The Great Kosovo Riddle

 

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

Good luck, Montenegro

http://www.makfax.com.mk/look/novina/article.tpl?IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=2&NrArticle=21345&NrIssue=13&NrSection=20


"Consolidation" of Kosovo's TMK as "multiethnic army"
http://kosovareport.blogspot.com/2006/05/albanian-premier-calls-for.html

NATO to protect decisions on Kosovo future
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20060508-014304-5002r

"Kosovo Status Determination Will Build Regional Security"
http://kosovareport.blogspot.com/2006/05/kosovo-status-determination-will-build.html

"The most important thing is finding a healthy and long-term solution for Kosovo and Metohija"
http://www.kosovo.net/news/archive/2006/May_08/2.html

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http://www.axisglobe.com/article.asp?article=838

Axis (Turkey)

May 8, 2006

The Great Kosovo Riddle

Can Karpat, AIA Balkan Section

Serbia is at odds with the EU after it failed to extradite Ratko Mladic. The fourth round of the Kosovo final status negotiations in Vienna ended with mutual recrimination and accusation between the Albanian and Serbian teams. During Kosovo Premier Agim Ceku’s visit to Skopje, Macedonian Premier Vlado Buckovski suggested that experts from Macedonia and Kosovo would confirm the former administrative border between Macedonia and former Yugoslavia as a real state border. Here is the week that shook Serbia…

On 3rd May, the EU postponed the talks on the stabilisation and association agreement because Serbia failed to extradite Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb army chief wanted for genocide.
On 4th-5th May, the fourth round of the Kosovo status talks began. The direct talks, which turned to greater local self-government for Kosovo’s 100.000 remaining Serbs, degenerated into mutual recrimination and accusation between the Albanian and Serbian teams.
On 5th May, after his meeting with Kosovo Prime Minister Agim Ceku, Macedonian Prime Minister Vlado Buckovski suggested that technical experts on both sides with support of US cartographers would confirm the administrative border between Macedonia and Yugoslavia as a real state border.
Last week’s chronology is not very hopeful as far as Serbia is concerned. And there is no immediate good sign on the horizon. Montenegro has already begun to prepare new passports. The fifth round of the Kosovo negotiations is scheduled for 23rd May - two days after the independence referendum in Montenegro. The “Greater Serbia†chimera progressively turns into a “Smaller Serbia†reality.

Painful times for the Serbia-EU relations

Serbian Interior Minister Dragan Jocic assured the international community that search for the fugitive war crimes accused Ratko Mladic will continue in the following days. However chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) Carla Del Ponte, speaking in Sarajevo last Friday, dismissed the arrests and raids in Belgrade, aimed at apprehending Ratko Mladic, as not serious: “Operations in Belgrade are just for the galleryâ€. It seems as though the current Serbian authorities completely lost their credibility. But what if the EU itself, which closed its doors, though probably momentarily, to Serbia, has actually lost its credibility?
The EU follows an obvious reward-or-punish process in its dealing with Serbia. On 29th April, NATO Secretary General Jaap De Hoop Scheffer, speaking at a forum in Brussels, clearly stated: “See that Mladic gets to The Hague, and I can tell you that NATO will bring you in very quickly, [and] then you can continue stabilisation and association with the European Unionâ€.
Apart the childishness of this process, is this really the best way to “rehabilitate†Serbia? If someday Serbian authorities extradite Mladic and Karadzic, it would be better that they do so because they think that these men should be tried for what they allegedly did during the Bosnia War. Only then Serbia could “exorcise its demonsâ€. Otherwise the extradition would be an unpleasant duty, which one accomplishes rather reluctantly just for the sake of a reward. Serbia must be won, not “bribedâ€.
It is known that in Serbia even those, who defend publicly the need to cooperate with the ICTY, base their arguments on little more than compliance with the international law. This can be changed through the consolidation of democracy, education, etc., but certainly not through punishment. Those, who want to join the EU in Serbia, are 60 percent of the population. Other 40 percent, however, is not a negligible minority, and their arguments are not always unconvincing. The international community should not give them such simple opportunities to strengthen their arguments.

The Kosovo talks: Deadlock on Mitrovica

During the fourth round of the Kosovo final status talks, the Serbs wanted 14 new municipalities, while the Kosovo Albanians were offering 3. The Serbian team demanded to make the northern part of Kosovska Mitrovica (northern Kosovo) a municipality of its own, while the Albanians were asking for two municipalities to be formed within the confines of one city. The two proposals about the fate of Mitrovica were diagonally opposite: Division or reunification.
The Kosovo Serbs live scattered in small communities throughout the province. Except in Mitrovica where they remain in sizeable numbers - enough to have a mini-state of their own. Mitrovica is the last urban centre of the Serbs in Kosovo and a gateway to Serbia proper. The town is divided by the river Ibar, which separates the Serb-dominated north from the Albanian-dominated south. Mitrovica, the scene of the bloody riots of March 2004, was recently patrolled by tanks to prevent ethnic clashes.

Ethnic map of Kosovo - blue zones represent Serbian concentration  (click for enlarge)

Mitrovica is the ultimate symbol, which will confirm whether reconciliation between the Albanian and Serbian communities is possible in Kosovo. While Kosovo’s Serbs and Albanians work and socialise together in urban areas like Pristina, life is less friendly in the Serbian enclaves. The “Train of Freedom†has run from the province's southern border with Macedonia to the northern border with Serbia proper since the end of the Kosovo War. The de facto divided town of Mitrovica is not an obstacle for the train. Yet, the last stop for Albanian passengers is on the southern side of the town. Many Serbs usually gather in a café on the other side, watching the bridge to check that no Albanian come across. According to French author Ernest Renan, in order to form a national body, the people of this body must learn to “forgetâ€. Obviously in the case of Kosovo, it is too early to forget - the wounds are still fresh.
Mitrovica is the key for the future of Kosovo and that of the whole region. Many fear that if Kosovo becomes independent without granting the Kosovo Serbs the large autonomy they want, these Serbs would leave Kosovo for good. This means that there will be thousands of Serbs along the Kosovo border of Serbia, full of resentment and ready to explode any time. The ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party would not fail to provoke them and exploit their anger. This stock of angry radical nationalists on Serbian border would threaten not only the safety of Kosovo, but also that of other neighbouring countries, the rest of Europe and Serbia itself.
During the last direct talks, the Serbian team made an interesting proposal. Slobodan Samardzic, a Serbian negotiator, stated that his team suggested the creation of 16 “communities†run by Serbs and other non-Albanians, including Roma Gypsies, Turks and Muslims of Slavic origin (Gorans and Bosnians). Does Serbia try to mobilise other non-Albanian communities of Kosovo and make out of minority rights a cause célÄbre in order to gain some support from “inside the castleâ€?
On 28th April, representatives of the Goran and Bosnian communities demanded for setting up new municipalities in Vitomirica (western Kosovo, near Pec), Recane (southern Kosovo, southeast of Prizren) and in the part of Dragas municipality (southern Kosovo, near Gora region) inhabited by Gorans and Bosnians.
As to the Turks of Kosovo, which are the third largest minority of Kosovo, they lost most of their rights after the establishment of the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). Turkish language, which was the third official language of Kosovo before the war, was replaced by English thereafter. Against the UNMIK, which somewhat discriminates some minorities of Kosovo, the Serbian proposal may seem attractive.

The border dispute anaesthetised

As to the visit of Kosovo Prime Minister Agim Ceku to Skopje, it brought nothing new. Agim Ceku and his Macedonian counterpart Vlado Buckovski stated that the Kosovo-Macedonia border issue is just a technical question, not a political problem. Buckovski stressed: “The former administrative border of the former Yugoslavia will be the one pending demarcation once certain conditions are met i.e. once we get a partner with a full international credibilityâ€. The discussion of this issue was postponed until a “more appropriate momentâ€.
Serbian Foreign Ministry expressed its surprise over the statement by Vlado Buckovski that experts from Macedonia and Kosovo would confirm the former administrative border between Macedonia and former Yugoslavia as a real state border. The internationally recognised state border between Serbia-Montenegro and Macedonia was established as such by the agreement on the state border in 2001.
Thus, ten days after the border dispute, which was revived on 25th April by Agim Ceku, everything got back to the starting point. Was this a kind of much ado about nothing?
According to the Coordinating Centre for Kosovo President Sandra Raskovic-Ivic, this was not the case: “The first thing that is obvious is that Ceku already feels like the premier of an independent and internationally recognised state of Kosovoâ€. Ceku was appeased on 5th May with Buckovski’s proposal of experts. Ceku acted as a real prime minister, and was also responded as a real one. He marked a good point for the Kosovo team.
Was Buckovski’s proposal a coincidence? Macedonia decided to hold parliamentary elections two months ahead of the official September deadline. Did Buckovski, the leader of the ruling Social Democrats, send a message to the Albanian minority, which forms no less than 19.2 percent of the population (est. 2004)? Also Ceku claimed that the reactions of Macedonian politicians were done for internal political consumption in the first place. If this is the fact, then Ceku himself is not exempt from internal political motives. He must placate the angry inhabitants of the Kosovo border village of Debelde, whose properties were divided by the new boundary.
The border demarcation agreement was signed on 22nd February 2001 - two years after Serbia lost control over Kosovo. Despite this fact, the agreement was welcomed by every factor in the international community (Macedonia’s neighbours, the EU, USA, NATO, etc.). Today there is no reason to change the current situation. With an unemployment rate nearing 55 percent, Kosovo will probably independent only by name. An economically dependent Kosovo will not be able to annul an agreement, which still benefits from international approval.

Related items:
Serbian Radical Party: The Hubris of Serbian Political Scene (04.05.06)
Euro-Atlantic Axis in the Balkans: Macedonia-Kosovo-Albania (02.05.06)
Kosovo Turks: Those Who Live in the Most Critical Region of the Balkans (15.12.05)
Kosovo: A New State or a New Bone of Contention in the Balkans? (26.11.05)
Kosovo is Heating Up Again (16.11.05)
Kosovo - Another Example of the International Impotence (29.10.05)

La Com�die Apsurde

"The director has total freedom to programme what he wants, according to his conscience,"

"Your decision goes against everything that constitutes a free society."

 

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1770543,00.html#article_continue

 

Pro-Serb scandal rocks La ComédiePaul Arendt
Tuesday May 9, 2006

The Guardian

France's best-known theatre company, Comédie Française, stands accused of "cultural censorship" after banning playwright Peter Handke's work. A production of Handke's play Voyage to the Sonorous Land, or the Art of Asking was cancelled after it was learned that Handke attended Slobodan Milosevic's funeral in March.

Handke, whose writing credits include Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire, is known for his pro-Serbian views. According to European press reports, he said at the funeral that he was happy to be beside "a man who defended his people". In the German magazine Focus, he questioned the western media's emnity to Milosevic.

Jean-Pierre Jourdain, secretary general at the Comédie Française, calls the comments scandalous. "Imagine for a moment that an author said Bin Laden wasn't at all responsible for 9/11," he says. "There would be an outcry. What's the difference with Milosevic?"

The decison to axe the production has been heavily criticised. In an open letter to the theatre, Handke's editor Ulla Unseld-Berkewicz wrote, "Your decision goes against everything that constitutes a free society." Nobel prize-winning author Elfriede Jelinek and Claus Peymann, director of Germany's Berliner Ensemble theatre company, have also come out in support of Handke. In a statement, Peymann said: "It's shocking that a European country, which has for years been a proponent and defender of individual freedom, has imposed such cultural censorship and subordination on its national theatre."

The theatre, however, stands by its decision. "The director has total freedom to programme what he wants, according to his conscience," says Jourdain.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

Kosovo consternation

http://www.washingtontimes.com/commentary/20060508-091537-7458r.htm

Kosovo consternation
By James "Ace" Lyons Jr.
May 9, 2006


Among the most important priorities of U.S. global policy is combating the international traffic in drugs and in persons (often a euphemism for women and children forced into prostitution).
    Because of the linkage and overlap among terrorist networks and organized criminal gangs, the battle against trafficking is also an integral part of the war on terror.
    Fighting organized criminal activities is difficult even in countries with a functioning legal system, honest police and the rule of law. Think how much harder that would be when dealing with an independent country where the authorities are an integral part of the criminal enterprise.
    Amazingly, that's what the international community seems to want to help establish in the Serbian province of Kosovo. When Kosovo was placed under United Nations administration and NATO military control at the end of the 1999 war, some hoped the province soon would meet at least minimum qualifications for some kind of independence, as demanded by Muslim Albanians who greatly outnumber the remaining Christian Serbs.
    That hasn't happened. Instead the drug, sex slave, weapons, money-laundering, and other illicit trades that helped fuel the conflicts of the 1990s have continued to grow. Just this month Marek Antoni Nowicki, Poland's leading human-rights lawyer and the U.N.'s international ombudsman for Kosovo until last year, denounced the "real criminal state in power" in Kosovo, working right under the nose of the U.N. and NATO. "Crime groups have been able to operate with impunity," said Mr. Nowicki. "These networks can rely on the weakness of the public institutions to sanction their operations." Mr. Nowicki's charges came on the heels of a March 2006 report by the U.N.'s internal watchdog agency, the Office of Internal Oversight, which found the head of U.N. Mission -- who holds virtually dictatorial powers -- derelict for ignoring fraud and other abuses at the airport in Kosovo's capital, Pristina.
    None of this should come as any surprise. Even in 1999, when the Clinton administration decided to take military action in support of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), there were numerous and credible intelligence and news reports of the KLA's criminal and terrorist inclinations. Predictably, KLA veterans found even more opportunity to ply their illicit trades when, ostensibly demobilized, they were recruited by the UN into Kosovo's police, civil administration, and quasi-military "Kosovo Protection Corps." The foxes were asked to guard the chicken coop -- another U.N. fiasco.
    As described in reports issued by the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, criminal activity in Kosovo continues to be closely tied to operations of the Albanian mafia across Europe, from home bases in Kosovo and adjacent areas of Albania and Macedonia. For example (from 2003): "According to the International Organization for Migration and EUROPOL, the principal supplier countries [i.e., for trafficked women] today are Moldova (up to 80 percent: many Moldovan villages do not have any more women), Bulgaria, Romania and Ukraine. The networks used various routes, including the route that passes through Kosovo, Albania, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (see the village of Veledze, the regional centre of prostitution) and Montenegro, then through Italy. The Albanian mafia has set up a real cartel on prostitution. It handles more than 65 percent of the trafficking in women in the Balkans." From 2004: "In Kosovo, as many as 80 percent of internally trafficked victims are child!
 ren."
    The response of international bureaucrats to this disgrace is predictable: ignore it and hope nobody notices. Or even better, pretend all is going well, declare the mission a success -- and hand power over to the criminals as the new sovereign "government."
    If that happens, even the minimal interference in the Kosovo-based gangs' operations will be removed. A criminal state not seen since the defunct Taliban regime in Afghanistan will be set up with easy proximity to the rest of Europe.
    Such an outcome would make a mockery of some of the United States' most important global security priorities. While the international community desires some sort of "closure" to the ongoing mess in Kosovo (and this is understandable), it is hard to think of a supposed solution worse than independence. Seven years after the 1999 war, this is one Clinton legacy that demands urgent reconsideration.
    
    James "Ace" Lyons Jr. is a retired admiral in the U.S. Navy. He is a former commander-in-chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet (the largest single military command in the world), senior U.S. military representative to the United Nations and as deputy chief of Naval operations and was principal adviser on all Joint Chiefs of Staff matters.
   
Copyright 2006 The Washington Times