Company News Story:
"Milosevic Son Again Accuses UN Court Over Father's Death
BELGRADE (AP)--Slobodan Milosevic's son, in a letter published Thursday, reiterated accusations that the U.N. war crimes tribunal was responsible for the ex-Serb leader's death.
Marko Milosevic alleged in the letter published by Vecernje Novosti daily that the U.N. court 'had a monopoly over my father's health' while he was in its detention at The Hague, Netherlands.
'The tribunal sentenced my father to death ... when it rejected his demand for a temporary release, ignoring his health and rights,' Marko Milosevic said in the letter.
'And, in the end, premeditatedly, the tribunal took my father to a death by natural causes.'
Milosevic died of a heart attack in March, while he was being tried for genocide for his role in the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s.
During the proceedings, Milosevic had refused to hire a lawyer and represented himself in the court, despite doctors' warnings that the stress could affect his already high blood pressure.
The tribunal in February refused to allow Milosevic to travel to Russia for treatment, saying he was in good hands at the Netherlands-based detention unit.
After Milosevic died, his family and allies in Serbia accused the tribunal of driving him to death by allegedly not granting proper medical care. Milosevic's Belgrade lawyer even suggested that the former Serbian and Yugoslav leader had feared he was being poisoned.
The Hague court has rejected the allegations.
Marko Milosevic said the tribunal's report about the cause of his fat"
August 17, 2006
Toward a Greater Albania�-�Editorials/Op-Ed�-�The Washington Times, America's Newspaper
Toward a Greater Albania - Editorials/Op-Ed - The Washington Times, America's Newspaper
Toward a Greater Albania
By Michael DjordjevicPublished August 16, 2006
Part two in a three-part series. With the fall of communism and emergence of America as the only world superpower, the hope for peace, freedom and progress was high. Nonetheless, in the twilight of the old order lurked a new global danger: fundamentalist Islam. This new challenge to world peace and stability is rooted in a cosmology older and stronger than ideologies of fascism or communism or ideas of the New World Order. The Balkans have historically been the key battlefield between Islam and European civilization since the battle at Kosovo, where the Ottoman Turks clashed with the Serbs in 1389, to the present. At its apex, the Islamic tide reached and was stopped at the gates of Vienna (1683). It was finally pushed out in the Balkan War of 1912, when the combined armies of Greece, Serbia, Montenegro and Bulgaria were stopped at the Gates of Istanbul (Constantinople) by the intervention of the great European powers of that period. Although not admitted in the capitals of the West, the real and the first clash with this revived expansionist force took place in the Balkans in the 1990s. In reality we have fought on the side of our enemies. As in Bosnia before, now in Kosovo, the West has again failed to deal with the basic and overarching Balkan problem � the Serbian Question. Simply, this issue originated from the fact that with the fall of Yugoslavia, nearly overnight one-third of the Serbs found themselves in a new sovereign state hastily recognized by the EU and then the United States. Due to years of experience of genocide and ethnic cleansing during WW II by the Croats, Bosnian and Albanian Muslims, the large Serbian minorities in these two countries demanded self-determination. This was denied as the West took the stand that "borders are inviolable." Yet now the Albanians in Kosovo are encouraged to violate the Serbian borders via self-determination, while the Bosnian Serbs in the entity of Republika Srpska are still denied the same right. Kosovo, a province in Serbia, is about 15 percent of her territory. Within only two generations (1929-1980) from 15 percent of Kosovo population, Albanians reached 80 percent; the Serbs declined from 60 percent to 18 percent in the same period. This is a clear-cut example of what open borders, a high birthrate and wrong politics can produce. After Serbia was bombed to submission in a "humanitarian" war in 1999, Kosovo was given to the United Nations for administration � with catastrophic results. Quickly, the province was methodically and ethically cleansed. It is now monoethnic. More than 150 Christian churches and old monasteries have been destroyed, while some 200 new mosques and a number of schools for the young were feverishly built by Wahhabi funds. Violent and corrupt, Kosovo has become a den of thieves, arm smugglers and white slavers and the key narcotics transfer point to Europe. Threatening violence, the Islamists demand independence from Serbia. America and Europe are seriously considering forcing Serbia to cede her land in contravention to all international norms and laws and U.N. Resolution 1244. This would be the second Moslem sovereign state created in the Balkans in one decade by the international community. As correctly asserted, "even as Western societies worry about the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, the international community's ill-conceived policies for Kosovo...may prove to be directly responsible for production of Europe's own Taliban." Independence for Kosovo will likely pave the tormenting road to "Greater Albania," thus assuring a permanent instability and turmoil in the Balkans. The idea of a "Greater Albania" is essentially a mono-ethnic nationalistic construct originated in 1878 by the Albanian League. To many Albanians, an independent and monoethnic Kosovo is nothing but a phase of the process leading to fulfillment of these nationalistic aspirations. Of course, changing the now existing borders of four sovereign states in the volatile Balkans is nothing short of creating conditions for permanent instability and new cycles of wars. These conflicts would readily and easily be exploited by outside parties, particularly terrorists and international criminal networks. So long as we fail to recognize Serbia's legitimate interests and continue to violate the moral norms and international legal system, the Kosovo problem cannot be solved. As Ambassador Jack Matlock correctly concluded in the New York Times in 1999: "Neither partition nor independence nor indefinite foreign occupation will win in the long run without the acquiescence of the Serbian people." As the Serbs have already waited five centuries to regain the cradle of their civilization and identity, they will certainly try to do so again, and in much shorter time. Part I Michael Djordjevich, an American of Serbian origin, founded and served as the first president of the Serbian Unity Congress.
Toward a Greater Albania
By Michael DjordjevicPublished August 16, 2006
Part two in a three-part series. With the fall of communism and emergence of America as the only world superpower, the hope for peace, freedom and progress was high. Nonetheless, in the twilight of the old order lurked a new global danger: fundamentalist Islam. This new challenge to world peace and stability is rooted in a cosmology older and stronger than ideologies of fascism or communism or ideas of the New World Order. The Balkans have historically been the key battlefield between Islam and European civilization since the battle at Kosovo, where the Ottoman Turks clashed with the Serbs in 1389, to the present. At its apex, the Islamic tide reached and was stopped at the gates of Vienna (1683). It was finally pushed out in the Balkan War of 1912, when the combined armies of Greece, Serbia, Montenegro and Bulgaria were stopped at the Gates of Istanbul (Constantinople) by the intervention of the great European powers of that period. Although not admitted in the capitals of the West, the real and the first clash with this revived expansionist force took place in the Balkans in the 1990s. In reality we have fought on the side of our enemies. As in Bosnia before, now in Kosovo, the West has again failed to deal with the basic and overarching Balkan problem � the Serbian Question. Simply, this issue originated from the fact that with the fall of Yugoslavia, nearly overnight one-third of the Serbs found themselves in a new sovereign state hastily recognized by the EU and then the United States. Due to years of experience of genocide and ethnic cleansing during WW II by the Croats, Bosnian and Albanian Muslims, the large Serbian minorities in these two countries demanded self-determination. This was denied as the West took the stand that "borders are inviolable." Yet now the Albanians in Kosovo are encouraged to violate the Serbian borders via self-determination, while the Bosnian Serbs in the entity of Republika Srpska are still denied the same right. Kosovo, a province in Serbia, is about 15 percent of her territory. Within only two generations (1929-1980) from 15 percent of Kosovo population, Albanians reached 80 percent; the Serbs declined from 60 percent to 18 percent in the same period. This is a clear-cut example of what open borders, a high birthrate and wrong politics can produce. After Serbia was bombed to submission in a "humanitarian" war in 1999, Kosovo was given to the United Nations for administration � with catastrophic results. Quickly, the province was methodically and ethically cleansed. It is now monoethnic. More than 150 Christian churches and old monasteries have been destroyed, while some 200 new mosques and a number of schools for the young were feverishly built by Wahhabi funds. Violent and corrupt, Kosovo has become a den of thieves, arm smugglers and white slavers and the key narcotics transfer point to Europe. Threatening violence, the Islamists demand independence from Serbia. America and Europe are seriously considering forcing Serbia to cede her land in contravention to all international norms and laws and U.N. Resolution 1244. This would be the second Moslem sovereign state created in the Balkans in one decade by the international community. As correctly asserted, "even as Western societies worry about the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, the international community's ill-conceived policies for Kosovo...may prove to be directly responsible for production of Europe's own Taliban." Independence for Kosovo will likely pave the tormenting road to "Greater Albania," thus assuring a permanent instability and turmoil in the Balkans. The idea of a "Greater Albania" is essentially a mono-ethnic nationalistic construct originated in 1878 by the Albanian League. To many Albanians, an independent and monoethnic Kosovo is nothing but a phase of the process leading to fulfillment of these nationalistic aspirations. Of course, changing the now existing borders of four sovereign states in the volatile Balkans is nothing short of creating conditions for permanent instability and new cycles of wars. These conflicts would readily and easily be exploited by outside parties, particularly terrorists and international criminal networks. So long as we fail to recognize Serbia's legitimate interests and continue to violate the moral norms and international legal system, the Kosovo problem cannot be solved. As Ambassador Jack Matlock correctly concluded in the New York Times in 1999: "Neither partition nor independence nor indefinite foreign occupation will win in the long run without the acquiescence of the Serbian people." As the Serbs have already waited five centuries to regain the cradle of their civilization and identity, they will certainly try to do so again, and in much shorter time. Part I Michael Djordjevich, an American of Serbian origin, founded and served as the first president of the Serbian Unity Congress.
August 14, 2006
THE PATRIOT NEWS - Balkan connection (Ltr published) by Stella L. Jatras
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
 | | ||||||||||
 LETTERS TO THE EDITORSunday, August 13, 2006 A front-page article (June 19) reported that the planned poison gas attack on the New York subway system was canceled by al-Qaida's No. 2 man, Ayman al-Zawahiri, 45 days before its execution because "it would not be spectacular enough." A July 27 article, which reports that al-Zawahiri is seeking support for jihad from non-Muslims, clearly demonstrates the terrorist dangers to this country. In addition to non-Muslims, Islamic terrorists are reportedly relying on European Muslims who don't fit the physical profile of Middle Eastern terrorists. Because the Balkans has become a central point of this recruitment effort, we must not ignore al-Zawahiri's connection to the area. The Serbian province of Kosovo, under U.N. administration since 1999, has been the center of Islamic terrorism and ethnic cleansing. Unfortunately, some in the administration are moving headlong toward establishing Kosovo as an independent state run by terrorists and war criminals, while ignoring the fact that Kosovo has become a center for terrorism and crime in the Balkans. Did we learn nothing from 9/11, or are we about to make another colossal mistake in the Balkans? -- STELLA L. JATRAS, Camp Hill |
Kosovo 2006 - "risk of genocide"
Print this damning and timely report (PDF link below) and send it to all those who built their political lives on "humanitarian intervention"!
"Nowhere in Europe is there such segregation as Kosovo.
Thousands of people are still displaced and in camps.
Nowhere else are there so many ‘ethnically pure’ towns and villages scattered across such a small province. Nowhere is there such a level of fear for so many minorities that they will be harassed simply for who they are. And perhaps nowhere else in Europe is at such a high risk of ethnic cleansing occurring in the near future – or even a risk of genocide."
http://www.minorityrights.org
http://www.minorityrights.org/admin/Download/pdf/MRGKosovoReport.pdf
Press release
http://www.minorityrights.org/media_centre/media_press/media_centre_press_ko
sovo.htm
Failure by international community to protect minorities in Kosovo could lead to renewed conflict Embargoed for release Monday 7th August 2006 at 10:30 a.m.
7 August 2006
After seven years of UN and international governance the situation in Kosovo is 'little short of disastrous' and there is a high risk of ethnic cleansing occurring again, according to a new report by Minority Rights Group.
The report titled Minority Rights in Kosovo under International Rule launched today, criticizes the UN and international community for failing to protect the rights of Kosovo's minority communities. It describes how the situation of minorities in Kosovo remains the worst in Europe, and highlights the danger of these mistakes being repeated in Iraq.
"The authorities have allowed a segregated society to develop and become entrenched, and thousands of minorities remain displaced," the report says.
"Nowhere (in Europe) is there such a level of fear for so many minorities that they will be harassed or attacked, simply for who they are or what language they speak," it adds.
According to the report, the short term measures of separating Kosovo's two main communities, Albanians and Serbs, has disastrous long term implications.
Clive Baldwin the author of the report, says: "The reality is that segregation is entrenched, creating a society that is so fractured that non of its people feel protected. They live in fear of mass conflict re-occurring in the long term."
The report, which looks at the situation of Kosovo's Albanian, Serb and other communities, including, Bosniak, Croat, Turk, Ashkalia and Roma, argues that problems to do with minorities are not due to lack of resources. In fact, the international administration has been one of the most expensive in UN history.
Instead, the report says a mindset of segregation, a lack of clear accountable government and a lack of any real protection of human rights and the rule of law are among the reasons why minorities continue to suffer in Kosovo.
It also faults the international community for failing to learn from past mistakes and use the experience and expertise available to them to protect minority rights.
"It is almost incredible is that all these mistakes have been made under an international administration consisting of institutions, notably the UN and OSCE, with a long institutional memory of addressing minority rights,"
Baldwin says.
According to the report the 'future status negotiations' represents both the best hope and the greatest danger and as the future of Kosovo is currently being decided the report calls for a radical move away from the patterns of segregation. It also recommends that minority rights are guaranteed by the rule of law and that all minorities, including minority women, should be consulted on the future of their lives, their property and their country.
"The message is clear to all parties. The Serbs need to realize that the effective protection of all communities in Kosovo in an integrated society is the only long term solution. It is in their best interest," says Baldwin.
"We urge the international community to recognise the damage that segregation can cause. They must realize that the Serbs and Kosovo's other communities, including the Albanians, are not benefiting from the current system. The only long term security for Kosovo will be effective protection for all minorities," he says.
For more information or to arrange interviews with Clive Baldwin, please contact Farah Mihlar on 0207 4224205 (office) 078 70596863 (mobile) or farah.mihlar@mrgmail.org
Notes to Editors
Since 1999 Kosovo has had an interim administration, consisting the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), which includes representatives of the EU and Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and a NATO-led Kosovo Force.
Clive Baldwin is Head of Advocacy at Minority Rights Group International.
>From 2000 to 2002 he was a member of the OSCE Mission in Kosovo.
Previously, he was a practising human rights lawyer.
Minority Rights Group International (MRG) is a non governmental organisation working to secure the rights of ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities and indigenous peoples worldwide.
Read the report summary
[Image Removed]
Download the PDF copy of Minority Rights in Kosovo under International Rule English Albanian Serbian = ________________________________________________________________________
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A Must See Video
This is a must see short video for everyone, exposing some of the greatest fraud in the main stream media regarding the Israeli conflict
COMMENTS: Regarding falsely orchestrating events and doctoring photos.
Remember Dubrovnik where a media fraud reported that the Serbs destroyed the Pearl of the Adriatic, the city of Dubrovnik? Read below the similarity between the alleged burning of Dubrovnik and the cover of U.S. News and World Report which shows a Hezbollah fighter overlooking a fire in Beirut. The caption reads, "Wreckage of an Israeli jet billowing smoke in Beirut." Upon closer look, it is not a war scene. No, those are automobile tires burning in a garbage dump.
Peter Maher, Professor Emeritus of Linquistics, visited Dubrovnik, Croatia, to see for himself the truth about the war in the Balkans. It should be noted that Dr. Maher, a Roman Catholic, not a Serbian Orthodox source, video taped the entire city, building by building and his footage was shown on Access TV Channel 19 in Chicago.
Dr. Maher wrote, "A few months earlier, the press was filled with stories that the Pearl of the Adriatic had been reduced to rubble. The stories were fakes." Professor Maher goes on to explain just how it happened: "The dramatic 'Dubrovnik burning' pictures were shot with long lenses. . . .But the smoke was from the fuel tanks of two pleasure boats burning in the Old Harbor ... Dubrovnik's Old City never burned and was never even targteted by the federal forces. It was not navy guns that did the damage, but plastic and incendiary devices planted on the spot by Croatian forces....The only structures destroyed in Dubrovnik were the home of the Serbian Orthodox priest and the 17th Century Serbian Orthodox Liberary, it was burned from within and there was no evidence of artillery damage to the exterior of the building.
And of course, let us not forget the image of the wailing woman in this video - how many did we see, month after month, of Bosnian or Kosovo women and children wailing on the front pages of all our newspapers? I do not denegrate their suffering because many of them did suffer needlessly, but intentionally by the Bosnian Muslim government of Alija Izetbegovic. But U.S. newspapers never showed photos of Serbian women and children suffering from NATO bombs, or their slaugfhtering at the hands of Agim Ceku, the Muslim war lord who today is walking a free man.
If only we had had this kind of email/bloging during the war against the Serbian people, the lies would have been exposed immediately and perhaps, just perhaps, things might have been different - one would hope.
'Nuf said. Stella
August 07, 2006
Crossfire War - Serbs in Kosovo Arming Self - Defence Groups
Crossfire War - Serbs in Kosovo Arming Self - Defence Groups
By Willard Payne
Crossfire War - TEHRAN WATCH - Southeast Europe Theatre: Tehran - Belgrade/Pristina - Vienna; Serbs Arming Self-Defense Groups - Former Military and Police Officers
Night Watch: BELGRADE - Reuters reports that the six capitals which make up the Contact Group on Serbia/Kosovo are increasingly concerned at what they call "recent developments". The capitals are: Washington-London-Berlin-Paris-Rome-Moscow. They refuse to specify what the "recent developments" are but ominous reports have been circulating that Serbian communities in Kosovo are strengthening self-defence groups composed of former military and police officers. This is obviously in preparation for the declaration of Kosovo's independence, the majority Albanian Muslim province of southern Serbia. [SWISSINFO]
Serbia Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica is on record as saying Monday that when Kosovo independence is declared he will state Kosovo is an integral part of Serbia, which of course gives his and Belgrade's approval for Serbian armed nationalist groups to open fire. Three Serbian urban communities in northern Kosovo, where Serbs are still the majoirty, have severed all contact with Kosovo's capital Pristina, which is controlled by Albanians. The Serbs in the north of the province, north of the Ibar river, are in a much better position, politically and economically since they have a continuous land link to Serbia. It's quite possible the shooting could start even before independence is declared.
The only question is who will the Serbs target first, Albanians or the Contact Group? Encouraging them in this new war is Tehran, which signed a security agreement with Belgrade last January that received a lot of publicity in both countries. Tehran will use the new fighting as a way of silencing Vienna, the capital that houses the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which had been investigating Iran's uranium enrichment - nuclear weapons program. Fighting in the Balkans will also end the West's attention on the war in Western Asia (Middle East), which Tehran had Hamas-Hezbollah start against Israel. There will be no more talk of an international peace force monitoring Lebanon led by Europe.
Night Watch Information Service
http://www.crossfirewar.com
Copyright � 2006, NewsBlaze, Daily News
By Willard Payne
Crossfire War - TEHRAN WATCH - Southeast Europe Theatre: Tehran - Belgrade/Pristina - Vienna; Serbs Arming Self-Defense Groups - Former Military and Police Officers
Night Watch: BELGRADE - Reuters reports that the six capitals which make up the Contact Group on Serbia/Kosovo are increasingly concerned at what they call "recent developments". The capitals are: Washington-London-Berlin-Paris-Rome-Moscow. They refuse to specify what the "recent developments" are but ominous reports have been circulating that Serbian communities in Kosovo are strengthening self-defence groups composed of former military and police officers. This is obviously in preparation for the declaration of Kosovo's independence, the majority Albanian Muslim province of southern Serbia. [SWISSINFO]
Serbia Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica is on record as saying Monday that when Kosovo independence is declared he will state Kosovo is an integral part of Serbia, which of course gives his and Belgrade's approval for Serbian armed nationalist groups to open fire. Three Serbian urban communities in northern Kosovo, where Serbs are still the majoirty, have severed all contact with Kosovo's capital Pristina, which is controlled by Albanians. The Serbs in the north of the province, north of the Ibar river, are in a much better position, politically and economically since they have a continuous land link to Serbia. It's quite possible the shooting could start even before independence is declared.
The only question is who will the Serbs target first, Albanians or the Contact Group? Encouraging them in this new war is Tehran, which signed a security agreement with Belgrade last January that received a lot of publicity in both countries. Tehran will use the new fighting as a way of silencing Vienna, the capital that houses the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which had been investigating Iran's uranium enrichment - nuclear weapons program. Fighting in the Balkans will also end the West's attention on the war in Western Asia (Middle East), which Tehran had Hamas-Hezbollah start against Israel. There will be no more talk of an international peace force monitoring Lebanon led by Europe.
Night Watch Information Service
http://www.crossfirewar.com
Copyright � 2006, NewsBlaze, Daily News
My letter to Newsweek: Bosnia Reborn
(Funny! I haven't heard a word from these people! Stella)
********************************************************************
Newsweek
Letter to the editor(s)
3 August 2006
The authors of Bosnia Reborn, (7 August) make Sarajevo sound like Paradise. If this is true, then why are Croatians and Bosnian Serbs making noises that they want to separate, each wishing to join their mother countries? While the US administration was supporting the Bosnian Muslim government of Alija Izetbegovic, his Vienna embassy issued a passport to Osama bin Laden in 1992. In his "The Islamic Declaration, Izetbegovic writes, "There can be no peace or coexistence between Islamic faith and non-Islamic faith political institutions....The Islamic movement must and can take place as soon as it is morally and numerically strong enough, not only to destroy the non-Islamic one, but to build up a new Islamic one."
"We came here to die in the service of Islam. This is our duty. No infidel force will tell us how to live or what to do. This (Bosnia) is a Muslim country which must be defended. (Islamic fighter as quoted by The New York Times and reprinted in The Sunday Telegraph, London, Dec. 10, 1995). Does this sound like Paradise?
Furthermore, the 200,000 killed was discredited when BBC reported in 2002 that the total number of deaths came to 40,000 while other Bosnian experts put the figure at between 20,000 and 70,000.
Stella L. Jatras
************************************************************************
letters@newsweek.com
Copyright 2006 Newsweek
All Rights Reserved
Newsweek
August 7, 2006
International Edition
Bosnia Reborn
Europe's one time wasteland, devastated by war, ideology and ethnic hatred, is staging one helluva comeback
By Ginanne Brownell; With Kris Anderson in London
Elvir Causevic left sarajevo in 1990, just before the war engulfed Bosnia and smashed it to smithereens. Now 33 and educated in America, a member of Yale University's research staff, he recently moved back --and continues to be amazed at the town's transformation. The city he had seen so often on TV during the dark years was devastated, full of scarred and burned-out buildings, bereft of its once vibrant cosmopolitanism.
But no more. Sarajevo today is the very image of a thriving European capital, chockablock with chic restaurants and upscale art galleries. Cranes punctuate the skyline, erecting offices and putting a new face on, among many other things, Bosnia's postmodern Parliament, ruined during the war. Strolling the cobbled streets of the capital's ancient Old Town--a twisty maze of bars and tourist shops selling everything from Turkish coffee sets to T shirts reading i 'm muslim, don't panic--Causevic is positively boosterish. "Now is the time for this country," he exults. His plan: to set up branches of his New York medical-instruments company in Sarajevo and Tuzla--a great investment, he thinks, because of Bosnia's strong engineering tradition and still inexpensive work force. He's already hired 12 employees and expects to grow to 100 within a couple years. "I see a real enthusiasm here," he concludes, reflecting national optimism.
It's hard to believe this is Bosnia--the place that introduced the world to the term "ethnic cleansing." A decade after its brutal war ended, the country is finally emerging from the wilderness. A recent World Bank report touts it as "a post-conflict success story." And it certainly looks that way. "Our economy used to be entirely dependent on international aid," Prime Minister Adnan Terzic tells NEWSWEEK. But these days, he enthuses (somewhat nerdily), the signs all point to "serious sustainability." Bosnia's GDP has tripled in the last decade.
Exports, including steel and timber, are up by 50 percent. The government has successfully privatized banks. Foreign direct investment has tripled since 1999 to �750 million in 2004--and the trend is fast accelerating upward. Unlike neighboring Croatia and Serbia, also part of the former Yugoslavia, Bosnia has practically no external debt. At 2 percent, inflation is lower than Britain's.
"I think boardrooms would be well advised to have a look at Bosnia," says Dirk Reinermann, the World Bank's country director.
It's been a long time since boardrooms bothered with Bosnia, a country roughly the size of Denmark with a population of 4 million. The fighting that raged from 1992 to 1995 killed 200,000 people, made refugees of 2 million more and destroyed almost 90 percent of the country's infrastructure. War damage totaled more than $60 billion--a magnitude of collapse not seen in Europe since World War II. Bosnia's three main ethnic groups (Roman Catholic Croats, Orthodox Serbs and Muslim Bosnians, more commonly known as Bosniaks) turned on each other savagely, despite decades of intermarriage and living peaceably together. Rape, torture, mass killings--Bosnia was a Balkan slaughterhouse, ending only with the
U.S.- brokered 1995 Dayton peace accords. That agreement became the country's constitution and set up two quasi-autonomous "entities"--the Republika Srpska (usually referred to as the RS) and the Federation, a shaky alliance between Bosnia's Croats and Muslims. A weak national government is overseen by a U.N.-appointed High Representative.
As those awkward arrangements suggest, Bosnia's troubles are hardly over. In the central and southeastern parts of the country, Muslim schoolchildren are segregated from Catholic kids in 52 schools. (When administrators in one such district tried to integrate a school playground, they received so many threatening phone calls that they scrapped the plan.) In the RS, whose population is 90 percent Serb, there have been rumblings of holding a referendum on independence. (With United Nations negotiations underway in Vienna on Kosovo 's independence, this isn't an entirely idle threat.) Even beer drinking can still become political. In north-central Vitez, whether you order a pint of Bosnian-brewed Sarajevska or a Croatian Karlovacko depends on which part of town you live in. With 20 percent of the country's population living below the poverty line, those in rural areas barely scrape out a living. Drug trafficking, organized crime and illegal logging are epidemic. Membership in NATO will remain a pipe dream until war criminals Radovan Karadic and Ratko Mladic, who may be hiding in the RS, are arrested.
Nonetheless, by the end of the year, Bosnia is expected to sign the Stabilization and Association Agreement, a big step toward EU eligibility. For most of the past decade, each of its factions had their own courts, customs and tax services; now the federal government has taken control. Three years ago, according to a Western diplomat, "Serbs would have laughed you out of the room if you told them they'd be serving in an integrated army." Today, they're doing just that. In June, Bosnia was awarded control of its airspace for the first time in more than a decade.
In Sarajevo, especially, you can see the country's ethnic groups reknitting old ties--not necessarily warmly, but with a heartening mutual acceptance. Many of the Serbs who fled the capital during the war are returning to visit. The ski slopes of Mt. Igman (remember the 1984 Olym-pics?) are becoming more culturally mixed, as are Sarajevo's packed caf�s and concert halls. Earlier this summer, throngs came out to hear a popular Serbian turbo-folk singer, Jelena Karleusa.
Orthodox, Catholic and Muslim religious leaders meet regularly and often go on walkabouts together in towns across Bosnia. "It is a much more pragmatic and much less ideologically nationalistic country than it was several years ago,"
says journalist Allan Little, coauthor of "The Death of Yugoslavia."
The picture is harsher outside the capital. Along the road from Sarajevo to Zenica (a new four-lane highway is slowly being built) the scars of war are still evident: carcasses of burned houses, villages that feel far emptier than they should. Yet the signs of progress are obvious here too. The vast majority of Bosnia's battered towns and villages have been rebuilt; according to government figures, 98 percent of properties illegally seized during the fighting have been returned to their rightful owners or their surviving kin. The ethnic mix of some places has changed. Many Serbs, Croats or Muslims have sold houses in areas where they might feel uncomfortable and bought another where they are in the ethnic majority. But others have returned to places they were driven from, if only because they are their homes.
Visit the Bosniak village of Ahmici, reduced to rubble by Croat forces in April 1993. The local mosque's white minaret, toppled during a massacre that claimed 118 lives, is back. A high-tech stereo blasts the call to prayer five times daily. A second mosque, up the hill from the outdoor basketball court, is being built. Its skeletal bricked interior is a Sunday-evening hangout for preteen girls, some wearing fashionable head scarves and flirting with boys.
Along the curving, pine-forested roads of the RS, where signs are infrequent and marked only in Cyrillic, minarets and Catholic crosses can be glimpsed rising in the distance.
If any place testifies to how far Bosnia has come, it is the northern town of Brcko, hard on the Serbian and Croatian borders. This heavily contested bit of territory was the "bridge" linking the western reaches of the RS to the east and Serbia proper. To this day, Brcko is administered separately from the other Bosnian entities, with an American supervisor appointed by the U.N. The region experienced some of the most intense fighting of the war--and some of its fiercest ethnic hatred. Yet former Army barracks have been transformed into a grassy quad of brightly painted government buildings. Citizens have moved forward, together. Unlike much of the rest of the country, schools in Brcko are mixed. So are the police force and the District Assembly. "Most people here wanted to live again in a multiethnic society, so we all fought really hard to make Brcko work," says Ivan Krndelj, the Croat deputy speaker of the Assembly.
You readily see that at Zitopromet, a food-processing firm with an ethnically mixed staff who work together in two shifts baking 10,000 loaves of bread and pastries a day. In offices fragrant with the smell of croissants, the company's Bosniak director, Bahrija Agic, says he was surprised how quickly people came together. "In the beginning, two employees left, saying they had problems working for a Muslim manager," he told NEWSWEEK. "But there just aren't tensions like that anymore."
More and more, that describes the atmosphere across Bosnia. British Brig.
Nigel Alwyn-Foster, deputy commander of the 6,200 troops of the European Union Force that took over from NATO in 2004, describes his theater of operations as "calm and stable." The garrison atmosphere of the immediate postwar years has disappeared. Bases have shut down and many EUFOR troops are living in local accommodations among the people. In leafy Bihac, to the west, Canadian M/Cpl.
Tom Robinson is on his third tour of Bosnia. He's amazed by how much has changed. "In 1996 Bihac was a ghost town," he says, strolling past a new multiplex cinema showing the latest Hollywood flicks. "My time here has gone from being like a parent saying 'No, you can't do that' to being like an older sibling standing on the sidelines offering advice when asked." The city, which saw heavy fighting, has a trendy new mall with clothing shops like Stefanel. Its border crossing with Croatia is a modern complex equipped with the latest EU customs technology.
That's a metaphor. Bosnia is clearly prepping for EU membership. The country 's newest high representative, German diplomat Christian Schwarz-Schilling, recently announced that he would also be the last. Next summer, he will relinquish his role as Bosnia's de facto head of state and become the mere "EU representative" to Bosnia--a job that's essentially monitoring Bosnia's progress toward joining Europe and that returns full responsibility for the country's affairs to the central Bosnian government. "This is a serious change of the political agenda," says Schwarz-Schilling.
There are other signs of political maturation. In April, the Bosnian Parliament, usually split ethnically, rejected reforms to the Constitution that would have strengthened the central government. The good news is that the measure lost by only two votes. Says NATO's senior officer in Bosnia, U.S. Brig.
Gen. Louis Weber: the fact that parties sat down together to reach consensus is huge. "In every sphere you want to measure Bosnia, from the military to the social to the political, it is on a positive slope."
Perhaps most noteworthy is the way Bosnians--Muslim, Croat and Serb--are slowly coming to terms with the past. This spring, a Sarajevan movie named "Grbavica" won top honors at the Berlin Film Festival. Directed by Jasmila Zbanic, it portrays a Bosniak woman, raped by Serb soldiers, who is forced to tell her daughter how she was conceived. The movie has helped drive forward legislation for things like compensation and health care for civilian victims of war. Pirated copies have been selling like hot cakes in the RS capital, Banja Luka. In June, after a tip-off by locals in the Serbian village of Serovici about a nearby mass grave containing the remains of 35 men--probably Muslims killed during the infamous massacre at Srebrenica--the RS and Federation officials have been working together to solve the crime. That wouldn't have happened just a short time ago, says Tuzla prosecutor Emir Ibrahimovic, watching as pathologists carefully unearthed clothed skeletons from the sodden dirt.
"These days, we're seeing lots of cooperation."
Biljana Josic, a fashionably dressed Serb translator who works for the European force, sits in a caf� in Banja Luka. "I love this country," she says.
"Change takes time but we are getting there." Back in Sarajevo, Elvir Causevic stops outside Hacienda, a Tex-Mex bar throbbing with Europop music. "Look, we're transforming into a market economy, dealing with the legacy of a horrific war and learning how to be an independent country all at the same time." Hitting that trifecta, today Bosnia has become a different kind of model for Europe--and the world.
LOAD-DATE: August 1, 2006
********************************************************************
Newsweek
Letter to the editor(s)
3 August 2006
The authors of Bosnia Reborn, (7 August) make Sarajevo sound like Paradise. If this is true, then why are Croatians and Bosnian Serbs making noises that they want to separate, each wishing to join their mother countries? While the US administration was supporting the Bosnian Muslim government of Alija Izetbegovic, his Vienna embassy issued a passport to Osama bin Laden in 1992. In his "The Islamic Declaration, Izetbegovic writes, "There can be no peace or coexistence between Islamic faith and non-Islamic faith political institutions....The Islamic movement must and can take place as soon as it is morally and numerically strong enough, not only to destroy the non-Islamic one, but to build up a new Islamic one."
"We came here to die in the service of Islam. This is our duty. No infidel force will tell us how to live or what to do. This (Bosnia) is a Muslim country which must be defended. (Islamic fighter as quoted by The New York Times and reprinted in The Sunday Telegraph, London, Dec. 10, 1995). Does this sound like Paradise?
Furthermore, the 200,000 killed was discredited when BBC reported in 2002 that the total number of deaths came to 40,000 while other Bosnian experts put the figure at between 20,000 and 70,000.
Stella L. Jatras
************************************************************************
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Copyright 2006 Newsweek
All Rights Reserved
Newsweek
August 7, 2006
International Edition
Bosnia Reborn
Europe's one time wasteland, devastated by war, ideology and ethnic hatred, is staging one helluva comeback
By Ginanne Brownell; With Kris Anderson in London
Elvir Causevic left sarajevo in 1990, just before the war engulfed Bosnia and smashed it to smithereens. Now 33 and educated in America, a member of Yale University's research staff, he recently moved back --and continues to be amazed at the town's transformation. The city he had seen so often on TV during the dark years was devastated, full of scarred and burned-out buildings, bereft of its once vibrant cosmopolitanism.
But no more. Sarajevo today is the very image of a thriving European capital, chockablock with chic restaurants and upscale art galleries. Cranes punctuate the skyline, erecting offices and putting a new face on, among many other things, Bosnia's postmodern Parliament, ruined during the war. Strolling the cobbled streets of the capital's ancient Old Town--a twisty maze of bars and tourist shops selling everything from Turkish coffee sets to T shirts reading i 'm muslim, don't panic--Causevic is positively boosterish. "Now is the time for this country," he exults. His plan: to set up branches of his New York medical-instruments company in Sarajevo and Tuzla--a great investment, he thinks, because of Bosnia's strong engineering tradition and still inexpensive work force. He's already hired 12 employees and expects to grow to 100 within a couple years. "I see a real enthusiasm here," he concludes, reflecting national optimism.
It's hard to believe this is Bosnia--the place that introduced the world to the term "ethnic cleansing." A decade after its brutal war ended, the country is finally emerging from the wilderness. A recent World Bank report touts it as "a post-conflict success story." And it certainly looks that way. "Our economy used to be entirely dependent on international aid," Prime Minister Adnan Terzic tells NEWSWEEK. But these days, he enthuses (somewhat nerdily), the signs all point to "serious sustainability." Bosnia's GDP has tripled in the last decade.
Exports, including steel and timber, are up by 50 percent. The government has successfully privatized banks. Foreign direct investment has tripled since 1999 to �750 million in 2004--and the trend is fast accelerating upward. Unlike neighboring Croatia and Serbia, also part of the former Yugoslavia, Bosnia has practically no external debt. At 2 percent, inflation is lower than Britain's.
"I think boardrooms would be well advised to have a look at Bosnia," says Dirk Reinermann, the World Bank's country director.
It's been a long time since boardrooms bothered with Bosnia, a country roughly the size of Denmark with a population of 4 million. The fighting that raged from 1992 to 1995 killed 200,000 people, made refugees of 2 million more and destroyed almost 90 percent of the country's infrastructure. War damage totaled more than $60 billion--a magnitude of collapse not seen in Europe since World War II. Bosnia's three main ethnic groups (Roman Catholic Croats, Orthodox Serbs and Muslim Bosnians, more commonly known as Bosniaks) turned on each other savagely, despite decades of intermarriage and living peaceably together. Rape, torture, mass killings--Bosnia was a Balkan slaughterhouse, ending only with the
U.S.- brokered 1995 Dayton peace accords. That agreement became the country's constitution and set up two quasi-autonomous "entities"--the Republika Srpska (usually referred to as the RS) and the Federation, a shaky alliance between Bosnia's Croats and Muslims. A weak national government is overseen by a U.N.-appointed High Representative.
As those awkward arrangements suggest, Bosnia's troubles are hardly over. In the central and southeastern parts of the country, Muslim schoolchildren are segregated from Catholic kids in 52 schools. (When administrators in one such district tried to integrate a school playground, they received so many threatening phone calls that they scrapped the plan.) In the RS, whose population is 90 percent Serb, there have been rumblings of holding a referendum on independence. (With United Nations negotiations underway in Vienna on Kosovo 's independence, this isn't an entirely idle threat.) Even beer drinking can still become political. In north-central Vitez, whether you order a pint of Bosnian-brewed Sarajevska or a Croatian Karlovacko depends on which part of town you live in. With 20 percent of the country's population living below the poverty line, those in rural areas barely scrape out a living. Drug trafficking, organized crime and illegal logging are epidemic. Membership in NATO will remain a pipe dream until war criminals Radovan Karadic and Ratko Mladic, who may be hiding in the RS, are arrested.
Nonetheless, by the end of the year, Bosnia is expected to sign the Stabilization and Association Agreement, a big step toward EU eligibility. For most of the past decade, each of its factions had their own courts, customs and tax services; now the federal government has taken control. Three years ago, according to a Western diplomat, "Serbs would have laughed you out of the room if you told them they'd be serving in an integrated army." Today, they're doing just that. In June, Bosnia was awarded control of its airspace for the first time in more than a decade.
In Sarajevo, especially, you can see the country's ethnic groups reknitting old ties--not necessarily warmly, but with a heartening mutual acceptance. Many of the Serbs who fled the capital during the war are returning to visit. The ski slopes of Mt. Igman (remember the 1984 Olym-pics?) are becoming more culturally mixed, as are Sarajevo's packed caf�s and concert halls. Earlier this summer, throngs came out to hear a popular Serbian turbo-folk singer, Jelena Karleusa.
Orthodox, Catholic and Muslim religious leaders meet regularly and often go on walkabouts together in towns across Bosnia. "It is a much more pragmatic and much less ideologically nationalistic country than it was several years ago,"
says journalist Allan Little, coauthor of "The Death of Yugoslavia."
The picture is harsher outside the capital. Along the road from Sarajevo to Zenica (a new four-lane highway is slowly being built) the scars of war are still evident: carcasses of burned houses, villages that feel far emptier than they should. Yet the signs of progress are obvious here too. The vast majority of Bosnia's battered towns and villages have been rebuilt; according to government figures, 98 percent of properties illegally seized during the fighting have been returned to their rightful owners or their surviving kin. The ethnic mix of some places has changed. Many Serbs, Croats or Muslims have sold houses in areas where they might feel uncomfortable and bought another where they are in the ethnic majority. But others have returned to places they were driven from, if only because they are their homes.
Visit the Bosniak village of Ahmici, reduced to rubble by Croat forces in April 1993. The local mosque's white minaret, toppled during a massacre that claimed 118 lives, is back. A high-tech stereo blasts the call to prayer five times daily. A second mosque, up the hill from the outdoor basketball court, is being built. Its skeletal bricked interior is a Sunday-evening hangout for preteen girls, some wearing fashionable head scarves and flirting with boys.
Along the curving, pine-forested roads of the RS, where signs are infrequent and marked only in Cyrillic, minarets and Catholic crosses can be glimpsed rising in the distance.
If any place testifies to how far Bosnia has come, it is the northern town of Brcko, hard on the Serbian and Croatian borders. This heavily contested bit of territory was the "bridge" linking the western reaches of the RS to the east and Serbia proper. To this day, Brcko is administered separately from the other Bosnian entities, with an American supervisor appointed by the U.N. The region experienced some of the most intense fighting of the war--and some of its fiercest ethnic hatred. Yet former Army barracks have been transformed into a grassy quad of brightly painted government buildings. Citizens have moved forward, together. Unlike much of the rest of the country, schools in Brcko are mixed. So are the police force and the District Assembly. "Most people here wanted to live again in a multiethnic society, so we all fought really hard to make Brcko work," says Ivan Krndelj, the Croat deputy speaker of the Assembly.
You readily see that at Zitopromet, a food-processing firm with an ethnically mixed staff who work together in two shifts baking 10,000 loaves of bread and pastries a day. In offices fragrant with the smell of croissants, the company's Bosniak director, Bahrija Agic, says he was surprised how quickly people came together. "In the beginning, two employees left, saying they had problems working for a Muslim manager," he told NEWSWEEK. "But there just aren't tensions like that anymore."
More and more, that describes the atmosphere across Bosnia. British Brig.
Nigel Alwyn-Foster, deputy commander of the 6,200 troops of the European Union Force that took over from NATO in 2004, describes his theater of operations as "calm and stable." The garrison atmosphere of the immediate postwar years has disappeared. Bases have shut down and many EUFOR troops are living in local accommodations among the people. In leafy Bihac, to the west, Canadian M/Cpl.
Tom Robinson is on his third tour of Bosnia. He's amazed by how much has changed. "In 1996 Bihac was a ghost town," he says, strolling past a new multiplex cinema showing the latest Hollywood flicks. "My time here has gone from being like a parent saying 'No, you can't do that' to being like an older sibling standing on the sidelines offering advice when asked." The city, which saw heavy fighting, has a trendy new mall with clothing shops like Stefanel. Its border crossing with Croatia is a modern complex equipped with the latest EU customs technology.
That's a metaphor. Bosnia is clearly prepping for EU membership. The country 's newest high representative, German diplomat Christian Schwarz-Schilling, recently announced that he would also be the last. Next summer, he will relinquish his role as Bosnia's de facto head of state and become the mere "EU representative" to Bosnia--a job that's essentially monitoring Bosnia's progress toward joining Europe and that returns full responsibility for the country's affairs to the central Bosnian government. "This is a serious change of the political agenda," says Schwarz-Schilling.
There are other signs of political maturation. In April, the Bosnian Parliament, usually split ethnically, rejected reforms to the Constitution that would have strengthened the central government. The good news is that the measure lost by only two votes. Says NATO's senior officer in Bosnia, U.S. Brig.
Gen. Louis Weber: the fact that parties sat down together to reach consensus is huge. "In every sphere you want to measure Bosnia, from the military to the social to the political, it is on a positive slope."
Perhaps most noteworthy is the way Bosnians--Muslim, Croat and Serb--are slowly coming to terms with the past. This spring, a Sarajevan movie named "Grbavica" won top honors at the Berlin Film Festival. Directed by Jasmila Zbanic, it portrays a Bosniak woman, raped by Serb soldiers, who is forced to tell her daughter how she was conceived. The movie has helped drive forward legislation for things like compensation and health care for civilian victims of war. Pirated copies have been selling like hot cakes in the RS capital, Banja Luka. In June, after a tip-off by locals in the Serbian village of Serovici about a nearby mass grave containing the remains of 35 men--probably Muslims killed during the infamous massacre at Srebrenica--the RS and Federation officials have been working together to solve the crime. That wouldn't have happened just a short time ago, says Tuzla prosecutor Emir Ibrahimovic, watching as pathologists carefully unearthed clothed skeletons from the sodden dirt.
"These days, we're seeing lots of cooperation."
Biljana Josic, a fashionably dressed Serb translator who works for the European force, sits in a caf� in Banja Luka. "I love this country," she says.
"Change takes time but we are getting there." Back in Sarajevo, Elvir Causevic stops outside Hacienda, a Tex-Mex bar throbbing with Europop music. "Look, we're transforming into a market economy, dealing with the legacy of a horrific war and learning how to be an independent country all at the same time." Hitting that trifecta, today Bosnia has become a different kind of model for Europe--and the world.
LOAD-DATE: August 1, 2006
In Kosovo the Orthodox Church Is Under Siege
"Artemjie, the bishop of Raska and Prizren, the highest Orthodox authority in Kosovo, laments "the inexplicable silence of Christian and democratic Europe in the face of such grave crimes committed against a Christian and European people, which the Serbian people is." And he accuses the Vatican of having been "amply implicated in the events" that produced the current situation."
http://www.chiesa.espressonline.it/printDettaglio.jsp?id=7002&eng=y
In Kosovo the Orthodox Church Is Under SiegeTo worldwide indifference, more than one hundred churches have already been assaulted and destroyed. Others are defended by NATO soldiers. The role of the Vatican and the growth of Islamic extremismby Sandro Magister ROMA - During the last week of November, two more Orthodox Christian churches were attacked and damaged in Kosovo - in Gornja Brnjica, and in Susica. Neither was protected by KFOR, the military force under NATO command that maintains order in the region.Since the war ended with the defeat of the Serbs in 1999, more than one hundred Orthodox holy places have been assaulted and destroyed in Kosovo, many of them going back to the 13th and 14th centuries. Earlier, while the Serbian army of Slobodan Milosevic had control of the region, it is calculated that 212 of the 560 Muslim mosques in the area were damaged or razed.In Kosovo today, the Orthodox Serbs are a besieged and endangered minority. Of the roughly 250,000 who fled following NATO�s military intervention, only a few thousand have returned. Together with the 130,000 who remained, they are herded in restricted zones and kept under constant threat. Power rests in the hands of the Muslim Kosovar Albanians. The future status of the region is uncertain. Formally, Kosovo remains an autonomous province of the Republic of Serbia and Montenegro, but resolution 1244 of the United Nations defining its status also refers to the Rambouillet accords of 1999, which appeal to the principle of self-determination of peoples in outlining the definitive arrangement of the area. And the overwhelming Albanian majority has enlisted this point in its bid for independence.The destruction of Christian churches is part of this plan - or, at least, that�s what the local Orthodox community fears. "Either destruction, or transformation into museums," specifies Fr. Sava Janjic, vice-prior of the monastery of Decani.This monastery is one of the masterpieces of medieval art in Kosovo, an historic cradle of Serbian Orthodoxy. It is occupied by 35 monks, many of whom have entered during the last twelve years, in a complete rebirth of monastic life. During the war, they were lavish in their defense of the Kosovar Albanians, threatened with ethnic cleansing by Slobodan Milosevic�s army. But today, it is the monks who are under constant threat. The Italian soldiers of KFOR ensure the defense of the monastery. The monks may not venture beyond the security fence to visit their faithful unless they are accompanied by an armed escort. The condition of the other 25 monasteries and churches under KFOR protection is similar. Among the most precious holy places - and the ones most at risk - are the patriarchate of Pec, the monastery of Gracanica, and the cathedral of the Mother of God of Ljevisa, in Prizren.Artemjie, the bishop of Raska and Prizren, the highest Orthodox authority in Kosovo, laments "the inexplicable silence of Christian and democratic Europe in the face of such grave crimes committed against a Christian and European people, which the Serbian people is." And he accuses the Vatican of having been "amply implicated in the events" that produced the current situation.Fr. Sava specifies that an authentic smear campaign has been unleashed against the Serbian Church: "The schools teach the theory that we did not build most of the Orthodox holy places in Kosovo, but that Roman Catholic Church did, and that they do not belong to us."There are approximately 65,000 Catholics in Kosovo. "We have excellent relations with the Muslims, and the government treats us well," a spokesman for the apostolic administration of Prizen told the Norwegian news agency for religious liberty "Forum 18."But there is a more disquieting reality behind these words. All throughout Kosovo, new mosques and Koranic schools financed by Saudi Arabia are springing up, and the influence of the Islamist currents is growing.This is confirmed by the dangers incurred by Muslims who convert to Christianity.These dangers were almost nonexistent in the past. Islam is generally weakly rooted in the Albanian population, and is accompanied by weak social controls.But now extremist groups have appeared. And life has become difficult for those who convert. Last May 11, in Gnjilane, a convert was brutally beaten and threatened with death as a "traitor."The ones most targeted are the converts to the evangelical Churches, which are the most active in the missions. Many of the newly baptized are forced to keep their conversion hidden even from their loved ones.The Catholic Church has chosen to keep a low profile and not to proselytize, and thus it feels Islamic pressure less. The moderate Muslim leader Ibrahim Rugova recently said that he has come to know the Catholic faith better and that he respects it a great deal.__________The Orthodox monastery of Decani has a website in English that is very rich with information on the present situation in Kosovo:> Visoki Decani Serbian Orthodox MonasteryFrom a neutral source, the most up-to-date news on the anti-Christian attacks in Kosovo are found in these two reports from the Norwegian news agency for religious freedom "Forum 18":> Renewed attacks on Serbian Orthodox, by Branko Bjelajac, 1 December 2003> Religious freedom survey in Kosovo, by Branko Bjelajac and Felix Corley, 9 September 2003Here is a link to a report that appeared in the February, 2003 edition of "30 Days," the monthly directed by Giulio Andreotti:> Kosovo. Dopo le bombe il caosOn the dangers faced by Muslims who convert to Christianity, throughout the Islamic world, see on this website:> "Moderate" Islam - But not for Converts to the Christian Faith (6.12.2003) __________Go to the home page of > www.chiesa.espressonline.it/english, to access the latest articles and links to other resources.Sandro Magister�s e-mail address is s.magister@espressoedit.itEnglish translation by Matthew Sherry: > traduttore@hotmail.com
http://www.chiesa.espressonline.it/printDettaglio.jsp?id=7002&eng=y
In Kosovo the Orthodox Church Is Under SiegeTo worldwide indifference, more than one hundred churches have already been assaulted and destroyed. Others are defended by NATO soldiers. The role of the Vatican and the growth of Islamic extremismby Sandro Magister ROMA - During the last week of November, two more Orthodox Christian churches were attacked and damaged in Kosovo - in Gornja Brnjica, and in Susica. Neither was protected by KFOR, the military force under NATO command that maintains order in the region.Since the war ended with the defeat of the Serbs in 1999, more than one hundred Orthodox holy places have been assaulted and destroyed in Kosovo, many of them going back to the 13th and 14th centuries. Earlier, while the Serbian army of Slobodan Milosevic had control of the region, it is calculated that 212 of the 560 Muslim mosques in the area were damaged or razed.In Kosovo today, the Orthodox Serbs are a besieged and endangered minority. Of the roughly 250,000 who fled following NATO�s military intervention, only a few thousand have returned. Together with the 130,000 who remained, they are herded in restricted zones and kept under constant threat. Power rests in the hands of the Muslim Kosovar Albanians. The future status of the region is uncertain. Formally, Kosovo remains an autonomous province of the Republic of Serbia and Montenegro, but resolution 1244 of the United Nations defining its status also refers to the Rambouillet accords of 1999, which appeal to the principle of self-determination of peoples in outlining the definitive arrangement of the area. And the overwhelming Albanian majority has enlisted this point in its bid for independence.The destruction of Christian churches is part of this plan - or, at least, that�s what the local Orthodox community fears. "Either destruction, or transformation into museums," specifies Fr. Sava Janjic, vice-prior of the monastery of Decani.This monastery is one of the masterpieces of medieval art in Kosovo, an historic cradle of Serbian Orthodoxy. It is occupied by 35 monks, many of whom have entered during the last twelve years, in a complete rebirth of monastic life. During the war, they were lavish in their defense of the Kosovar Albanians, threatened with ethnic cleansing by Slobodan Milosevic�s army. But today, it is the monks who are under constant threat. The Italian soldiers of KFOR ensure the defense of the monastery. The monks may not venture beyond the security fence to visit their faithful unless they are accompanied by an armed escort. The condition of the other 25 monasteries and churches under KFOR protection is similar. Among the most precious holy places - and the ones most at risk - are the patriarchate of Pec, the monastery of Gracanica, and the cathedral of the Mother of God of Ljevisa, in Prizren.Artemjie, the bishop of Raska and Prizren, the highest Orthodox authority in Kosovo, laments "the inexplicable silence of Christian and democratic Europe in the face of such grave crimes committed against a Christian and European people, which the Serbian people is." And he accuses the Vatican of having been "amply implicated in the events" that produced the current situation.Fr. Sava specifies that an authentic smear campaign has been unleashed against the Serbian Church: "The schools teach the theory that we did not build most of the Orthodox holy places in Kosovo, but that Roman Catholic Church did, and that they do not belong to us."There are approximately 65,000 Catholics in Kosovo. "We have excellent relations with the Muslims, and the government treats us well," a spokesman for the apostolic administration of Prizen told the Norwegian news agency for religious liberty "Forum 18."But there is a more disquieting reality behind these words. All throughout Kosovo, new mosques and Koranic schools financed by Saudi Arabia are springing up, and the influence of the Islamist currents is growing.This is confirmed by the dangers incurred by Muslims who convert to Christianity.These dangers were almost nonexistent in the past. Islam is generally weakly rooted in the Albanian population, and is accompanied by weak social controls.But now extremist groups have appeared. And life has become difficult for those who convert. Last May 11, in Gnjilane, a convert was brutally beaten and threatened with death as a "traitor."The ones most targeted are the converts to the evangelical Churches, which are the most active in the missions. Many of the newly baptized are forced to keep their conversion hidden even from their loved ones.The Catholic Church has chosen to keep a low profile and not to proselytize, and thus it feels Islamic pressure less. The moderate Muslim leader Ibrahim Rugova recently said that he has come to know the Catholic faith better and that he respects it a great deal.__________The Orthodox monastery of Decani has a website in English that is very rich with information on the present situation in Kosovo:> Visoki Decani Serbian Orthodox MonasteryFrom a neutral source, the most up-to-date news on the anti-Christian attacks in Kosovo are found in these two reports from the Norwegian news agency for religious freedom "Forum 18":> Renewed attacks on Serbian Orthodox, by Branko Bjelajac, 1 December 2003> Religious freedom survey in Kosovo, by Branko Bjelajac and Felix Corley, 9 September 2003Here is a link to a report that appeared in the February, 2003 edition of "30 Days," the monthly directed by Giulio Andreotti:> Kosovo. Dopo le bombe il caosOn the dangers faced by Muslims who convert to Christianity, throughout the Islamic world, see on this website:> "Moderate" Islam - But not for Converts to the Christian Faith (6.12.2003) __________Go to the home page of > www.chiesa.espressonline.it/english, to access the latest articles and links to other resources.Sandro Magister�s e-mail address is s.magister@espressoedit.itEnglish translation by Matthew Sherry: > traduttore@hotmail.com
August 03, 2006
A Bishop's Faith - Embassy Row 3 August
Very good article! Stella
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/embassy.htm
Embassy Row
By James Morrison
August 3, 2006
A BISHOP'S FAITH
His dwindling flock is scattered and under siege. His churches and
cemeteries have been vandalized. The world appears to sympathize with his
persecutors, but the spiritual leader of Kosovo's Orthodox Serbs says he
cannot afford the luxury of feeling sorry for himself.
"To be pessimistic is not an attribute for a man of faith," said Bishop
Artemije of Kosovo and Metohija, "particularly for a bishop."
But the bleak message the black-robed, white-bearded cleric brought with
him to Washington last week showed how little political progress has been
made since the 1999 NATO bombing campaign that drove Slobodan Milosevic's
Yugoslav forces from Kosovo, leaving the province a de facto international
protectorate until its final status is determined.
Kosovo's overwhelmingly ethnic-Albanian Muslim majority insists on
independence from Serbia, while the Serbian government is equally adamant
that the province remain under its control. Despite an effort by the United
States and allied countries to strike a deal on Kosovo by the end of the
year, desultory talks in Vienna have produced little progress.
Bishop Artemije is a frequent visitor to Washington, where he sounds the
alarm over what he says are increasing attacks by Kosovo's Muslims on the
minority Serbs and their churches. In a briefing at the National Press Club
last week, he said Kosovo had become "a black hole of corruption and
organized crime," a "rogue state" in the heart of Europe with growing ties
to radical Islamic movements in the Middle East.
"Sacrificing our land and our blood cannot buy protection from jihad,"
he warned.
In the interview with our correspondent David R. Sands, the bishop said
the more than 200,000 Kosovar Serbs -- two-thirds of his flock -- have been
forced to flee the province since the war because of ethnic and religious
intimidation and violence. More than 150 Christian churches and monasteries
have been destroyed, and the remaining Orthodox Serbs live in small, often
isolated pockets surrounded by hostile Muslim neighbors.
The opposite was the case during the Kosovo war that began in 1995, when
Serbian forces retaliated against attacks by rebels of the Kosovo Liberation
Army. An estimated 10,000 to 12,000 Kosovar civilians and about 3,000
Serbian civilians died in the conflict. NATO waged a 78-day bombing campaign
to drive the Serbian troops out of Kosovo and destroyed bridges, power
stations, factories and other civilian targets throughout what was then
Yugoslavia.
Bishop Artemije said he found "a little more understanding" from Bush
administration officials in his latest visit but acknowledged the difficult
diplomatic and political landscape.
"If you look at the situation with human eyes, it can seem depressing
and hopeless at times," he said.
"But if you look at Kosovo with the eyes of faith, hope is never lost.
There is always hope that there is still honesty in the world, a world that
seems to be asleep and that we will try with all our might to wake up."
Embassy Row
By James Morrison
August 3, 2006
A BISHOP'S FAITH
His dwindling flock is scattered and under siege. His churches and
cemeteries have been vandalized. The world appears to sympathize with his
persecutors, but the spiritual leader of Kosovo's Orthodox Serbs says he
cannot afford the luxury of feeling sorry for himself.
"To be pessimistic is not an attribute for a man of faith," said Bishop
Artemije of Kosovo and Metohija, "particularly for a bishop."
But the bleak message the black-robed, white-bearded cleric brought with
him to Washington last week showed how little political progress has been
made since the 1999 NATO bombing campaign that drove Slobodan Milosevic's
Yugoslav forces from Kosovo, leaving the province a de facto international
protectorate until its final status is determined.
Kosovo's overwhelmingly ethnic-Albanian Muslim majority insists on
independence from Serbia, while the Serbian government is equally adamant
that the province remain under its control. Despite an effort by the United
States and allied countries to strike a deal on Kosovo by the end of the
year, desultory talks in Vienna have produced little progress.
Bishop Artemije is a frequent visitor to Washington, where he sounds the
alarm over what he says are increasing attacks by Kosovo's Muslims on the
minority Serbs and their churches. In a briefing at the National Press Club
last week, he said Kosovo had become "a black hole of corruption and
organized crime," a "rogue state" in the heart of Europe with growing ties
to radical Islamic movements in the Middle East.
"Sacrificing our land and our blood cannot buy protection from jihad,"
he warned.
In the interview with our correspondent David R. Sands, the bishop said
the more than 200,000 Kosovar Serbs -- two-thirds of his flock -- have been
forced to flee the province since the war because of ethnic and religious
intimidation and violence. More than 150 Christian churches and monasteries
have been destroyed, and the remaining Orthodox Serbs live in small, often
isolated pockets surrounded by hostile Muslim neighbors.
The opposite was the case during the Kosovo war that began in 1995, when
Serbian forces retaliated against attacks by rebels of the Kosovo Liberation
Army. An estimated 10,000 to 12,000 Kosovar civilians and about 3,000
Serbian civilians died in the conflict. NATO waged a 78-day bombing campaign
to drive the Serbian troops out of Kosovo and destroyed bridges, power
stations, factories and other civilian targets throughout what was then
Yugoslavia.
Bishop Artemije said he found "a little more understanding" from Bush
administration officials in his latest visit but acknowledged the difficult
diplomatic and political landscape.
"If you look at the situation with human eyes, it can seem depressing
and hopeless at times," he said.
"But if you look at Kosovo with the eyes of faith, hope is never lost.
There is always hope that there is still honesty in the world, a world that
seems to be asleep and that we will try with all our might to wake up."
July 31, 2006
Serbia not to Give up on Kosovo
Kostunica: Serbia not to Give up on Kosovo in Exchange for faster EU
Accession (Danas)
Serbian PM Vojislav Kostunica said in an interview with Danas that Serbia
would never accept to give up on Kosovo in exchange for a faster EU
accession and stressed that Belgrade would respond with all legal means to
an eventual independence of Kosovo. He has expressed his optimism that the
solution 'to the most difficult problem of the state' will not be
detrimental to Serbia. "A part of international community largely considers
that there is only one possible option, that is, that Kosovo should become
independent, and therefore only presents its superficial advantages. This
option has many flaws, and the solution that we advocate - the substantial
autonomy has many advantages."
When asked how serious was Tomislav Nikolic's call for defending Kosovo
militarily, Kostuica said that for him the most important thing is that the
Kosovo debate should first go through the Parliament, and the Belgrade
negotiating team would submit its report to the Serbian Parliament in early
autumn: "The Parliament is the only democratic forum for discussing Kosovo.
If we think about the worst Kosovo outcome, the position of our country
would be to conclude that Kosovo is a part of Serbia. It is not an empty
rhetoric, but a constitutional and legal formulation," said Kostunica.
According to him, Serbia has until now used arguments of legality and not of
force. "We would like to continue to do that. Arguments of force are often
on other sides, in certain parts of the international community that
sometimes condition our European integrations with giving up on Kosovo. It
is impossible. There are certain criteria for all countries that wish to
become EU members. No country has been conditioned with giving up a part of
its territory in order to join the EU. This cannot be applied to Serbia."
July 30, 2006
"Serbia Will Fight for Kosovo"
Crossfire War - Balkans - Kosovo - Countdown to Resumption of War
By Willard Payne
Crossfire War - TEHRAN WATCH - Southeast Europe Theatre - Kosovo: Tehran - Belgrade/Brussels - Vienna; "Serbia Will Fight for Kosovo" - Tomislav Nikolic - Serbian Radical Party - Countdown to Resumption of War
Night Watch: BELGRADE - Tomislav Nikolic is the leader of the increasingly popular Serbian Radical Party and chances are he is expressing what most Serbs, including Serbian leaders, are saying privately, despite their official posturing during the current series of Vienna negotiations. Nikolic represents a wave of ultra-nationalism that has been sweeping Serbia since NATO took control over the province in 1999 after a 78 - day bombing campaign, that coined the phrase "collateral damage" as a way of writing off civilian deaths. [SERBIANNA]
Most Albanians are also aware that if the UN sponsored talks result in an international declaration of Kosovo independence, war will break out in the Balkans again. Nikolic stated, "The whole world must know that. Serbia will fight for Kosovo." And that no Serbian leader will accept Kosovo independence. Albanians seem to be provoking a renewed conflict by conducting attacks against Serbian communities in Kosovo.
Nikolic continued by admitting that "if they want to take Kosovo away from us Belgrade cannot prevent that. Serbia will be peaceful as long as talks are going on but could explode in unrest in case of Kosovo independence." The only question is who will the Serbs attack first, Albanians or UN/NATO forces in the area supporting Kosovo.
Tehran does not care just as long as fighting resumes which will direct Vienna's and Brussels' attention away from Tehran and toward the war right on Europe's doorstep. In preparation for Iran's direct intervention Tehran signed, in January, a security agreement with Belgrade similar to the military-security agreements Tehran has with Damascus and Islamabad. It was a follow up to Tehran establishing relations with every capital in the divided Yugoslavia in 1992 and announcing this was their "entry into Central Europe", Iran's avenue of invasion.
I don't know what the schedule for the UN talks are but war begins again in the Balkans with the recognition of Kosovo independence unless Serbs decide to respond militarily to attacks against them that have been going on for at least a year by Albanian groups. Serbian and ethnic Albanian officials were not available for comment when asked to respond to statements from the Serbian Radical Party leader.
Regular readers of crossfirewar.com know I have long stated the conflicts here are the result of the most regressive decsion Europe ever made in its modern history when it agreed to the division of Yugoslavia in the name of the "New World Order" that was declared right after the end of the Cold War in 1990. It was supposed to be a staged crisis, orchestrated by Vienna, showing the world the new cooperation between Eastern-Western Europe. Vienna and all the 55 governments in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) assumed the crisis could be solved with a series of high profile, highly publicized diplomatic agreements and conferences, the same way they arranged crises throughout the Cold War. But this time Vienna-Brussels underestimated the impact of weapon dealers.
The division unleashed the dark forces of pagan ethnic nationalism and religious hatred, Europe's most primitive and proud mentality. It is impossible to have a more divisive influence. I had convinced myself Europe was through with map-making, but societies retain their character. Neither did Europe know Tehran would realize this is a front they can use.
Enter Persia, intelligent ancient evil, experts at using availability. The West has not confronted an enemy like Iran for quite some time, not since the Ottomans. The West will regroup around Rome. NATO will not survive. Brussels put itself completely out of position when it recognized the divided Yugoslavia. NATO will never be any threat to Iran. Rome will replace Brussels as the most important adminstration center in Western Europe. The West's new military alliance will be headquarted there. Berlin and Eastern Europe will remain in close cooperation with Moscow.
Night Watch Information Service
http://www.crossfirewar.com
http://newsblaze.com/story/20060728222959payn.nb/newsblaze/OPINIONS/Opinions.html
Copyright © 2006, NewsBlaze, Daily News
July 25, 2006
No deal in sight on Kosovo
No deal in sight on Kosovo
25.07.2006 - 09:59 CET
Serbian and Kosovo Albanian leaders stuck to diametrically-opposed positions during their first direct talks on the future of Kosovo on Monday – but the EU "welcomed" the meeting which saw the Serb prime minister stay away from lunch.
Serb president Boris Tadic and prime minister Vojislav Kostunica met their Kosovan counterparts Fatmir Sejdiu and Agim Ceku in Vienna on Monday (24 July), under the guidance of UN special envoy Martti Ahtisaari with US and EU envoys also in tow.
"As the first meeting of its kind, today's discussion was meant to enable both sides to present and argue their respective positions, and the meeting did achieve that objective," Mr Ahtisaari said after the talks.
"It is evident that the positions of the parties remain far apart: Belgrade would agree to almost anything but independence, whereas Pristina would accept nothing but full independence," the UN top diplomat said.
Kosovo is officially still a Serb province, but has been under UN administration since the end of the war in 1999 when NATO drove out Serbian forces ending their crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists.
No handshaking
The two delegations on Monday entered the Viennese palace room from the opposite ends, without shaking hands.
The camps had lunch around the same table, but Mr Kostunica stayed away from his chair next to Mr Ceku, for "phone consultations" before the meeting continued in the afternoon.
The Serbian prime minister in his speech said that "in the history of Europe there can't be found any precedent which would serve as an argument to take away from Serbia 15 percent of its territory and change the internationally-recognized border against it will".
He added Serbia is ready to accept a "substantial autonomy" however, according to which Belgrade would retain power over key policies in Kosovo.
Under the proposal, Serbia would hold on to "basic elements of sovereignty" such as foreign policy, border control, customs, human rights, monetary policy and the protection of cultural and religious heritage.
The Serbian proposal also stipulates that Kosovo would be completely demilitarised , meaning there would be no Serbian or Albanian military forces, with the UN acting as a guarantor.
Alpha and omega
But Kosovo's president Mr Sejdiu said that it is time to end the status quo, which has "hampered the economic development and has provoked political tensions."
The continuation of the status-quo "is not in the interest of anybody in Kosovo, and in the region" he continued, adding that it "damages the peace and the overall stability in South-Eastern Europe".
"An overwhelming majority of Kosovan people wants Kosovo to become an independent and sovereign state", the president explained, adding "independence is the alpha and omega, the beginning and end of our position."
Ethnic Albanians represent around 90 percent of Kosovo's 2 million population.
EU future
Despite the deep divisions, EU officials welcomed the meeting, while urging both Belgrade and Pristina "to engage constructively and show flexibility."
"The meeting is welcome. Clearly, there are divided views on the status question but it is important that with this meeting a new phase of the talks has begun," EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana's spokeswoman said.
"This process in our view should lead to a Kosovo which is multi-ethnic, democratic and secure for all citizens, which can contribute to regional stability and which is able to make progress towards the EU," she added.
The international community is keen to settle Kosovo's final status by the end of the year, but it is unclear if future bilateral talks will follow the same format or take place at a lower political level.
"It is a bit premature to start speculating on the timeframe," the UN's Mr Ahtisaari indicated, adding that a more detailed schedule might emerge following internal UN meetings in mid-September.© 2006 EUobserver, All rights reserved
July 24, 2006
"Kosovo: The Power of Compromise" by Aleksandar Mitic
TRANSITIONS ONLINE (www.tol.cz)
Kosovo: The Power of Compromise
by Aleksandar Mitic
21 July 2006
A true, balanced, and negotiated compromise on Kosovo's future status would swing the pendulum of Balkan stability towards the European path.
A manipulated, one-sided, and imposed decision would, however, open a Pandora's box of secessionist movements in the world and release the ghosts of a nationalist past in the Balkans.
As we approach the beginning of talks on the future status of the Kosovo province, it becomes crucial to grasp the full complexity of the Kosovo status issue.
There has been an attempt in the last year and a half to close down international debate before the status talks had even begun by suggesting that only independence is a viable solution for Kosovo.
The truth is, the issue of Kosovo's status is dependent on so many historical, legal, political, religious, economic, and demographic elements that it deserves, at the very least, a wide international debate on possible solutions and their implications.
To argue thus that only one solution is possible is not only flawed reasoning, but a dangerous and explosive recipe for future frustration, tension, and conflict.
There has also been an attempt to refocus and spin the talks in the direction of Kosovo's independence, from those who say that these are not really talks on the future status but rather on the terms of Kosovo's future independence to those who argue that the negotiations should be only about the position of the Kosovo Serbs in an independent Kosovo. Some also argued that the talks will be about finding a way to impose independence upon Belgrade. While there are a few officials who have, often privately rather than publicly, indicated their preference for such approaches, it must be said that these are completely contrary to international law.
RISKY BUSINESS
The aim of the talks on Kosovo's future status is to finally provide a fair, stable, long-term solution for this crisis region. The majority Kosovo Albanians must get a maximum of opportunity and real means to manage their future without feeling threatened, but also without endangering the welfare of Kosovo Serbs and other non-Albanians. The interests of Serbia, of which Kosovo is a part, the stability of the Balkans, and the worldwide impact of these negotiations are also crucial factors which must be taken into account.
Within the principles of international law and the preset recommendations of the international community's informal "Contact Group" – no return to the pre-1999 Milosevic-era situation, no joining of neighboring states, no partition – a number of possible solutions for the future status of Kosovo deserve to be examined.
There is also a number of pre-conditions for successful talks that must be met: artificial deadlines such as end of 2006 must not be used to the detriment of a sound solution; and the outcome should be an agreed, negotiated compromise, not an imposed, one-sided decision.
The breaching of international law and the creation of worldwide precedents should be avoided for the sake of regional and world security.
In this regard, it is of paramount importance that double standards must not be allowed to win over universal standards.
To claim that the Kosovo situation features "unique" characteristics and that its independence would not represent a precedent for triggering other crises elsewhere in the world is unlikely to convince everyone in the international community. What is it that makes Kosovo so unique? Ten years of institutional discrimination? Several thousand victims of a conflict between a repressive state security force and a separatist guerilla force? A majority ethnic group actively seeking independence? But the very same characteristics are shared by dozens of similar regions around the world. If every such case is seen as unique, international law becomes irrelevant.
Independence for Kosovo would indeed be a risky, unilaterally-imposed and ultimately wrong solution. Why would one side get it all, the other one lose all? Why reward seven years of Albanian violence in post-war Kosovo? Why break up Serbia, the most ethnically diverse country in the Western Balkans and create a second ethnic-Albanian state on one part of its territory? Where is the logic of European integration in this pursuit of Balkanization of the Balkans?
A BLUFFER'S GUIDE TO INDEPENDENCE
Bluffs and spin must not be used as arguments. To say, for example, that Serbia already lost Kosovo in 1999 is only an interpretation and does not stand in any single international document, let alone in the UN Security Council resolution 1244 that ended the conflict. In the resolution, "self-governing" is mentioned three times, "self-government" four times, "self-administration" once, "substantial autonomy" three times, whereas neither "self-determination" nor "independence" are mentioned at all. Did NATO intervene in 1999 to protect human rights or to provide the basis for secession? If Kosovo was lost to Serbia in 1999, why did it not obtain independence then? As far as the so-called moral argument that it is the violence of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic which lost Kosovo for Serbia, the Kosovo Albanians should be least inclined to favor it since their massive and systematic violence and repression of the Serb community in the last seven post-war years has taken all the "moral credit" out of their hands.
The same goes for the often heard assertion that Serbia should choose between Kosovo and the European Union. In fact, under the EU Thessaloniki agenda on the Western Balkans, Serbia has a clear European perspective and as the Western Balkans' largest country, it certainly won't remain a black hole inside the EU. To suggest that Serbia should give up a large part of its territory – which has been the cradle of its civilization, culture, and religion for nine centuries now – for the sake of possibly entering a supranational integration process two or three years earlier does not make much sense. No international or domestic campaign aimed at convincing Serbian public opinion on this one would succeed.
One of the most common arguments for the independence of Kosovo is that if the ethnic Albanians do not get what they want, they will stage mass violence against the Serbs, other non-Albanians, and the international troops. The argument points to the massive riots in March 2004 as a warning of what could happen if ethnic Albanian desires are not satisfied. But is the world really so afraid of such threats that it does not dare stand up to them? NATO seems ready to call this bluff. The Alliance's Secretary-General has warned on several occasions that violence as means of promoting political objectives in the status talks would this time be met with a robust response from 17,000 NATO troops in the province. Indeed, threats of violence must not be legitimized nor used as arguments.
Finally, it is most worrying to suggest that some sort of "conditional independence" should be the outcome of the status talks.
This empty formula is even presented by some as a compromise solution, because ethnic Albanians will have to wait a few more years for independence and give up on the idea of Greater Albania. Many of its backers suggest "conditional independence" means that Kosovo will be granted independence in phases, provided the majority ethnic Albanians finally start respecting the human rights of the Serbs and other non-Albanians. But this option is an insult to negotiators and 21st-century human-rights standards. If Belgrade is resolutely opposed to immediate independence, why would it accept independence two or three years from now? If even the most basic standards of human rights are not respected under international supervision, why should we expect that they would be in a conditionally independent Kosovo? And doesn't the "conditional independence" concept introduce a new kind of trade-off: respect for human rights in exchange for territory?
COMPROMISE: A WIN-WIN SOLUTION
Looking at the situation realistically and fairly, the most sustainable and just solution for the future status of the province lies between the standard type of autonomy, which ethnic Albanians now reject, and independence, which clashes with international law and is unacceptable for the Serbs in general and Serbia as a state.
A solution that would provide for a maximum of autonomy for Kosovo within the borders of Serbia could satisfy all the legitimate demands, including the Kosovo Albanians' demand to be self-governing, and it can protect the interests of non-Albanians in Kosovo and the interests of Serbia as a state. Such a solution would also comply with the principle of the inviolability of international borders.
Kosovo would enjoy full legislative, executive, and judicial capacity, a limited external representation – in particular regarding its full direct access to the international financial institutions – and most importantly, normalized relations with Serbia.
On the other hand, Serbia still has many positive things to offer Kosovo, including a strong push in its macroeconomic revival, a common market for goods, an integrated energy, electricity and infrastructure network, access to its health and education systems, a common fight against organized crime, and a joint contribution to regional stability and European integration.
At the same time, an autonomous Kosovo would still need to improve its treatment of the Kosovo Serbs and other non-Albanians. A wide-scale decentralization including a horizontal linkage of Serbian municipalities, which would benefit from the education, social, and health system of central Serbia, is a precondition for the survival of Kosovo Serbs, as suggested by UN special envoy Kai Eide.
This horizontal linkage is not a model for partition and conflict but, on the contrary, a model for integration and survival, as these municipalities would be fully integrated in the autonomous Kosovo system run from Pristina, while keeping some political links with Belgrade.
Considering all this, an autonomy for the Kosovo Serbs within a maximum autonomy for Kosovo inside Serbia appears as the most reasonable and viable long-term solution.
More than anything, it is a win-win solution. The Kosovo Albanians would finally get the means to manage their future and so will the Kosovo Serbs; Serbia would not have its borders changed and its historical and religious cradle amputated; Macedonia and Bosnia will receive guarantees that border changes in the Balkans are no longer tolerated; the EU would obtain regional stability and be able fully to take charge of its European perspective; the United States would be able to disengage its troops without losing its diplomatic leverage in both Pristina and Belgrade; Russia, China, India, and many other countries in the world would appreciate not having to deal with a dangerous secessionist precedent; the UN will see a major crisis issue resolved peacefully and with full respect for international law.
It is time to respect international law; it is time to find a long-term solution for Kosovo; it is high time to be patient, fair, sound, and consistent.
It is time for a successful compromise for the first time in Kosovo's long history.
Aleksandar Mitic is a Brussels-based journalist and one of the authors of the CD-ROM and Internet project "Kosovo 2006: The Making of a Compromise."
July 23, 2006
Serbia: Between Empire of Heaven and Empire of Earth Again
http://www.axisglobe.com/article.asp?article=1000
Serbia: Between Empire of Heaven and Empire of Earth Again Can Karpat, AIA Balkan Section Tomorrow the Kosovo final status talks enter a brand new phase. For the first time since the war, the leaders of Kosovo and Serbia meet in order to present their positions on status of Serbia’s breakaway province. There is no reason to believe that while seven purely technical rounds have failed, these new highly political rounds would succeed. Does it mean that the international community has switched to the Plan-B, namely the “Diktat solution”? Is this the beginning of the end for Serbia...
Serbia's choice
Knez Lazar
“The Downfall of the Serbian Empire” is one of the best known Serbian epic songs, which tells the choice of Knez Lazar on the eve of the Battle of Kosovo in 1389. “Lazar, glorious Emperor, which is the empire of your choice? Is it the empire of heaven? Is it the empire of the earth?” If Lazar chose the empire of the earth, the Ottoman army would all perish. However, the empire of the earth would be nothing but temporal. If Lazar chose the empire of heaven, he and his men would all die, but ensured their place in heaven. “And the emperor chose the empire of heaven above the empire of the earth”. Because the empire of the earth is eternal.
For centuries long this song on Lazar’s choice had been a sweet consolation for the Serbs, who had been defeated by the Turks in the Battle of Kosovo. It comforted the Serbian psyche: They were not defeated; they chose to be defeated, for no less than a secure place in heaven.
The Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica should better prepare himself for such a fatidic choice today. When Kosovo will be a lost cause for Serbia, Prime Minister should be able to tell his people that heaven is waiting for them to sooth their wounded pride. This time heaven may not be that spiritual, however, as it was in case of Prince Lazar. EU membership would be Serbia’s earthly compensation.
Today the Kosovo final status talks enter a new top-level phase. Kosovo Albanian and Serbian high-level leaders are to meet face-to-face in order to present their positions on the future of Serbia’s breakaway province.
The Serbian President Boris Tadic will sit opposite Fatmir Sejdiu, the President of the province that still, though de facto, belongs to Serbia. And Vojislav Kostunica will sit in front of his counterpart Agim Ceku, whom Serbia has been accusing of serious war crimes for years.
One must not be a clairvoyant to guess the outcome of this new second phase: dialogue of the deaf and failure.
The beginning of the end
There is no reason to believe that while seven purely technical rounds have failed, these new highly political rounds would succeed. From now on, the two sides will discuss the future status of Kosovo, and not the peripheral issues like decentralization, the economy or protection of the Serbian cultural heritage and religious sites in the province.
Not even the question of the protection of the Serbian culture in Kosovo, definitely one of the softest issues on the agenda, could be resolved during the seven rounds of talks.
Even the Special Envoy for the Kosovo Future Status Process Martti Ahtisaari stated that he did not expect the talks to generate any concrete results and added that this would likely have to wait until after the next UN General Assembly session in September.
Thus Martti Ahtisaari confirmed the general belief that the talks are only a necessary transition period, which will serve as a confirmation of the failed status talks. As soon as the failure of the second phase of the talks is totally confirmed, the Kosovo case will be transferred to the UN Security Council (UNSC), which will probably impose its decision as an “international Diktat” to the two sides.
The attitude of Russia and China, the two permanent members of the UNSC, will be decisive since all the others are in favour of some form of independence for Kosovo. However, as long as Russia is concerned, the international community receives highly contradictory signals from Moscow.
Until very recently Russia has totally backed the Serbian cause. However, now, Moscow is keen to change its policy on Kosovo in light of the precedent it would set for other regions like, not unexpectedly, Georgia's breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and Moldova's breakaway region of Transdnestria.
The USA and Great Britain insist that a comparison cannot be drawn between Kosovo and Georgia and Moldova. However, sooner or later they will have to assure Russia’s vote in the UNSC. And the price of the Russian vote is now well known. Since according to the Western powers Kosovo’s independence will be the key to the total pacification of the Balkans, it would be not a big surprise if, at the end of the day, Russia gets at least some kind of assurance for a similar deal for South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transdnestria.
The elections of the year
Meanwhile party leaders in Serbia are discussing possible dates for the next general elections. While Vojislav Kostunica’s Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) prefers elections left to next spring, Boris Tadic’s Democratic Party (DS) prefers this autumn. In any case, the elections will be held probably before the Kosovo issue is resolved.
Vojislav Kostunica’s minority government is losing blood every day, namely its working majority in Parliament. On the one hand, since the death of their leader, Slobodan Milosevic in The Hague Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) has threatened to withdraw their support from the government if any other forcible extraditions take place. On the other hand, the Europhile-technocrat liberal party G 17 Plus warns the government that they will pull out of the coalition by October if pre-accession talks with the EU are not resumed.
Serbia goes through an extremely difficult year. On 3rd May the EU suspended pre-accession talks with Serbia after Belgrade failed to deliver General Ratko Mladic to The Hague. On 21st Montenegro seceded from its state union with Serbia and became independent. The Presevo Valley, Sandzak and Vojvodina may be the next regions, which would bedevil the political atmosphere in Serbia. And of course, Kosovo.
Unsurprisingly the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party (SRS) exploits this situation to the extreme. No less than 37 percent of the Serbian people support this party at the public surveys. A particularly sad picture since nothing but the mentality of SRS and alike were responsible for this desperate no-way-back situation in Kosovo in the first place.Very hard times are waiting for moderate nationalist Vojislav Kostunica. How will he persuade his voters that he is the reasonable Prince Lazar, and not the treacherous Vuk Brankovic, whose betrayal, so the Serbs like to believe, supposedly condemned the Serbian kingdom to defeat before the Turks in 1389? How will the new epic song look like?
In his open letter on 13th July, Vojislav Kostunica himself made this point clear: “Can such a country, by any measure a democratic one, survive the forcible taking of 15 percent of its territory? What democratically elected government could explain to its voters after such an act that they should continue to believe in the principles of tolerance, liberalism and the sacrosanct will of the people - the values of enlightened Western civilization, in the name of which they toppled an evil, authoritarian regime?”
Unlike DS, DSS and other pro-Western parties, SRS is able to give its supporters very simple and clear messages. And in times of political suffocation people, who lost their confidence even in themselves, often prefer this kind of simple and clear messages. Sad but history can testify to this.
The general elections in Serbia will be by far the most important elections in the Balkans this year. If the two major Serbian parties DS and DSS cannot find a common ground to cooperate, not only Serbia would stray from the path that leads towards democracy, but the Western powers would also have to deal henceforth with negotiators that they never dreamt of in their worst nightmares at the status talks in Vienna.
Related items:
From the Wisdom of Suffocating Serbia (22.06.06)
Kosovo: Riddle whose Answer everyone knows (06.06.06)
Serbia - Independent despite Herself (25.05.06)
The Great Kosovo Riddle (08.05.06)
Serbian Radical Party: The Hubris of Serbian Political Scene (04.05.06)
Kosovo: A New State or a New Bone of Contention in the Balkans? (26.11.05)
July 20, 2006
UNSC set to break Kosovo status quo
UNSC set to break Kosovo status quo
With talks between Belgrade and Pristina over Kosovo's final status set to fail, the UNSC is ready to make the decision itself by the year's end, a diplomat says.
By Ekrem Krasniqi in Brussels for ISN Security Watch (20/07/06)If Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leaders and the authorities in Belgrade fail to reach an agreement over the status of Serbia's UN-administered province of Kosovo by the end of the year, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) will make the decision on its own, an EU diplomat told ISN Security Watch.
And Kosovo's independence looks like a done deal, especially with Russia seemingly on board at the UNSC, though not without its own game plan.
UN-mediated Kosovo status talks between Belgrade and Pristina are expected to take place later this month, but EU diplomats in Brussels have said that if the two sides failed to reach an agreement, the UNSC would step in and make it for them.
"The Contact Group prefers an agreed solution," but if that does not happen, "then the Security Council will have to take up its responsibilities," a European diplomat told ISN Security Watch on condition of anonymity.
UN special envoy for Kosovo talks, former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, is trying to organize the first high-level meeting between Kosovo and Serb leaders in Vienna on 24 July, hoping to bring in Serbian President Boris Tadic, who has already agreed to attend, and Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, who has not net responded, and their counterparts from Kosovo, Fatmir Sejdiu and Agim Ceku.
The meeting in Vienna would open the second phase of the talks on the future of Kosovo.
Since the beginning of the year, negotiations on decentralization (the creation of more municipalities for the Serbian minority and the shift of power from the central government to municipal authorities), the economy (the privatization of Kosovo's enterprises, property rights, citizens savings, pensions, etc) and culture (ensuring the cultural heritage and religious sites of Serbs) failed to bring about any significant results.
But even if partial agreement could be reached on some of these issues, there is little chance that Pristina and Belgrade would agree on dueling status proposals, and there are not any new options on the table: Kosovo's ethnic Albanians will settle for nothing less than independence, while Belgrade insists that independence is not an option and is willing to go only as far as granting the province greater autonomy.
What is most likely to happen is that the Vienna meeting will serve only as a confirmation of the failed status talks, which will allow the "Kosovo File" to be sent directly to the UNSC to decide on how best to end the status quo.
The US and Britain are pushing for the independence, with US President George W Bush saying that the solution should reflect the demand of the majority, but must also respect the rights of the minorities.
Washington says the Kosovo status chapter must be closed as soon as possible, as the status quo can no longer be maintained and any further delays keep the economy in limbo and could lead to renewed unrest among ethnic Albanians.
Implications for Belgrade
But handing the decision over to the UNSC - which is likely to result in a declaration of independence for Kosovo later this year or early next year - could be problematic.
One question Western leaders will have to answer is how to sell Kosovo's independence to the Serbian people to avoid internal instability. This comes at a time when radicals are leading the polls with a 40 percent popularity rating. Declaring an independent Kosovo would certainly give radicals a further boost and could be the downfall of the current government.
The Serbian leadership is hoping to convince the UNSC to delay its decision by a few months, at least until after elections, which are tentatively planned for the end of this year.
Serbian President Tadic, a moderate who on several occasions has acknowledged that Kosovo was moving toward independence, said after meeting with top EU officials Tuesday in Brussels that he would prefer extraordinary elections in Serbia before Kosovo's status was decided.
But over all, what Belgrade really wants is a temporary solution for Kosovo, such as "essential autonomy" inside Serbia, and a postponement of final status for up to 20 years - an idea that already has been categorically rejected by Western governments.
The question of Russia
For the West, the political implications for Belgrade seem to hold less importance than Russia's demands, however. After all, elections will come and go in Serbia and regardless, Belgrade will have to make a touch decision between holding on to Kosovo and pursuing its path of Euro-Atlantic integration.
Russia, on the other hand, would use Kosovo independence to win the backing of Western governments for independence for Georgia's breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and Moldova's breakaway region of Transdneistria.
Russian authorities have been quite vocal about the precedent Kosovo's independence could set.
At least for now, Britain and the US have maintained that a comparison cannot be drawn between Kosovo and Georgia and Moldova, but that could change as Kosovo's independence would require Russia's vote on the UNSC - a vote it is not likely to give without some assurance of a similar deal for South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transdneistria.
In Brussels, the ISN Security Watch's EU source echoed sentiments in London and Washington, saying that "all issues should be resolved according to their specifications," but he said he doubted Russia would move to bloc the UNSC vote on Kosovo's final status.
Russia's apparent readiness to accept Kosovo’s independence in light of the precedent it would set represents a marked change in Moscow's position.
Earlier, Russia had rejected the idea of independence for Kosovo as it feared it would strengthen the case for the independence of its Northern Caucasus republic of Chechnya.
But now, diplomats are cautiously optimistic that Russia will not abandon Contact Group statements saying that the solution for Kosovo "must be acceptable to Kosovo people” - a statement Western diplomats interpret as meaning "acceptable to the ethnic Albanian majority," or independence.
Observers also believe that with Russia on board - though it is not clear if Moscow's demands will be met - Kosovo independence is a done deal.
“The Russians believe that Kosovo’s independence will help their case in the three regions,” Nicholas Whyte from the International Crisis Group (ICG) told ISN Security Watch.
There have been diplomatic rumblings in Brussels that the UNSC was planning to "invite" member nations to recognize Kosovo's independence in the fall, though this has not been independently confirmed.
But if the West fails to agree on Russia's hoped-for concessions, complications could erupt at the UNSC, he suggested.
Since Moscow's change in position, the Serbian leadership has been lobbying other Contact Group members, including China, to vote against Kosovo independence. But so far, those lobbying efforts seem to have made little headway.
Regional implications
Since Montenegro's declaration of independence from the state union with Serbia in May, Bosnian Serbs have stepped up their calls for a similar right to self-determination - a call that has been categorically rejected by Western officials. The Dayton Peace Agreement that ended the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia split the country into two administrative entities, the Bosniak- and Croat-dominated Federation entity and the Bosnian Serb-dominated Republika Srpska entity.
The Serbian government has repeatedly warned that a declaration of independence for Kosovo could threaten regional stability in the western Balkans.
But EU and US officials have remained adamant that whatever the solution for Kosovo, the borders of Bosnia and Herzegovina cannot be changed.
Some also have warned of potential consequences for Serbia's internal borders, with Serbs in northern Kosovo threatening partition, which could in turn provoke the ethnic Albanian majority in the south of Serbia (Presevo Valley) to seek to join a newly independent Kosovo. Others warn that it could also incite new tensions in Macedonia (the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia), where the Albanian minority forms a quarter of the population.
The Contact Group has made it clear that an independent Kosovo could not join any parts or countries in the region, referring to northwestern Macedonia, southern Serbia and Albania.
EU boosts Kosovo independence hopes
On Monday, Kosovo's independence was boosted further when EU officials released a report to member states' foreign ministers signaled the bloc would begin to treat Kosovo as an independent state.
The report says Kosovo is to move toward the EU as an independent country from Serbia by building bilateral relations as Brussels does with other aspiring countries of the western Balkans region.
The EU’s foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, and Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said the 25-nation bloc expected Kosovo authorities to work hard on meeting the criteria set for accession. They also said Brussels should be ready to grant to Kosovo all contractual relations for this purpose.
Once the final status has been decided the EU will take over the mandate of the United Nation's Mission (UNMIK) and is to supervise Kosovo's "limited" independence, while NATO will continue to run the security mission, but with reduced troop numbers.
As such, EU member states will assume the main role in Kosovo, with a European police mission that is expected to help local authorities provide security guarantees for minorities.
Ekrem Krasniqi is ISN Security Watch’s senior correspondent at the EU, UN, and NATO in Brussels, where he has been based since 1992. Has has worked for the Kosovo weekly magazine Zeri and the daily Zëri i Ditës. Krasniqi is the founder of DTT-NET.COM press agency and serves as the outlet’s editor-in-chief.
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