Failure by IC to protect minorities in Kosovo could lead to renewed conflict

Kosovo's FInal Status: new Report:

http://www.minorityrights.org/ 

 

Press release

 

Failure by international community to protect minorities in Kosovo could lead to renewed conflict  

 

Embargoed for release Monday 7th August 2006 at 10:30 a.m.  

 

7 August 2006 

 

After seven years of UN and international governance the situation in Kosovo is 'little short of disastrous' and there is a high risk of ethnic cleansing occurring again, according to a new report by Minority Rights Group.

The report titled Minority Rights in Kosovo under International Rule launched today, criticizes the UN and international community for failing to protect the rights of Kosovo's minority communities. It describes how the situation of minorities in Kosovo remains the worst in Europe, and highlights the danger of these mistakes being repeated in Iraq.

"The authorities have allowed a segregated society to develop and become entrenched, and thousands of minorities remain displaced," the report says.

"Nowhere (in Europe) is there such a level of fear for so many minorities that they will be harassed or attacked, simply for who they are or what language they speak," it adds.

According to the report, the short term measures of separating Kosovo's two main communities, Albanians and Serbs, has disastrous long term implications.

Clive Baldwin the author of the report, says: "The reality is that segregation is entrenched, creating a society that is so fractured that non of its people feel protected. They live in fear of mass conflict re-occurring in the long term."

The report, which looks at the situation of Kosovo's Albanian, Serb and other communities, including, Bosniak, Croat, Turk, Ashkalia and Roma, argues that problems to do with minorities are not due to lack of resources. In fact, the international administration has been one of the most expensive in UN history.

Instead, the report says a mindset of segregation, a lack of clear accountable government and a lack of any real protection of human rights and the rule of law are among the reasons why minorities continue to suffer in Kosovo.

It also faults the international community for failing to learn from past mistakes and use the experience and expertise available to them to protect minority rights.
"It is almost incredible is that all these mistakes have been made under an international administration consisting of institutions, notably the UN and OSCE, with a long institutional memory of addressing minority rights," Baldwin says.

According to the report the 'future status negotiations' represents both the best hope and the greatest danger and as the future of Kosovo is currently being decided the report calls for a radical move away from the patterns of segregation. It also recommends that minority rights are guaranteed by the rule of law and that all minorities, including minority women, should be consulted on the future of their lives, their property and their country.

"The message is clear to all parties. The Serbs need to realize that the effective protection of all communities in Kosovo in an integrated society is the only long term solution. It is in their best interest," says Baldwin.

"We urge the international community to recognise the damage that segregation can cause. They must realize that the Serbs and Kosovo's other communities, including the Albanians, are not benefiting from the current system. The only long term security for Kosovo will be effective protection for all minorities," he says.

For more information or to arrange interviews with Clive Baldwin, please contact Farah Mihlar on 0207 4224205 (office) 078 70596863 (mobile) or farah.mihlar@mrgmail.org

Notes to Editors

• Since 1999 Kosovo has had an interim administration, consisting the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), which includes representatives of the EU and Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and a NATO-led Kosovo Force.
• Clive Baldwin is Head of Advocacy at Minority Rights Group International. From 2000 to 2002 he was a member of the OSCE Mission in Kosovo. Previously, he was a practising human rights lawyer.
• Minority Rights Group International (MRG) is a non governmental organisation working to secure the rights of ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities and indigenous peoples worldwide.

 

Kosovo report summary

By Preti Taneja

Nowhere in Europe is there such segregation as Kosovo. Thousands of people are still displaced and in camps. Nowhere else are there so many 'ethnically pure' towns and villages scattered across such a small province. Nowhere is there such a level of fear for so many minorities that they will be harassed simply for who they are. And perhaps nowhere else in Europe is at such a high risk of ethnic cleansing occurring in the near future - or even a risk of genocide.

This is not a description of Kosovo in 1998 or in 2003. It is a description of Kosovo today. For the Serbs and 'other minorities' - the Roma, Bosniaks (Slavic Muslims), Croats, Turks and Albanians of Kosovo - who suffer from expulsion from their homes, discrimination and restrictions on speaking their own language, the pattern of violence they have endured for so long may be about to be entrenched as law in the new Kosovo, as the future status talks continue behind closed doors in Vienna.

How, after one of the longest and most expensive international administrations since the creation of the United Nations (UN), whose mandate was explicitly to secure an environment for refugees to return home and ensure public safety (Resolution 1244, Article 10), has this been allowed to occur?

This report tracks a clear failure on the part of the international protectorate to learn lessons from the past and draw on the minority rights expertise available to it in the UN and other bodies. This failure has allowed decision-makers to remain unaccountable, and produced a Constitutional Framework that refers to minority rights so broadly that they are too wide to be effective. Instead of integration, the current situation encourages the opposite: segregation. The report shows how the initial international governance structure - five different armed brigades in Kosovo, each running a different region and led by a different country (France, Germany, Italy the UK and the USA), each with very different policies towards security and minorities - has kept fresh the wounds inflicted before the security forces first arrived and allowed patterns of violence to be repeated.

The problem is not lack of financing. Conversely, the fact that so much money has been spent on the region has allowed segregation in public services to become an easy solution to conflict between groups. A short-term mentality, the use of quota systems in public services and an electoral system based on rigid ethnic representation show a lack of commitment to implementing minority rights in any meaningful way.

This report shows how the future status negotiations currently under way in Vienna represent both the best hope and the greatest danger for peace.

For hope to be justified, the report emphasizes, there is a radical need for change in mindset and in practice:

• Minority rights should be guaranteed by a rule of law that is actually taken seriously and applied.

Till today, the governing administration, the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) and the NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR) have declared themselves above regulation, overturning even the most basic of human rights laws, that of requiring all detention to be by order of a judge. Rights that exist on paper are made meaningless, and any fragile sense of security minorities have is consistently undermined. Therefore:

• The criminal justice system must hold those responsible for past crimes to account and see them arrested whatever their political power.

Out of hundreds of investigations into the 2004 atrocities, few have been prosecuted, and those few convicted have received lenient sentences.

• All minorities should be consulted on the future of their lives, their property and their country, instead of talks taking place among a select group of people, in secret and behind closed doors.
• Specific efforts must be made to include women's views and international negotiations should include minority rights and gender experts.

When the Constitutional Framework was drawn up in 2001 it was not put up for general consultation. The same mistake is being made today, with talks taking place in Vienna, far from where the most disadvantaged can take part. Understanding the devastating realities facing returning refugees and communities wanting to keep their language alive, to travel in safety and to seek work at all levels of society - all of which have become next to impossible for Kosovo's minorities despite seven years of international intervention - is vital for anyone involved in peacekeeping missions, in reportage or in international governance.

The report shows that measures that separate communities through religion or ethnicity should be transitional, if they have to be used at all. The future status talks offer a chance for change. Otherwise, the danger is that the patterns of segregation that are accepted in Kosovo, and that lead to the terror of ethnic cleansing, will be enshrined in the Constitution, and will be played out again over the next decade.

 

Why Milosevic was never trated in Russia?

Serbianna

Views & Analysis
Moscow Calling

Why Milosevic was never trated in Russia?
By Jonathan Widell, Dr Patrick Barriot and Jacques VergÄs


Slobodan Milosevic was found dead in his cell in the United Nations Detention Unit in The Hague on March 11, 2006. According to the pathological report, the cause of death was the heart infarction. That is still debated. The cause of death hinges, at least in part, on the question whether the cause of death could have been prevented by the treating physicians. Understandably, they would prefer a cause of death that could not be detected nor treated. The debate can get convoluted and technical, but it cannot be overstated that Milosevic was known to be a sick man when he came to The Hague. The tribunal could not pretend it did not know of his health problems. The detention unit even confiscated Milosevic's antihypertensive drugs on his arrival. Even if Milosevic's hypertensive problems have become part of the tribunal's folklore by now, closer medical attention has revealed much more profound health problems. Those who do not want to admit that the tribunal could have done anything about the problems seem to opt for ventricular fibrillation as the cause of death, because it fills the bill: it was hard to detect and to treat. However, that was not all. To cite just one of the preventable, though perhaps more innocent-sounding, health conditions we could mention the hearing loss, which was ultimately diagnosed by one of the Dutch physicians. Because the cardiac problems had taken the center stage, the tribunal did not have the opportunity to decide how it was going to conduct the trial in spite of Milosevic's hearing problem.
Milosevic's medical history soon turns into a report card of the court's appointed physicians. One does not have to be prejudiced or particularly harsh to conclude that at least the medical officer, Dr Paulus Falke, may have been out of his depth. The Trial Chamber even remarked that one of his reports was unsatisfactory. The fact appeared in all its poignancy after the examination by three "foreign", i.e. non-Dutch, doctors who examined Milosevic on November 4, 2005 at Milosevic's request. One of them, Dr Margarita Shumilina, was bold enough to mention in her report that the treatment of Milosevic in the detention unit had been inadequate so far. The visiting doctors made the concrete proposal to prescribe a six-week rest for Milosevic until further tests could be carried out.

The prosecution thought the medical problems concealed some sinister conspiracy against the tribunal. Its theory must have been that Milosevic was losing his nerve as the end of the trial was approaching and did everything he could to disrupt the remainder of the trial. So he sought an escape by some desperate act. Even the reliability of the visiting doctors was questioned. It did not seem quite plausible to argue that they had been bought by Milosevic to produce reports that he wanted. However, no matter how remote that possibility seemed, the tribunal clung to that explanation rather than admit that its physicians had been wrong.

In the meantime, Milosevic must have been strengthened in his conviction that his health was really at stake and that whatever could still be done about it was not going to happen in The Hague. After a period of medical as well as legal uncertainty, he submitted his request for provisional release on December 20, 2005. He wanted to get treated at the Bakoulev Center in Moscow.

By that time, the reports of November 4, 2005 seemed outdated and, as it turned out, the original reports submitted by the visiting doctors were not formulated clearly enough with Moscow-based treatment in mind. The prosecution made the most of the time gap between the reports and Milosevic's current medical position. In fact, the prosecution realized how useful it was to delay the process. The winter recess, during which Milosevic planned to get treated in Moscow, had passed, and the prosecution was still posing questions about his choice of the Bakoulev Center. The Center's main attraction, the expeditious treatment promised by the Head of the Center, Dr. Bockeria, began to wear thin.

But so did Milosevic's health. The time-consuming case within a case that Milosevic's request had prompted was at cross purposes with the urgency of the matter. The arguments centering on the expeditiousness that were thrown around in the process sounded hollow. All they did was to prolong the resolution of the case even further.

Not that Milosevic's choice for the Bakoulev Center had come out of the blue. Dr Elena Golukhova from the Bakoulev Center had examined him in early 2004, as was confirmed in the Parker report, which the tribunal published after his death. He had good reasons to trust the specialist from the Bakoulev Center, and his declared trust in the medical specialists at the Center was put forward in the request for provisional release as the main reason his wish should have been respected. Instead, the prosecution started making ad hominem arguments against Dr Shumilina, whose primary fault was that she had stated that Milosevic's current treatment was inadequate.

The confidentiality of Milosevic's medical file has been lifted, at least some of it. There are still many unanswered questions, and the documents that would answer them are not available. What we can do is to point out the questions. Still, the medical file to date contains more than 360 pages. In what follows we will review the documentation. Due to the amount of material that we intend to cover, the article is not really an article. It is longer.

I. Row of rotating doctors.......CONTINUED----> http://www.serbianna.com/columns/widell/005.shtml

Dividing the Pannonian Sea

Dividing the Pannonian Sea

By Russell Gordon


If those who aspire to the fulfillment of the Wolfowitz Doctrine were nonplussed by the termination of the 50-year Cold War with the Soviet Union, existent blowback may be the answer to their hegemonic prayers.

The West has finally forced Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s hand, with Russia now supporting the Iran/Syria Axis. Zbigniew Brzezinski’s less than stellar protégés have indeed revived the Cold War: by pushing NATO eastward, humiliating and bombing the Serbs, isolating Russia from its near-abroad through thinly-veiled, anti-democratic “color revolutions”, and covertly supporting al Qaeda terrorists in Chechnya. Russia, in turn, has escalated its support of Iran, Syria, possibly some Iraqi insurgents, Columbian Marxist guerillas, and others in opposition to US global policies.

Blowback - intended or otherwise - is nothing new to the US foreign policy establishment. The US helped create the Viet-Minh while materially backing the French, thus setting the stage for French loss of former colonial possessions in Indochina, and US entry into the region. In a similar vain, the US heavily-armed the most extreme of Afghan and foreign mujahedeen factions, which helped lead to the Soviet Union’s demise, but as forecasted, created a stateless nemesis whose future eradication will prove much more tenuous.

And indeed, if Washington gives independence to Albanian Islamo-fascists in the Serbian province of Kosovo, Foggy Bottom may become up to its’ deaf ears in unforeseen consequences. Or are they?

Charading as Wilsonianism, the Wolfowitz Doctrine has shown itself to be a cheap knock-off of Bismarckian and Hitlerian doctrine, amplifying Bismarck’s Mittel-Europa to a global scale. Washington’s foreign policy elite have effectively shown any and all comers who might have defensible interests that all bets are off in regards to morality, justice, civility, ethics, nobility, and even logic. To say that the US global policies are even in defense of US strategic interests is presumptuous, given the obvious long term consequences.

In the short-term, the US already is seeing negative results. US forces are bogged down in Iraq, squaring off against Islamist and indigenous insurgent forces supported by Sunni and Shi’ite entities – local and regional. Russia, China, Iran and former Soviet Central Asian states have formed a countervailing bloc via the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Iran is saber rattling atomic capabilities, and playing the Hezbollah trump card to counter-balance Sunni Arab influence in the Middle East.

Common misperception is that the Russians are the Serbs’ historical friends, but as the Serb saying goes, “God help us if the Russians arrive.” Indeed, as no nation has friends, but rather allies of immediate convenience, Putin is ready to sacrifice Kosovo to set a precedent for Trans-Dniestr, Abkhazia, and Nagorno-Karabakh, some of which will prove troubling for US plans in dominating the Caucasus oil supply. Moreover, Kosovo independence will affirm to countless separatist groups worldwide that military escalation combined with public relations will eventually yield results, thus making increased localized warfare inevitable.

In the Balkans, it appears that Washington wishes not the continuation of Belgrade's current “collaborative” policies, but rather to force Serbia into a corner, thus driving the Serbian populace towards the Radicals, and thereby creating a justification to isolate Serbia yet again, all the while claiming the Serbs have “chosen the forces of darkness and isolation over a brighter European future.”

With the release of Muslim war criminal Naser Oric from ICTY Hague detention, and continued demands for the arrest and extradition of Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic, the Serbian populace may have achieved final proof that the international policy bias was not a series of mistakes, but rather intended as humiliation. Provoking their inat – self-defeating spite –will again enable a free hand to Washington militarists to exact further reprisals in a continuing message to global rivals, and conveniently causing further disunity in Europe. As for the Serbs, damned if they do, and damned if they don’t.

Predictably, the US can then jump back into pre-determined paradigms of demanding special status for Sandzak/Raska, Presevo area, eastern Montenegro, Voivodina, and western Macedonia. Undoubtedly media war, and Albanian terrorist actions, will be employed as provocations, and already US Marines are training with maps of Montenegro, to 'intervene to stop “genocide” against Albanians.' The humiliating psychological conditions are not too dissimilar to those imposed on Germany at Versailles, and may yet contribute to armed conflict at a later date. As far as NATO is concerned, this may be in their perceived interests.
 
Unfortunately, many Serbs are still stuck in outdated paradigms themselves, appealing to logic, reason and decency which have long since been forgone in the halls of power in Washington and the capitols of the co-opted. One Western analyst opined that “most Serbian politicians are fighting over money….”  With gauleiters unwittingly assisting in a phased plan of dismemberment, time may be running short.

Possible encouraging signs include the appointment to DCI of Gen. Michael Hayden, who along with his mentor Gen. Charles G. Boyd has been outspoken in his criticism of US policy and media bias against the Serbs, singling out CNN and the New York Times by name for their duplicity. But as one intelligence analyst noted, Hayden may become “boxed into a corner [at the CIA] in five minutes.” Ohio National Guard troops are training Serbian Army troops in Serbia, and two US F-16’s recently touched down in a courtesy call to the Serbian military – sans accoutrements explosifs of 1999. Clearly there is some diversity of opinion in Washington and Langley.

But as one Serbian-American publisher said, “a conspiracy of silence continues” about the realities of the previous and current Balkan conflicts, which could prepare the way for US public support for continued US moves against Serbia -- should darker forces win out. Dividing the Pannonian Sea
http://www.serbianna.com/columns/gordon/003.shtml

Book Review Ratko Mladic: Justice or Vindictive Triumph? | Carl Savich | Columns | Serbianna.com

Book Review Ratko Mladic: Justice or Vindictive Triumph? Carl Savich Columns Serbianna.com

Navigating Kosovo's future - Print Version - International Herald Tribune

Navigating Kosovo's future - Print Version - International Herald Tribune:

"Navigating Kosovo's future

The New York Times

FRIDAY, AUGUST 18, 2006

The 1999 war over Kosovo left the former Serbian province in political limbo, postponing the question of possible independence for another day. That day is now at hand, and the main question facing the international community is not whether Kosovo will become independent, but when and how. Status talks are expected to conclude in the next few months, with the UN Security Council to rule on the issue by the end of the year.

The original plan was for Kosovo's political leaders to demonstrate their ability to govern responsibly before formal discussions of sovereignty could begin. They haven't really done so, although they have made some grudging moves under international pressure.

Yet as a practical matter, Kosovo's international wardship cannot be extended indefinitely. The most promising way to encourage further progress is by moving ahead to a carefully conditioned form of limited autonomy.

The most critical issue, now as ever, is guaranteeing the rights of the ethnic Serb minority. Any independence arrangement will have to assure minorities a substantial role in government, particularly in sensitive areas like the Justice Ministry.

For the first few years at least, the powers of Kosovo's new government must be strictly limited. An international authority will have to monitor the government's fulfillment of internationally agreed conditions, paying special attention to issues like the rule of law and minority rights. A few thousand NATO-led troops should remain in Kosovo with the power to intervene when necessary to compel compliance.

Most of the countries with troops in Kosovo would prefer to bring them home now. But Kosovo's march toward independence is going to remain difficult and dangerous for years. The need for a continuing armed international presence should be non-negotiable.

Kosovo: The Power of Compromise

Kosovo: The Power of Compromise Aleksandar Mitic Columns serbianna.com: "Kosovo: The Power of Compromise
By Aleksandar Mitic
A true, balanced, and negotiated compromise on Kosovo's future status would swing the pendulum of Balkan stability towards the European path.
A manipulated, one-sided, and imposed decision would, however, open a Pandora's box of secessionist movements in the world and release the ghosts of a nationalist past in the Balkans.
As we approach the beginning of talks on the future status of the Kosovo province, it becomes crucial to grasp the full complexity of the Kosovo status issue.
There has been an attempt in the last year and a half to close down international debate before the status talks had even begun by suggesting that only independence is a viable solution for Kosovo. "

No Concessions Over Kosovo � No Ratko Mladic

FOCUS Information Agency: "No Concessions Over Kosovo � No Ratko Mladic



17 August 2006 15:30 FOCUS News Agency



Novi Sad. Serbia�s Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica will not hand in General Ratko Mladic to The Hague Tribunal if he doesn�t receive concessions over Kosovo in return, the chair of the Center for Peace and Democracy Development Vesna Pesic said cited by Serbian radio station B92.
�If Kostunica does not convince the Contact Group to adopt one of the variants that would correspond to Serbia�s wishes and Kosovo receives independence instead he will hand in neither Ratko Mladic nor the others wanted by The Hague Tribunal,� Vesna Pesic said. According to her this is the reason why General Mladic is still at large and not at The Hague prison."

Milosevic Son Again Accuses UN Court Over Father's Death

Company News Story:

"Milosevic Son Again Accuses UN Court Over Father's Death


BELGRADE (AP)--Slobodan Milosevic's son, in a letter published Thursday, reiterated accusations that the U.N. war crimes tribunal was responsible for the ex-Serb leader's death.
Marko Milosevic alleged in the letter published by Vecernje Novosti daily that the U.N. court 'had a monopoly over my father's health' while he was in its detention at The Hague, Netherlands.
'The tribunal sentenced my father to death ... when it rejected his demand for a temporary release, ignoring his health and rights,' Marko Milosevic said in the letter.
'And, in the end, premeditatedly, the tribunal took my father to a death by natural causes.'
Milosevic died of a heart attack in March, while he was being tried for genocide for his role in the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s.
During the proceedings, Milosevic had refused to hire a lawyer and represented himself in the court, despite doctors' warnings that the stress could affect his already high blood pressure.
The tribunal in February refused to allow Milosevic to travel to Russia for treatment, saying he was in good hands at the Netherlands-based detention unit.
After Milosevic died, his family and allies in Serbia accused the tribunal of driving him to death by allegedly not granting proper medical care. Milosevic's Belgrade lawyer even suggested that the former Serbian and Yugoslav leader had feared he was being poisoned.
The Hague court has rejected the allegations.
Marko Milosevic said the tribunal's report about the cause of his fat"

Toward a Greater Albania�-�Editorials/Op-Ed�-�The Washington Times, America's Newspaper

Toward a Greater Albania - Editorials/Op-Ed - The Washington Times, America's Newspaper

Toward a Greater Albania

By Michael DjordjevicPublished August 16, 2006


Part two in a three-part series. With the fall of communism and emergence of America as the only world superpower, the hope for peace, freedom and progress was high. Nonetheless, in the twilight of the old order lurked a new global danger: fundamentalist Islam. This new challenge to world peace and stability is rooted in a cosmology older and stronger than ideologies of fascism or communism or ideas of the New World Order. The Balkans have historically been the key battlefield between Islam and European civilization since the battle at Kosovo, where the Ottoman Turks clashed with the Serbs in 1389, to the present. At its apex, the Islamic tide reached and was stopped at the gates of Vienna (1683). It was finally pushed out in the Balkan War of 1912, when the combined armies of Greece, Serbia, Montenegro and Bulgaria were stopped at the Gates of Istanbul (Constantinople) by the intervention of the great European powers of that period. Although not admitted in the capitals of the West, the real and the first clash with this revived expansionist force took place in the Balkans in the 1990s. In reality we have fought on the side of our enemies. As in Bosnia before, now in Kosovo, the West has again failed to deal with the basic and overarching Balkan problem � the Serbian Question. Simply, this issue originated from the fact that with the fall of Yugoslavia, nearly overnight one-third of the Serbs found themselves in a new sovereign state hastily recognized by the EU and then the United States. Due to years of experience of genocide and ethnic cleansing during WW II by the Croats, Bosnian and Albanian Muslims, the large Serbian minorities in these two countries demanded self-determination. This was denied as the West took the stand that "borders are inviolable." Yet now the Albanians in Kosovo are encouraged to violate the Serbian borders via self-determination, while the Bosnian Serbs in the entity of Republika Srpska are still denied the same right. Kosovo, a province in Serbia, is about 15 percent of her territory. Within only two generations (1929-1980) from 15 percent of Kosovo population, Albanians reached 80 percent; the Serbs declined from 60 percent to 18 percent in the same period. This is a clear-cut example of what open borders, a high birthrate and wrong politics can produce. After Serbia was bombed to submission in a "humanitarian" war in 1999, Kosovo was given to the United Nations for administration � with catastrophic results. Quickly, the province was methodically and ethically cleansed. It is now monoethnic. More than 150 Christian churches and old monasteries have been destroyed, while some 200 new mosques and a number of schools for the young were feverishly built by Wahhabi funds. Violent and corrupt, Kosovo has become a den of thieves, arm smugglers and white slavers and the key narcotics transfer point to Europe. Threatening violence, the Islamists demand independence from Serbia. America and Europe are seriously considering forcing Serbia to cede her land in contravention to all international norms and laws and U.N. Resolution 1244. This would be the second Moslem sovereign state created in the Balkans in one decade by the international community. As correctly asserted, "even as Western societies worry about the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, the international community's ill-conceived policies for Kosovo...may prove to be directly responsible for production of Europe's own Taliban." Independence for Kosovo will likely pave the tormenting road to "Greater Albania," thus assuring a permanent instability and turmoil in the Balkans. The idea of a "Greater Albania" is essentially a mono-ethnic nationalistic construct originated in 1878 by the Albanian League. To many Albanians, an independent and monoethnic Kosovo is nothing but a phase of the process leading to fulfillment of these nationalistic aspirations. Of course, changing the now existing borders of four sovereign states in the volatile Balkans is nothing short of creating conditions for permanent instability and new cycles of wars. These conflicts would readily and easily be exploited by outside parties, particularly terrorists and international criminal networks. So long as we fail to recognize Serbia's legitimate interests and continue to violate the moral norms and international legal system, the Kosovo problem cannot be solved. As Ambassador Jack Matlock correctly concluded in the New York Times in 1999: "Neither partition nor independence nor indefinite foreign occupation will win in the long run without the acquiescence of the Serbian people." As the Serbs have already waited five centuries to regain the cradle of their civilization and identity, they will certainly try to do so again, and in much shorter time. Part I Michael Djordjevich, an American of Serbian origin, founded and served as the first president of the Serbian Unity Congress.

Latest video shows alleged Balkan war crimes

 

Balkans

Latest video shows alleged Balkan war crimes

Another video has been broadcast in the Balkans which purports to show war crimes committed against ethnic Serbs in Croatia in 1995. It appears to show members of Bosnian paramilitary groups brutally interrogated a Serb prisoner who is later killed. The fighters are also shown vandalising an orthodox church.

This latest images - from nearly two hours of videos - were broadcast by Croatian television. The previous amateur video, allegedly involving Croatian fighters as well as those from Bosnia-Herzegovina, was transmitted by Serbian TV last week.

The violence took place in the self-declared Serb republic of Krajina when a Croatian military offensive was launched in 1995 to retake contested territories from Serbs. Hundreds of Serbs were killed and around 200,000 thousand fled into Bosnia and Serbia. Both Bosnia and Croatia have opened war crimes inquiries after receiving copies of the video that was broadcast by Serbian television last week.

http://euronews.net/create_html.php?page=detail_info&article=374383&lng=1

THE PATRIOT NEWS - Balkan connection (Ltr published) by Stella L. Jatras

http://www.pennlive.com/letters/patriotnews/index.ssf?/base/news/115531980717170.xml&coll=1

 

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

 

 

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Click here to send a letter to the editor online Balkan connection Sunday, August 13, 2006 A front-page article (June 19) reported that the planned poison gas attack on the New York subway system was canceled by al-Qaida's No. 2 man, Ayman al-Zawahiri, 45 days before its execution because "it would not be spectacular enough." A July 27 article, which reports that al-Zawahiri is seeking support for jihad from non-Muslims, clearly demonstrates the terrorist dangers to this country. In addition to non-Muslims, Islamic terrorists are reportedly relying on European Muslims who don't fit the physical profile of Middle Eastern terrorists. Because the Balkans has become a central point of this recruitment effort, we must not ignore al-Zawahiri's connection to the area. The Serbian province of Kosovo, under U.N. administration since 1999, has been the center of Islamic terrorism and ethnic cleansing. Unfortunately, some in the administration are moving headlong toward establishing Kosovo as an independent state run by terrorists and war criminals, while ignoring the fact that Kosovo has become a center for terrorism and crime in the Balkans. Did we learn nothing from 9/11, or are we about to make another colossal mistake in the Balkans? -- STELLA L. JATRAS, Camp Hill

Kosovo 2006 - "risk of genocide"

Print this damning and timely report  (PDF link below) and send it to all those who built their political lives on "humanitarian intervention"!


"Nowhere in Europe is there such segregation as Kosovo.
Thousands of people are still displaced and in camps.
Nowhere else are there so many ‘ethnically pure’ towns and villages scattered across such a small province. Nowhere is there such a level of fear for so many minorities that they will be harassed simply for who they are. And perhaps nowhere else in Europe is at such a high risk of ethnic cleansing occurring in the near future – or even a risk of genocide."


http://www.minorityrights.org
http://www.minorityrights.org/admin/Download/pdf/MRGKosovoReport.pdf
Press release
http://www.minorityrights.org/media_centre/media_press/media_centre_press_ko
sovo.htm
Failure by international community to protect minorities in Kosovo could lead to renewed conflict Embargoed for release Monday 7th August 2006 at 10:30 a.m.
7 August 2006
After seven years of UN and international governance the situation in Kosovo is 'little short of disastrous' and there is a high risk of ethnic cleansing occurring again, according to a new report by Minority Rights Group.
The report titled Minority Rights in Kosovo under International Rule launched today, criticizes the UN and international community for failing to protect the rights of Kosovo's minority communities. It describes how the situation of minorities in Kosovo remains the worst in Europe, and highlights the danger of these mistakes being repeated in Iraq.
"The authorities have allowed a segregated society to develop and become entrenched, and thousands of minorities remain displaced," the report says.
"Nowhere (in Europe) is there such a level of fear for so many minorities that they will be harassed or attacked, simply for who they are or what language they speak," it adds.
According to the report, the short term measures of separating Kosovo's two main communities, Albanians and Serbs, has disastrous long term implications.
Clive Baldwin the author of the report, says: "The reality is that segregation is entrenched, creating a society that is so fractured that non of its people feel protected. They live in fear of mass conflict re-occurring in the long term."
The report, which looks at the situation of Kosovo's Albanian, Serb and other communities, including, Bosniak, Croat, Turk, Ashkalia and Roma, argues that problems to do with minorities are not due to lack of resources. In fact, the international administration has been one of the most expensive in UN history.
Instead, the report says a mindset of segregation, a lack of clear accountable government and a lack of any real protection of human rights and the rule of law are among the reasons why minorities continue to suffer in Kosovo.
It also faults the international community for failing to learn from past mistakes and use the experience and expertise available to them to protect minority rights.
"It is almost incredible is that all these mistakes have been made under an international administration consisting of institutions, notably the UN and OSCE, with a long institutional memory of addressing minority rights,"
Baldwin says.
According to the report the 'future status negotiations' represents both the best hope and the greatest danger and as the future of Kosovo is currently being decided the report calls for a radical move away from the patterns of segregation. It also recommends that minority rights are guaranteed by the rule of law and that all minorities, including minority women, should be consulted on the future of their lives, their property and their country.
"The message is clear to all parties. The Serbs need to realize that the effective protection of all communities in Kosovo in an integrated society is the only long term solution. It is in their best interest," says Baldwin.
"We urge the international community to recognise the damage that segregation can cause. They must realize that the Serbs and Kosovo's other communities, including the Albanians, are not benefiting from the current system. The only long term security for Kosovo will be effective protection for all minorities," he says.
For more information or to arrange interviews with Clive Baldwin, please contact Farah Mihlar on 0207 4224205 (office) 078 70596863 (mobile) or farah.mihlar@mrgmail.org


Notes to Editors
Since 1999 Kosovo has had an interim administration, consisting the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), which includes representatives of the EU and Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and a NATO-led Kosovo Force.
Clive Baldwin is Head of Advocacy at Minority Rights Group International.
>From 2000 to 2002 he was a member of the OSCE Mission in Kosovo.
Previously, he was a practising human rights lawyer.
Minority Rights Group International (MRG) is a non governmental organisation working to secure the rights of ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities and indigenous peoples worldwide.

Read the report summary

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Download the PDF copy of Minority Rights in Kosovo under International Rule English Albanian Serbian = ________________________________________________________________________
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A Must See Video

 

This is a must see short video for everyone, exposing some of the greatest fraud in the main stream media regarding the Israeli conflict

 

http://www.aish.com/movies/PhotoFraud.asp

 

COMMENTS:  Regarding falsely orchestrating events and doctoring photos. 

 

Remember Dubrovnik where a media fraud reported that the Serbs destroyed the Pearl of the Adriatic, the city of Dubrovnik?  Read below the similarity between the alleged burning of Dubrovnik and the cover of U.S. News and World Report which shows a Hezbollah fighter overlooking a fire in Beirut.    The caption reads, "Wreckage of an Israeli jet billowing smoke in Beirut."  Upon closer look, it is not a war scene.  No, those are automobile tires burning in a garbage dump. 

 

Peter Maher, Professor Emeritus of Linquistics, visited Dubrovnik, Croatia, to see for himself the truth about the war in the Balkans.  It should be noted that Dr. Maher, a Roman Catholic, not a Serbian Orthodox source, video taped the entire city, building by building and his footage was shown on Access TV Channel 19 in Chicago.

 

Dr. Maher wrote, "A few months earlier, the press was filled with stories that the Pearl of the Adriatic had been reduced to rubble. The stories were fakes."  Professor Maher goes on to explain just how it happened:  "The dramatic 'Dubrovnik burning' pictures were shot with long lenses. . . .But the smoke was from the fuel tanks of two pleasure boats burning in the Old Harbor ... Dubrovnik's Old City never burned and was never even targteted by the federal forces.   It was not navy guns that did the damage, but plastic and incendiary devices planted on the spot by Croatian forces....The only structures destroyed in Dubrovnik were the home of the Serbian Orthodox priest and the 17th Century Serbian Orthodox Liberary, it was burned from within and there was no evidence of artillery damage to the exterior of the building. 

 

And of course, let us not forget the image of the wailing woman in this video - how many did we see, month after month, of Bosnian or Kosovo women and children wailing on the front pages of all our newspapers?  I do not denegrate their suffering because many of them did suffer needlessly, but intentionally by the Bosnian Muslim government of Alija Izetbegovic. But U.S. newspapers never showed photos of Serbian women and children suffering from NATO bombs, or their slaugfhtering at the hands of Agim Ceku, the Muslim war lord who today is walking a free man. 

 

If only we had had this kind of email/bloging during the war against the Serbian people, the lies would have been exposed immediately and perhaps, just perhaps, things might have been different - one would hope.   

 

'Nuf said.  Stella

Crossfire War - Serbs in Kosovo Arming Self - Defence Groups

Crossfire War - Serbs in Kosovo Arming Self - Defence Groups
By Willard Payne
Crossfire War - TEHRAN WATCH - Southeast Europe Theatre: Tehran - Belgrade/Pristina - Vienna; Serbs Arming Self-Defense Groups - Former Military and Police Officers
Night Watch: BELGRADE - Reuters reports that the six capitals which make up the Contact Group on Serbia/Kosovo are increasingly concerned at what they call "recent developments". The capitals are: Washington-London-Berlin-Paris-Rome-Moscow. They refuse to specify what the "recent developments" are but ominous reports have been circulating that Serbian communities in Kosovo are strengthening self-defence groups composed of former military and police officers. This is obviously in preparation for the declaration of Kosovo's independence, the majority Albanian Muslim province of southern Serbia. [SWISSINFO]
Serbia Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica is on record as saying Monday that when Kosovo independence is declared he will state Kosovo is an integral part of Serbia, which of course gives his and Belgrade's approval for Serbian armed nationalist groups to open fire. Three Serbian urban communities in northern Kosovo, where Serbs are still the majoirty, have severed all contact with Kosovo's capital Pristina, which is controlled by Albanians. The Serbs in the north of the province, north of the Ibar river, are in a much better position, politically and economically since they have a continuous land link to Serbia. It's quite possible the shooting could start even before independence is declared.
The only question is who will the Serbs target first, Albanians or the Contact Group? Encouraging them in this new war is Tehran, which signed a security agreement with Belgrade last January that received a lot of publicity in both countries. Tehran will use the new fighting as a way of silencing Vienna, the capital that houses the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which had been investigating Iran's uranium enrichment - nuclear weapons program. Fighting in the Balkans will also end the West's attention on the war in Western Asia (Middle East), which Tehran had Hamas-Hezbollah start against Israel. There will be no more talk of an international peace force monitoring Lebanon led by Europe.
Night Watch Information Service
http://www.crossfirewar.com


Copyright � 2006, NewsBlaze, Daily News

My letter to Newsweek: Bosnia Reborn

(Funny! I haven't heard a word from these people! Stella)
********************************************************************
Newsweek
Letter to the editor(s)
3 August 2006
The authors of Bosnia Reborn, (7 August) make Sarajevo sound like Paradise. If this is true, then why are Croatians and Bosnian Serbs making noises that they want to separate, each wishing to join their mother countries? While the US administration was supporting the Bosnian Muslim government of Alija Izetbegovic, his Vienna embassy issued a passport to Osama bin Laden in 1992. In his "The Islamic Declaration, Izetbegovic writes, "There can be no peace or coexistence between Islamic faith and non-Islamic faith political institutions....The Islamic movement must and can take place as soon as it is morally and numerically strong enough, not only to destroy the non-Islamic one, but to build up a new Islamic one."
"We came here to die in the service of Islam. This is our duty. No infidel force will tell us how to live or what to do. This (Bosnia) is a Muslim country which must be defended. (Islamic fighter as quoted by The New York Times and reprinted in The Sunday Telegraph, London, Dec. 10, 1995). Does this sound like Paradise?
Furthermore, the 200,000 killed was discredited when BBC reported in 2002 that the total number of deaths came to 40,000 while other Bosnian experts put the figure at between 20,000 and 70,000.
Stella L. Jatras
************************************************************************
letters@newsweek.com


Copyright 2006 Newsweek
All Rights Reserved
Newsweek
August 7, 2006
International Edition

Bosnia Reborn
Europe's one time wasteland, devastated by war, ideology and ethnic hatred, is staging one helluva comeback
By Ginanne Brownell; With Kris Anderson in London

Elvir Causevic left sarajevo in 1990, just before the war engulfed Bosnia and smashed it to smithereens. Now 33 and educated in America, a member of Yale University's research staff, he recently moved back --and continues to be amazed at the town's transformation. The city he had seen so often on TV during the dark years was devastated, full of scarred and burned-out buildings, bereft of its once vibrant cosmopolitanism.
But no more. Sarajevo today is the very image of a thriving European capital, chockablock with chic restaurants and upscale art galleries. Cranes punctuate the skyline, erecting offices and putting a new face on, among many other things, Bosnia's postmodern Parliament, ruined during the war. Strolling the cobbled streets of the capital's ancient Old Town--a twisty maze of bars and tourist shops selling everything from Turkish coffee sets to T shirts reading i 'm muslim, don't panic--Causevic is positively boosterish. "Now is the time for this country," he exults. His plan: to set up branches of his New York medical-instruments company in Sarajevo and Tuzla--a great investment, he thinks, because of Bosnia's strong engineering tradition and still inexpensive work force. He's already hired 12 employees and expects to grow to 100 within a couple years. "I see a real enthusiasm here," he concludes, reflecting national optimism.
It's hard to believe this is Bosnia--the place that introduced the world to the term "ethnic cleansing." A decade after its brutal war ended, the country is finally emerging from the wilderness. A recent World Bank report touts it as "a post-conflict success story." And it certainly looks that way. "Our economy used to be entirely dependent on international aid," Prime Minister Adnan Terzic tells NEWSWEEK. But these days, he enthuses (somewhat nerdily), the signs all point to "serious sustainability." Bosnia's GDP has tripled in the last decade.
Exports, including steel and timber, are up by 50 percent. The government has successfully privatized banks. Foreign direct investment has tripled since 1999 to �750 million in 2004--and the trend is fast accelerating upward. Unlike neighboring Croatia and Serbia, also part of the former Yugoslavia, Bosnia has practically no external debt. At 2 percent, inflation is lower than Britain's.
"I think boardrooms would be well advised to have a look at Bosnia," says Dirk Reinermann, the World Bank's country director.
It's been a long time since boardrooms bothered with Bosnia, a country roughly the size of Denmark with a population of 4 million. The fighting that raged from 1992 to 1995 killed 200,000 people, made refugees of 2 million more and destroyed almost 90 percent of the country's infrastructure. War damage totaled more than $60 billion--a magnitude of collapse not seen in Europe since World War II. Bosnia's three main ethnic groups (Roman Catholic Croats, Orthodox Serbs and Muslim Bosnians, more commonly known as Bosniaks) turned on each other savagely, despite decades of intermarriage and living peaceably together. Rape, torture, mass killings--Bosnia was a Balkan slaughterhouse, ending only with the
U.S.- brokered 1995 Dayton peace accords. That agreement became the country's constitution and set up two quasi-autonomous "entities"--the Republika Srpska (usually referred to as the RS) and the Federation, a shaky alliance between Bosnia's Croats and Muslims. A weak national government is overseen by a U.N.-appointed High Representative.
As those awkward arrangements suggest, Bosnia's troubles are hardly over. In the central and southeastern parts of the country, Muslim schoolchildren are segregated from Catholic kids in 52 schools. (When administrators in one such district tried to integrate a school playground, they received so many threatening phone calls that they scrapped the plan.) In the RS, whose population is 90 percent Serb, there have been rumblings of holding a referendum on independence. (With United Nations negotiations underway in Vienna on Kosovo 's independence, this isn't an entirely idle threat.) Even beer drinking can still become political. In north-central Vitez, whether you order a pint of Bosnian-brewed Sarajevska or a Croatian Karlovacko depends on which part of town you live in. With 20 percent of the country's population living below the poverty line, those in rural areas barely scrape out a living. Drug trafficking, organized crime and illegal logging are epidemic. Membership in NATO will remain a pipe dream until war criminals Radovan Karadic and Ratko Mladic, who may be hiding in the RS, are arrested.
Nonetheless, by the end of the year, Bosnia is expected to sign the Stabilization and Association Agreement, a big step toward EU eligibility. For most of the past decade, each of its factions had their own courts, customs and tax services; now the federal government has taken control. Three years ago, according to a Western diplomat, "Serbs would have laughed you out of the room if you told them they'd be serving in an integrated army." Today, they're doing just that. In June, Bosnia was awarded control of its airspace for the first time in more than a decade.
In Sarajevo, especially, you can see the country's ethnic groups reknitting old ties--not necessarily warmly, but with a heartening mutual acceptance. Many of the Serbs who fled the capital during the war are returning to visit. The ski slopes of Mt. Igman (remember the 1984 Olym-pics?) are becoming more culturally mixed, as are Sarajevo's packed caf�s and concert halls. Earlier this summer, throngs came out to hear a popular Serbian turbo-folk singer, Jelena Karleusa.
Orthodox, Catholic and Muslim religious leaders meet regularly and often go on walkabouts together in towns across Bosnia. "It is a much more pragmatic and much less ideologically nationalistic country than it was several years ago,"
says journalist Allan Little, coauthor of "The Death of Yugoslavia."
The picture is harsher outside the capital. Along the road from Sarajevo to Zenica (a new four-lane highway is slowly being built) the scars of war are still evident: carcasses of burned houses, villages that feel far emptier than they should. Yet the signs of progress are obvious here too. The vast majority of Bosnia's battered towns and villages have been rebuilt; according to government figures, 98 percent of properties illegally seized during the fighting have been returned to their rightful owners or their surviving kin. The ethnic mix of some places has changed. Many Serbs, Croats or Muslims have sold houses in areas where they might feel uncomfortable and bought another where they are in the ethnic majority. But others have returned to places they were driven from, if only because they are their homes.
Visit the Bosniak village of Ahmici, reduced to rubble by Croat forces in April 1993. The local mosque's white minaret, toppled during a massacre that claimed 118 lives, is back. A high-tech stereo blasts the call to prayer five times daily. A second mosque, up the hill from the outdoor basketball court, is being built. Its skeletal bricked interior is a Sunday-evening hangout for preteen girls, some wearing fashionable head scarves and flirting with boys.
Along the curving, pine-forested roads of the RS, where signs are infrequent and marked only in Cyrillic, minarets and Catholic crosses can be glimpsed rising in the distance.
If any place testifies to how far Bosnia has come, it is the northern town of Brcko, hard on the Serbian and Croatian borders. This heavily contested bit of territory was the "bridge" linking the western reaches of the RS to the east and Serbia proper. To this day, Brcko is administered separately from the other Bosnian entities, with an American supervisor appointed by the U.N. The region experienced some of the most intense fighting of the war--and some of its fiercest ethnic hatred. Yet former Army barracks have been transformed into a grassy quad of brightly painted government buildings. Citizens have moved forward, together. Unlike much of the rest of the country, schools in Brcko are mixed. So are the police force and the District Assembly. "Most people here wanted to live again in a multiethnic society, so we all fought really hard to make Brcko work," says Ivan Krndelj, the Croat deputy speaker of the Assembly.
You readily see that at Zitopromet, a food-processing firm with an ethnically mixed staff who work together in two shifts baking 10,000 loaves of bread and pastries a day. In offices fragrant with the smell of croissants, the company's Bosniak director, Bahrija Agic, says he was surprised how quickly people came together. "In the beginning, two employees left, saying they had problems working for a Muslim manager," he told NEWSWEEK. "But there just aren't tensions like that anymore."
More and more, that describes the atmosphere across Bosnia. British Brig.
Nigel Alwyn-Foster, deputy commander of the 6,200 troops of the European Union Force that took over from NATO in 2004, describes his theater of operations as "calm and stable." The garrison atmosphere of the immediate postwar years has disappeared. Bases have shut down and many EUFOR troops are living in local accommodations among the people. In leafy Bihac, to the west, Canadian M/Cpl.
Tom Robinson is on his third tour of Bosnia. He's amazed by how much has changed. "In 1996 Bihac was a ghost town," he says, strolling past a new multiplex cinema showing the latest Hollywood flicks. "My time here has gone from being like a parent saying 'No, you can't do that' to being like an older sibling standing on the sidelines offering advice when asked." The city, which saw heavy fighting, has a trendy new mall with clothing shops like Stefanel. Its border crossing with Croatia is a modern complex equipped with the latest EU customs technology.
That's a metaphor. Bosnia is clearly prepping for EU membership. The country 's newest high representative, German diplomat Christian Schwarz-Schilling, recently announced that he would also be the last. Next summer, he will relinquish his role as Bosnia's de facto head of state and become the mere "EU representative" to Bosnia--a job that's essentially monitoring Bosnia's progress toward joining Europe and that returns full responsibility for the country's affairs to the central Bosnian government. "This is a serious change of the political agenda," says Schwarz-Schilling.
There are other signs of political maturation. In April, the Bosnian Parliament, usually split ethnically, rejected reforms to the Constitution that would have strengthened the central government. The good news is that the measure lost by only two votes. Says NATO's senior officer in Bosnia, U.S. Brig.
Gen. Louis Weber: the fact that parties sat down together to reach consensus is huge. "In every sphere you want to measure Bosnia, from the military to the social to the political, it is on a positive slope."
Perhaps most noteworthy is the way Bosnians--Muslim, Croat and Serb--are slowly coming to terms with the past. This spring, a Sarajevan movie named "Grbavica" won top honors at the Berlin Film Festival. Directed by Jasmila Zbanic, it portrays a Bosniak woman, raped by Serb soldiers, who is forced to tell her daughter how she was conceived. The movie has helped drive forward legislation for things like compensation and health care for civilian victims of war. Pirated copies have been selling like hot cakes in the RS capital, Banja Luka. In June, after a tip-off by locals in the Serbian village of Serovici about a nearby mass grave containing the remains of 35 men--probably Muslims killed during the infamous massacre at Srebrenica--the RS and Federation officials have been working together to solve the crime. That wouldn't have happened just a short time ago, says Tuzla prosecutor Emir Ibrahimovic, watching as pathologists carefully unearthed clothed skeletons from the sodden dirt.
"These days, we're seeing lots of cooperation."
Biljana Josic, a fashionably dressed Serb translator who works for the European force, sits in a caf� in Banja Luka. "I love this country," she says.
"Change takes time but we are getting there." Back in Sarajevo, Elvir Causevic stops outside Hacienda, a Tex-Mex bar throbbing with Europop music. "Look, we're transforming into a market economy, dealing with the legacy of a horrific war and learning how to be an independent country all at the same time." Hitting that trifecta, today Bosnia has become a different kind of model for Europe--and the world.
LOAD-DATE: August 1, 2006

In Kosovo the Orthodox Church Is Under Siege

"Artemjie, the bishop of Raska and Prizren, the highest Orthodox authority in Kosovo, laments "the inexplicable silence of Christian and democratic Europe in the face of such grave crimes committed against a Christian and European people, which the Serbian people is." And he accuses the Vatican of having been "amply implicated in the events" that produced the current situation."

http://www.chiesa.espressonline.it/printDettaglio.jsp?id=7002&eng=y

In Kosovo the Orthodox Church Is Under SiegeTo worldwide indifference, more than one hundred churches have already been assaulted and destroyed. Others are defended by NATO soldiers. The role of the Vatican and the growth of Islamic extremismby Sandro Magister ROMA - During the last week of November, two more Orthodox Christian churches were attacked and damaged in Kosovo - in Gornja Brnjica, and in Susica. Neither was protected by KFOR, the military force under NATO command that maintains order in the region.Since the war ended with the defeat of the Serbs in 1999, more than one hundred Orthodox holy places have been assaulted and destroyed in Kosovo, many of them going back to the 13th and 14th centuries. Earlier, while the Serbian army of Slobodan Milosevic had control of the region, it is calculated that 212 of the 560 Muslim mosques in the area were damaged or razed.In Kosovo today, the Orthodox Serbs are a besieged and endangered minority. Of the roughly 250,000 who fled following NATO�s military intervention, only a few thousand have returned. Together with the 130,000 who remained, they are herded in restricted zones and kept under constant threat. Power rests in the hands of the Muslim Kosovar Albanians. The future status of the region is uncertain. Formally, Kosovo remains an autonomous province of the Republic of Serbia and Montenegro, but resolution 1244 of the United Nations defining its status also refers to the Rambouillet accords of 1999, which appeal to the principle of self-determination of peoples in outlining the definitive arrangement of the area. And the overwhelming Albanian majority has enlisted this point in its bid for independence.The destruction of Christian churches is part of this plan - or, at least, that�s what the local Orthodox community fears. "Either destruction, or transformation into museums," specifies Fr. Sava Janjic, vice-prior of the monastery of Decani.This monastery is one of the masterpieces of medieval art in Kosovo, an historic cradle of Serbian Orthodoxy. It is occupied by 35 monks, many of whom have entered during the last twelve years, in a complete rebirth of monastic life. During the war, they were lavish in their defense of the Kosovar Albanians, threatened with ethnic cleansing by Slobodan Milosevic�s army. But today, it is the monks who are under constant threat. The Italian soldiers of KFOR ensure the defense of the monastery. The monks may not venture beyond the security fence to visit their faithful unless they are accompanied by an armed escort. The condition of the other 25 monasteries and churches under KFOR protection is similar. Among the most precious holy places - and the ones most at risk - are the patriarchate of Pec, the monastery of Gracanica, and the cathedral of the Mother of God of Ljevisa, in Prizren.Artemjie, the bishop of Raska and Prizren, the highest Orthodox authority in Kosovo, laments "the inexplicable silence of Christian and democratic Europe in the face of such grave crimes committed against a Christian and European people, which the Serbian people is." And he accuses the Vatican of having been "amply implicated in the events" that produced the current situation.Fr. Sava specifies that an authentic smear campaign has been unleashed against the Serbian Church: "The schools teach the theory that we did not build most of the Orthodox holy places in Kosovo, but that Roman Catholic Church did, and that they do not belong to us."There are approximately 65,000 Catholics in Kosovo. "We have excellent relations with the Muslims, and the government treats us well," a spokesman for the apostolic administration of Prizen told the Norwegian news agency for religious liberty "Forum 18."But there is a more disquieting reality behind these words. All throughout Kosovo, new mosques and Koranic schools financed by Saudi Arabia are springing up, and the influence of the Islamist currents is growing.This is confirmed by the dangers incurred by Muslims who convert to Christianity.These dangers were almost nonexistent in the past. Islam is generally weakly rooted in the Albanian population, and is accompanied by weak social controls.But now extremist groups have appeared. And life has become difficult for those who convert. Last May 11, in Gnjilane, a convert was brutally beaten and threatened with death as a "traitor."The ones most targeted are the converts to the evangelical Churches, which are the most active in the missions. Many of the newly baptized are forced to keep their conversion hidden even from their loved ones.The Catholic Church has chosen to keep a low profile and not to proselytize, and thus it feels Islamic pressure less. The moderate Muslim leader Ibrahim Rugova recently said that he has come to know the Catholic faith better and that he respects it a great deal.__________The Orthodox monastery of Decani has a website in English that is very rich with information on the present situation in Kosovo:> Visoki Decani Serbian Orthodox MonasteryFrom a neutral source, the most up-to-date news on the anti-Christian attacks in Kosovo are found in these two reports from the Norwegian news agency for religious freedom "Forum 18":> Renewed attacks on Serbian Orthodox, by Branko Bjelajac, 1 December 2003> Religious freedom survey in Kosovo, by Branko Bjelajac and Felix Corley, 9 September 2003Here is a link to a report that appeared in the February, 2003 edition of "30 Days," the monthly directed by Giulio Andreotti:> Kosovo. Dopo le bombe il caosOn the dangers faced by Muslims who convert to Christianity, throughout the Islamic world, see on this website:> "Moderate" Islam - But not for Converts to the Christian Faith (6.12.2003) __________Go to the home page of > www.chiesa.espressonline.it/english, to access the latest articles and links to other resources.Sandro Magister�s e-mail address is s.magister@espressoedit.itEnglish translation by Matthew Sherry: > traduttore@hotmail.com

A Bishop's Faith - Embassy Row 3 August

letters@washingtontimes.com

 

Very good article!  Stella

 

http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/embassy.htm
Embassy Row
By James Morrison
August 3, 2006

A BISHOP'S FAITH

    His dwindling flock is scattered and under siege. His churches and
cemeteries have been vandalized. The world appears to sympathize with his
persecutors, but the spiritual leader of Kosovo's Orthodox Serbs says he
cannot afford the luxury of feeling sorry for himself.
    "To be pessimistic is not an attribute for a man of faith," said Bishop
Artemije of Kosovo and Metohija, "particularly for a bishop."
    But the bleak message the black-robed, white-bearded cleric brought with
him to Washington last week showed how little political progress has been
made since the 1999 NATO bombing campaign that drove Slobodan Milosevic's
Yugoslav forces from Kosovo, leaving the province a de facto international
protectorate until its final status is determined.
    Kosovo's overwhelmingly ethnic-Albanian Muslim majority insists on
independence from Serbia, while the Serbian government is equally adamant
that the province remain under its control. Despite an effort by the United
States and allied countries to strike a deal on Kosovo by the end of the
year, desultory talks in Vienna have produced little progress.
    Bishop Artemije is a frequent visitor to Washington, where he sounds the
alarm over what he says are increasing attacks by Kosovo's Muslims on the
minority Serbs and their churches. In a briefing at the National Press Club
last week, he said Kosovo had become "a black hole of corruption and
organized crime," a "rogue state" in the heart of Europe with growing ties
to radical Islamic movements in the Middle East.
    "Sacrificing our land and our blood cannot buy protection from jihad,"
he warned.
    In the interview with our correspondent David R. Sands, the bishop said
the more than 200,000 Kosovar Serbs -- two-thirds of his flock -- have been
forced to flee the province since the war because of ethnic and religious
intimidation and violence. More than 150 Christian churches and monasteries
have been destroyed, and the remaining Orthodox Serbs live in small, often
isolated pockets surrounded by hostile Muslim neighbors.
    The opposite was the case during the Kosovo war that began in 1995, when
Serbian forces retaliated against attacks by rebels of the Kosovo Liberation
Army. An estimated 10,000 to 12,000 Kosovar civilians and about 3,000
Serbian civilians died in the conflict. NATO waged a 78-day bombing campaign
to drive the Serbian troops out of Kosovo and destroyed bridges, power
stations, factories and other civilian targets throughout what was then
Yugoslavia.
    Bishop Artemije said he found "a little more understanding" from Bush
administration officials in his latest visit but acknowledged the difficult
diplomatic and political landscape.
    "If you look at the situation with human eyes, it can seem depressing
and hopeless at times," he said.
    "But if you look at Kosovo with the eyes of faith, hope is never lost.
There is always hope that there is still honesty in the world, a world that
seems to be asleep and that we will try with all our might to wake up."

Serbia not to Give up on Kosovo

Kostunica: Serbia not to Give up on Kosovo in Exchange for faster EU
Accession (Danas)



Serbian PM Vojislav Kostunica said in an interview with Danas that Serbia
would never accept to give up on Kosovo in exchange for a faster EU
accession and stressed that Belgrade would respond with all legal means to
an eventual independence of Kosovo. He has expressed his optimism that the
solution 'to the most difficult problem of the state' will not be
detrimental to Serbia. "A part of international community largely considers
that there is only one possible option, that is, that Kosovo should become
independent, and therefore only presents its superficial advantages. This
option has many flaws, and the solution that we advocate - the substantial
autonomy has many advantages."


When asked how serious was Tomislav Nikolic's call for defending Kosovo
militarily, Kostuica said that for him the most important thing is that the
Kosovo debate should first go through the Parliament, and the Belgrade
negotiating team would submit its report to the Serbian Parliament in early
autumn: "The Parliament is the only democratic forum for discussing Kosovo.
If we think about the worst Kosovo outcome, the position of our country
would be to conclude that Kosovo is a part of Serbia. It is not an empty
rhetoric, but a constitutional and legal formulation," said Kostunica.

 

According to him, Serbia has until now used arguments of legality and not of
force. "We would like to continue to do that. Arguments of force are often
on other sides, in certain parts of the international community that
sometimes condition our European integrations with giving up on Kosovo. It
is impossible. There are certain criteria for all countries that wish to
become EU members. No country has been conditioned with giving up a part of
its territory in order to join the EU. This cannot be applied to Serbia."

"Serbia Will Fight for Kosovo"

Crossfire War - Balkans - Kosovo - Countdown to Resumption of War

By Willard Payne

Crossfire War - TEHRAN WATCH - Southeast Europe Theatre - Kosovo: Tehran - Belgrade/Brussels - Vienna; "Serbia Will Fight for Kosovo" - Tomislav Nikolic - Serbian Radical Party - Countdown to Resumption of War

Night Watch: BELGRADE - Tomislav Nikolic is the leader of the increasingly popular Serbian Radical Party and chances are he is expressing what most Serbs, including Serbian leaders, are saying privately, despite their official posturing during the current series of Vienna negotiations. Nikolic represents a wave of ultra-nationalism that has been sweeping Serbia since NATO took control over the province in 1999 after a 78 - day bombing campaign, that coined the phrase "collateral damage" as a way of writing off civilian deaths. [SERBIANNA]

Most Albanians are also aware that if the UN sponsored talks result in an international declaration of Kosovo independence, war will break out in the Balkans again. Nikolic stated, "The whole world must know that. Serbia will fight for Kosovo." And that no Serbian leader will accept Kosovo independence. Albanians seem to be provoking a renewed conflict by conducting attacks against Serbian communities in Kosovo.

Nikolic continued by admitting that "if they want to take Kosovo away from us Belgrade cannot prevent that. Serbia will be peaceful as long as talks are going on but could explode in unrest in case of Kosovo independence." The only question is who will the Serbs attack first, Albanians or UN/NATO forces in the area supporting Kosovo.

Tehran does not care just as long as fighting resumes which will direct Vienna's and Brussels' attention away from Tehran and toward the war right on Europe's doorstep. In preparation for Iran's direct intervention Tehran signed, in January, a security agreement with Belgrade similar to the military-security agreements Tehran has with Damascus and Islamabad. It was a follow up to Tehran establishing relations with every capital in the divided Yugoslavia in 1992 and announcing this was their "entry into Central Europe", Iran's avenue of invasion.

I don't know what the schedule for the UN talks are but war begins again in the Balkans with the recognition of Kosovo independence unless Serbs decide to respond militarily to attacks against them that have been going on for at least a year by Albanian groups. Serbian and ethnic Albanian officials were not available for comment when asked to respond to statements from the Serbian Radical Party leader.

Regular readers of crossfirewar.com know I have long stated the conflicts here are the result of the most regressive decsion Europe ever made in its modern history when it agreed to the division of Yugoslavia in the name of the "New World Order" that was declared right after the end of the Cold War in 1990. It was supposed to be a staged crisis, orchestrated by Vienna, showing the world the new cooperation between Eastern-Western Europe. Vienna and all the 55 governments in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) assumed the crisis could be solved with a series of high profile, highly publicized diplomatic agreements and conferences, the same way they arranged crises throughout the Cold War. But this time Vienna-Brussels underestimated the impact of weapon dealers.

The division unleashed the dark forces of pagan ethnic nationalism and religious hatred, Europe's most primitive and proud mentality. It is impossible to have a more divisive influence. I had convinced myself Europe was through with map-making, but societies retain their character. Neither did Europe know Tehran would realize this is a front they can use.

Enter Persia, intelligent ancient evil, experts at using availability. The West has not confronted an enemy like Iran for quite some time, not since the Ottomans. The West will regroup around Rome. NATO will not survive. Brussels put itself completely out of position when it recognized the divided Yugoslavia. NATO will never be any threat to Iran. Rome will replace Brussels as the most important adminstration center in Western Europe. The West's new military alliance will be headquarted there. Berlin and Eastern Europe will remain in close cooperation with Moscow.

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No deal in sight on Kosovo

25.07.2006 - 09:59 CET | By Ekrem Krasniqi

Serbian and Kosovo Albanian leaders stuck to diametrically-opposed positions during their first direct talks on the future of Kosovo on Monday – but the EU "welcomed" the meeting which saw the Serb prime minister stay away from lunch.

Serb president Boris Tadic and prime minister Vojislav Kostunica met their Kosovan counterparts Fatmir Sejdiu and Agim Ceku in Vienna on Monday (24 July), under the guidance of UN special envoy Martti Ahtisaari with US and EU envoys also in tow.  

"As the first meeting of its kind, today's discussion was meant to enable both sides to present and argue their respective positions, and the meeting did achieve that objective," Mr Ahtisaari said after the talks.

"It is evident that the positions of the parties remain far apart: Belgrade would agree to almost anything but independence, whereas Pristina would accept nothing but full independence," the UN top diplomat said.

Kosovo is officially still a Serb province, but has been under UN administration since the end of the war in 1999 when NATO drove out Serbian forces ending their crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists.

No handshaking
The two delegations on Monday entered the Viennese palace room from the opposite ends, without shaking hands.

The camps had lunch around the same table, but Mr Kostunica stayed away from his chair next to Mr Ceku, for "phone consultations" before the meeting continued in the afternoon.

The Serbian prime minister in his speech said that "in the history of Europe there can't be found any precedent which would serve as an argument to take away from Serbia 15 percent of its territory and change the internationally-recognized border against it will".

He added Serbia is ready to accept a "substantial autonomy" however, according to which Belgrade would retain power over key policies in Kosovo.

Under the proposal, Serbia would hold on to "basic elements of sovereignty" such as foreign policy, border control, customs, human rights, monetary policy and the protection of cultural and religious heritage.

The Serbian proposal also stipulates that Kosovo would be completely demilitarised , meaning there would be no Serbian or Albanian military forces, with the UN acting as a guarantor.

Alpha and omega
But Kosovo's president Mr Sejdiu said that it is time to end the status quo, which has "hampered the economic development and has provoked political tensions."

The continuation of the status-quo "is not in the interest of anybody in Kosovo, and in the region" he continued, adding that it "damages the peace and the overall stability in South-Eastern Europe".

"An overwhelming majority of Kosovan people wants Kosovo to become an independent and sovereign state", the president explained, adding "independence is the alpha and omega, the beginning and end of our position."

Ethnic Albanians represent around 90 percent of Kosovo's 2 million population.

EU future
Despite the deep divisions, EU officials welcomed the meeting, while urging both Belgrade and Pristina "to engage constructively and show flexibility."

"The meeting is welcome. Clearly, there are divided views on the status question but it is important that with this meeting a new phase of the talks has begun," EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana's spokeswoman said.

"This process in our view should lead to a Kosovo which is multi-ethnic, democratic and secure for all citizens, which can contribute to regional stability and which is able to make progress towards the EU," she added.

The international community is keen to settle Kosovo's final status by the end of the year, but it is unclear if future bilateral talks will follow the same format or take place at a lower political level.

"It is a bit premature to start speculating on the timeframe," the UN's Mr Ahtisaari indicated, adding that a more detailed schedule might emerge following internal UN meetings in mid-September.

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