



If Osama bin Laden and Muslim terrorism is this nation's number one enemy, then the invasion of Bosnia by thousands of bin Laden trained terrorists was surely Serbia's enemies and they had every right to defend themselves. Hundreds of those Muslim terrorists remain in Bosnia and Kosovo today.



Since the end of the war in 1999 and the arrival of KFOR troops in Kosovo over 150 ancient Serbian churches have been destroyed. For the most part the press has remained silent. The same press that demanded human rights and religious tolerance for Bosnian Muslims continue to deny the Serbs equal justice as Serbs have been made nearly extinct in Kosovo where they were a majority of the population in 1939 the year in which I was born.



The media tells us that Albanians are a majority of Kosovo but never publish the fact that 40% are illegal aliens who cross the border into Serbia as easily as Mexicans cross our borders each night in San Diego.



In the preface to his book Witness to Genocide" which is truly an oxymoron. Roy Gutman wrote, and I quote: "Having set such lofty standards, I immediately make an exception and wrote about the Omarska camp which I had no visited, based on secondhand witness accounts." end quote.



Gutman wrote to my author refusing permission for Peter to quote from A Witness to Genocide, so we paraphrased his quotes. Meanwhile his publisher, Simon and Schuster said we could quote from their book then charged us $450.00 for the privilege.



Media Cleansing: Dirty Reporting documents how many journalists covering the

Balkan Civil Wars also made exceptions to their lofty standards they, lied, fabricated, and distorted the truth. They repeated the propaganda of other journalists ad naseum. Like Gutman they trampled on journalistic ethics, integrity and morality for their bylines.



The recent SkyNews release of Bosnian Muslim video footage of Serbs being rounded up, tortured and shot at point blank range has not gotten the attention of the media nor Carla Dela Ponte who dismisses all the crimes committed against Serbs guaranteeing that Muslim war criminals will all go free. Just like the 20,000 Nazi Harjar troops did in Bosnia in WWII after they liquidated tens of thousands of Sebs, Jews and Gypsies. Have we not learned any lessons?



On March 15th, 1993 French journalist Jerome Bony, reporting from the Muslim stronghold of Tuzla said: and I quote: "When I was at 50 kilometers from Tuzla, I was told go to the Tuzla gymnasium, there you will find 4,000 raped women." "At 20 kilometers, this figure dropped to 400. At 10 kilometers, only 40 were left. Once at the sight, I found only four women to testify." End Quote.



And this is the sort of evidence that gave us headlines screaming 60,000 rape victims in Bosnia, an absurd claim that to this day has never been exposed as a fraud by the American media.



I attended a panel discussion at Long Beach State in California on April 15th that year in which Jacques Merlino, Deputy Chief Editor on Antenna 2 in Paris told his audience: And I quote:



"All journalists in Bosnia are required to submit their articles to Bosnian censors in Sarajevo." "Notice that any reference to conflicts between Croatians and Muslim forces are heavily edited, visual images of these conflicts are forbidden. Any journalist breaking these rules is expelled from Bosnia." End Quote.



In other words John Burns accepted half a Pulitzer and never told his readers that he abided by this kind of censorship. It also makes me wonder what kind of Bosnian democracy did Madeleine Albright built on such deceptions.



In his December 1993 editorial in Strategic Policy Gregory Copley wrote: I quote: "The big lie technique is alive and well. Croatia has used the media and skillful image manipulation to hide its renewed genocide against the Serbs while at the same time ensuring that Serbs are themselves wrongly accused of the same type of crime, and more. Pictures of dead, wounded (or raped) Serbs often fill the screens of the world's television and print media, only to be re-labelled as dead, wounded or raped Croats or Muslims. Serbs—not only suffer the indignity of defeat in death; they also are used in death as models in the macabre image manipulation operations of the Croatians and Muslim Bosnians." End quote.



Mr. Brock's career as a newspaper journalist for more than 30 years is highlighted by 17 professional awards including being named a finalst for the 1989 Pulitzer Prize competition for Public Service.



Recognized as a political and environmental writer and investigative reporter, Mr. Brock holds the Southern Journalism Award for Investigative Reporting (Duke University), the Thomas L. Stokes Award for Environmental Reporting of the Washington Journalism Center, and 15 other distinctions.



He has widely traveled the Balkans, Western Central Europe, the former Soviet Union, the Middle East and other regions since 1976.



A specialist in the role of the Western media in the Balkan wars, Mr. Brock's controversial articles and reports were reprinted in major newspapers worldwide. He appeared on nationally-televised panel discussions that focused on the Yugoslav wars, and he was interviewed by numerous domestic and international newspapers, television and radio.



During his career, he has covered organized crime, drug-trafficking, and the unique politics along the U.S.-Mexican border as well as critical water issues in that desert climate.



His "Dateline Yugoslavia: The Partisan Press", published 13 years ago in the journal Foreign Policy set off shock waves in Washington and the media that are still rippling. The publisher was regaled into organizing a virtual accountability session at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Brock appeared with David Binder, facing a roomful of media "pit bulls," and restated his findings about the co-belligerent Western pack journalism maneuvering and manipulating for NATO intervention, encouraging NATO to violate it own defensive treaty.



But, that wasn't enough for his critics who harangued Brock as a "holocaust denier" until they ran out of breath.



In preparation of Media Cleansing.... Peter confronted his colleagues about their professional lapses and collusion with the secessionist Yugoslav governments—and our own State Department.



He did what any good investigative reporter does. He searched for information and waited patiently as the story developed, talking with scores of professionals and eventually tracking down the offending correspondents one-by-one, some of whom refused to answer questions.



They complained to his superiors at his newspaper, and even threatened him with lawsuits. He caught up with one Pulitzer Prize winner at an international Balkan conference in Sweden and unrelentingly questioned him from the audience.



One of the best lines in his book is from the editor of a top supermarket tabloid who, when asked about the shrill and surreal war-coverage by the American media flagships, answered: and I quote: "They're doing a better job of it than we could!" end quote.



Peter Brock began his newspaper career at The Philadelphia Inquirer, served for 20 years with The El Paso (Texas) Herald-Post, and wrote/reported/edited for newspapers in New Mexico, Colorado and Washington, D.C. Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to introduce a true professional, an expert at his craft and my friend, Peter Brock.



This article appeared in newspaper, Canadian Srbobran, December 1, 2006 issue, page 10. Peter Brock’s book Media Cleansing, can be obtained from:

Graphics Mnagement Press,

10520 Ohio Avenue,

Los Angeles, CA 90024

www.gmbooks.com

Telephone: (310) 475-2988

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The Long Defeat

The Long Defeat



Losing in the Balkans, too by Nebojsa Malic



There is no doubt that future analysts will regard 2006 as the year of setbacks for the American Empire. The most visible defeats have taken place in the Middle East: Iraq first and foremost, then the abortive Israeli war against the Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the recent defeat of US-sponsored warlords in Somalia. But Empire’s influence is waning in the Balkans as well.

Earlier this year, Muslim and Croat nationalists in Bosnia defeated a package of US-drafted constitutional reforms. Bosnian Serbs, too, have refused any further submission to Imperial diktat, electing a government that has sworn to protect their constitutional rights. One of its first actions was to reject the plan to "reform" the country’s police, which the U.S. and EU have been trying to impose for the past year.

Despite its announcements throughout 2006, the Empire has also failed to achieve the illegal separation of the occupied Serbian province of Kosovo. Seized by NATO in 1999, after a 78-day bombing campaign, and administered by the UN and an Albanian-dominated Provisional Government, the province has been systematically ethnically cleansed of its non-Albanian population, with Serb property, monuments and heritage a particular target. Champions of an independent Albanian Kosovo have vocally trumpeted its inevitability by the end of 2006 – yet the year is almost out, and that has not been the case. The sham "negotiations," begun in February under the leadership of pro-Albanian envoy Martti Ahtisaari, have failed to force the Serbian government to cede one-seventh of its territory to Albanian separatists. Serbia’s new constitution, approved at a referendum in October, explicitly claims sovereignty over Kosovo.

The Hard Sell

Ahtisaari’s announcement in early November that his final recommendations would be postponed till after the Serbian elections – scheduled for January 21, 2007 – made perfect sense at the time. The Empire simply did not have enough leverage to force the issue. However, it appears that Washington’s leverage is actually diminishing with time, and that independence of Kosovo is less likely the longer it is delayed.

That, at least, is the belief of Albanian partisans such as the International Crisis Group, which this week urged absolutely no further delays in giving the province to the Albanians. The province’s current UN viceroy, Joachim Ruecker, appears to share both ICG’s sympathies and its agenda; he, too, opposes further delays.

Leader of the province’s Provisional Government, former Croatian general and leader of the terrorist KLA Agim Ceku chose a different tack last week, when he visited the U.S. to lobby for independence. His editorial in last Wednesday’s Washington Post paints a rosy picture of an entrepreneurial democracy, where Serbs and other non-Albanians enjoy rights and privileges unheard of in the civilized world, and only the evil shadow of Serb nationalism is preventing the freedom-minded Albanians and Serbians alike from embarking on a bright European future.

None of this has any relationship to the truth whatsoever.

Aware that international law is squarely against them, champions of independence are trying to appeal to "democracy," "human rights," and "will of the majority" – in this case, the Albanians.

Holding the Line

Unfortunately for the Albanians and their allies, the Empire lacks force to impose the secession of Kosovo. If it could have done so, it would have done it in the past seven years. This means Washington and Brussels need Belgrade to consent to Kosovo’s separation. But the Serbian leaders, usually willing to compromise their nation’s interests for the political equivalent of doggy biscuits from the Empire, are intransigently refusing to do so this time.

Serbia’s prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, is leading the resistance to Imperial pressure. His political rival, President Boris Tadic, is much less committed – but knows that it would be political suicide to break ranks now. Same with the foreign minister Draskovic – who, for all his servility to the Empire, seems to oppose the secession of Kosovo more genuinely than Tadic.

NATO’s surprise invitation to Serbia into the "Partnership for Peace" program, earlier this month, was aimed at boosting Tadic and Draskovic ahead of the January 21 elections. It is unclear how much of an effect it had with the general public in Serbia, however. Serbs care about getting into NATO far, far less than about getting into the European Union – and Brussels has decided to keep further accession talks on ice till after the elections.

Srdja Trifkovic, a commentator close to Kostunica, offers this prediction:

Kostunica will not be duped, Serbia will not cave in, Russia will not relent, and the Albanians will not give up on what they had been promised by those who had never had the right to make the promise in the first place. They threaten renewed violence, but the threat only serves to reinforce the argument that they should not be allowed to get away with it. As Russia’s ambassador to the U.N. told his Western colleagues last Wednesday, "you may be willing to give in to Albanian blackmail, but we are not."

A Simple Plan

This is the outcome that, understandably, drives those who have invested political and other sorts of capital into the cause of an independent Albanian Kosovo downright insane. With the resurgent Russophobia in Washington, Russia’s Vladimir Putin is finding that standing up for Serbia defends a principle important to Russia as well. It is increasingly clear that the only way the Washington-London-Brussels axis can work around international law and Russian and Chinese opposition is, again, obtaining Belgrade’s consent.

Imperial policymakers believe they have a way to do this. If the "democrats" such as Tadic and Draskovic win come January, they would be paid to surrender Kosovo. They’ve been bought before, the reasoning goes. And if the Radicals triumph, the propaganda machine can be shifted into gear and declare them the new Nazis or something equally disagreeable, in which case the Empire will assert that Serbia has forfeited all rights and its consent is no longer necessary. But what if the current Prime Minister manages to once again build a coalition government, sidelining Imperial mercenaries and belligerent populists alike? Empire’s greatest fear is a Kostunica victory, because then it won’t have any cards to play. He had called its bluff.

Therefore, the Empire will try to ensure Mr. Kostunica does not win. The most likely way to do this would be to offer ham-fisted support to the "democrats" like Tadic, Draskovic or even the Jacobin firebrand Ceda Jovanovic. If it works, they will get a pliable government. And if it does not, and the electorate angrily falls into Radical hands, so much the better.

Collision Course

Meanwhile, Albanian separatists are making their own contingency plans. Earlier this month, checkpoints appeared on roads in American-occupied west of the province, manned by black-clad militants of the "Albanian National Army" (UCK). NATO and the UN chose to ignore them, or dismiss their relevance – as they have done to all instances of Albanian violence in the province to date, whether it was aimed at Serbs, internationals, or other Albanians.

Another reason for Albanian discontent is Ahtisaari’s rumored "proposal," which will definitely involve a separation from Serbia, but also mean some sort of EU protectorate. It is clear that Albanians won’t get independence. They were used as a weapon against Serbia; having outlived their purpose, they are likely to join Croatia as another Balkans "junkyard dog" with illusions of special importance.

But with Imperial influence shrinking and getting weaker worldwide… will the Serbs and the Albanians accept such an outcome? That doesn’t look likely. The edifice of lies that is the Empire-ordered Balkans will not stand for long.





The Long Defeat

http://www.antiwar.com/malic/?articleid=10204

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The Untold Story of Kosovo Negotiations

NEWS VIEWS by Srdja Trifkovic











Friday, December 15, 2006



The Untold Story of Kosovo Negotiations



Vojislav Kostunica, Serbia’s prime minister for the past three

years, has one of the most challenging jobs in the world. He

nevertheless seems at ease with that burden, and appears more

confident than while he was Yugoslavia’s last president

(2000-2003). When we met in Belgrade last week, he was as

matter-of-fact about the problems he is facing as ever; but

whereas in the past he had occasionally agonized about the

magnitude and complexity of those problems, today he treats

them as facts of life that neither intimidate nor depress him.

It may be telling that in appearance he has hardly aged over

the past decade, while in substance he has become the key

figure on Serbia’s political scene for many years to come.







The most pressing of those problems is of course Kosovo. The

United States, NATO and several leading European Union

countries have occupied one-seventh of his country’s territory

for over seven years, and the officials who run the

“international community” appear keen—for now—to detach the

southern province permanently from Serbia. Kostunica’s best

defense against the pressure to sign Kosovo away—and that

pressure keeps coming from Washington, Brussels, London and

other power centers—has been to insist on the need for any

solution to be legal, to conform to the letter and spirit of

the international law.

The law is clear: Kosovo belongs to Serbia, and its status was

reiterated in the UN Security Council Resolution 1244 that

stopped NATO bombing in June 1999. Detaching it from Serbia

against Belgrade’s will would be an unprecedented violation of

the UN Charter and the Helsinki Final Act of 1975. Ahtisaari

and his political masters know that, of course, but like to

pretend that it is but a minor irritant. As Kostunica says,

“When we mention the need for legality, some of these

officials become exasperated, even agitated. They respond with

various comments to the effect that we should not be bound by

‘mere’ legality.”

This, Kostunica adds, reminds him of the attitude of

Yugoslavia’s late communist dictator, Marshal Tito. When

commenting on how the country’s judges should try political

cases, Tito famously advised them “not to stick to the law

like a drunk sticks to a fence.” Such attitude irritates

Kostunica—a constitutional lawyer, whose nickname in Serbia is

“the Legalist”—but it does not surprise him. “The whole

negotiating process had been designed from the outset to lead

to only one outcome: Kosovo’s independence,” says he; and the

role of the U.N. mediator, Finland’s former president Marti

Ahtisaari, was simply to choreograph that outcome.

Kostunica’s account of Ahtisaari’s bungled attempt to

“deliver” the Serbs indicates that the promoters of the

Albanian cause had selected the wrong person for the job. The

Finn came to it as a self-declared proponent of detaching

Kosovo from Serbia and an associate of the Soros-funded

International Crisis Group, a leading pro-Albanian lobby

group. Ahtisaari’s opening gambit nevertheless was to try and

assure Kostunica of his good intentions: he really wanted to

assist Serbia, he said, in ridding herself of a problem—of

Kosovo, that is; and “we” should work together on finding the

formula to make it happen smoothly and painlessly, since “we”

(men of the world, big-time players in the “international

community”) surely realize that Kosovo is lost to Serbia

anyway.

Ahtisaari’s approach may have been based on six years’ worth

of flawed advice that he and others in the “international

community” had received from Western diplomats in Belgrade and

from a small but influential clique of “pro-Western” Serbian

officials and analysts. All along their assumption had been

that Serbia would cave in yet again and agree to Kosovo’s

detachment, albeit with some meaningless fig leaf

(“conditional independence,” “international guarantees for

minority rights,” etc, etc); that Russia and China would

endorse the deal at the Security Council; and that the problem

would be taken off the agenda by the end of this year with the

admission of yet another part of ex-Yugoslavia into the

“international community.”

Observers agree that the nature of the new entity would be

clear not so much for what Kosovo would be (an international

protectorate, an EU-NATO condominium, a future province of

Greater Albania) but for what it would no longer be: part of

Serbia. As a Washingtonian insider has noted, “The UN, the EU,

the Contact Group countries, would issue the appropriate

guarantees, mainly protection for the remaining Serbs—and

everyone would know the guarantees were just new lies on top

of the old. When all the Serbs were cleared out and their holy

places destroyed, there would be expressions of regret from

Washington, Brussels, London, etc: ‘Indeed, how sad. How

unfortunate that these Serbs should have made themselves so

hated’.”

The belief that this scenario might work was reinforced by

none other than President Boris Tadic’s chief foreign policy

advisor Vuk Jeremic, one of very few Serbian enthusiasts for

John Kerry’s victory in November 2004. Mr. Jeremic (who

happens to be a Muslim on his mother’s side) came to

Washington on 18 May 2005 to testify in Congress on why Kosovo

should stay within Serbia; but in some of his off-the-record

conversations he assured his hosts that the task is really to

sugar-coat the bitter pill that Serbia will have to swallow

anyway—and to ensure that the nationalist Radical Party does

not score excessive gains in the process.

When confronted with Kostunica’s polite but firm refusal to

operate on those assumptions, Ahtisaari tried subterfuge,

suggesting tête-à-tête off-the-record conversations with

individual Serbian leaders. Aware of the potential for

intrigue and double-dealing contingent upon such arrangements,

Kostunica refused. All his meetings with Ahtisaari were

strictly official, on-the-record, minuted, and attended by

advisors. In the meantime the negotiations between Serbs and

Albanians in Vienna, supposedly mediated by Ahtisaari, failed

because they were doomed to fail. As Kostunica says, the

Albanians were led to believe that they would get independence

anyway, and therefore had no incentive to negotiate.

The biggest internal challenge for the prime minister was to

ensure coherence of the official Serbian position, between

himself, President Tadic, and foreign minister Draskovic. That

has not been easy, and may have become impossible were it not

for the remarkable unity of the country’s public opinion on

this issue, manifested in the referendum on Serbia’s

constitution last October that reiterated Kosovo’s status as

integral part of Serbia. Confronted with the strength of

popular sentiment, Kostunica’s coalition partners and

Tadic—whose Democratic Party is not in government—realized

that breaking ranks would be tantamount to political suicide.

Some of the lingering ambiguities in Belgrade’s leadership

remain, however, and became apparent only days after our

meeting when President Tadic announced that he would fight to

save Kosovo—but added that he does not believe that the fight

would be ultimately successful.

Kostunica disagrees with that assessment, and believes that

the chances of success—of a compromise that would give

self-rule to the Albanians but keep Kosovo within Serbia’s

boundaries—are better now than at any time since 1999. The

fact that Ahtisaari felt compelled to move the deadline, long

set for the end of this year, has tremendous psychological and

political significance: the surest means of denial is delay.

Many proponents of Kosovo’s independence now realize that

setting a firm deadline was a grave mistake. We are witnessing

a shift in momentum that does not work to their advantage.

The shift would not have been possible without Russia’s firm

and unambiguous commitment not to support any Security Council

resolution that is not acceptable to Serbia. We can only

speculate whether Moscow’s stand would be so solid had the

United States promised to treat Kosovo as a valid precedent

for Transdnistria, Abkhazia, South Ossetia and

Nagorno-Karabakh; but having rejected any such possibility out

of hand, Washington has ensured that Putin has no incentive to

play ball. As for China, the danger works in the opposite

direction: had Peking supported Kosovo’s independence, it

could have facilitated the creation of a precedent that could

be and therefore would be used against it vis-à-vis Taiwan (or

even Tibet) at some future date.

Option B for the proponents of Kosovo’s independence was

stated by the province’s “prime minister,” war criminal Agim

Ceku, earlier this week: Albanians proclaim independence

regardless of the UN and invite bilateral recognition by

individual countries, most crucially the United States. The

trouble is that the Europeans hate that option, even those

(notably in London and Berlin) who are supportive of

independence. Option B cannot work unless the European Union

supports it as a whole, and within the EU so many countries

have announced their opposition—Spain, Greece, Rumania, and

Slovakia unequivocally—that it is not practicable. No

individual EU country will recognize a self-proclaimed “state”

in Kosovo unless it is an agreed policy consensually approved

in Brussels. Ceku et al may try it nevertheless, but

Washington is certain not to extend recognition that bypasses

the Security Council if that risks a rift with the Europeans:

the U.S. needs them on board to manage the mess in

Afghanistan, and for the forthcoming disengagement from Iraq.

In conclusion, the untold news is that Kosovo will not become

independent. The New York Times, the Washington Post and the

rest of the Western “mainstream” will go on huffing and

puffing and pretending otherwise, but there is not much they

can do: Kostunica will not be duped, Serbia will not cave in,

Russia will not relent, and the Albanians will not give up on

what they had been promised by those who had never had the

right to make the promise in the first place. They threaten

renewed violence, but the threat only serves to reinforce the

argument that they should not be allowed to get away with it.

As Russia’s ambassador to the U.N. told his Western colleagues

last Wednesday, “you may be willing to give in to Albanian

blackmail, but we are not.”

As Kostunica says, once the reality sinks in we’ll finally

have some real negotiations. We do not know what the end

result will be, but that is in the nature of all genuine

negotiations: their outcome is unknown. Ahtisaari has failed,

and his supporters are getting very nervous. As Misha Glenny

confided to the former U.S. ambassador in Belgrade William

Montgomery on December 7, “I am seriously worried about the

Kosovo situation . . . entre nous, I am very disappointed with

Martti’s performance.”

Good. Very, very good.

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U.S.-Russia tug-of-war

Fate of Serbia's breakaway region of Kosovo sparks U.S.-Russia tug-of-war
The Associated Press
Wednesday, December 6, 2006

The United States and Russia are engaged in a diplomatic tug-of-war over the breakaway region of Kosovo, which is awaiting a final U.N. recommendation on whether it will become an independent nation or remain part of Serbia.
Washington supports conditional independence for Kosovo and wants to set a timetable. Moscow, Serbia's traditional ally, is against establishing a schedule and says a solution must be found that satisfies both sides.
"We've long taken the position that now being seven years since war ended in Kosovo in 1999, it's time to give people of Kosovo a certain sense of their future," U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said this week on the sidelines of a conference of the 56-member Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
The situation is complicated by the fact that the Kremlin has signaled that if Kosovo were granted independence, Russia would regard that as a precedent for Moscow-backed separatist movements in former Soviet republics — a position rejected by Washington.
Moscow has cultivated strong ties with two rebel Georgian provinces, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, that broke away from the central government in wars in the early 1990s and with Moldova's separatist province of Trans-Dniester. It has stopped short of recognizing them, but has hinted that their independence drive also should be honored.
Washington claims that Kosovo is a unique case and that any solution imposed by the United Nations there cannot be replicated elsewhere.
Kosovo has been a U.N. protectorate since 1999, when NATO drove Serbian forces out of the mainly Albanian inhabited province to prevent a campaign of ethnic cleansing.
A U.N. envoy is due to deliver a final recommendation early next year on whether the province should gain independence or remain a self-governing part of Serbia.
Ethnic Albanians, who comprise 90 percent of Kosovo's 2 million people, are demanding independence, but Serbia insists that it must remain a self-governing part of Serbia.
Washington expects the upcoming U.N. ruling, prepared by former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, to result in conditional independence for Kosovo despite Serbia's objections.
Burns insisted this week that because of Kosovo's status as a ward of the United Nations it could not be compared to breakaway regions that are unrecognized by the international community.
"The United States expects that after (the Jan. 21 parliamentary elections in Serbia), President Ahtisaari would put forward his plan for final status of Kosovo," he said. "We then anticipate that the U.N. Security Council would be asked to pass resolution concerning final status of Kosovo."
"We would want that to happen very quickly: let's say a month or so following Serb elections in late January," Burns said.
But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov immediately rejected that proposal. Moscow wields veto power in the Security Council, and Russia's ambassador in Belgrade indicated on Monday that it may use it to prevent Kosovo's independence.
"The solution could be only a negotiated solution and I do not see how the Security Council could associate itself with any idea, which would mean imposing decision to one of the parties," Lavrov said.
Another complication is the long-established principle of the territorial inviolability of all nations. Analysts have noted that a breakup of Serbia could even have repercussions on far-flung countries such as Indonesia, whose provinces of Papua and Aceh are seeking the right of self-determination.
Slovenia's Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel, who chaired the OSCE meeting in Brussels, said Kosovo is a special case because there is an "unbridgeable rift" between Serbia and Kosovo's Albanians.
"It is a universal principle to respect territorial integrity of all nations," Rupel told The Associated Press. "But the problem of Serbia and Kosovo is very delicate (because) there can be no agreement between them."
___ http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/12/06/europe/EU_GEN_OSCE_US_Russia_Kosovo.php
Associated Press writer Maria Danilova contributed to this story from Moscow.
Copyright © 2006 The International Herald Tribune www.iht.com

Kosovo fears prompt US and UK to back deeper Serbia ties

Kosovo fears prompt US and UK to back deeper Serbia ties

By Daniel Dombey in Rigaand Neil MacDonald in Sarajevo

Published: November 30 2006 02:00 | Last updated: November 30 2006 02:00

The
US, the UK and the Netherlands yesterday staged a dramatic U-turn on
Serbia, endorsing plans for deeper Nato ties with Belgrade amid fears
that a coming dispute over Kosovo could spin out of control.

Washington,
London and The Hague had previously blocked calls for Belgrade to join
Nato's Partnership for Peace - a programme that has in the past brought
some countries closer to membership. They insisted that Serbia first
needed to make progress on hunting down Ratko Mladic, the indicted war
criminal widely blamed for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in which
thousands of Bosnian Muslims died.

But
at a Nato summit in Riga, US and UK diplomats accepted the arguments
made by most other Nato member states that Belgrade needed a positive
signal if it was not to be estranged from the west.

Diplomats
said that Nato made its move to bolster pro-western parties in Serbia's
January elections. They added that it could also soften the blow
Belgrade is set to receive next year when many countries are expected
to recognise the indepen-dence of Kosovo, the break-away province that
was at the heart of Nato's 1999 war with Serbia.

"I have long
been of the opinion that this was the right way to go," said Jaap de
Hoop Scheffer, Nato secretary-general, referring to the decision to
give Serbia partnership. Tacitly acknowledging the dispute within Nato,
he added: "It was not so easy."

The neighbouring countries of
Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro were also welcomed into the Nato
partnership for peace, while Croatia was given a strong signal that it
would be admitted in 2008.

Carla del Ponte, chief prosecutor at
The Hague tribunal, said the decisionappeared to reward Serbia for
non-cooperation in the hunt for Mr Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, the
former Bosnian Serb leader. "We were not consulted," spokesman Anton
Nikiforov, said.

Vojislav Kostunica, Serbia's nationalist-leaning
prime minister, claimed that closer association with Nato, which leads
an international peacekeeping force in Kosovo, would help Serbia hold
on to at least nominal sovereignty over the province.

"The
entrance of Serbia into the partnership for peace is a very important
and encouraging fact at a moment when we are struggling to keep the
integrity of Serbia," Mr Kostunica said, according to the official
Tanjug news agency. His government says it would accept the maximum
possible autonomy for Kosovo, but not independence with a seat in the
UN.

The European Union has separately halted negotiations on an
association agreement with Serbia - widely considered a waystation to
EU membership - because of Belgrade's failure to do more on handing
over Mr Mladic to the inter-national criminal tribunal in The Hague.

Nato
said it expected Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia to co-operate with
prosecutors and would monitor closely to ensure this happens.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/ad054048-8017-11db-a3be-0000779e2340.html

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What About Clinton and Kosovo?

What About Clinton and Kosovo? Get Over 'Bush Lied' Nonsense

by Larry Elder

Posted Dec 01, 2006

The White House -- finally -- began pushing back against irresponsible
charges that Bush "lied" to the American people in making the case for
war.



The
garrulous Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., made many "Bush lied" accusations:
"There was no imminent threat. This was made up in Texas, announced in
January [2003] to the Republican leadership that war was going to take
place and was going to be good politically. This whole thing was a
fraud." And Kennedy later intoned on the Senate floor, "Before the war,
week after week after week after week, we were told lie after lie after
lie after lie."



Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said, " . . . [T]he
administration intentionally misled the country into war." Anti-war
protester Cindy Sheehan, speaking to the president in a TV ad, said,
"You were wrong about the weapons of mass destruction. You were wrong
about the link between Iraq and al-Qaeda. You lied to us, and because
of your lies, my son died."



Question: If Bush "lied," did former President Clinton "lie" about Kosovo?



Clinton,
in a March 24, 1999, Oval Office broadcast, explained his military
action in Kosovo: "We act to prevent a wider war, to defuse a powder
keg at the heart of Europe, that has exploded twice before in this
century with catastrophic results. . . . By acting now, we are
upholding our values, protecting our interests and advancing the cause
of peace.



. . . Ending this tragedy is a moral imperative. It
is also important to America's national interests. . . . Do our
interests in Kosovo justify the dangers to our armed forces? . . . I am
convinced that the dangers of acting are far outweighed by the dangers
of not acting -- dangerous to defenseless people and to our national
interests. . . . I have a responsibility as president to deal with
problems such as this before they do permanent harm to our national
interests. America has a responsibility to stand with our allies when
they are trying to save innocent lives and preserve peace, freedom and
stability in Europe. That is what we are doing in Kosovo."



The
former president called Kosovo a humanitarian crisis. The New York
Times, on April 19, 1999, wrote: "In San Francisco on Thursday,
President Clinton said that the Serbs had displaced 'over a million
Kosovars' and had killed and raped 'thousands upon thousands of them.'
From interviews that journalists and relief workers have conducted with
scores of refugees from Kosovo, there is no reason to doubt him. But at
this point it is also impossible to prove that he is correct."



Actor/activist
Mike Farrell, who opposes the Iraq War, nevertheless supported military
action in Kosovo, stating, "I am in favor of an intervention. . . . I
was in Rwanda shortly after the slaughter there. I was infuriated then
-- and am now -- that the international community did not step in. . .
. I know that the escalation of violence and violations of human rights
in Kosovo have been going on for some time. . . . I reluctantly find
myself supporting the notion that something needed to be done and that
it is appropriate for us to act, and if this is the only way, so be
it."



But what about Clinton's assertion of the displacement of
"over a million Kosovars"? According to USA Today on July 1, 1999,
"Many of the figures used by the Clinton administration and NATO to
describe the wartime plight of Albanians in Kosovo now appear greatly
exaggerated as allied forces take control of the province. . . .
Instead of 100,000 ethnic Albanian men feared murdered by rampaging
Serbs, officials now estimate that about 10,000 were killed."



But is the 10,000 number accurate?



The
Orange County Register, in a Nov. 22, 1999, editorial, said, "Months
after the bombing has ceased, United Nations and European Union
investigations have bolstered what critics had argued: NATO's estimates
of Serbian genocide against the Kosovars were greatly overblown. Many
observers now think the inflated numbers simply were part of the
U.S.-led propaganda effort to build support for the war.



" . . .
The latest evidence suggests that fewer than 3,000 Kosovars were
murdered -- horrifying, yes, but not many more than the number of Serbs
who were killed by NATO bombing attacks on Yugoslavia, roughly
estimated between 3,000 and 5,000 soldiers and civilians."



Does
this mean that Clinton "lied, people died"? The intelligence turned out
to be wrong, very wrong. Something like this always warrants a serious
examination of intelligence failures. But intelligence failures, bad
intelligence or failing to properly analyze the intelligence is a far
cry from accusing a commander in chief of deliberately and
intentionally misleading the American people.



Can we, perhaps, now drop the "Bush lied" nonsense, and pursue the business of winning the war against Islamo-fascism? Perhaps?

---

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