For many of you, this is repeated information. But to the readers of ODYSSEY, a very influential Greek magazine, it is new. Just wanted you to know that my letter had been published and that is what is important. Stella
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ODYSSEY
Letters
September/October 2006, Page 9
John Sitilides and Sarah K. Norman are correct when they state that "U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns has been the leading architect of Kosovo policy in the Bush Administration." [The Kosovo Connection, May/June 2006]. What should have been added, however, is Mr. Burns' anti-Serb animosity that was evident when he was spokesman for the Clinton administration.
A critical question is whether "a democratic referendum" for independence will be open only to the residents of Kosovo which are over ninety percent Kosovo Albanian, or will it be opened to all of Serbia since Kosovo is still a province of Serbia. If the case is the latter, then Kosovo Albanians make up only nineteen percent of the country. It is interesting to note that Albanians became the majority in Kosovo primarily after Communist dictator Josip Broz Tito, in his hatred for the Orthodox Christian Serbs, encouraged the illegal crossing of Muslim Albanians into Christian Kosovo.
The roots of this crisis in Kosovo can be traced back to the breakup of Yugoslavia and the formation of Bosnia. The tragedy is that all of the suffering, bloodshed, and deaths in the Balkans might never have happened if it had not been for the meddling of our Department of State. In what is known as The 1992 Lisbon Agreement, the three Bosnian leaders representing the Croats, Muslims and Serbs, endorsed a proposal that the republic be a confederation divided into three ethnic regions, similar to the "Benelux in the Balkans" proposal by Dr. Achilles Skordas. It was then that our American Ambassador to Yugoslavia, Mr. Warren Zimmermann, advised Mr. Izetbegovic, who representing the Muslim party of Bosnia, that "if he didn't like it, why sign it?" Although the Lisbon Agreement was the best opportunity to achieve peace, it failed primarily due to the misguided, ill-advised advice given to the Bosnian president by our state department official that encouraged Mr. Izetbegovic not to sign the agreement which he had originally accepted in Lisbon, a decision which made the war inevitable.
While the Clinton administration was supporting the Bosnian government of Alija Izetbegovic, the embassy in Vienna issued a passport to Osama bin Laden which enabled him to visit Bosnia and Kosovo on four different occasions. As a result many Kosovo Liberation Army fighters were trained in bin Laden's terrorist training camps in Afghanistan.
Former UNPROFOR Commander, Canadian Maj. Gen (Ret.) Lewis MacKenzie said it best: "The Kosovo-Albanians have played us like a Stradivarius. We have subsidized and indirectly supported their violent campaign for an ethnically pure and independent Kosovo.We have never blamed them for being the perpetrators of the violence in the early '90s and we continue to portray them as the designated victim today in spite of evidence to the contrary. When they achieve independence with the help of our tax dollars combined with those of bin Laden and al-Qaeda, just consider the message of encouragement this sends to other terrorist-supported independence movements around the world."
After 9/11, President Bush said that we would do whatever it takes to defend our country, yet we denied the Serbs the right to defend themselves against the same enemy we are fighting today. One thing is evident. If Kosovo Albanians achieve independence, Serbian culture, language and religion will be eradicated. Furthermore the consequences of an independent Kosovo may well result in another mini-Afghanistan, which is certainly not in the best interest of the United States nor of Europe.
Stella L. Jatras, Camp Hill, PA
