Serbophobia Obscures the Facts

Serbophobia Obscures the Facts


"Bosnian Serbs were concerned with protecting the Serbs, not killing the Muslims or Croats", Phillip Corwin

Phillip Corwin: Serbophobia Prevents Reaching the Truth

Interview with Phillip Corwin by Cathrin Schütz, Junge Welt

American Phillip Corwin was the highest UN official in Bosnia from spring to summer of 1995, serving as Civil Affairs Coordinator and Delegate of the Special Representative for the UN Secretary General. Previously, from 1994 to the spring of 1995 he held the same office for the region of Eastern Slavonia in Croatia. Duke University Press published his memoirs: Dubious mandates - A Memoir of the UN in Bosnia, Summer 1995.
Q: Richard Holbrooke, Paddy Ashdown and many other Western representatives who were involved in the Yugoslav tragedy, unanimously assessed the arrest of Radovan Karadzic's as the capture of one of the most brutal war criminals of our time. What is your opinion?
PC: Holbrooke and Ashdown used the wars in former Yugoslavia to build their careers. Their phrases like "one of the most brutal" and "good Nazi" -- that's how Holbrooke characterized Dr. Karadzic just now in the Spiegel interview -- remind us of their terrible bias and the severe harm that they caused as so-called diplomats. They foment the Serbophobia even now, making a fair process against Dr. Karadzic in The Hague impossible.

Q: What do you expect from the trial of the former president of Republika Srpska in Bosnia before the ad hoc tribunal in The Hague?
PC: In any criminal process the question of the intent is of central importance. Based on my personal contacts with Bosnian Serbs, including with Dr. Karadzic, I can only say that I am convinced the issue with Bosnian Serbs was to protect the Serbs, not to kill Muslims or Croats. Incidentally, the Gypsies allied with the Serbs -- they probably still remember all too well the treatment they were given during the Second World War by the "good Nazis" on the Croat and Muslim side. The Serbs were never threatened by the Gypsies and vice versa, the Serbs never undertook anything against the Gypsies. As always in the Hague, Dr. Karadzic can't expect a fair trial. He will be accused of participating in a 'conspiracy' and they will blame him for the deeds of soldiers in the field, whom he didn't know and to whom he never issued any orders.
Srebrenica Takeover: 700 Muslims Killed at Worst
Q: One of the main charges is Karadzic's alleged responsibility for the genocide of 8,000 Muslim males from Srebrenica. At the time Srebrenica was taken over by the Bosnian Serb Army in July 1995 you were the highest civilian official of the UN in Bosnia. What really happened?
PC: What happened on July 11 1995 in Srebrenica is part of a greater tragedy and cannot and must not be taken out of the context. Those who do are clearly doing it with intention to twist things to the detriment of one of the warring parties. What happened in Srebrenica was not a single massacre Serbs committed against the Muslims, but a series of bloody attacks and counterattacks during three years and escalating in 1995. The number of Muslims killed most probably was not higher than the number of the Serbs killed in the region during the previous years in the assaults of the Bosnian Muslim war commander Naser Oric. The number of missing Bosnian Muslims is also exaggerated. All this shows that the official reports are of purely political nature.
In May 1995, two months before the last battle for Srebrenica, the Croat army led the Operation Lightning in which 90 percent of the Serbs who lived in western Slavonia were expelled, i.e. they conducted the ethnic cleansing. A month after Srebrenica, 200,000 Serbs were expelled from their ancestral land in Krajina region [also in Croatia]. The international community remained silent in both cases! Srebrenica must be viewed in the context of events. If there really was a massacre -- and it seems realistic to speak about 700 victims -- then this is a war crime and the perpetrators must be held accountable. But the difference between the 700 and the commonly referred to 8,000 is not numerical -- it is political.
Recommended: Don't forget what happened in Yugoslavia, by John Pilger (NewStatesman.com)
http://byzantinesacredart.com/blog/2008/08/corwin-interview.html

Krajina, Not Kosovo

Krajina, Not Kosovo

Ossetia as botched Balkans replay

by Nebojsa Malic

Six days ago, as most of the world was watching the opening ceremonies of the Olympics in Beijing, Georgian troops attacked the self-proclaimed Republic of South Ossetia. Russia quickly intervened, ousting Georgian forces from the region and attacking Georgian military bases. Despite the training and weapons supplied by the U.S. and Israel, the Georgian military quickly collapsed. President Mikheil Saakashvili, installed in power in 2003 by a CIA-sponsored "Rose Revolution," pleaded for help from his patrons, painting himself and his country as victims of "Russian aggression." Aside from empty words of encouragement and hypocritical condemnation of Russian "excessive force," the Empire had no help to give.
Over the past week, many commentators have compared Russia's intervention to protect Ossetia with NATO's 1999 attack on Serbia. The analogy does not apply, though. If there is a Balkans comparison to be made, a far better one would be with the Republic of Serbian Krajina, destroyed by Croatia in August of 1995.
Another August
There are many similarities between Ossetia and Krajina. Both are inhabited by populations distinct from the country they nominally belonged to – Ossetians and Serbs, respectively. Both were created in the aftermath of secessions; Croatia had seceded from Yugoslavia, Georgia from the Soviet Union. Both were a response to the government's attack on their people's rights: Serbs were written out of Croatia's constitution, while Ossetia was officially abolished by the regime in Tbilisi. Both came out ahead in the resulting conflicts with government troops, and both became de facto independent after armistices in 1992.
Here is where their fates diverged, however. Krajina's armistice was guaranteed by the UN and Serbia, but with the war breaking out in Bosnia, Serbia was blamed for "aggression" and sidelined by a UN blockade. When Croatian forces struck at Krajina, in August 1995, the government in Belgrade stood by and did nothing. The UN did not resist, either.
Backing both Croatia and Georgia was the American Empire. Back in 1995, it was still in its formative stages, neither ready nor willing to get directly involved in a Balkans shooting war and seeking to use Croatians as proxies in the Bosnian War. The troops that attacked Krajina in 1995 were trained and equipped by the U.S. and provided with air cover and intelligence reports. Georgia received similar help after Saakashvili came to power in late 2003.
Among the few who made this connection is Russian analyst Boris Shmelyov. As quoted in the Belgrade daily Vecernje Novosti:
"Back then, the Croats took an incredibly brutal action and killed many civilians, but the West pretended they did not see it. Now, the Georgians have done the same…"
Noting that the same U.S. military instructors were training Croats, then Albanians, and now Georgians, Shmelyov pointed out there is a powerful structure of the retired officers in the U.S., who are involved in the training of armed forces in the countries supported by the American authorities.
Could it be that Saakashvili's orders to attack Ossetia were inspired by the August 1995 Croatian "Storm"? The parallels are uncanny. However, unlike Croatia's triumphant blitz, celebrated even today with a "Homeland Thanksgiving Day," Georgia's adventure in Ossetia backfired spectacularly. For, unlike Croatia in 1995, Saakashvili was not dealing with an intimidated and blockaded Serbia, but with an angry and powerful Russian Federation.
Enter the Russophobes
It took several days for politicians and the media in the West to work themselves up into proper self-righteous lather. Once they did, however, it became obvious that Russophobia was not a Cold War relic, but rather a fashionable creed in Washington's policymaking circles. One can understand the hysterical pronouncements coming from Georgian officials about how the fate of their country – or rather, their government – was an issue of "freedom" and "democracy." But it certainly did not take long for ex-diplomat Richard Holbrooke to compare Russia to Nazi Germany. Once again, every enemy is Hitler, and it's always Munich 1938 – except when it really is, of course.
Washington commentators displayed all the symptoms of what Richard Spencer at Takimag.com called "Putin Derangement Syndrome": a delusional belief that Vladimir Putin is "not simply a totalitarian dictator at home but a super-genius strategist in foreign affairs – if anything unusual happens in his part of the world, it's all part of one of his wicked schemes."
Granted, there was some dissent. The rabidly Russophobic Washington Post did run an article by former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who condemned the Georgians for starting the war. In the Guardian, Mark Almond challenged the Cold War analogies. Charles King in the Christian Science Monitor argued the conflict wasn't entirely Russia's fault. But since when have facts stopped a good story? As Brendan O'Neill argues persuasively, both Georgians and Ossetians have been used as pawns by the West to fabricate yet another morality tale.
Familiar Stories
Despite the fact that Georgia was the clear aggressor, and that Russian intervention only followed after the razing of Ossetian capital Tskhinvali, many civilian deaths, a mass of refugees, and the killing of several Russian peacekeepers, the Western media have slowly spun the crisis as Russian "aggression." As Justin Raimondo put it:
"According to our 'free' media, the Georgians didn't invade the land of the Ossetians – they merely tried to 'retake' it, as a child would bloodlessly and even quite playfully retake a shiny red ball from a playmate. Those evil Russkies, on the other hand, invaded, plunged into, and escalated their attack on Georgia. At least, those are the words our 'reporters' are using."
That is another way in which the Caucasus war resembles the Balkans. In addition to loaded words, there are loaded images. Sharp eyes have already begun to question several photographs of Georgians mourning their dead, offering compelling evidence they were staged. There are no pictures of Ossetians mourning, of course, and only a few testimonies.
Speaking of pictures: for their "voices on Georgia" feature, the BBC somehow managed to get portrait pictures of two young Georgians, both making passionate emotional appeals. Representing the other side were an Ossetian professor and a Russian architect, both over 40. No pictures.
On Tuesday, there was even a flashback of Bosnia: several journalists were injured when a "series of sudden explosions" rocked the city of Gori, birthplace of Josef Stalin and the closest city to the Ossetian front. Once again, "it was not clear who was responsible" even though the closest Russian forces were 12 kilometers away and the fire came from "mortars firing from 1-2 km away."
Scapegoating Saakashvili?
On Aug. 12, Russian President Medvedev ordered a halt to military operations, as a peace plan proposed by French President Sarkozy was negotiated. Moscow publicly stated it had no plans to depose Saakashvili, and angrily rejected U.S. charges of plotting "regime change." However, Saakashvili's political future looks very precarious at this point.
Analysts interviewed by Reuters seem to agree that Saakashvili committed a "strategic blunder" and that Georgia is likely to lose Ossetia and Abkhazia now. The London Telegraph calls him "the man who lost it all," while the Independent painted him as a "beleaguered gambler."
The New York Times blamed "mixed messages" from Washington; supposedly, Washington urged Saakashvili privately not to attack, while publicly supporting him in full. But is that so?
At first glance, it is hard to see how Georgia's fiasco could benefit the Empire. Its strongest military and political client in the Caucasus has been neutered. The war almost endangered the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, the one source of Caspian oil under American control. Russia has asserted itself, and now looms like a shadow over the West…
Once again, keep in mind the way politics works. Saakashvili was a good client, but he failed. Now a liability, he can be written off, allowing the Empire to engage in self-righteous posturing. The very same people who invaded Iraq now thunder about "Russian aggression" and call Moscow's actions "unacceptable" with a straight face. The Empire may have suffered a defeat, but as we learned in the Balkans, it's never about what really happens – it's about managing perceptions. So a setback in the Caucasus is being spun as a proof that the West is righteous, good, and democratic, that Russia is evil and aggressive – and oh, yes, that the Kosovo war was just and right. After all, didn't Russians validate it with their actions? (No.)
Either way, the Imperial establishment has now latched on to the notion of Russian belligerence as yet another excuse for their project of global hegemony, benevolent or otherwise.
Lesson Not Learned
On the second day of the conflict, before the media received their marching orders, the New York Times carried a story about how the West misread Russia. It quoted George Friedman of analytical think-tank Stratfor:
"We've placed ourselves in a position that globally we don't have the wherewithal to do anything. … One would think under those circumstances, we'd shut up."
When told of the quote, the NYT story concludes, one senior administration official, laughed. "Well, maybe we're learning to shut up now."
It seems the lesson didn't take.
http://antiwar.com/malic/?articleid=13294

Outside View: Kosovo spark, Ossetia fire

Outside View: Kosovo spark, Ossetia fire

OBRAD KESIC

Published: August 13, 2008

It is obvious that the current conflict in Georgia has been greatly influenced by the United States' and the European Union's decision to initiate, support and recognize Kosovo's independence. Over the last few days this connection has been made in newspapers from Spain to China. Prominent European statesmen such as Lech Walesa and Jiri Dienstbier also have linked the current violence in the Caucasus to the "irresponsible" decision to recognize Serbia's breakaway province.
Even the major protagonists in the current crisis have embraced this connection. The South Ossetians and Abkhazians have cited Kosovo's independence as an argument for their own separatist ambitions; the Russians have referred to Kosovo to slash at the credibility and legitimacy of EU and American criticisms. Georgian leaders who had warned about the dangerous precedent of Kosovo's independence and had refused to recognize it are now desperately attempting to find differences between the two situations in order to deny any possible legitimacy for the case for independence of its own separatist regions.
There is now a striking similarity between the current Georgian crisis and the Kosovo issue. In 1999, arguing that a humanitarian intervention was needed to protect innocent civilians from a repressive and violent state, NATO bombed Serbia and effectively separated Kosovo from the rest of the country. Now it is Russia's turn at humanitarian intervention. The Albanians in Kosovo claimed a right to self-determination and their own state, arguing that their rights would never fully be guaranteed in Serbia. This fundamental claim is now being made by Ossetians and Abkhazians as to why they need to be independent from Georgia.
Kosovo's independence came about in large part through an arrogant and reckless attitude in Washington (primarily in the Department of State and Congress), as well as in some EU capitals, that the positions of Serbia and Russia could simply be ignored. The U.N. Security Council and international law could be bypassed simply by arguing that the Kosovo problem was "unique" and easily quarantined from other similar ethnically motivated disputes over territory. There was a mistaken belief that if American and EU diplomats, officials and leaders repeated the official mantra that "Kosovo is unique" and that "Kosovo is not a precedent" that this would suffice to contain any possible repercussions from a policy that was hastily endorsed as "the only possible" option. American and some European diplomats grew fond of saying that Serbia and Russia should accept "reality" and the "facts on the ground" in Kosovo.
Now it is Washington and Brussels who must accept the reality of their own policy blunder in Kosovo, if they are to have any chance at containing and ending the violence in Georgia. This ought to begin by acknowledging that Kosovo's case for independence is no more or less unique than that of South Ossetia, Abkhazia or numerous others. It also should be realized that wishful thinking is no substitute for policy that is based on principles anchored in international law. If the United States and the European Union are not prepared to militarily intervene in the Georgian conflict, it leaves three options open.
The first is to refuse to assume any responsibility for the current mess and to continue the motions of diplomatic activity (shuttle diplomacy, rhetorical expressions of outrage and support for Georgia and self-serving media interviews) and hope that the Russians end their military intervention as soon as possible and that afterward there will be something left of a viable Georgian state.
The second option is to accept the results of their own policies in the Balkans by acknowledging directly or indirectly the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. This could be justified in the same way as in the case of Kosovo: namely that by attempting to take back South Ossetia by military action (and the humanitarian tragedy this caused), Georgia has lost the right to govern these two regions where the overwhelming majority of the citizens will never again accept being governed by Tbilisi.
The third option is to admit the EU and U.S. policy on Kosovo was a mistake and attempt to manage the Georgian crisis in light of this. That would mean freezing Kosovo's independence by returning complete authority over the province to the United Nations and by restarting negotiations between Serbs and Kosovar Albanians under U.N. sponsorship. For Georgia this would signify the only hope that Russia would lose its moral ground for further military escalation and that it could return to the status quo prior to its own military actions on Aug. 6. This would also allow for the United Nations to regain credibility and legitimacy for new peace talks on South Ossetia and Abkhazia and for any possible peacekeeping role.
If American and EU officials continue to ignore the new international reality that they have helped create by backing Kosovo's independence, they will have chosen a road that will lead to new separatist conflicts well beyond the Balkans and the Caucasus.
With their policies they have smashed an international order that had for the most part balanced for hundreds of years the demands for self-determination with the need to maintain the territorial integrity and sovereignty of international borders. One way or another, they must now pay for it.
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(Obrad Kesic is a senior partner with TSM Global Consultants LLC.)
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(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)
© 2008 United Press International. All Rights Reserved.
This material may not be reproduced, redistributed, or manipulated in any form.
http://www.metimes.com/Security/2008/08/13/outside_view_kosovo_spark_ossetia_fire/f646/

Kosovo redux

Kosovo redux

George Jonas, National Post Published: Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Dimitar Dilkoff, AFP, Getty Images

On Tuesday, the European Union's Javier Solana called upon Russia to do what the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) didn't do nine years ago: Respect another country's territorial integrity. Instead of replying: "We'll respect Georgia's territorial integrity as much as the Western powers respected Serbia's territorial integrity in 1999," the Russians responded politely. According to a news agency report, President Dmitry Medvedev "in a telephone conversation confirmed to Mr. Solana he has given the order to stop military operations."
This, if true, is good news for approximately 70,000 South Ossetians who live in the region that sits like the hump of a dromedary on the northern spine of Georgia, even if it can't do much for the thousand or two (reports vary) who have already lost their lives. Unfortunately, the news may not be true. "Despite the Russian President's claims earlier this morning that military operations against Georgia have been suspended, at this moment, Russian fighter jets are bombarding two Georgian villages outside South Ossetia," reported a Georgian government communique at noon.
What the governments of Russia and Georgia have in common is that one cannot believe a thing they say. In fairness, they resemble most governments in this, including the EU's, whose rotating President, Nicolas Sarkozy, has torn himself away from his busy schedule as France's President and Carla Bruni's husband to lend a hand to the peace process in Moscow if he can, and sample some caviar if he can't.
France's current relations with Russia are friendly. France opposes Georgia and Ukraine joining the EU at the present time, for which Mr. Sarkozy has been patted on the back at various diplomatic receptions by Czar Vladimir, a. k. a. Prime Minister Putin, himself. Pleasant as this is, it doesn't guarantee much except a continuing supply of vodka and Caspian fish roe. But then, harsh word don't guarantee anything either. They may even sound faintly distasteful, as U. S. President George W. Bush's televised remark did from the White House: "Russia has invaded a sovereign neighbouring state and threatens a democratic government elected by its people. Such an action is unacceptable in the 21st century."
One wishes. The words lose much of their ring coming from a President who has just given despotic China the seal of good housekeeping by his benign presence at the Olympics, and whose own country has bombed and invaded sovereign countries, not only potential threats like Iraq or Afghanistan, but countries that couldn't threaten America or its allies by any stretch of the imagination -- such, for instance, as Serbia.
We're seeing a replay of Kosovo, except in a more dangerous setting. The role the late Slobodan Milosevic played nine years ago is assumed today by Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, while Vladimir Putin is putting on the hat of British prime minister Tony Blair and U. S. President Bill Clinton.
Look at the parallels. The world community recognizes South Ossetia as being part of Georgia, just as it recognized Kosovo as being part of Serbia. The Ossetian majority in South Ossetia wants to secede from Georgia to become independent, or join North Ossetia (in other words, Russia) just as a majority in Kosovo wanted the break away from Serbia, as it eventually did, to become independent or join Muslim Albania. So far, the conflicts seem identical.
There's a difference between Milosevic and Saakashvili as human beings. The leader of Georgia is a democrat and a staunch ally of America, while the former Yugoslav/Serb leader was a communist-turned-chauvinist, a thug and no friend of the West. This is true and a sufficient reason to choose sides in a conflict, but not for describing identical conduct by incongruent words.
Will Saakashvili end up before an international tribunal as an accused war criminal for resisting the disintegration of his country by sending troops into rebellious South Ossetia? I doubt it. Should he? No, not if you ask me -- I'm just not sure why, if Milosevic did.
Is sending troops into South Ossetia to prevent its secession from Georgia, which is what Saakashvili did, different from sending troops into Kosovo to prevent its secession from Serbia, which is what Milosevic tried to do? Why? And how does bombing Georgia to get rid of Saakashvili's troops in South Ossetia, as Putin has been doing, differ from bombing Serbia, as NATO did between March and June in 1999, to get rid ofw Milosevic's troops in Kosovo?
To prevent the ethnic cleansings of Albanians in Kosovo, NATO presided over the ethnic cleansing of the Serbs. Is Putin to be condemned for preventing Georgia from defending its territorial integrity when Clinton and Blair escape censure for preventing Serbia's defence of its territorial integrity? Again, why? They're either both war crimes or neither is.
When Hitler dismembered Czechoslovakia in 1938, an act subsequently treated as a war crime at the Nuremberg Trials, in addition to his own ambitions, he was responding to the desire of the ethnic German inhabitants of the Sudetenland to unite their region with the German Reich. It may have been a war crime all right, but it was also an attempt to give effect to the Wilsonian principle of national self-determination. Putin seems ready to pull a Sudetenland in Georgia. I'm afraid NATO may have empowered him by pulling one in 1999 in Kosovo.
Copyright © 2007 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest MediaWorks Publications, Inc.. All rights reserved.
http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/columnists
/story.html?id=5a55717d-2bc9-415a-afd7-147b3e9b71b4

Superpower swoop

Superpower swoop

Misha Glenny

Published 14 August 2008

What Russia and America are really doing in Georgia and who set the trap? Vladimir Putin and his thuggish FSB pals or Dick Cheney and his equally unflappable neocon friends?
Georgia's decision to seize large parts of Tskhinvali, the capital of the breakaway region of South Ossetia, on the evening of 7 August was a disastrous political miscalculation, even in an era that is increasingly defined by spectacularly poor judgement.
Within three days of the assault, Russian forces had responded by in effect neutralising Georgia's military capacity, which President Mikhail Saakashvili's government in Tbilisi had spent several years and considerable sums of money building up.
Clearly, Russia has been goading and provoking the Georgian government for several years into making the big mistake. The parastates of Abkhazia and, above all, South Ossetia, have been under the control of a toxic coalition of criminals and both former and serving FSB officers. Russian soldiers have been acting as their protectors under the guise of a peacekeeping mission, preventing Georgia's attempts to seek a negotiated reintegration of the two areas. The Georgian crisis has benefited the standing of hardliners in Moscow, still aggrieved at Vladimir Putin's decision to place the moderate, business-friendly Dmitry Medvedev in the Kremlin.
But under the influence of an energetic neo-con lobby in Washington, and with considerable support from Israeli weapons manufacturers and military trainers, Saakashvili and the hawks around him came to believe the farcical proposition that Georgia's armed forces could take on the military might of their northern neighbour in a conventional fight and win.
The Georgian minister for reintegration of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Temur Yakobash vili, revealed the depth of the illusion the day after the conflict broke out when he thanked Israel for its assistance in training Georgian troops. "Israel should be proud of its military, which trained Georgian soldiers," Yakobashvili said, with reference to Defensive Shield, the private company run by Gal Hirsch, a former general in the Israel Defence Forces.
Still unaware of what was really happening on the battlefield, Yakobashvili reported that a small group of Georgian soldiers had been able to wipe out an entire Russian military division, thanks to the Israeli training. "We killed 60 Russian soldiers yesterday alone," he said. "The Russians have lost more than 50 tanks, and we have shot down 11 of their planes. They have sustained enormous damage in terms of manpower."
Warned off
The Russians, of course, knew all about Defensive Shield and the tens of millions of dollars worth of Israeli military equipment that Georgia had been purchasing. Just over a week before the conflict erupted, Putin put in a call to the Israeli president, Shimon Peres. His message, according to a western intelligence source, was simple: "Pull out your trainers and weapons or we will escalate our co-operation with Syria and Iran." Peres does not suffer the same illusions as Georgian ministers and the Israeli set-up left Tbilisi within two days.
The KGB has also been tracking Georgia's clandestine arms procurement in Ukraine (where most weapons dealers work for Russian intelligence anyhow). The Russian army was also fully briefed about the joint US-Georgian manoeuvres, which took place in Georgia last month. Russia was not taking a military risk when responding to the Georgian attack on Tskhinvali - Moscow knew the precise contours of its enemy's capability. David's victory over Goliath was sensational because of its rarity - in the real world Goliath always comes out on top.
So the Russians set a trap and, prodded by Dick Cheney's people, Georgia walked right into it.
The consequences of this egregious error begin in Georgia itself. Not only is it now defenceless, it can kiss goodbye to any restoration of sovereignty over both South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Even though President Sarkozy of France received tentative agreement from both Moscow and Tbilisi for the establishment of international talks to settle the status of the two areas, they are unlikely to rejoin Georgia any time soon. The loss of Abkhazia, with its considerable economic potential, is a huge blow.
The EU and the US will argue that there is no parallel to be drawn between Kosovo and the Georgian breakaway regions. But that is not how much of the world, including China, South Africa and Indonesia, see it. And it is not how Russia sees it. The first chickens of Kosovo's independence are coming home to roost.
Saakashvili is now very vulnerable. The Russian invasion has cut communications between Tbilisi and the main port in Poti. BP has closed down the pipeline running from Baku to Ceyhan in Turkey through Tbilisi, and Georgian banks are freezing all loans and blocking capital flight.
After only a week, the Georgian economy is teetering. "It doesn't look very good for Georgia," Edward Parker from the credit rating agency Fitch told the Moscow Times. "Going to war with Russia is bad for your creditworthiness, to put it mildly." And if the wheels do come off the economy, it is hard to see how Saakashvili might salvage his political position - such a combination of economic distress and military defeat is usually fatal. If he goes, Georgia is likely to fracture politically into a variety of fiefdoms familiar from the 1990s and living standards will plummet.
There is one faint consolation. The west may be impotent when it comes to responding to the situation militarily but it can rally round by offering the country a financial and commercial lifeline.
The foreign implications of the error are graver still. Russia is placing a marker on Ukraine. Do not, Moscow says, even think of allowing Ukraine into Nato, otherwise what we have seen in Georgia will be child's play. So the west will have to think hard how to play Ukraine's application to join the military alliance.
This in turn has accentuated the divisions within the European Union between those countries, including Germany, which remain cautious about a course of open confrontation with Russia, and Britain, which has echoed calls from Washington demanding that Russia's application to join the World Trade Organisation be reconsidered. Speaking from Tbilisi, one senior European diplomat told me that the split on this issue, which was openly on display at the Nato Bucharest summit in April, "is running deeper within the EU than was the case in the run-up to Iraq".
But the Georgian fiasco has implications for politics in the Middle East, the European Union and the United States.
For the Bush administration (or for its hawks at least), the Georgian mistake presents an opportunity - let us recast Russia as a threat to global stability and a potential enemy. Predictably, the toughest response to the Russian invasion came from Cheney. The outbreak of the crisis coincided with President Bush horseplaying with beach volleyball players in Beijing and the vice-president was in operational control at the time.
Cheney immediately announced that the Russian invasion cannot go "unanswered", a choice of words that the American former ambassador to Nato Robert Hunter described as "inflammatory". Cheney has been spoiling for a fight with the Russians for a couple of years, and he and his allies have seized upon Georgia's and Ukraine's stated aim to join Nato as a way of riling Moscow.
This plan came unstuck at the Bucharest summit, when some European countries, led by Germany, blocked the Nato road map for the two former Soviet republics. But the final statement did concede that the two countries' aspirations would eventually be met at some unspecified time in the future.
As a democratic country, Georgia has every right to apply for Nato membership, even though its inability to assert its sovereignty over South Ossetia and Abkhazia presents a problem to some existing Nato members. But the neocons in Washington have been pushing Georgian and Ukrainian membership as a critical goal for the maintenance of the western alliance. By cranking up the dispute with Russia over Nato, Cheney is shifting the political debate in the US away from the state of the economy and towards the issue of national security.
Global dangers
If the presidential election is fought on the former issue, Barack Obama is a shoo-in. But if the central issue is national security and who would be best at dealing with a major crisis like Georgia, then his Republican opponent, John McCain, has to be favourite. McCain's response to Georgia was almost as tough as Cheney's, explained in part by the fact that until May this year his chief foreign policy adviser was working as a lobbyist for Saakashvili.
This political dynamic is driving the west towards a rift with Russia that will polarise a number of other issues, including policy towards Iran. On this latter matter, Russia has played a relatively constructive and, perhaps more importantly, a moderating role. In the next three months, the issues of Ukraine and Iran will loom large in global politics and they may well have a decisive impact on the outcome of the US election. Who set the trap in Georgia? Vladimir Putin and his thuggish pals from the FSB, or Dick Cheney and his equally unflappable neocon friends?
Whether Georgia was defeated by the Russians or lost by the neocons, a touch of diplomatic sobriety on both sides would be a welcome development, if the Georgian conflict is not to mark a very dangerous new phase in the development of global politics - serial confrontation between the west and Russia.

http://www.newstatesman.com/europe/2008/08/georgia-russia-ukraine-cheney

Don't forget what happened in Yugoslavia

Don't forget what happened in Yugoslavia

John Pilger

Published 14 August 2008

Even as Blair the war leader was on a triumphant tour of "liberated" Kosovo, the KLA was ethnically cleansing more than 200,000 Serbs and Roma from the province

The secrets of the crushing of Yugoslavia are emerging, telling us more about how the modern world is policed. The former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia in The Hague, Carla Del Ponte, this year published her memoir The Hunt: Me and War Criminals. Largely ignored in Britain, the book reveals unpalatable truths about the west's intervention in Kosovo, which has echoes in the Caucasus.

The tribunal was set up and bankrolled principally by the United States. Del Ponte's role was to investigate the crimes committed as Yugoslavia was dismembered in the 1990s. She insisted that this include Nato's 78-day bombing of Serbia and Kosovo in 1999, which killed hundreds of people in hospitals, schools, churches, parks and tele vision studios, and destroyed economic infrastructure. "If I am not willing to [prosecute Nato personnel]," said Del Ponte, "I must give up my mission." It was a sham. Under pressure from Washington and London, an investigation into Nato war crimes was scrapped.

Readers will recall that the justification for the Nato bombing was that the Serbs were committing "genocide" in the secessionist province of Kosovo against ethnic Albanians. David Scheffer, US ambassador-at-large for war crimes, announced that as many as "225,000 ethnic Albanian men aged between 14 and 59" may have been murdered. Tony Blair invoked the Holocaust and "the spirit of the Second World War". The west's heroic allies were the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), whose murderous record was set aside. The British foreign secretary, Robin Cook, told them to call him any time on his mobile phone.

With the Nato bombing over, international teams descended upon Kosovo to exhume the "holocaust". The FBI failed to find a single mass grave and went home. The Spanish forensic team did the same, its leader angrily denouncing "a semantic pirouette by the war propaganda machines". A year later, Del Ponte's tribunal announced the final count of the dead in Kosovo: 2,788. This included combatants on both sides and Serbs and Roma murdered by the KLA. There was no genocide in Kosovo. The "holocaust" was a lie. The Nato attack had been fraudulent.

That was not all, says Del Ponte in her book: the KLA kidnapped hundreds of Serbs and transported them to Albania, where their kidneys and other body parts were removed; these were then sold for transplant in other countries. She also says there was sufficient evidence to prosecute the Kosovar Albanians for war crimes, but the investigation "was nipped in the bud" so that the tribunal's focus would be on "crimes committed by Serbia". She says the Hague judges were terrified of the Kosovar Albanians - the very people in whose name Nato had attacked Serbia.

Indeed, even as Blair the war leader was on a triumphant tour of "liberated" Kosovo, the KLA was ethnically cleansing more than 200,000 Serbs and Roma from the province. Last February the "international community", led by the US, recognised Kosovo, which has no formal economy and is run, in effect, by criminal gangs that traffic in drugs, contraband and women. But it has one valuable asset: the US military base Camp Bondsteel, described by the Council of Europe's human rights commissioner as "a smaller version of Guantanamo". Del Ponte, a Swiss diplomat, has been told by her own government to stop promoting her book.

Yugoslavia was a uniquely independent and multi-ethnic, if imperfect, federation that stood as a political and economic bridge in the Cold War. This was not acceptable to the expanding European Community, especially newly united Germany, which had begun a drive east to dominate its "natural market" in the Yugoslav pro vinces of Croatia and Slovenia. By the time the Europeans met at Maastricht in 1991, a secret deal had been struck; Germany recognised Croatia, and Yugoslavia was doomed. In Washington, the US ensured that the struggling Yugoslav economy was denied World Bank loans and the defunct Nato was reinvented as an enforcer. At a 1999 Kosovo "peace" conference in France, the Serbs were told to accept occupation by Nato forces and a market economy, or be bombed into submission. It was the perfect precursor to the bloodbaths in Afghanistan and Iraq.

http://www.newstatesman.com/europe/2008/08/pilger-kosovo-war-nato-serbs

Socialists and Democrats Will Rule Serbia

Socialists and Democrats Will Rule Serbia
by Srdja Trifkovic

http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/?p=664#comments

The political situation in Serbia is both unprecedented and unexpected. No analyst had predicted, three or four months ago, that the election on May 11 would result in such impressive gains by the Democratic Party (Demokratska stranka, DS)—which won over 38 percent of the vote—and in a relative defeat for the Radicals (Srpska radikalna stranka, SRS), which polled 29 percent. The most surprising feature of Serbia's post-election scene in the formation of the new governing coalition, based on an alliance between the "pro-Western, reformist" Democrats and the Socialists (Socijalisticka partija Srbije, SPS), the party of the late President Slobodan Milosevic.
For the past almost eight years since the fall of Milosevic, the Democrats and their allies have been demonizing the Socialist Party as an ugly relic of the past, the party that provided the political backbone to Milosevic and his regime, the obedient mechanism for all of his misguided and possibly criminal policies in the 1990s. One of the members of the present DS-led coalition, a separatist from Vojvodina by the name of Nenad Canak, has even advocated a formal ban on the Socialist Party.
But the Democrats have made a complete U-turn since May 11, having realized that they need the Socialists—who together with their smaller allies have 20 deputies—in order to stay in power. Over the past six weeks some extensive horse-trading followed that realization. Legitimizing the Socialists, proclaiming them to be a modern, decent, pro-European center-left party, fit for membership in the Socialist International, is merely one part of the package offered by the DS. Overall, the coalition agreement is the fruit of a massive exercise in political corruption, the like of which has never been seen in Serbia's long and turbulent history.
TYCOONS AND DIPLOMATS—The ability of the Democratic Party to come on top is nevertheless difficult to explain unless we consider the impact of an important pressure group helping the DS. This group's influence was not unknown, but it had never before pulled the strings so blatantly. It is the oligarchy. Now at last we know the full extent to which Belgrade's leading tycoons—their fortunes often harking back to the days of Milosevic—control the political scene from the shadows. About a dozen men who hold all key levers of financial and economic power in the country are overwhelmingly supportive of Tadic's Democrats. They are well aware that under the Yellow-Red Coalition (DS-SPS) their lucrative practices will continue unhindered. On the other hand, they were scared stiff of the Radicals, because the SRS had made the struggle against corruption a key element of its election campaign. In addition, the Radicals have amassed a lot of compromising information about some key oligarchs and their political associates in the DS camp, and they were determined to pursue prosecutions if they came to power. Knowing this, the tycoons had an additional motive to contribute lavishly to a clandestine slush fund that the DS used to woo Ivica Dacic, the Socialists leader, and his junior partners. Tadic's emissaries have done their work on the Socialist Party Main Board so thoroughly, that even this bulwark of Milosevic's reliable cadres from the 1990s overwhelmingly voted to support the coalition of their party with the DS.
While the exact magnitude of illicit transactions is unknown for the time being, Belgrade is a relatively small place in which nothing political remains unknown for long. In Serbia's politics, where there's smoke, there's fire. It is also noteworthy that the oligarchs enjoy the support of some Western diplomats in Belgrade—specifically the U.S. and British Ambassadors—in their self-appropriated role of king-makers, which provides a vivid example of the EU-NATO support for democracy in the Balkans.

COMMIES OLD AND NEW—That so many old Milosevic loyalists, who presumably have good reasons to despise and dislike Tadic's people, have changed their minds so swiftly, is a sad testimony to the condition of a shattered nation. The SPS U-turn does not concern the legacy of Milosevic alone. Having profiled themselves for years as a patriotic force determined to defend Serbia's rights in Kosovo come what may, the Socialists are about to join forces with the party obviously reconciled to giving up on Serbia's southern province after some decent interval, while pretending all along not to be doing so.
The readiness to treat vital national interests as disposable commodities indicates that the DS-SPS tandem is less surprising than it looks. The differences between the new partners may not be so deep after all. The leading lights of both parties have their ideological roots in the old, long-defunct League of Communists of Yugoslavia. A cynic would say that we are witnessing the creation of a coalition between Serbia's "reformist" communists—such as Dragoljub Micunovic—who have morphed into Tadic's Europhile social-democrats, and some seriously hard-line doctrinaires—such as Milutin Mrkonjic—who still remain faithful to Milosevic's legacy. It has been noted that we are now witnessing the coalition of two opposite factions from the Eight Session of the Communist party of Serbia in September 1987, which propelled Milosevic to power. The reformist, social-democratic wing was defeated at that time, while Milosevic's wing was triumphant. Over the past eight years the roles have been reversed. After an estrangement lasting two decades, the two factions are coming back together again.
Some Serbian patriots console themselves with the view that this coalition cannot last for long. They are wrong: this coalition is likely to stay in power longer than its predecessors because its partners will have no motive to rock the boat. The Socialists have obtained the best deal they could hope for, and they have an incentive to maintain the new status quo as long as possible. Their leader Ivica Dacic probably realizes that the party will disappear from the political scene at the next election: SPS rank-and-file will never forgive him the deal with Tadic, and this is the one shot at power, money and influence that he will ever have.
The Democrats cannot afford to risk another election, because they have reached the zenith of their likely electoral success, with just under forty percent of the vote and over a hundred deputies. They are loath to risk their current dominant position, especially if the country's financial and economic situation starts to unravel. Serbia is effectively bankrupt. It owes over $20 billion to foreign creditors, but in spite of heavy borrowing the neoliberals who run the showt have not succeeded in quick-starting the economy. Public spending in particular is not supported by the economy. After the final round of privatization, public spending may have to be financed either by inflationary means, or else by a new round of borrowing.
OPPOSITION IN CRISIS—On the other hand, the opposition to the DS-led government has to devise a long-term strategy which it does not have at the moment. In the short term it will be hard for the leading opposition parties, the Serbian Radical Party (SRS) and the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS), to come up with a program of action that could undermine the emerging coalition. The DSS of the outgoing Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica is entering a period of decline. It is having difficulty in retaining loyalty of any significant segment of the electorate. Having failed on two important occasions (after the elections of December of 2004 and January of 2007) to put together stable coalitions, it is paying the price of joining forces with the DS last year. The ensuing tensions and almost schizoid bipolarity between Tadic's Europhiles and Kostunica's moderate patriots have harmed the latter disproportionately. The latter is now paying the price of not entering a coalition with the Radical Party when he could do so from the position of strength.
The Radicals also are entering a period of crisis. For many years they have been building up their support and developing their base, in the confident expectation that the ruling parties' failures over Kosovo will work to their advantage. This is not the case, however. The Democrats have succeeded in presenting Kosovo as fait accompli to the Serbian public, and they keep pointing at some elusive "European integrations" as a substitute. The Radicals, on the other hand, have failed to articulate a message that is both correct and inspiring. The Serbs are tired of economic deprivation, and many of them are willing to be duped with Euro-talk. They are still listening to the rosy stories of the open EU path, which with the defeat of the Lisbon Treaty at the Irish referendum is in fact closed. There will be no enlargement of the EU for a many years to come.
SERBIA AND THE E.U.—Serbia's Euro-fanatics, led by President Boris Tadic, will admit no such thing, however. In an interview on June 29, Tadic stated two priorities of the new government: to ratify the Stabilization and Association Agreement with the EU as soon as possible, and to "complete" cooperation with the Hague Tribunal. But Tadic's haste makes no sense. Even if the Serbian Assembly ratifies it, that gesture will be meaningless. The EU has already decided that the Agreement is suspended until General Mladic and Dr. Karadzic are arrested and delivered to the Hague Tribunal—and that will not happen. Had the Serbian government had the wherewithal to deliver them, it would have done so log time ago. Even if the Serbian Assembly ratifies the SAA, it will remain inoperative for as long as Brussels remains unconvinced that Serbia has fully complied with its imposed obligation to cooperate with The Hague Tribunal—and yet such compliance is impossible for as long as Karadzic and Mladic are at large; it's a classic Catch 22. In addition, even if the SAA were to become operative, it would not mean that Serbia is any closer to joining the EU. With the outcome of the Irish referendum the Lisbon Treaty is effectively dead. The Treaty, had it passed, would have provided the mechanism for further enlargement. Now the EU has to fall back on the Nice Treaty, signed in December 2000, that came into force in February 2003. It specifically limits the size of the EU to 28 members, which means that Croatia may be admitted next year, and that's the end: after that, for maybe 10 to 15 years the enlargement process will be over. It is interesting, however, that in Serbia nobody seems to be willing to spell this simple fact aloud. The enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn keeps saying that the door is still open to new members, but he is not telling the truth. He is paid to say so. In reality, in Brussels the EU bureaucrats are knowingly nodding to each other that it is over: neither Serbia, nor Macedonia, nor Bosnia-Herzegovina, let alone Turkey, will be members of the EU for at least two decades.
AS FOR KOSOVO…—Commenting on possible replacement of UNMIK by EULEX in Kosovo, Tadic repeated on June 29 that no transformation of UN's mission would be acceptable based on the initiative of the UN Secretary General alone, and that a Security Council decision would be needed. His statement was apparently calculated to prepare the ground for Serbia's gradual admission that Kosovo is a lost cause. Tadic pretends to resist such outcome, but in practice he is not taking any steps that would make the position of the secessionists more difficult. Belgrade's trade with Kosovo continues unabated, Kosovo Albanians' transit through the territory of Serbia is unhindered, Serbian electricity keeps Kosovo's derelict grid functioning.
Tadic seems to be implying that Serbia will accept the EU's EULEX mission, illegal as it is, provided it gets a fig leaf of legality from the UN Security Council. At the UN SC the only barrier is the opposition of Russia. Russia is not going to continue opposing Western policies, however, if Serbia herself is reconciled to the loss of the southern province. We are already witnessing gradual distancing of the Russian diplomacy from the Kosovo issue. It is only a matter of time till the new government in Belgrade signals to Moscow that Serbia is perfectly willing to see Russia removing its objections to the transformation of the UN mission into an EU mission. If and when that happens, it will mark de facto acceptance of Kosovo's independence by Belgrade.
The chief losers, in the short term, will be the remaining Serbs of Kosovo. Their lot is fatally dependent upon the posture of the government in Belgrade, politically, financially, and morally. Their ability to resist forced integration into an independent Kosovo is dependent on what happens in the Serbian capital. With the new coalition, they can no longer count on any serious support from Belgrade and most certainly they can no longer take it for granted. The previous coalition had an important ministry, the Ministry for Kosovo and Metohija, which was ably handled by the Democratic Party of Serbia and one of its leading lights, Prof. Slobodan Samardzic, as Minister. They were able to devise a whole series of projects that helped the Serbian community in Kosovo feel that it is not abandoned and that its members can count on support from Belgrade. With the new government this will no longer be the case.
It is tempting to conclude that Serbia will have an unpatriotic government for the next few years. This conclusion depends on one's definition of "patriotism," of course, and Tadic would claim that his striving to join "Europe" at any price—Kosovo implicitly included—is somehow "patriotic." Tadic's and his cohorts' understanding of Serbdom means turning Serbia into just another post-modern European nation that has given up on the legacy of its culture, tradition, and faith, just another nation that measures its successes solely in terms of dollars or euros per capita.

Kosovo Serbs vow to stay divided

Kosovo Serbs vow to stay divided

Kosovo's Serbs have rejected the region's self-proclaimed independence from Serbia, and on Saturday set up their own rival institutions. The BBC's Helen Fawkes says this is likely to cement Kosovo's divisions.

Kosovo may have declared independence almost four months ago, but in the Serb areas there is little sign of this being Europe's newest country.

When you wander around North Mitrovica, you see lots of Serbian flags.

Some of the shop signs are written in Cyrillic. Go inside, and you will be asked to pay with Serbian money.

Now this Serb-dominated town has its own self-proclaimed "parliament".

However, the assembly does not actually have its own building.

Its opening session was held in a cramped and sweaty university lecture hall.

There was no special seating, so the representatives sat on rows of wooden benches, alongside the members of the public.

The 40-or-so representatives of the new assembly were given laminated white cards to hold up when they wanted to vote.

Symbolic

''These people will be feeling victorious. The assembly preserves the status quo and the position of Mitrovica,'' says Jelena Bjelic, editor-in-chief of the Serbian language newspaper in Kosovo, Gradjanski Glasnik.

The assembly is designed to strengthen the position of Serbs in Kosovo.

It will cause trouble for the authorities in Belgrade. It will also cause additional problems for Kosovo Serbs
Dusan Janjic
Political analyst

Its constitution declared that it would act as co-ordination body with Belgrade.

However, it will not be able to make any laws, and so it does not have any significant power.

In some ways this does not matter.

It seems like the main purpose of the assembly is to be symbolic.

Not all Serbs support it, though. Some see it as joke.

The moderate Kosovo Serb leader Oliver Ivanovic says that rather than helping ordinary people, it will be used as a ''political weapon".

Nationalist base

Some of those at the opening session of the assembly wore badges with the face of Vojislav Seselj, the leader of the Serbian Radical Party, who is currently on trial at the War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague.

The politicians that make up the assembly are hard-line nationalists, belonging to the parties which are destined to be in opposition in Belgrade.

A pro-Western coalition government is expected to be formed this week in Belgrade.

So the assembly in Kosovo gives the nationalists a power base.

''The assembly does not represent all the Serbian political parties. It will cause trouble for the authorities in Belgrade. It will also cause additional problems for Kosovo Serbs,'' says political analyst Dusan Janjic.

The assembly was set up partly in response to Kosovo's new constitution, which came into force a few weeks ago, following the declaration of independence.

It says that the majority ethnic-Albanian government now runs Kosovo, and that it assumes many of the powers of the United Nations, which has administered Kosovo for the last decade.

The ethnic-Albanian political leaders have condemned the Kosovo Serb assembly as illegal.

The UN will not recognise the assembly - a spokesman for the UN described it as a virtual reality.

Whether it is legal or not, the assembly will be able to help ensure that the Kosovan government is not able to operate in Serb areas.

It will only deepen the ethnic divisions in Kosovo and strengthen the parallel structures that already exist here.

There are also fears that the rhetoric that is likely to come from the assembly will have a destabilising effect on one of the tensest region in the Balkans.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/7481299.stm

Russia praises formation of Kosovo Serbs' parliament

Russia praises formation of Kosovo Serbs' parliament
20:57 | 01/ 07/ 2008

Print version

MOSCOW, July 1 (RIA Novosti) - The parliament set up by the Serbian community in Kosovo is a logical response to Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Tuesday.

Kosovo Serbs gathered last Saturday in the ethnically divided city of Mitrovica for a session to inaugurate their own legislative body, calling it the Assembly of the Union of Municipalities of the Autonomous Province of Kosovo, and draft its mandate.

The statement from the Russian Foreign Ministry said the establishment of the Assembly was "a logical reaction to illegal and unilateral declaration of independence of the region and is a reflection of prevailing sentiments among Serbs to resist their forceful integration into the illegal entity of the Kosovo Albanians."

The establishment of the assembly brought negative reactions from many of the countries that backed Kosovo's independence when it was declared five months ago.

"A number of countries have made a hasty assessment of this move [to establish the Assembly] branding it as illegal," the ministry said. "Thus, they have once again shown their biased approach to the situation in Kosovo."

Kosovo - which has been under UN administration since NATO bombings ended a conflict between Serbian troops and Albanian separatists in 1999 - has been recognized by 43 of 192 UN member states, including by the United States and most major European powers.

Moscow has supported its ally Serbia in refusing to recognize the world's 'newest state'.

http://en.rian.ru/world/20080701/112744964.html

Return of the Reds

http://www.antiwar.com/malic/?articleid=13051

ANTIWAR (USA)

Moments of Transition
by Nebojsa Malic

June 26, 2008

Return of the Reds

Meet the New Boss, Same as the Very Old Boss

There is a proverb in the Balkans, probably as old as civilization: where
drills fail, money will do. It seems a fitting byline for the unraveling of
some six weeks of political drama, following the May 11 general elections.
At first, it seemed that President Tadic and the Democratic Party were
celebrating prematurely; their coalition, while scoring better than polls
had predicted, lacked enough votes to form a government. An alliance between
the National bloc of ex-PM Vojislav Kostunica, the Radical Party and the
resurgent Socialists (once led by Slobodan Milosevic) seemed a foregone
conclusion, and was even reported as a done deal.

What happened next seemed like a plot hatched by Chancellor Palpatine
himself. On June 24, the Socialists' steering committee voted overwhelmingly
for a deal with the Democrats - the very same party that has persecuted them
since the October 2000 coup, and blamed them for all the ills that have
befallen Serbia since 1989 (or even earlier), including the NATO bombing and
the occupation of Kosovo. Now the "Yellow and Red" coalition is being
reported as a done deal.

This is precisely the "Pro-European" government that Washington and Brussels
have lobbied for, and Tadic desired since winning a second term in February.
In return for supporting the people that overthrew them on behalf of NATO in
2000, the Socialists would become "respectable." Without the stubborn
insistence on international law by the now former PM Kostunica, the new
regime in Belgrade would not be free to "do everything it can" (to borrow
President Tadic's favorite phrase) to please its "friends" in Washington,
London and Brussels.

In Bad Faith

How did this happen? One theory is that the Socialists' leader Ivica Dacic
wanted to free himself of Milosevic's shadow, and the promises of Imperial
favor were too much to resist. It is well-known that Dacic and his junior
partners, Dragan "Palm Tree" Markovic and Jovan Krkobabic, were feted by
Serbian tycoons close to the Democratic Party and "advised" by U.S. and UK
ambassadors, Cameron Munter and Steven Wordsworth. Of course, Wordsworth and
Munter reject any insinuation that they were meddling in Serbia's internal
affairs by brokering coalition deals; it's perfectly normal for foreign
ambassadors to "advise" politicians of the host countries what to do, is it
not? And the tycoons surely had nothing to do with any of this, they were
just legitimate businessfolk relaxing over some cocktails and barbecue, and
figured they would invite their good friends over to share.

The Serbian media space is notoriously rotten; most media are owned by
foreign conglomerates or political interests. So, when the German-owned,
unabashedly pro-Democrat daily Blic spoke of an imminent coalition of
Democrats and Socialists three weeks or so ago, even as the Socialists were
closing a deal about running Belgrade with the Radicals and the National
bloc, that report sounded like deliberate misinformation and wishful
thinking. But could Blic have been right? Was it Dacic's plan to "go Yellow"
all along?

It certainly appears so. Another paper, Kurir, published a transcript of a
taped phone conversation between two Socialist officials, in which they
revealed that the Belgrade deal was a red herring, made to be broken within
months, leaving the Democrats in charge of the city.

The official excuse given by the Socialists is that they could not agree
with the legal analysis of Serbia's stillborn treaty with the EU offered by
Kostunica's legal team. However, given the Socialists' statements on record
concerning the SAA, this is obviously a smokescreen.

Absolute Power

For their part, Kostunica's National bloc and the Radicals seem to have
taken the Socialists' defection in stride. The Radicals are used to being in
opposition; they were only in power as Milosevic's very junior partners at
one point in the 1990s. Kostunica has survived a Democrat-orchestrated
ouster once before, only to return in triumph. That said, how come he
allowed himself to be blindsided again? "Fool me twice, shame on me" sounds
very appropriate here.

And what of Serbia? Buried in private and government debt - the poisonous
fruit of economic mismanagement by Democrats' allies G17 since 2000 - with
its military, diplomacy and security services gutted at the hands of
ministers always more at home in Brussels than in Belgrade, it is now in the
hands of people who haven't the slightest intent to oppose the illegal
separation of Kosovo. Nor is the new regime likely to oppose any further
dismantling of Serbia, should the Empire wish it.

Governments are essentially protection rackets. If a government is failing
to protect its subjects' lives and property from depredations of another
government, it is not doing its job.

Worse yet, the Democrats in Serbia now control the presidency, the cabinet,
the parliament, the media, and the economy. And as Lord Acton wrote,
"absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Back to the Future

Commentator Branko Radun made an interesting observation in the wake of the
"Yellow and Red" deal: "A growing number of people has the impression that
this was a reconciliation of the two factions from the Eighth Session."

What he is talking about is the 1987 meeting of the Serbian Communist Party
at which Slobodan Milosevic rose to power, ousting the old, hapless
apparatchiks who were passive in face of Albanian separatism. Milosevic's
most intractable enemies actually came from the ranks of the old Communist
Party, because they saw in him the bete noire of Yugoslav Communism, a "Serb
nationalist."

The irony here is that Milosevic could hardly be a "Serb nationalist" and a
Communist at the same time, since those are mutually exclusive concepts.
Communism in the Balkans has always had a Serbophobic flavor. Yugoslavia was
declared a "prison of nations" run by the "Greater Serbian bourgeois
imperialists," with only the Communists willing and able to "liberate" the
various groups. The dismemberment of Yugoslavia became an official goal of
the Communists in 1928; once they held power in the country in 1945, they
abandoned the concept - why destroy something you can rule? - but it still
lingered in the country's subdivision into "republics," which would cause
such bloodshed in the 1990s.

From that standpoint, what happened this week in Belgrade is far less
surprising than what it seemed at first glance. Today's Democrats are
dominated by the heirs of those Communists who lost out in 1987. By making a
deal with them, Dacic recanted for his predecessor's "heresy" and came back
into the fold.

Reunited after 20 years, the "transnational progressivists" are again in
absolute control of Serbia. And lo, how fortuitous, the EU and the American
Empire also see Serbian culture, faith and tradition as threats to their new
post-historical order.

It is looking like the beginning of a beautiful friendship. For all but the
Serbs, of course.
__,_._,___

”The Hunt: “Me and Military Criminals”

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9418

CENTRE FOR RESEARCH ON GLOBALIZATION (CANADA)

”The Hunt: “Me and Military Criminals”

A book on man-hunt by the Tribunal’ s prosecutor general

By Elena Guskova

Global Research, June 22, 2008
Strategic Cultural Foundation

[translated from the Russian original]

The presentation of memories of Carla del Ponte slated for April 3, 2008
just days after she had left her post of the Hague Prosecutor General for
the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. The book published under the title”The
Hunt: “Me and Military Criminals” covers quite a long period of del Ponte’s
stint as the prosecutor from August 1999 to December 2007. A large part of
the book is given to exactly “the hunt” or the search and organisation of
legal prosecution of the guilty people, negotiations with the leadership of
a number of countries and international organisation with an eye to
extradition of the persons the Tribunal regards as military criminals, and
the obstacles put up by officials of different levels to prevent her from
completing her hard work. But the book became a sensation long before its
going out of print, when journalists laid their eyes on it. Its readers all
over the world and people with thinking were shaken by the facts Carla del
Ponte gave in her book that had always been concealed from public, about the
atrocities of Albanians committed against peaceful Serbs and Albanians
unwilling to become part of hostilities in Kosovo and Metohia, and the trade
in body organs extirpated from kidnapped Serbs. The leaders of the Kosovo
Liberation Army (KLA) were the culprits, its militants and currently the
respected politicians Hasim Taci, Agim Ceku and Ramus Haradinai.

Carla del Ponte writes that she got information from journalists way back in
1999 about 300 Serbs who were kidnapped in Kosovo and Metohia and then taken
to Albania. At first the prisoners were placed in the camps in Kukes and
Tropya in Albania’s north, and later surgeons hired by Albanians removed
their vitally important organs in field conditions. The Albanian village of
Burel was also mentioned, where in a “yellow house” the prisoners were
operated on after which their organs were delivered to Italy, and further
on, to major West European medical centres. According to del Ponte, “only
several months later investigators of the Tribunal and UNMIK arrived to
Albania to see the “yellow house”, which journalists described as the place
where prisoners were murdered for their bodily organs. A group of
journalists led the investigators and one Albanian prosecutor to that place.
The house is now painted white; and its host denies that it was repainted,
even though the investigators find traces of yellow along the basement. They
find pieces of sterile gauze. Lying nearby is a used syringe, two plastic
vials, one of which contained muscle relaxant that is usually used in
surgery. Application of special chemicals detects blood stains on the walls
and the floor in one of the rooms and at a cleaned floor sections measuring
1.8 by 0.6 metres." 1

Such revelations at the time when Kosovo declared its independence and when
the militants who took part in all these atrocities turned to politics
really turn the set notions the West has about developments in this unquiet
province upside down. In reality these facts are nothing new, it was just
that no one wanted to hear about them.

Carla del Ponte writes that the families of the Serbs who disappeared in
Kosovo asked her many “quite justified” questions. Why does the Tribunal not
give them any information about the disappeared relations? Why did the
Tribunal fail to find collective graves of Serbian victims? Why the POW
camps were not found? Why Albanians are not arrested after the Association
of the Families of Disappeared Kosovo Serbs tabled its list of suspects to
the Tribunal? Carla answered the questions evasively, saying the Tribunal
did not have documents about the KLA structure, being unable to come to
terms with KFOR2 and UNMIK3 about collaboration and is unable to investigate
all the crimes for reasons of difficulties in finding eyewitnesses of the
murder of Serbs, whereas those who could, are unwilling to speak4. These
answers convince no one. Even our Centre5 has documents about the KLA
structure, to say nothing of Belgrade. It has a vast repository of materials
about the atrocities committed against peaceful population in Kosovo, and
the Serbian authorities handed over to the Tribunal all the necessary
documents accusing the Albanians. Del Ponte writes that Neboisa Covic, then
the chairman of the the SRYu government’s Kosovo and Metohia Coordination
Centre gave to UNMIK information about 196 sites where atrocities against
Serbian population were committed. 6.

In 2001 the list of the kidnapped persons was handed over to del Ponte by
representatives of the Association of the Families of the Disappeared
persons. Simo Spasic, the chairman of this NGO argues that “all their
relations know the people who committed those crimes. They have evidence.
They eye witnessed many crimes. They watched horrible things – remains of
children burnt alive, the ripped stomachs of pregnant women and the embryos.
We have to live with this pang in our hearts but no one is willing to hear
us. We have photos; we know the places where the graves of the people who
were tortured and murdered are. None of the cases has been investigated. All
the facts are carefully concealed. The reason is this: had the crimes of the
Albanians been known about, no one would acknowledge Kosovo’s independence”
(underlined by me – E.G.) Besides, Spasic recalls, foreign TV companies
including the BBC, Deutsche Welle and Sky News showed footage of columns
guarded by KLA militants that moved in the direction of Albania. Those were
exactly the 300 people.”

The Belgrade media quote dozens of situations when a number of Serbian
organisations tired to make the Tribunal investigate Albanian crimes in
Kosovo, presenting to it detailed maps of burial places and concentration
camps in this province and in Albania’s north, evidence of cruel torture and
murder of peaceful residents. But it never started the trial of Albanian
leaders on charges of mass murder of people for obtaining their organs for
transplantation. Just the Association mentioned above has a list of more
than 2 000 people.

As for eyewitnesses, the Tribunal has at its disposal a wide range of ways
to protect them, and it needs to look for them not only among Albanians who
indeed are scared by the militants7 but among Serbs as well. But the word
“Serb” appears to be the term the Tribunal uses only when it means to punish
them. Carla del Ponte admits that she knew about the mass graves in three
provinces of north Albania. Human Rights Watch (HRW) also reported having
seen the documents the Tribunal collected, that included evidence of seven
KLA militants who claimed they were eyewitnesses of the delivery if
kidnapped Serbs to Albania. HRW experts decided to check this information in
Carla del Ponte’s book on their own, even though they initially doubted it.
They got the evidence and succeeded in getting new information about that8.

Thus, the Tribunal and its Prosecutor General had information about the
crimes committed against Serbs. But why did Carla del Ponte kept silent for
such a long time – close to 10 years? Her book gives part of the answer.

According to her the available evidence was not enough to verify the exact
dates of kidnapping, transfer of victims across the Albanian border and
identify the sites of crimes. Besides, Albanian prosecutors and detectives
did not want to collaborate, saying that if Albanians did murder Serbs, they
were right to do it. Carla del Ponte had enough courage the publish the
statement of Fabio Mini, Italian general who headed the KFOR (October, 2002)
who said that “to put Albanians under arrest was difficult because the
former UNMIK and KLA leaders were close relations.” Mini was sure that if
arrests would start “we would see many local leaders going on holidays
guarded by Americans.” 9. That is why, del Ponte concludes, the
investigation came to a halt. 10

The question is why the approaches a number of international organisations,
including UN, NATO and EU used against Serbia (cutting of credits, the
boycott of the talks on its NATO and EU entry, and so forth) were not used
against Albania?

The main thing as we see it is the prosecutor’s revelations boils down to
her making it known that “prosecution of military criminals in the
present-day world is an exclusively political affair. There was a silent
prohibition on accusations of Albanians. In this case the issue of Kosovo’s
independence would not be plausible. 11 Besides, her book makes it possible
to conclude that the peace-keepers and their masters were scary of
Albanians, and “were not ready to issue any sort of a warrant to arrest
Albanians” aware that Agim Ceku and Hasim Taci “were able to ignite a series
of riots in Macedonia and southern Serbia, and in other provinces, calling
the Albanian minorities there to violence.” 12 To continue this assumption,
it can be said that it was necessary to maintain the idea of the Serbian
guilt for everything that had taken place in the Balkans in the 1990s, that
had been worked out for quite a long time, to sustain the reasoning that
NATO activities in the Balkans with an eye at protecting Albanians in Kosovo
in 1999, and prevent world public opinion from concluding that the
international organisations in the post-Yugoslav space practiced double
standards.

The revelations of the Prosecutor were sensational only for those who did
not want to hear. Serbs started shouting about crimes against them in
Kosovo. 13 Danitsa Marinkovic, a courageous former judge of the district
court in Pristina investigated many facts, including earlier kidnappings,
the fake show of the killing of allegedly peaceful people in the village of
Racak, after which the bombing of Yugoslavia started and information about
the KLA death camps. She was also in the know of no other than Hasim Taci
organised kidnappings and established links with European medical centres,
and set into action the mechanism of deliveries of human organs to his
clientele, making fabulous money.

Carla del Ponte’s book provides serious arguments to investigators,
confirming information about subjectivity of activities of international
organisations operating in the former Yugoslavia and acting on its territory
at present. It is evident that the support of Albanians in Kosovo by the
international organisations was not accidental, and it was not accidental
that the facts of the involvement of the current leadership of the province
(Hasim Taci, Agim Ceku and Ramus Haradinai) in the crimes Carla del Ponte
writes about. There is much evidence of these military crimes.

Danitsa Marinkovic told that Fatmir Limai was in charge of the camp in
Klecka, where Serbian prisoners were held. As for the current Kosovo
premier, Hasim Taci was commandant of a similar camp in Lapusnik. “While I
was a judge in Pristina, I went to Klecka, -Danitsa said. “At the time there
were about 100 Serbian women, children and old people. They had been
murdered. We saw parts of their bodies scattered all over the place.” 14
Unlike Hasuim Taci, Fatmir Limai faced the court in the Hague in 2005. And
the verdict was “Not guilty”!

The Hague Tribunal acquitted two more Kosovo criminals, Ramus Haradinai and
Idriz Baliai, the former chief of the KLA squad “Black Eaglkes”. Both
committed atrocious crimes and no one doubted their guilt. One more field
commander, Lahi Brahimai was acknowledged guilty of torture, and sentenced
to six years of imprisonment.

The trial of Ramus Haradinai (then prime minister of Kosovo) and the
above-mentioned militants started in the Hague in April, 2007. Haradinai who
in 1998 was one of the KLA commanders, was charged on 37 articles, 17 of
which were crimes against humanity, and 20 - military crimes. Besides, all
of them were accused of harassment of Kosovo Serbs, Gypsies and Albanians
that were loyal to Serbs, involvement in murders, rape, illegal arrests and
destruction of property. But the judges did not find evidence of the guilt
of Ramus Haradinai and Idriz Baliai. It may be admitted that 7 million Euros
that were raised for their defence played its part. According to the German
“Berliner Zeitung”, the German intelligence regards Haradinai “the godfather
of a mafia clan engaged in speculation of cigarettes, drugs, arms and trade
in people.”

Haradinai has always been an “exclusive” defendant. Del Pobnte writes that
he was taken to the Hague on a German aeroplane, and once landed in Germany
where the leader of Albanian separatists accused of many crimes was greeted
by the guard of honour. Haradinai’s family maintains close ties with the UN
mission on Kosovo. Del Ponte writes about a visit by Larry Rosin (currently
the deputy head of the UN mission in Kosovo) to attend the matrimonial
ceremony of Haradinai’s close relation. No other but Rosin on behalf of the
UN mission in Kosovo gave his personal guarantees to the Hague tribunal that
Haradinai’s condict was proof of “his being able to defend himself in court
not being in custody.” On the other hand, Sorren Essen-Petersen, the former
head of the UN mission in Kosovo contacted the Hague tribunal asking to set
Haradinai free, because “his presence in Kosovo is a guarantee of peace and
stability.” Seeing Haradinai off to the Hague the head of the UN mission in
Kosovo said to Haradinai in public: “My friend! Let us see you returning
soon!” 15

And the triumphant return did happen. The prosecutors failed to present to
the Tribubnal even 10 eyewitnesses, who had been murdered one after another
before the trial. Kutim Berisa, whose ear Baliai personally cut off, was
killed in a car crash in February of 2008 in Montenegro a day after a
meeting with a representative of the Tribunal to discuss the coming court
session. Ilir Selmai was stabbed to death in a provoked fight. Bekim Mustafa
and Auni Elezai were shot dead. Kosovo police officers Sabaheta Tava and
Isuk Hakliai, who agreed to present evidence of Haradinai’s crimes, were
murdered, and the car with their bodies was burned. Three other
eyewitnesses – Jeidin Musta, Sadrik Murici and Vesel Murici were “the
protected eyewitnesses”, but they all were murdered by contract killers.
Tahir Zemai, one of the KLA leaders, who agreed to cooperate with the
tribunal, was shot dead together with his son. Ramir Murici survived a wound
but refused to provide evidence. About 40 potential eyewitnesses of KLA
atrocities in Kosovo and Metohia were murdered. 16 That is why former KLA
militants have no fear of court prosecution. They keep on going about their
criminal activities, confident of their protectors and the might of their
money and arms.

The Hague tribunal has long been known for its lack of objectivity and
prejudication. It has demonstrated its biased prejudgements, spending years
trying to prove the faults of Serbs. No other than Serbs make up two-thirds
of the convicts in Scheveningen. Only Serbian leaders have faced the court
or are on the “wanted” lists, the leaders of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina
are at large. Activities of Serbs, Croats and Muslims get different
qualification at the tribunal: Serbs are accused of genocide for the lack of
human treatments of their prisoners, Croats are guilty of crimes against
humanity, and Muslims are blamed for serious violations of the Geneva
conventions. Only Serbs are accused of ethnic cleansings. That is exactly
the accusation they are faced with for the departure of Albanians from
Kosovo in 1998, whereas the activities of Croats in 1995 when the military
operations “The Shine “and “The Storm” that caused more than 250 000 Serbs
to leave their homes are not qualified this way. The crimes committed by
Serbs are regarded the result of systematic carefully planned policies. In
the case of Croats and Muslims, these are viewed as side effects of
hostilities created by a few undisciplined servicemen.” 17 By its selective
methods of trial the Tribunal violates the very idea of an international
criminal court. Carla del Ponte’s book is a graphic illustration of the
fact.

I happened to follow the Tribunal’s proceedings as an insider, when I acted
as a legal expert in the defence of Serbian general Stanislav Galic, accused
of blockading Saraevo, sharp-shooting and other crimes. It was exactly then
that I got proof of the fact that the official position of the Tribunal was
inherently subjective and sketchy. Principally, the Tribunal comes from the
assumption that in all the hostilities in the Balkans in the last several
years Serbs were aggressors or in their majority they committed military
crimes, whereas other parties waged wars in line with the norms of
international law, defending themselves against the aggressor. The trite
image of Serbian guilt was invented in 1991. Unfortunately, it is very hard
to break it today, as both the parties to the conflict and a number of
international organisations worked hard and persevered at its shaping. Owing
to the activities of the Tribunal, the stamp of a criminal will rest on the
entire Serbian nation for many years, and the international organisations
and NATO would get one more proof that to punish Serbia with sanctions,
blockade and bombings was right.

There never was a presentation of the book of the Tribunal’s principal
counsel for the prosecution never happened. The Swiss Foreign Ministry
prohibited it. Carla del Ponte was urgently dispatched to Buenos Aires,
where she had acted as Switzerland’s Ambassador to Argentina since January
of 2008. Europeans and the world at large seemed to disregard her book.
Quite naturally, Serbians were disgusted demanding the facts she published
in her book be investigated. Kosovars (Kosovo residents), too, were
indignant over the image she portrayed in her memories of the principal
accuser. Kosovo’s Parliamentary Assembly is preparing to sue her at an
international court for causing intentional harm to the image of Kosovo that
only recently declared itself independent.18 Russia’s reaction to the book
was very serious. Our Foreign Ministry tabled an inquiry at the Tribunal,
demanding that ex-Prosecutor General’s statements be verified and
information about steps taken to investigate the issue be given. «The facts
of atrocities committed by KLA militants against Kosovo’s Serbian peaceful
residents under the slogans of fighting for independence that have now
became known to broad public,” – the official statement reads, - “are
shocking. Small wonder that the revelations of Carla del Pont do not fit the
scenario of carving an image of Kosovo Albanians as martyrs, defended by a
number of states that wish to use this image as a basis for legitimising
Kosovo’s “independence”, the statement of Russia’s Foreign Ministry
underlines. By dozing off freedom of speech where crimes against peaceful
population are concerned. Apparently aims at dumping the response of
international political circles and society in general over the facts that
disclose the criminal pre-history of the illegal sovereignty of Kosovo. The
Russian delegation at the session of the EU parliamentary Assembly on April
4-18, 2008 announced its initiative to make the EU responsible for starting
investigation of Carla del Ponte’s information.

When in 1990s we spoke about the absence of objectiveness in activities of a
number of international organisations, the other side would either distrust
us, or pretended to be distrustful. Now Carla del Ponte’s book gives weighty
arguments to investigators and legal experts, even if partly removing the
cover over the backroom games some states are playing to defend their
stance. Many people think that the book arrived too late, so the process
launched by the ITFY is hard to be reversed. But the book’s significance is
its casting doubt on the activities of international organisation in the
former Yugoslavia and the efficiency of the ITFY itself, also casting a
shadow on the KFOR staff and the UN peace-keepers. It also makes sit
possible to sue Carla del Ponte for intentionally concealing from justice
the facts of atrocious military crimes, making her an accomplice of their
perpetuators.

----------------------------------------------------------

NOTES
1 Carla del Ponte. Working for many years the best we can//Politika-
Belgrade,May 3,2008 p.19

2 Kosovo Security Force

3 United Nations Mission in Kosovo

4 Carla del Ponte Working for many years the best we can //
Politika –Belgrade, May 3,2008 ,p.19

5 The Centre for the Studies of the Modern Balkans Crisis of the Institute
for Slav Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences.

6 Carla del Ponte. Неправда је семе будућих ратова //Politika, Belgrade, May
1-2, 2008, p.33.

7 Fokina k.Nacharov S. The Chairman of the Association of SSerbs Disappeared
in Kosovo Simo Spasic: We are Suing Carla del Ponte. She Knew about
Concentration camps for Serbs//Izvestia. –M.2008, April 4

8 Fokina K., Nacarov S.. The Chairman of the Association of the Disappeared
Kosovo Serbs Simo Spasic: We will sue Carla del Ponte. She knew about
concentration camps for Serbs.//Izvestia. – M. 2008. April 4

9 HRW:istraga o trgovinin organima//BBC Serbian. Com – 2008, May 6.

10 Carla del Ponte: Working for many years the best we can...

11 Ditto

12 Ditto

13 Carla del Ponte Кажем Hинhиhу//Politika, Belgrade. 2008, April 23, p.29

14 See 7

15Quote: http://www.koreni.net/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1054;
Bavyrin D.The Albanian Solidarity // Vzglyad. –M.2008 –March 22.
http://www,vz.ru/politics/2008/3/22/154104.html

16 What has the Hague Tribunal Forgive the Albanian Terrorist and Promising
Kosovo politician Ramus Haradianai?//REGNUM.. - 2008. - April 6.

17 Tribunal vise razloga da postoji//Blic.- Belgrade, 2008. – April 4.

18 Klimenko Z.V. Basic Parametres of the Activities of the International
Tribunal for Investigation of Military Crimes in the Former Yugoslavia.
Presentation at the international conference “Present-day problems of the
post-Yugoslav space and Russia’s stance”. Moscow, November 13,2002. HRW:
istraga o trgovini organima // BBC SERBIAN.com. – 2008. 6 maj.

Whoever betrays Kosovo is betraying Serbia!

www.glas-javnosti.co.yu

Glas Javnosti daily, Belgrade
June 20, 2008

Whoever betrays Kosovo is betraying Serbia!
by Dr. Kosta Cavoski

At this time when there are so many sycophants and lickspittles on our
political scene circling around their foreign masters, it is very difficult
to
talk about (Serbian) democracy. Because there actually is no real democracy
(in Serbia), and what we have today is a political particracy: rule by
oligarchic party leaderships that do not care for election results, the will
of the people or the country, let alone for the fate of the nation to which
they belong. Such a particracy is also an outcome of our electoral system.

You probably remember that the Dayton Agreement was signed in Dayton, and
that the foreigners were especially insistent on implementing an electoral
system using proportional representation in Republika Srpska and in all of
Bosnia-Herzegovina. Because proportional representation fragments parties,
and makes it possible for a large number of parties to take part in
elections. The key goal for the foreigners at that time was to reduce the
influence of Karadzic's Serbian Democratic Party, to make it impossible for
it to (keep getting) an absolute majority. By the second elections, they
succeeded.

(In Serbia) proportional representation giving detrimental results is used
because it is supposedly more just, enabling parties that represent minority
interests to also appear in parliament. The majority system where, as a
rule, two, sometimes three and occasionally, exceptionally, a fourth party
manage to get into parliament is a guillotine for small parties.

The majority system is good because it makes it possible for a single party
to form a government, and for a country to have an accountable government.
In such an electoral system, there is the government on one side and the
opposition on the other, and as the English saying goes, 'The opposition
need do nothing except oppose, never propose.' That is, to catch the
government's mistakes, to criticize it publicly and, of course, to possibly
win in the next elections.

The proportional system practiced (in Serbia) has enormous deficiencies. No
party, not even the Radicals, who had a respectable relative majority, had
more than 30 percent or was able to form a government. Therefore,
governments had to be built on coalitions. We have had coalitions that have
been unprincipled and based on interests, marriages of convenience. Hence,
the government could hardly conduct consistent policies.

When the second government of Vojislav Kostunica came with the external
support of the Socialists, the Socialists' condition was that Hague
indictees not be arrested. As a result that government, if you remember,
managed to convince some to turn themselves in; and when General Lukic was
arrested in hospital and sent to The Hague against his will, the Socialists
simply - stayed silent.

Now Zupljanin has been arrested. Because of Slobodan Milosevic, the
Socialists do not recognize the Hague Tribunal. That is why they should have
said something, communicated that they will form no coalition or government
with those arresting indictees and sending them to The Hague. But look: they
are ready to enter a coalition including the Democratic Party, which is
nothing but the extended arm of the foreign occupiers in this country. We
must ask ourselves how the Socialists - who have endured such blows as
having the head of their party arrested, sent to The Hague and subjected to
juridical murder - can even think about cooperating with those who sent
Milosevic to The Hague!

Corruption is the other face of coalitions such as these. Corruption will
never be completely eradicated. As long everyone respects people who are
rich more than people who are knowledgeable, everyone will aspire to be be
rich. Especially those close to the government or in power themselves. But
when the system is a two-party one, the opposition is constantly catching
the government's mistakes. And when a coalition is in power, then there is a
silent agreement among the coalition associates to overlook things in
matters of corruption. This is why everyone is stealing but no one is
accusing anyone of stealing; it is simply ignored.

Today those in power are trying to funnel enough money to permit them to
live to the end of their lives. Unlike today's socialists, the ones of the
past believed that the system would last and ensure their security. So they
did not take too much, figuring they would be taken care of in their old
age. Today this has changed radically and it is none other than coalitions
that are making corruption possible.

During the election campaign we heard the parties telling us how there are
two camps (in Serbia), how some are in favor of keeping Kosovo and Metohija
as a part of Serbia and against joining the EU if that meant Serbia without
Kosovo and Metohija, while others claimed that we must join the European
Union at any price because that is the only way we can get new money and new
jobs. As if the past eight years had not been enough to do this, and we
needed the next eight.

Therefore, the camps were sharply divided. Now we have a small, three-member
coalition with Palma consisting of only three deputy seats that is claiming
we can join Europe and preserve Kosovo and Metohija, too. And how is it
possible to do all these things? How, when 20 members of the EU - out of a
total of 27 - have already recognized Kosovo and Metohija as an independent
state? Because they will keep it in mind during ratification. In other
words, God forbid that a new government of Socialists and "yellows" is
formed, we can expect Brussels to tell us, 'Until you establish good
relations with your neighbors - meaning diplomatic relations with Pristina -
we will not be able to continue talks on entering the EU.'

They are not saying anything about this for now in order to form their
coalition, but when it is formed, it will be said publicly. And our people,
being like they are, will say: what can we do, the hornless are no match for
the horned (a Serbian proverb). However, those of us who know all this well
and see it happening have a duty to warn that a great deception is taking
place. Our people are being tricked. Worst of all, a betrayal of our
national interests is in progress.

All those who reject the possible coalition of the Serbian Radical Party,
the Democratic Party of Serbia, New Serbia and the Socialists are, in fact,
accepting the truncation of Kosovo and Metohija from Serbia, the
independence of Kosovo and Metohija, and entry into the EU without that
central part of our country and our national survival. They are, dear
friends, traitors and we must not allow this to happen. This must not pass!

(Translated on June 21, 2008 by sib)