SNN

December 27, 2005

Kosovo Conditional independence

Kosovo: behind-the-scenes hard talk begins (ISN Security Watch)

As both formal and informal behind-the-scenes talks about Kosovos future status begin, the member countries of the powerful Contact Group seem to have reached a consensus that Kosovo should be granted conditional independence.

By Tim Judah in London and Paris for ISN Security Watch (24/12/05)

Though UN officials have recently announced that talks concerning the status of Serbias UN-administered province of Kosovo would begin in earnest in January, ISN Security Watch has learned that much of the real work is already being done behind the scenes, with intense discussions between key countries involved in the region and Serbian and Kosovo Albanian leaders.

Over the past few weeks, a series of meetings, both formal and informal, have taken place in key capitals - including the Serbian capital, Belgrade, and the Kosovo capital, Pristina - as diplomats attempt to shape a deal for Kosovo, bolstering the work being done by former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, who has been chosen to head the UN-led status negotiations.

Since the end of the Kosovo war in 1999, the province of some two million people has been under the jurisdiction of the UN, though it legally remains a part of Serbia. Its population is over 90 per cent ethnic Albanian. They have made it clear they want nothing less than full independence for Kosovo.

Serbia's official position is that Kosovo can have ' more than autonomy but less than independence.

Members of the Serbian negotiation team, Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica and President Boris Tadic, had proposed earlier this month that Kosovo be divided into Albanian and Serbian areas.

According to the Serbian plan, the Albanian areas would be self-governing and independent in all but name, while the Serbian ones would remain linked to Belgrade and the Serbian flag would fly once again on Kosovos frontiers.

In parallel to this, the Serbian leadership has also decided that it would be most advantageous to argue their Kosovo case along legal lines - that is to say that Kosovo is de jure part of Serbia and thus its international frontiers cannot be changed without Serbias consent.

However, Kosovos Albanian leaders are demanding that the province be given full independence in recognition of their right to self-determination.

Over the last few weeks, there have been several meetings - including one between the Contact Group, which was set up to coordinate policy during the Balkan wars in the early 1990s, and Ahtisaari - which have yielded significant results. While Ahtisaari is now the official Kosovo mediator, real power lies with the countries of the Contact Group.

There appears to be a considerable unity of purpose among the Contact Group members. France and the US, for example, so often at loggerheads over the past few years, have no major disagreement over Kosovo. Russia, too, has been described by diplomats as extremely cooperative over Kosovo. If Serbian leaders were hoping to find backing from the traditionally friendly Russians there is no evidence thus far that they will get it.

Representatives of the Contact Group countries have decided that the best solution for Kosovo is that it be given so called conditional independence.

This means that the sovereign link with Serbia will be broken but that restrictions on Kosovos independence will remain for a transitional period. These could include, for example, no army and awarding reserve powers to a representative of the international community. The result would be a slimmed down and more focused version of the model that exists in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is effectively governed by the international communitys High Representative, who has sweeping powers.

Diplomats who have talked to ISN Security Watch, on condition of anonymity, say the only disagreement among the Contact Group members is over speed and tactics.

We all know, more or less, where we are going but we just have to be careful of the language used in public, one source said.

At the moment, officials from Contact Group countries say publicly that what they want is an agreement made between and mutually acceptable to Serbs and Albanians. Yet, privately, everyone knows that Serbs and Albanians will never be able to agree on the status of Kosovo.

France is less willing to openly say that the Contact Group countries are in favor of conditional independence because it fears that to do so might prompt the Serbs to withdraw from talks before they have even properly started.

By contrast, the British believe that the sooner the I word (for independence) is pronounced, the more flexible the Albanians will become. The British theory, according to informed sources, is that given a guarantee that independence (conditional or otherwise) is coming, the Albanians will be more amenable to granting the Kosovo Serbs concessions such as extensive decentralization.

As to whether moving Kosovo towards independence might provoke a nationalist radicalization of Serbia, one source in favor of moving faster rather than slower, simply sums up the Serbian dilemma as one of Belarus or Brussels. That is to say that Serbia has a choice between renewed isolation or continuing along its current path towards European integration.

It is clear to Serbian leaders that US policymakers have little sympathy for the Serbian efforts to keep Kosovo. However, what is unclear is that there appears to be no compelling reason (other than realpolitik,) as to why the US should favor independence for the Kosovo Albanians but oppose it for Iraqi Kurds, for instance.

Serbs have looked for support in meetings in Moscow and with the French. The Russians, while promising Serbian leaders that they would oppose anything Belgrade does not agree with, say in private talks with their western counterparts that they will not oppose conditional independence for Kosovo.

France then was perhaps the last best hope for the Serbian leadership, but here too, in a series of meetings this month, the Serbs have been disappointed. According to ISN Security Watch sources, the Serbs were told that France would support Serbian interests but that those interests had to be realistic. Holding on to Kosovo, in any form, was not considered realistic.

In public and private, the Serbs are now pursuing different lines of attack. Predrag Simic, Serbia and Montenegros ambassador to France and a member of the Serbian Kosovo negotiating team, evokes the situation leading up to the Second World War to argue against independence for Kosovo.

In 1938, he says, the Western powers, fearful of Hitler, accepted his demand to annex the Sudetenland, the predominantly German inhabited area of Czechoslovakia. But this appeasement brought neither peace nor security to Europe.

However, in private, according to western diplomatic sources, Serbian President Tadic is exploring a more flexible agenda. He wants any settlement to secure the future of the Kosovo Serbs and wants to try and steer proponents of conditional independence into making sure that if this cannot be avoided then, at least for the foreseeable future, Kosovo will have no army or highly symbolic seat at the UN.

But Western diplomats are fearful of what they call the disaster scenario, which foresees the talks failing to gain traction and hardliners on either side opting for violence.

The disaster scenario sees either Serbian or Albanian hardliners provoking an exodus from the Serbian enclaves in Kosovo. There are some100,000 Serbs in Kosovo, of which 30,000 live in the solidly Serbian north, while the rest are scattered in enclaves in central and southern Kosovo.

Albanian hardliners could decide to attack the enclaves and provoke the flight of the Serbs there, so as to prevent the areas from becoming autonomous regions that would remain, in their view, like Serbian claws in a future independent Kosovo.

By contrast Serbian hardliners could seek to provoke a Serbian exodus from the enclaves in a bid to solidify the Serbian population of the north. Their hope would be that many years down the line the de facto partition that already exists along the Ibar river would one day be recognized as the international frontier between the part of Kosovo that Serbia managed to save and the Albanian part, which would be independent.

It is precisely because they want to avert such a disaster scenario that the diplomats are now talking intensively to the Serbs and Albanians and among themselves.

Indeed, the message diplomats are now delivering to the Kosovo Albanians might come as a surprise to some. According to one source, the Albanians have been warned not to let hardliners provoke violence, but they have also been told that since conditional independence is the aim, The talks are not about the status of Kosovo. What they are really about then, is negotiating the status of the Serbs in Kosovo, the source said.

Tim Judah is the author of Kosovo: War and Revenge and The Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, both published by Yale University Press.
Source: ISN Security Watch

News Fixing

                                             AN APPEAL TO REASON

                                                           R.K.Kent

G.M. Books of Los Angeles has just published and released Peter Brock’s powerful and devastating book which   takes a very close and intimate look at the trees and the forest. Its title is Media Cleansing: Dirty Reporting – Journalism and Tragedy in Yugoslavia. While the major media in the U.S. and Western Europe continue to repeat endlessly that the “massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and BOYS by ‘the Serbs’ at Srebrenica” constitutes the only “case of ‘genocide’” in Europe since WWII, Brock shows that the claim is built like a house of cards. Poke SERIOUSLY at any angle and the claim collapses. The numbers are, to say the least, highly suspect. Actual   findings, even years after l995, do not support them.

All kinds of researchers, in teams and individually, have arrived at a host of major doubts about this constantly repeated claim even before Brock’s new book. The context of the event alone, based on factual and verified information, exposes the claim as a methodical, structured and manipulative adjunct to an end or ends that have transcended an initial propaganda phase.

It managed to hide (a) that there was a civil war ongoing in Eastern Bosnia, involving the entire district of Srebrenica;

(b)that a SYSTEMATIC extermination and ethnic cleansing of near-by Serb villagers.---men, women and children-- had been going on even before Srebrenica became, by U.N. mandate, a “safety zone,” inhabited only by “unarmed civilians;”

(c)that this old silver-mining town was, in fact, used by well armed Bosnian Muslims, led by a warlord named Nasir Oric, to liquidate all the near-by Serbs by terror and mayhem, DOCUMENTED BY ORIC HIMSELF;

(d)that Oric and up to about 5,000 of his men, forewarned from Sarajevo, fled to the Bosnian Muslim stronghold of Tuzla, days before the Bosnian Serb Army took Srebrenica ;

(e)that the allegation of “genocide” with which General Ratko Mladic is being charged, could not stand in any real court of law because he put the Muslim elderly, women and children of Srebrenica into buses and sent them to Tuzla, in sharp contrast to the real GENOCIDE carried out by Oric;

(f)that while Oric has been running a disco for U.S. G.I.s in Tuzla, under no indictment   by the Hague “Tribunal” until recently (for “mistreating prisoners”) Mladic is wanted by it as a major “war criminal” for having committed “genocide” at Srebrenica;.

(g)that the U.S.under a NATO cosmetic umbrella had the command and put into action its preponderant personnel and weapons systems to wage a 78-day purely punitive air war against a defenseless Serbia, without the Congressional declaration of war mandated by the Constitution and causing over 3,000 civilian death plus a damage to Serbia’s infrastructure, governmental and private properties estimated at the low of $20 and high of $40 billion;.

(h)that the punishment exceeded by far the non-existent SERIE of “sins” into which “the Serbs” are being marched, with sticks and carrots, to accept “collective guilt” because some ethnic Serbs committed egregious crimes in an egregious tripartite fratricide heavily assisted via the classic “”Balkanization” by foreign powers of our own moment in time, some with an attested   pedigree .in repetitive invasions, civilized savageries and undergoing an acute historical amnesia.

Given all that plus the latest and decidedly irrefutable work by Brock it is difficult to understand the unending flow of political venom against present-day Serbia from our powerful Solons who have inducted the U.S. Congress into additional, this time economic, threat of punishments if Mladic and Karadzic are not delivered by Serbia to the Hague Tribunal, by 31st May 2006. Since the International “Community” has constructed an international boundary between Serbia and Bosnia, Belgrade cannot send troops into Bosnia to “capture” Mladic. If foreign requests were to be put to Syria to deliver Bin Laden to the U.S. one could only laugh at them. But, the analogy is symmetric. It is also doubtful that Karadzic is still in any ex-Yugoslav space. This turns   the demand to Serbia into either a “fait accompli” to punish since it cannot be met or, else, borders on the irrational..

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The Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) Canada

News Fixing

By Dimitri Diamant


December 26, 2005


Many know that price fixing by the largest competitors in any industry is against the law. Stories have been told of top execs meeting in hotel rooms in order to fix such industry-wide prices, nothing written down, not even on slips of paper.

Lately, there seems to be an ominous trend towards something similar that could be described as News Fixing.

Proper journalistic standards require that the most authoritative sources that are available be referred to, and there should be confirmation; but are there an increasing number of circumstances where such proper journalistic standards are not being followed? This situation suffers from even more aggravation due to the well known concentration of major news source outlets into fewer and fewer hands, so that now, only a handful of media CEOs can make it clear to all journalists that the quality and reliability of news sources can be fudged.

One serious example of this practice would be an alleged massacre that all journalists dutifully always describe as the worst since World War II. This would be the alleged massacre that may have taken place in Srebrenica, Bosnia in July, 1995.

What are the sources for this story? When News Fixing takes place, we see that all journalists, for example, from television, whether presenting the news or conducting interviews with pre-selected guests, always rigidly preach from exactly the same hymn book, News Fixing, almost as though the top level CEO is always looking over their shoulder. Is this the free press?

Whenever any noted journalist is constrained to provide a source for the Srebrenica story, they always immediately refer to the International Committee of the Red Cross, the ICRC, Geneva, Switzerland, but without any further elaboration whatsoever. Is this their only source, as vaguely as it is presented, for a story as singularly important as this?

It is possible to delve into the statements made by the ICRC at that time with regard to Srebrenica. The most authoritative source would be an interview granted to Junge Welt (Young World), a Berlin newspaper, www.jungewelt.de . This newspaper was founded at the time of the DDR, continues to publish during the subsequent fifteen years of the Federal Republic, and their editorial policy would continue to be critical of the dissolution of Yugoslavia, a country that was founded in 1920 by Woodrow Wilson. This authoritative interview was granted to Junge Welt on August 30, 1995 by an official spokesperson from the ICRC headquarters, Geneva, Switzerland. A pertinent excerpt from this interview, granted by a Mr. Pierre Gaultier of the ICRC, would be as follows:

"All together we arrived at the number of approximately 10,000 [missing from Srebrenica]. But there may be some double counting... Before we have finished [weeding out the double counting] we cannot give any exact information. Our work is made even more complicated by the fact that the Bosnian government has informed us that several thousand refugees have broken through enemy lines and have been reintegrated into the Bosnian Muslim army. These persons are therefore not missing, but they cannot be removed from the lists of the missing (...) because we have not received their names."

Other sources, including the original ICTY indictment issued by Richard Goldstone, accurately describe these thousands of men as armed fighters, which is why Mr. Gaultier refers to them as "refugees" reintegrated into the "army". Some of these armed fighters, eighteen or nineteen years of age, are now described by all journalists as boys.

Thus, from this interview, we see that thousands did reach, on foot, essentially the town of Tuzla. The remaining thousands are said to be missing, not massacred. However, instead of relying on this authoritative source, all journalists, if pressed, will refer instead to an idle speculation by a Red Cross field worker, with the last name of Barry, who once said that "5,000 have simply disappeared". Now, one has to think cleverly for a moment to see that the word "disappeared" is not the same as "massacred", and the disappearances of thousands more or less took place in the direction of the town of Tuzla, and then on from there into the Muslim, Islamic army. Today, in 2005, ten years later, six thousand such bodies have yet to be found by zealous, well funded professional gravediggers hired by the ICTY, and that would be because missing, and even disappearing, is not the same as massacred.

Returning to the subject of news source reliability, why do all journalists, at the direction of their CEO's, always refer to Barry instead of Mr. Gaultier? The ruminations of a lone, low-level ICRC field worker are a far cry from an authoritative interview granted by an official spokesperson from the ICRC headquarters at Geneva, Switzerland.

What has been the position of the ICRC since then? No doubt, from national contributors, they have eventually felt the need to conform with the uniform Srebrenica story. However, on July 26, 2005, about a month before the Junge Welt interview, and some days after the alleged massacre of July, 1995, the ICRC issued the following news release, four paragraphs altogether, only the fourth and last paragraph presented in its entirety:

        26-07-1995 ICRC News 30
        Bosnia-Herzegovina: ICRC action in enclaves crisis

        "More than 1,000 civilians - most of them women and children - have fled the fighting that is now raging in the north of the Bihac enclave to seek refuge with relatives in the town of Cazin. ...

        "At the start of the crisis affecting the enclaves, the ICRC set up a special tracing service in Kladanj, on the Tuzla air base and in the various places where displaced persons have gathered, to try and locate people separated from their families or reported missing. ...

        "Emergency teams of medical personnel and water supply experts, stationed by the ICRC at the Kladanj checkpoint and in the Tuzla area, stand ready to take action in the event of a fresh influx of displaced people from Zepa and its surroundings. ...

        "Since the fall of the Srebrenica enclave, the ICRC has not succeeded in gaining access to individuals detained by the Bosnian Serb forces. It is relentlessly pursuing its approaches to the authorities in charge, which have publicly pledged, on several occasions, to respect the Geneva Conventions. So far they have not honoured their commitments, and the ICRC is deeply concerned about the plight of all those whom it is unable to protect."

The Srebrenica enclave is mentioned last, and there is no mention of a major massacre.

Concluding, price fixing is supposed to be against the law, and News Fixing ought to be seriously frowned upon, if only this were possible.




The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=1640 <http://www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=1640>

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Srebrenica 'killings' video
http://www.srpskapolitika.com/video/Srebrenica.html

December 26, 2005

Serbs' general Mladic in talks about surrendering to war crimes tribunal

Serbs' general Mladic in talks about surrendering to war crimes tribunal
By Daniel Howden

Published: 26 December 2005

Ratko Mladic, the top war crimes fugitive from former Yugoslavia, is in talks with the security services about surrendering, a former Belgrade police chief says.

The wartime Bosnian Serb general was driving a hard bargain, insisting on financial security for his helpers and family and amnesty for those who sheltered him, Marko Nicovic told Mina, the Montenegrin news agency.

No one in the government was available for comment.

Belgrade is under intense pressure to hand over the remaining war crimes fugitives, including Mladic and his political leader Radovan Karadzic, or be halted on its path to join the European Union and Nato.

A peaceful surrender of Mladic is crucial for the government because if police or guards were hurt while arresting the former general it could affect the government's popularity, Mr Nicovic said.

"The topic of negotiations is certainly also what the general will say in The Hague," Nicovic said. Mladic knew all about the former Yugoslav army's involvement in the Balkan wars, he said.

The report comes days after Serbia's war crimes prosecutor, Vladimir Vukcevic, said the authorities were on to a number of people who were in contact with suspects indicted for war crimes and warned them they would be criminally prosecuted if they continued to help runaways in any way.

Karadzic and Mladic have been charged with genocide for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Muslims and the siege of Sarajevo, which claimed more than 10,000 lives during the 1992-95 war in Bosnia.

Serbia's Interior Minister, Dragan Jocic, repeated on Friday that arresting the remaining fugitives was the priority of the police, as well as the state and military intelligence services.

Six indicted UN war crimes suspects are still at large, all of them Serbians or Bosnian Serbs, including Karadzic and Mladic.

Serbia delivered 13 war crimes suspects to the tribunal this year, the last one in April. Western officials have told Serbia they wanted to see more action and not just promises.

Ratko Mladic, the top war crimes fugitive from former Yugoslavia, is in talks with the security services about surrendering, a former Belgrade police chief says.

The wartime Bosnian Serb general was driving a hard bargain, insisting on financial security for his helpers and family and amnesty for those who sheltered him, Marko Nicovic told Mina, the Montenegrin news agency.

No one in the government was available for comment.

Belgrade is under intense pressure to hand over the remaining war crimes fugitives, including Mladic and his political leader Radovan Karadzic, or be halted on its path to join the European Union and Nato.

A peaceful surrender of Mladic is crucial for the government because if police or guards were hurt while arresting the former general it could affect the government's popularity, Mr Nicovic said.

"The topic of negotiations is certainly also what the general will say in The Hague," Nicovic said. Mladic knew all about the former Yugoslav army's involvement in the Balkan wars, he said.

http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article335068.ece <http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article335068.ece>

Kosovo�s Moment of Truth

http://kosovareport.blogspot.com/2005/12/kosovos-moment-of-truth.html

Kosovo report

December 25, 2005

KosovoÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s Moment of Truth

By Tim Judah
(Survival vol. 47 no. 4 Winter 2005Ã¢â‚¬â€œ06 pp. 73Ã¢â‚¬â€œ84)

For the last six years Kosovo has been run as protectorate of the United Nations. That chapter of its history is now coming to an end. Very soon Ã¢â‚¬â€œ probably at least by December 2005 Ã¢â‚¬â€œ talks should begin on the future status of this territory bitterly disputed between Serbs and Albanians. It is widely expected that, against the wishes of the government in Belgrade, Kosovo will be granted some form of Ã¢â‚¬Ëœconditional independenceÃ¢â‚¬â„¢. Exactly what this means remains to be seen.

The roots of the Kosovo conflict lie in the fact that more than 90% of its two million people are ethnic Albanians.1 That Kosovo, within anyoneÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s living memory, has always had a high preponderance of Albanians made it a particular political problem within Yugoslavia. Since 1999, however, the link with Serbia has, in all but de jure terms, been severed. The likelihood that it can be restored seems fanciful to say the least.

In 1989 Serbia, under Slobodan Milosevic, abolished KosovoÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s autonomy. During the major Yugoslav wars in Croatia and Bosnia, Kosovo stayed quiet. In 1998, however, a guerrilla war broke out. Events escalated until NATOÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s 78-day bombing campaign over what was then still known as Yugoslavia. After a period of frantic diplomacy Milosevic surrendered, Serbia pulled its forces out of Kosovo and much of the local administration collapsed. They were replaced by the UN and a NATO-led force called KFOR. This arrangement was blessed by UN Security Council Resolution 1244, which provided the legal basis for the current situation in Kosovo. The resolution recognised the territorial integrity of what was then called the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and instructed what was to become the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) to promote, Ã¢â‚¬Ëœpending a final settlement Ã¢â‚¬Â¦ substantial autonomy and self-government in Kosovo taking into full account Ã¢â‚¬Â¦ the Rambouillet AccordsÃ¢â‚¬â„¢.

The ill-fated Rambouillet meeting outside Paris preceded NATOÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s bombardment of 1999. The Serbian side did not agree to the text it was asked to sign, one reason being that this document had foreseen that KosovoÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s future would, after three years, be decided Ã¢â‚¬â„¢on the basis of the will of the peopleÃ¢â‚¬â„¢. The Serbs argued that since the Albanians were in favour of indeÃ‚Â¬pendence, this phrase could only mean that they would lose their southern province, which they regard as the cradle of their civilisation. Thus, at its very heart, Resolution 1244 contained a contradiction Ã¢â‚¬â€œ pitting the Kosovo majorityÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s right to self-determination against the equally valid legal prinÃ‚Â¬ciple of the territorial integrity of states. Up to now it has been possible to avoid resolving this contradiction. Today, however, in the words of UNMIK head SÃƒÂ¸ren Jessen-Petersen, Kosovo is facing Ã¢â‚¬â„¢its moment of truthÃ¢â‚¬â„¢.

Since 1999 Kosovo has changed beyond recognition. The first and most obvious change is that there are no longer any Serbs in any of KosovoÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s major urban settlements, bar north Mitrovica, which is a divided city. The end of Serbian rule culminated in the flight and ethnic cleansing of large numbers of Serbs (and Roma), very few of whom have returned. Today one-third of the estimated 100,000 Serbs who remain in Kosovo live in Mitrovica and the overwhelmingly Serbian-inhabited north of Kosovo, which is contiguous with Serbia. The rest live in enclaves scattered throughout the rest of the province. Some of these need 24-hour military protection, as do Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries. Economically, Kosovo remains extremely weak and unemployment high, though reliable figures are hard to come by. Average wages are now around Ã¢â€šÂ¬200 a month and many families depend on remittances from the large Kosovo diaspora living and working abroad, especially in Western Europe.

Since 1999, the UN has set up a government structure in Kosovo. Powers are gradually being devolved to elected bodies and their ministries. Most Serbs boycott these institutions, either at the behest of the authorities in Belgrade or because they believe that on those occasions when they did participate, they were simply used in an Albanian effort to deceive the outside world into believing that a real multi-ethnic society was being built in Kosovo. The boycott is controversial, however. Some Serb leaders believe they have lost more than they have gained by staying outside of KosovoÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s structures.

In December 2003 UNMIK, together with the government of Kosovo, promulgated a list of so-called Ã¢â‚¬ËœStandardsÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ against which KosovoÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s progress could be measured, covering everything from rule of law to minority rights. At the same time the UN and other diplomats Ã¢â‚¬â€œ adopting the slogan Ã¢â‚¬ËœStandards before StatusÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ Ã¢â‚¬â€œ made clear that the issue of KosovoÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s final status was not on the agenda for the immediate future. In November 2003, however, the Ã¢â‚¬ËœContact GroupÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ of main outside powers announced that if all went well, by the middle of 2005 a comprehensive review of standards would open the way for talks on the future status of the province. The irony is that talks may soon begin not because things went well, but because they went disastrously wrong. In March 2004 riots broke out in which some 4,000 Serbs and Roma were driven from their homes and 19 killed. It became starkly clear that the status quo was untenable and, if there was a new upsurge in violence, UNMIK might even collapse. Immediately after the riots UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called in a diplomat with considerable Balkan experience to lead an inquiry into what had caused them. The insights of this diplomat, Norwegian ambassador to NATO Kai Eide, helped convince Annan and many others that dangerous stagnation had set in; the only way to avoid a new conflagration was to give the impression that Kosovo was somehow moving forward and was not doomed to remain forever a forgotten, poverty-stricken corner of Europe.

KosovoÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s Albanian leaders either quickly understood, or were made to understand by diplomats and the foreign leaders that they met, that the riots had been disastrous for their international image. In December 2004, following elections, a new government came to power headed by former Kosovo Liberation Army commander Ramush Haradinaj. With much force and skill, Haradinaj moved to get Kosovo to live up to the Standards and even to reach out to the Serbs. Being a skilful premier was not enough, however, to stop allegations about his past catching up with him. In March 2005 he was indicted by the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in The Hague for war crimes dating back to 1998. With much dignity he resigned and departed but, contrary to expectations, Kosovo remained calm. In part this was because Albanian leaders understood that, if angry Kosovars began rampaging once again, the prospect of the comprehensive review would clearly diminish. This time they played their cards well and in June Kofi Annan invited Kai Eide back to begin the review.

Eide delivered his report on 4 October. Annan passed it on to the Security Council three days later, saying he accepted its recommendations. Ã¢â‚¬ËœThe time has comeÃ¢â‚¬â„¢, said Annan, Ã¢â‚¬â„¢to move to the next phase of the political process.Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ He added that he now intended to Ã¢â‚¬â„¢initiate preparationsÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ for the appointment of Ã¢â‚¬Ëœa Special Envoy to lead the future status process.Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ At the time of writing it was widely expected that he would choose Martti Ahtisaari, the former Finnish president who played a key role in securing MilosevicÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s agreement to the terms which ended NATOÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s bombardment of Yugoslavia in 1999.

EideÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s most important point was that talks on the future status of Kosovo should begin. He was not asked to say what he thought the final status of Kosovo should be and, significantly, he uses the words Ã¢â‚¬Ëœfuture statusÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ rather than Ã¢â‚¬Ëœfinal statusÃ¢â‚¬â„¢. This implies, and indeed Eide in places explicitly says, that international involvement in the contested province will continue for many years. Ã¢â‚¬â„¢The international community must do the utmost to ensure that whatever the status becomes it does not become a Ã¢â‚¬Å“failedÃ¢â‚¬Â statusÃ¢â‚¬â„¢, he writes. Ã¢â‚¬â„¢Entering the future status process does not mean entering the last stage, but the next stage in the process.Ã¢â‚¬â„¢
Progress in meeting the Standards as a whole has been uneven, Eide says: Ã¢â‚¬â„¢regrettably, little has been achieved to create a foundation for a multi-ethnic societyÃ¢â‚¬â„¢. Talks should nevertheless begin, he says, because the momentum and expectations have built up; Ã¢â‚¬â„¢having moved from stagnation to expectaÃ‚Â¬tion, stagnation cannot be allowed to take holdÃ¢â‚¬â„¢.

Some of EideÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s recommendations may be carried out whatever the result of status talks. The EU, he argues, should play a prominent role, especially in police and judicial matters. NATO, too, will have to stay, with at least some contribution from the US Ã¢â‚¬Ëœin order to provide a visible expression of [AmericaÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s] continued engagementÃ¢â‚¬â„¢. Certain elements of the international presence in Bosnia should be copied for Kosovo. These include the role of the Ã¢â‚¬Ëœhigh representativeÃ¢â‚¬â„¢, currently BritainÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s Paddy Ashdown, who exerÃ‚Â¬cises huge powers and can fire any elected official in Bosnia. In Sarajevo, Ashdown holds a kind of hybrid position Ã¢â‚¬â€œ both Ã¢â‚¬Ëœhigh representativeÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ of the intervening powers and international community, vaguely defined, but also the EUÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s special representative to Bosnia. Eide suggests a similar arrangement for the post-UNMIK era in Kosovo: a high represenative with extraordinary powers in the field of inter-ethnic relations, but who is also Ã¢â‚¬Ëœfirmly anchoredÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ in the EU.

Regarding KosovoÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s Serbian minority, Eide argues in favour of an Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ambiÃ‚Â¬tious decentralisation planÃ¢â‚¬Ëœ which would give Kosovo Serbs competences Ã¢â‚¬â„¢in areas such as police, justice, education, culture, media and the economyÃ¢â‚¬â„¢. He also recommends that what he terms Ã¢â‚¬â„¢protective spaceÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ should be created around Serbian Orthodox religious sites and institutions and that ways should be found to place them Ã¢â‚¬Ëœunder a form of international protectionÃ¢â‚¬â„¢. He adds: Ã¢â‚¬Ëœit is important not only to protect individual sites as cultural and religious monuments, but also living communitiesÃ¢â‚¬â„¢.

Albanian and Serb reactions to the Eide report were mixed. Albanian leaders reacted exuberantly to the fact that it had recommended that talks begin, but initially said little about the content of the report. Although giving praise where praise was due, the report was largely damning about corruption and the majorityÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s treatment of the Serb minority. Reactions in Serbia were on the whole positive, although not without criticisms. If the Standards had not been met, asked some, then why was Eide recommending that talks begin? To a great extent this was empty rhetoric, since by the time the report was issued Belgrade and Pristina were already readying themselves for talks, or at least were supposed to be.

As late as June 2005, on the Serb side a degree of denial still prevailed. Officials in Belgrade described SerbiaÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s policy as anticipating that Kosovo could have Ã¢â‚¬Ëœmore than autonomy, but less than independenceÃ¢â‚¬â„¢. What this meant was unclear. Some officials, such as Aleksandar Simic, an adviser to Premier Vojislav Kostunica, said that this meant that although being autonomous, the future Kosovo would send back deputies to the parliament in Belgrade and play a full role in running the whole country.13 Serbia has a population of 7.5 million, as against some 2m for Kosovo. The forcible reincorporation of such a large number of implacably hostile Albanians into the Serbian body politic seemed so far from reality or in the interests of a stable Serbia that one could only wonder: had Serbian strategists, unable in the past six years to visit Kosovo at will, simply lost any grasp of the reality there?

By autumn 2005, however, a more realistic concept of what was possible was emerging. Sanda Raskovic-Ivic, the head of the Serbian governmentÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s Coordination Centre for Kosovo, was saying that she envisaged the province having full autonomy in the judicial, executive and legislative fields but that defence, foreign affairs and sovereignty would remain in the hands of Serbia. Dusan Batakovic, a historian and diplomat with a deep knowledge of Kosovo, and now advisor to Serbian President Boris Tadic, elaborated on this: he did not expect that the Albanians would want to return to parliament in Belgrade, though this option remained. He also said that, in preparing for talks, he was gaming various scenarios of what might happen.

It seems unlikely that the Serbian idea of Ã¢â‚¬Ëœmore than autonomy but less than independenceÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ will gain support amongst the big powers who will help arbitrate KosovoÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s fate. However, the new position, despite the occasional nationalistic outburst, is expressed in the mild language of compromise; the Serbs claim they are trying to find a happy median between the Albanian desire for self-rule and their desire to defend SerbiaÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s territorial integrity. In private, some senior Serbian leaders say they believe that Ã¢â‚¬Ëœconditional independenceÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ for Kosovo is inevitable, but they will nonetheless put up a fierce rearguard struggle to prevent it. No Serbian leader wants to go down in history as the one who lost Kosovo, so if this rearguard action succeeds in staving off independence during their watch Ã¢â‚¬â€œ which is conceivable, if unlikely Ã¢â‚¬â€œ they will regard the talks as a success.

In Pristina, preparations for talks lag far behind those of Belgrade. Publicly, everyone from President Ibrahim Rugova to Premier Bajram Kosumi says that they are willing to talk with the Serbs about everything except independence, which is non-negotiable. PristinaÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s position, in other words, is the mirror image of BelgradeÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s. This position is understandable from their point of view, but what seems alarming is the lack of preparaÃ‚Â¬tion for any succession issues, in light of the experience of the rest of the former Yugoslavia. Since 1999, for example, Serbia has not paid pensions to Albanian workers who had paid their contributions like other Yugoslav citizens. When Kosovo Albanian negotiators demand this money, the Serbs will retort that they have paid the interest on KosovoÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s internaÃ‚Â¬tional debt for the last six years.

Indeed, diplomats in Pristina fret that the main Kosovan leaders are simply unprepared for talks and have been lulled, by talk of Ã¢â‚¬Ëœconditional independenceÃ¢â‚¬â„¢, into a false sense of security. They do not seem to appreciate the threat, from their point of view, of the preparations being made by the Serbs.15 Indeed, Albanians recently were outraged when the International Telecommunications Union failed to quickly accede to a request from UNMIK to allot Kosovo an international direct-dialling code separate from SerbiaÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s. This was thanks to deft diplomacy on the part of Serbia, although the issue has not yet been finally settled.

Some skilled people will be at the coming talks, as part of a team already selected by Rugova. But the question is whether there are enough of them. The two best men on the team, not being major political figures, have the least clout. One is Blerim Shala, the editor of the daily Zeri, who has been asked to coordinate the teamÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s working groups; the other is Veton Surroi, the publisher and now leader of the small opposition party Ora. The rest of the team leave room for concern, quite apart from personal antipathies within the group. Nexhat Daci, the speaker of parliament, is widely regarded by diplomats who deal with Kosovo as an old-style, inflexible demagogue and by opposition leaders as unacceptably authoritarian. Next is Bajram Kosumi, the likeable but weak premier who succeeded Ramush Haradinaj. A whiff of scandal hangs over his premiership following allegations of corruption which appeared in the press. President Ibrahim Rugova is the best-known international symbol of Kosovo and his authority is unmatched. However, he has lung cancer and nobody knows how his health will hold up over the next few months. If he dies or is incapacitated soon this will provoke a major political upheaval as rival camps, which are already emerging, fight for the leadership of his Democratic League of Kosovo, the largest single party in Kosovo. His demise could also fatally weaken the Kosovo Albanian negotiÃ‚Â¬ating team, as the others fight for a leadership role. Finally there is Hashim Thaci, the leader of the opposition Democratic Party of Kosovo, who used to be the political leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army. All these men, bar Daci, participated in the Rambouillet negotiations.

At the time of writing the Eide report was awaiting examination by the Security Council. According to diplomatic sources, once this stage has been passed and Ahtisaari or someone else has been selected to lead the talks, three deputies Ã¢â‚¬â€œ from the US, EU and Russia -- will be chosen. A period of shuttle diplomacy will begin, perhaps in December, and at some point in early 2006 the team could retire to write a draft agreement. While working groups of Serbs and Albanians may go over certain individual questions, the main negotiators will not yet meet. Indeed, a proposal which had been floated behind the scenes in late summer for a formal opening of talks was quashed on the grounds that both sides would then be obliged to state positions publicly, which would later reduce their room for manoeuvre and flexibility. According to Veton Surroi, a realistic scenario foresees the Serb and Albanian main negotiating teams summoned to meet around May 2006 Ã¢â‚¬Ëœin a castle in AustriaÃ¢â‚¬â„¢. In January Austria takes over the presidency of the EU.

What happens next is impossible to predict. One scenario outlined by a senior diplomatic source foresees that the Serbian team will fight hard to make sure that the agreement contains all possible safeguards for the Kosovo Serbs, acknowledging its own interests and in institutionalising international protection for Serbian Orthodox monasteries and churches.18 Having achieved this, the Serbs could then refuse to endorse the plan because it also points the way to KosovoÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s independence. Reluctantly, perhaps, the Albanians would then be compelled to accept more in terms of Serbian rights in Kosovo than they would have done otherwise, but under international pressure they might see such concessions as the price of independence.

At the same time SerbiaÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s leaders, none of whom want to take responsibility for losing Kosovo, could claim that, at this point and having fought as hard as possible, Kosovo was taken away from Serbia. Since Serbia did not give its consent, it will not recognise the emerging state and hence, as far as it is concerned, its status could (theoretically,) be reversed at a later date. If this is in fact how the situÃ‚Â¬ation develops, this Serb position will, sooner or later, have to be modified, if only as the price of EU membership Ã¢â‚¬â€œ as recent quarrels over Turkey and the question of its recognition of Cyprus have demonstrated.

It is impossible to know in advance what the UN-led negotiating team might propose. But since the widespread assumption is that it will be some form of Ã¢â‚¬Ëœconditional independenceÃ¢â‚¬â„¢, it is worth examining what this could mean. In broad terms it would certainly mean adopting some of the recomÃ‚Â¬mendations discussed by Eide, but more specifically it may well be that the negotiators are guided by the blueprint of the International Commission on the Balkans. This independent group, which issued its report in April 2005, was chaired by former Italian Premier Giuliano Amato, and for the most part included people either from or with a deep knowledge and experience of the Balkans. They proposed that Kosovo should move towards independence in four stages. The first, Ã¢â‚¬Ëœde facto separation of Kosovo from SerbiaÃ¢â‚¬â„¢, seems to describe the current situation. The second is called Ã¢â‚¬Ëœindependence without full sovereigntyÃ¢â‚¬â„¢, which is described as meaning that Kosovo is an independent entity but not yet a sovereign state and one in which the international community Ã¢â‚¬Ëœreserves powers in the fields of human rights and minoritiesÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ Ã¢â‚¬â€œ a theme which was echoed by Eide. The third stage is called Ã¢â‚¬Ëœguided sovereigntyÃ¢â‚¬â„¢, and would Ã¢â‚¬Ëœcoincide with KosovoÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s recognition as a candidate for EU membershipÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ and in which the international community would lose its reserve powers which would be replaced by Ã¢â‚¬Ëœinfluence through the negotiation processÃ¢â‚¬â„¢. The fourth and final stage is called Ã¢â‚¬Ëœfull and final sovereigntyÃ¢â‚¬â„¢, and is marked by the Ã¢â‚¬Ëœabsorption of Kosovo into the EU and its adoption of the shared soverÃ‚Â¬eignty to which all members are subjectÃ¢â‚¬â„¢.

The Serbs hope that it will not come to this, and with skilful diplomacy they might stand a slim chance of at least making the technical status of Kosovo somewhat vaguer and more drawn out than that described above. For this they would probably need vigorous support from Russia, however, and according to diplomatic sources the Russians have already decided to betray the Serbs.20 For the benefit of the Serbian press, Russian diplomats say that they will not accept any solution for Kosovo which is not endorsed by Belgrade, but to Western diplomats they are saying precisely the oppoÃ‚Â¬site. It has always been widely assumed that Russia, citing the precedent of Chechnya, would oppose KosovoÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s independence. Now, however, three things seem to have happened. In 2003 Russian troops were withdrawn from the Balkans. This has dramatically lowered RussiaÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s diplomatic leverage in the region. Secondly, Russian diplomats have concluded that there is no realistic way to reconnect Kosovo and its hostile population to Belgrade. Thirdly, they have concluded, and indeed told visiting foreign ministers, that as far as they are concerned the question of precedent could be used to their advantage. That is to say, they are noting that if Kosovo can secede from a sovereign state, then the same argument can potentially be applied in areas of the former Soviet Union where they have interests, specifically Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia and Trans-Dniester in Moldova.

China is unlikely to resist the independence of Kosovo if Russia does not, although this cannot be taken for granted. While China has never taken an active role or even interest in the Balkans, it did veto the continuation of a UN peacekeeping force in Macedonia in 1999. The Serbs might succeed in persuading China that independence for Kosovo would set a dangerous precedent for Taiwan or even Tibet. Whatever the repercussions for Tibet, Serbian politicians argue that if Kosovo is granted some form of independence this would destabilise the region in a way they could not control. They argue, for example, that if they cannot prevent the loss of Kosovo, Serbia might succumb to a renewed wave of angry nationalism and the Radical Party, led by Vojislav Seselj, now on trial in The Hague on war-crimes charges, might come to power. This is conceivable. The Radicals are already the largest party in parliaÃ‚Â¬ment, although they are not in government. Outside of SerbiaÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s borders, the Serbian argument runs, KosovoÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s independence would embolden Albanian nationalists in Macedonia, thus perhaps prompting the disintegration of that state, with its large Albanian minority. The Serb part of Bosnia would again raise its wartime demand to secede and join Serbia.

Diplomats who follow the region are of course well acquainted with this line of argument, which played a decisive role in the EUÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s decision in October to begin talks with Serbia on a Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA). Diplomats openly said that they decided not to let the outstanding issue of Ratko Mladic, the fugitive Bosnian Serb wartime commander wanted by the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal, stand in the way of the opening of negotiations. They are hoping that the good news of the conclusion of an agreement next year may help counteract the simultaneous bad news of the loss of Kosovo and likely secession of Montenegro from the loose federation which currently links it to Serbia.

Albanians counter these arguments about radicalisation in Serbia with the argument that, unless they get independence, it is certain that hardliners will again resort to arms; in the ensuing uprising KFOR and representaÃ‚Â¬tives of the international community present in Kosovo will be targeted. UN vehicles are already targets of the occasional bomb.

In the shorter term there is another threat. Over the last few months, Albin Kurti, a 30-year-old former student leader and political prisoner, has been organising young people across Kosovo. Studying the techniques used by those who organised the overthrow of former regimes in Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine, Kurti wants to ready his people to come out in protest against the talks on KosovoÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s future status.

Kurti says that talks, by their very nature, aim at compromise and there can be no compromise on KosovoÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s independence. He fears that what he calls KosovoÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s Ã¢â‚¬ËœcorruptÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ politicians might yet buckle on this if put under presÃ‚Â¬sure. He argues that talks with Serbia should only take place when Kosovo is already independent and thus can sit at the table as an equal. His slogan Ã¢â‚¬â€œ Ã¢â‚¬ËœNo negotiations! Self Determination!Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ Ã¢â‚¬â€œ already decorates walls across Kosovo but his strength is, as yet, untested. If, however, at some point in the near future or during talks one of the Albanian leaders, for example Hashim Thaci, decided to Ã¢â‚¬Ëœplay the Kurti cardÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ and swing his support behind him then the outcome would be not only unpredictable but in such an unstable and highly charged situation a fresh wave of anti-Serbian ethnic cleansing similar to that of March 2004 might break out.

Diplomats who deal with Kosovo all repeat the mantra that they have no preconceived agenda, beyond wanting to prohibit the physical partition of Kosovo or a possible future union with Albania, and that they want Serbs and Albanians to reach agreement on the territoryÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s future among themselves. All of them know, however, and admit in private, that the likelihood of this happening is nil. This is why Ã¢â‚¬Ëœconditional independenceÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ is their aim. As to the fear of violence and instability, the most honest of them will admit that their fear of radicalisation in Serbia is simply less than their fear of an Albanian uprising. As to the question of the probable eventual recogÃ‚Â¬nition of the new state, they argue that while it would be preferable for this to be done via the Security Council, especially in light of the fact that Kosovo is now under UN jurisdiction, if Russia or China prevented this another route would have to be found. After all, the UN Security Council played no role in the recognition of the other states which emerged from the former Yugoslavia. According to Richard Caplan, in the likely case of Serbia opposing KosovoÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s recognition, Ã¢â‚¬Ëœthere will be ample opportunities for lawyers on both sides to exploit what is a rather ambiguous caseÃ¢â‚¬â„¢. Realities on the ground will be decisive. Ã¢â‚¬ËœHere, I think, politics will trump law.Ã¢â‚¬â„¢

posted by KosovoReport @ 4:44 PM 0 comments

December 25, 2005

New book on US destruction of Yugoslavia

New book on US destruction of Yugoslavia

Workers World - Dec 29, 2005 issue
http://www.workers.org/2005/world/milosevic-1229/

New book gives different view of U.S. destruction of Yugoslavia

By Paddy Colligan

"The Defense Speaks for History and the Future: Opening defense
statement at The Hague by President of Yugoslavia Slobodan Milosevic
with an introduction by Ramsey Clark" published by the International
Action Center, 2005. 120 pp. $19.95

Does this sound like a book to miss? Well, even if you do buy it,
would you let it languish on your bookshelf, without reading it? If
you followed either course of action, you would miss out on a
remarkable document. In fact, you would be react ing precisely as U.S.
administrations from Bush Sr. to Clinton to Bush Shrub have planned.
The demonization of Presi dent Milosevic has been so thorough that
even those on the side of the working class may not expect him to be
the source of historical insight. This is a pity, as he has been a
major political figure for many years in Yugoslavia, a once
significant workers' state.

This remarkable little book gives a lucid overview of the complex
history of the Balkans from World War II to the present. It includes
an analysis of the roots of the tragic inter-ethnic violence and the
way inter-imperialist rivalries have played out in the (now) former
Yugoslavia. At times it is quite detailed and examines arguments
primarily familiar to those who have closely followed the region's
political twists and turns. More often it offers difficult to find and
valuable background information that makes the region comprehensible.

Often books that are translations are awkward and convoluted. Not this
book. It is an excellent and authoritative translation of Milosevic's
opening statement, which he delivered in Serbo-Croatian before the
fraudulent International Criminal Court for the former Yugo slavia.
The writing is clear and even elegant. It is an achievement that
Milosevic was able to produce this in his isolated incarceration in
Scheveningen Prison in The Hague.

Part of Milosevic's opening statement reads, "An untruthful, distorted
picture of what happened in the territory of the former Yugoslavia was
created in internation al public opinion over a long period of time
with clear political intentions. These charges represent an
unscrupulous mani pulation of lies, a perversion of law, a defeat of
morals, and an extreme distortion of history. Everything has been
turned upside down in order to shield from responsibility those who
are truly responsible for the tragic events, to render the wrong
judgments and to draw the wrong conclusions about the nature and
background of the war against Yugoslavia."

It is worth our time to read Milo sevic's book so we can more fully
understand what the U.S. has done to Yugo slavia--this scenario of
systematically demonizing, dismantling and destroying countries that
won't do Washington's bidding continues to be the modus operandi of
U.S. governments.

This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: w...@workers.org
Subscribe wwnews-subscr...@workersworld.net

Balkan's North-South Independence Blues

Xinhua : Macedonian president says borders must be established before Kosovo status talks
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200512/24/eng20051224_230472.html

Commentary and Analysis:

* Kosovo: behind-the-scenes hard talk begins

(by Tim Judah)
http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?ID=14024

* Kosovo 'domino effect’ no longer genuine issue

(by Igor Jovanovic )
http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?id=14030

Hungarian tricolour adopted by ethnic Hungarians in Serbia
http://calibre.mworld.com/m/m.w?lp=GetStory&id=177416881

December 24, 2005

New book on US destruction of Yugoslavia

What remains to be done in the Balkans

http://www.antiwar.com/blog/index.php?id=P2582

Antiwar.com

Blog
December 23, 2005

UNMIK Boss Gives Up on Human Rights for Kosovo

Marek Antoni Nowicki, ombudsmen for Kosovo, is notable for being one of the very few international officials to have remained in the UN mission there from the very beginning. But now he's on the way out, reports ADN Kronos.

He's also remarkable for being one a very few officials who consistently has stood up for the rights of the people of Kosovo, reminding a disinterested outside world of the chronic problems faced by the province's minorities. And Nowicki has not been afraid to criticize the UN administration for its failings, either.

During his tenure, Nowicki was one of the few UNMIK officials to win the respect and trust of all of Kosovo's ethnic communities because he did a rare thing: he listened to their problems. He was impartial. He tried to help the voiceless common people when the state or other groups treated them unfairly. Most fundamentally, he was respected because he was an international, and not from one of the rival ethnic groups.

You can read his interview with Balkanalysis.com here.

This is why, without being self-aggrandizing, Nowicki wisely noted that "the situation is likely to get worse unless the international community appoints a new human rights watchdog," according to the ADN Kronos report.

However, UNMIK boss Soren Jessen-Petersen - an avowed friend of the murderous war criminal Ramush Haradinaj - has decided to replace Nowicki by granting "human rights supervision to local ethnic Albanian authorities, a move that Novicky considers premature."

At the same time Jessen-Petersen, who has "wide arbitrary powers in the province," has decided, contrary to the UN's mandate and Kosovo's legal status, that he will create "Kosovo justice and police ministries, under majority ethnic Albanians’ control."

Anyone who thinks that granting human rights protection responsibilities to a partisan ethnic group widely feared (for good reason) by another has got to be smoking something very potent indeed.

And anyone who thinks that the same people who helped mastermind the March 2004 anti-Serb pograms can be trusted to exercise their duties responsibly and fairly is either deluded or a delighted supporter of full ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.

To sum up, it is all too clear that the UNMIK is looking to save its own hide from local Albanians who perceive it as an obstacle to independence. By placing the courts, the cops and the human rights observers in the latter's hands, they are paving the way for a fait accompli- the removal of all minorities from Kosovo, which will render moot the idea of a "negotiated solution," leaving Belgrade with nothing to protect save a heritage without a remaining population. And the UNMIK staff is making sure there will be no one left to call them on it, while they can move on to another high-paying job with a similar institutional protection from accountability somewhere else in the world. These people are truly reprehensible.

Posted by: Christopher Deliso on Dec 23, 05 | 3:59 am | Comments? | link

######

Goldberg: US will keep supporting Kosovo (dailies)

All daily newspapers cover the meeting that US Head of Office Philip Goldberg had yesterday with Assembly Speaker Nexhat Daci. ZÃ«ri quotes Goldberg on the front page as saying that the US will be with Kosovo during the process of status resolution. On the other hand, Koha Ditore reports that Goldberg is disappointed over the non-inclusion of Kosovo Serb representatives in the Assembly. “One of my greatest disappointments ever since I came here is that the majority of Serb representatives have not attended the sessions of the Assembly,” he said.

Koha Ditore also quotes Goldberg as saying that in 2005, the Assembly has played a strong and constructive role in passing laws, which was necessary to enable work in standards implementation.

In Epoka e Re Goldberg is quoted as saying that 2005 is a historical year for Kosovo.

Assembly Speaker Daci said that the most essential thing is that Kosovo is on the right path toward status resolution and has the needed international support.

December 11, 2005

Why NATO bombed Serb TV

Why NATO bombed Serb TV
The Spectator (UK)
December 06, 2005

Did George W. Bush make a tasteless gag about bombing al-Jazeera? Did Tony Blair dutifully laugh? How could two leaders of the free world think it appropriate to jest about whacking pesky Arab journos while a nation Iraq burned under their watch? These are the questions being asked by British journalists who are shocked by rumours of a conversation that allegedly took place between Bush and Blair in April last year. I have a different question: why do these journalists seem more outraged by this President's alleged scurrilous aside about bombing a TV station than they were by an earlier president's actual bombing of a TV station?

Six years ago President Bill Clinton sent cruise missiles to destroy a TV studio and knock off some media workers, and it was no joke. At 2.20 a. m. on 23 April 1999, at the height of the Kosovo campaign, the Nato alliance led by Clinton and Blair destroyed the headquarters of Radio Television Serbia (RTS) in central Belgrade. The missiles destroyed the entrance and left at least one studio in ruins. More than 120 people were working in the building at the time; 16 were killed and another 16 were injured all of them civilian workers, mostly technicians and support staff.

The BBC's John Simpson described seeing 'the body of a make-up artist lying in a dressing room'. That was 27-year-old Yelitsa Munitlak, burned to death in the small room where she applied make-up to the station's newsreaders. She was so badly disfigured that her body could be identified only by the rings she was wearing. One of the RTS technical team, trapped between two collapsed concrete blocks, had to have both his legs amputated at the scene. He died later in hospital.

Today journalists wonder whether Blair laughed at Bush's joke about al-Jazeera, or perhaps even talked the President out of a serious 'plot' to bomb the Arab channel.

Never mind all that. Here is what Blair said after the targeted killing of media workers in Yugoslavia: the media 'is the apparatus that keeps Slobodan Milosevic in power and we are entirely justified as Nato allies in damaging and taking on those targets'.

He was backed by Clare Short, who today poses as an anti-war warrior but who six years ago was Blair's cheerleader-in-chief for bombing Yugoslavia. After the attack on RTS she said, 'The propaganda machine is prolonging the war and it's a legitimate target.' Tell that to the family of Yelitsa Munitlak.

To add insult to grotesque injuries, Nato officials later tried to deny that they had purposefully targeted a studio packed with civilian workers, instead claiming they had meant to bomb the TV transmitter next door. Yet according to the final report of the UN committee to review the Nato bombing campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, 'Nato intentionally bombed the central studio of the RTS broadcasting corporation.' And as Amnesty International pointed out, 'intentionally directing attacks against civilian objects is a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court'.

How did British journalists react to this 'war crime'? Not very honourably; certainly with far less rage than they have directed against Bush and Blair for their alleged chat about al-Jazeera. Some in the media who supported the Kosovo campaign kept shtoom about the attack. The broadcasting union Bectu did not even comment on it.

There was almost a celebratory tone in the Guardian's initial coverage of the bombing of RTS. In its first report on the attack (written by Martin Kettle and Maggie O'Kane, both of whom supported 'punishing' the Serbs) the paper repeated Nato's justifications for the attack without question: 'Nato targeted the heart of . . . Milosevic's power base early today by bombing the headquarters of Serbian state television, taking it off the air in the middle of a news bulletin.' It failed to say how camera operators, soundmen and makeup girls were central to Milosevic's 'power base'. Some journalists criticised the bombing of RTS not because it was criminal but because it provided a 'gift to Nato's critics'; in short, it made their 'good war' look bad.

There were honourable exceptions to all this. The National Union of Journalists, for example, vigorously opposed the attack. But too many journalists tried to squeeze this bombing of media workers into their view of the Kosovo campaign as a 'humanitarian' war. Yet the idea that you can burn to death a make-up girl in the name of 'humanitarianism'
is surely as perverse if not more so than the thought of Bush and Blair talking about bringing freedom to Iraq (which presumably includes freedom of speech) while talking about blowing up journalists.

By: Brendan O'Neill
http://www.spectator.co.uk/article_archive.php?id=7013&issue=2005-12-03

December 07, 2005

Interview with Serbian President Boris Tadic

NIN, 01/12/2005
By Dragan Bujosevic

Interview w/Serbian President
Boris Tadic
“Elections – Now!”

After the two new disputable mandates “reallocated” within G17 Plus, do you regret that you did not first insist on elections and then on resolving the Kosovo problem?

“I am the President of Serbia and the state issues are for me older than those with party dimensions. But, I consider that it is very important that we have political stability for the extremely difficult Kosovo talks, and it would be good to have a government which enjoys support from the majority of the Serbian citizens.”

This Government is now supported by only 15% of the voters.

“The legitimacy of the Government obtained at the 2003 elections is shaken. As a reminder, the key objection that this Government had in regard to the previous one was that a government supported by 25% of the voters had no legitimacy.”

You think that elections should be organized first, and then we should embark on the story about Kosovo’s future?

“I think that would be the best and most useful solution, since the negotiating team should have full power, and full legitimacy. I am certain, on the other hand, that the current Parliament’s composition does not correspond to the mood of the electorate. However, there is a legal way of slating elections, and therefore, the ruling coalition undertakes responsibility for its alarmingly insufficient legitimacy among the people… The current Government stays in power at any cost by, in my opinion, violating the law. But, we are expecting a court decision.”

Although you have told the Blic daily that the elections are not necessary as long as the Kosovo talks are in progress, the DS deputy leader Gavrilovic said a couple of days earlier: elections first.

“Let me clarify that. At the final stage of the Kosovo talks, elections would not be useful. In am certain that for conducting the coming Kosovo talks with full strength and full legitimacy, the elections would be most efficient just at this moment. However, it is not up to me, but the Government and the Parliament, to decide on that.”

Don’t you think that the electorate is totally confused when you first say that the Government snatches mandates, and they you form a negotiating team with it? If they are thieves, then they are thieves?

“The Constitution does not oblige me only to send messages to my voters and those who support my politics, it also obligates me to send clear messages to all the Serbian citizens. I am obliged to cooperate both with the Government and the Parliament, to a smaller extent… However, as the Serbian President, I am also obliged to point at all the violations of the Constitution and law, while fighting, within the law and only with political means, and not by legal or physical violence. I am convinced that this Parliament is rump, and has a big problem regarding its own legitimacy. The Serbian President was elected by the direct will of the citizens, while all the other representatives of the citizens were elected indirectly on party tickets. The citizens do not know who their representatives in the Parliament are, and the situation in Serbia would be far more stable if the MPs were elected directly by the citizens, if we had a majority electoral system, and if the citizens had a recall mechanism for these MPs, like they have for the President of the State.”

Have you proposed to PM Kostunica to call for elections?

“I proposed that both to him and other leaders of the ruling coalition, with one firm stance – that after the early elections, a government of the democratic forces and with full legitimacy should be formed. The response was that it would not be useful at the moment.”

The minority Government is now going to make such important decisions on Serbia’s future?

“I do not understand such political logics. It may lead to temporary and illusive peace, but essentially leads to the disintegration of political processes. The Government resorts to two arguments to defend itself from early elections. One is that early elections would bring the Radicals to power, and the other is that elections are not necessary, considering that the Kosovo talks are already on the agenda. Thus, the inability of the ruling coalition regarding the fight against the radicalization of Serbia is taken as an argument in the international public against the elections, while on the other hand, the Kosovo talks are used as an explanation why the Government should remain until the end of its mandate. Both arguments are, however, incorrect.”

By entering the negotiating team, you pardoned the Government and enabled it to rule at least for another year?

“No. By entering the negotiating team, I fulfil my constitutional obligation to preserve the sovereignty and territorial integrity of this country. With the Kosovo talks, they are more jeopardized than in any other moment over the past 15 years.”

Did the Democratic Party (DS) accept the Parliament’s Resolution by joining the negotiating team, although it abstained from voting for it?

“No. The Resolution is not a negotiating platform. It is the Parliament’s stance on Kosovo and Metohija (KiM), and it says what Serbia does not want an imposed solution, and that it wants a compromise within the constitutional and legal solutions that were defined by Slobodan Milosevic. The negotiating platform cannot include the latter and that is why the DS and I were against this stance, which has no ground either in the political reality or in the stances of the UN Security Council and the Contact Group, which will make a solution at the end of the talks.”

At the beginning of the talks, you say that the Resolution cannot be applied?

“The Serbian Government and the MPs who voted for it know that. The Resolution was adopted as an explanation or justification before their voters, and less as an expression of a real approach in resolving the KiM problem. My approach is different. I think that Serbia has no reason to deceive itself. The institutions like the Parliament or Government are even forbidden to deceive the citizens over what we will face in KiM. I can guarantee that a solution to KiM will not be found within the constitutional-legal principles set by Milosevic. This can be confirmed by the documents of the UN Security Council, which is in charge of the administration in the Province, as well as by the Contact Group’s documents, and others.”

It is known that the even the State Union is formed against this Constitution, so why are you bothered by the detail of its mentioning in the Resolution?

“It is not a detail, but an essential problem which is decisive for the KiM talks. A difficult discussion is being led in the international community over which principle it will cling to. One principle is that there is no return to the time of before 1999, and the second is that KiM will not be any more part of Serbia. If the international community opts for the first principle, we have some room for negotiations. If the second prevails, then the task of the negotiating team is extremely hard. Therefore, I am saying: there is no return to the situation of before 1999, but we offer a solution to a sustainable, intact KiM with the sovereignty of our country, through creating two entities which will enable coexistence. First of all, I am interested in the survival of the Serbs with the guarantee for institutional connections between the Serb entity and the central institutions in Belgrade. Then come the relations with the ethnic Albanian community, which will be the subject of the forthcoming talks.”

But, The Contact Group has another stance as well – that Kosovo’s borders are unbreakable. Thus, it is independent. EU Commissioner Rehn speaks today with SRSG Jessen-Petersen about Kosovo’s entry into the EU; Kosovo without Serbia?

“There are currently four policies for KiM in Serbia. The first says – we can imagine it as independent. The Second says, without false patriotic emotions, that we would rather lose our lives than Kosovo, while we actually only think of the political ratings at the next elections. The third policy says: we do not accept imposed solutions, either conditional or unconditional independence, but it does not say what we want, and it directly leads to an imposed solution. The fourth policy, which is my policy, says what Serbia wants in KiM. That is the only way to prevent imposed solutions. If we only say what we do not want, we increase the possibility for imposed solutions. We should convince the Contact Group members that Serbia’s long-term interest is in accordance with the interests of the international community and all the Contact Group members. The international community has three principles: there is no return to the situation of before 1999, there is no border change of KiM, and there is no annexation of KiM to any country. In all my international contacts, I keep saying that the principle of inviolability of KiM’s borders is acceptable if the principle of inviolability of Serbia’s and the SCG borders is also applicable. If not, then we have a violation of the basic principles guaranteed by international agreements, which would introduce a legal-political precedent, dangerous not only for Serbia but also for many other countries in the region and the world.”

It has been claimed that you harmonized the Resolution on Kosovo with Kostunica’s office three weeks before its adoption in the Parliament.

“It is true that the two offices adjusted the PM’s speech at the UN SC, and I am behind what Kostunica said there. I did receive the draft resolution from the Premier, and said that I had some objections. During my visit to Israel, the Government consulted some other parties, and while I was in Russia, the Government stated that the Socialists and the Radicals had agreed with the draft which I had not accepted. Upon my return from Moscow, I presented my objections directly to D/PM Labus. After that, the Government held consultations on the document and did not accept my suggestions. I want to stress again that the limitation to Milosevic’s time Constitution is out of reality, and the talks are led to change this constitutional-legal framework for KiM, and every citizen and politician is aware of that. There is not reason to deceive ourselves about that. I do not want to give my vote to some political unreality. If this unrealistic clause had been excluded, the DS would have supported the Resolution, but the DS demonstrates responsibility for what will happen in a couple of months.”

Being dissatisfied with the accord between Kostunica and [SRS deputy leader] Nikolic, you announced your plan on two entity in Moscow as a tit-for-tat?

“Not at all. Before my departure for Moscow, I presented my plan to Kostunica, like I had told him earlier what our negotiating goal should be.”

What was Kostunica’s response?

“That it is in line with the policy conducted so far, and that he will analyse all the consequences of such a negotiating team. Finally, the Government agreed with my proposal.”

It has been speculated in the media that you received an unfavourable scenario from the US, and in accordance with it, you changed your stance, i.e., gave up the Resolution and offered two entities.

“If someone knows about some US scenario, I am requesting him to immediately send it to me. I have not received such a scenario. That the US is in favour of a quick outcome is not a news, at least not in the past ten months. But, Washington officially does not plead for any solution. It is a different issue whether some influential circles in America favour an independent Kosovo. Yes, they do, and not only in the US, but also in most Contact Group member countries, and our public should now that, and we should fight against that with legal, political and diplomatic arguments.”

Was [former CCK head] Nebojsa Covic mentioned as a possible negotiating team member?

“Covic constantly talked about KiM with Kostunica and me, but after a conflict with the Government, he was eliminated. I still think that his place is in the negotiating team.”

One of the team members is Professor Fleiner, whose Government (Switzerland) was the only one to support Kosovo independence. Is that a problem?

“He is a man whose stances are close to the interests of Serbia. I do not know whether the Institute for Federalism, at which he works, is on the Swiss Government’s budget. It would be good to check that.”

Does Slobodan Samardzic [Kostunica’s advisor and negotiating team member] receive a scholarship from the Swiss Government?

“I do not know, and it should be checked. It would not be good if it was so. We must protect the interests of the State and every member of the negotiating team. However, prior to that, I would not question the loyalty to the State of any of its citizen, including Slobodan Samardzic.”

There is a noticeable difference between your plan and the one adopted in the Parliament last March. Your plan does not mention the resettlement of people, there is no territorial continuity, and the entity you mention is rather a political term?

“That is a more realistic solution. At the time when [former Serbian PM] Zoran Djindjic drafted a plan for KiM, and what I am now talking about is essentially that plan, the return of the army and police to the Serb entity was anticipated. Unfortunately, although it is stipulated in UN SC resolution # 1244, it is no longer a reality.”

Can your plan be applied as long as the one adopted by the Parliament exists?

“The Parliament is not participating in the negotiations.”

That is true, but its plan is obliging until it has been annulled?

“My plan is the continuation of what is essential; it is only adjusted to a real situation. After all, that is demanded from politicians who hold specific posts. Today in the world, the disputable issues are not negotiated by nations and parliaments, but by individuals elected by the citizens to negotiate. It is now important that both the Premier and President demonstrate capability of taking responsibility and making strong moves in accordance with our interests. The Premier and President are not supposed to be a mere transmission of the Parliament. The Premier is responsible to the Parliament, and the President, to the people. Our job is to impose sustainable solutions. I am ready for such moves, and I am responsible before the people. I would like to reiterate that I am not responsible for the Parliament’s political moves, although I respect and accept what it passes.”

The Resolution, however, stipulates something else: “Government, you will negotiate, but the decision belongs to the Parliament?”

“That is an expression of politics which does not include individual responsibility, and that is a way of conducting politics that smells of the old time. This is how Milosevic ruled, and he always tried to have the citizens justifying his moves through referenda or the will of the Parliament. I respect the Parliament, but it must also accept the authority of the executive power and the Serbian President. A parliament that wants to be an executive power as well, and not only the legislative power, is a parliament which does not understand its place in a democratic state.”

Does the Resolution include a possibility for the PM, if the talks go wrong, to withdraw from the whole process, saying that he has no mandate, and ask for early elections at which KiM would be the only question?

“No responsible politician would do that. There is nothing easier for a politician than saying: I give up. I asked Tomislav Nikolic what he would do if the country faced an ultimatum regarding cooperation with The Hague tribunal. He said he would resign. I do not accept such political philosophy. If you are elected for some work, you should take the responsibility in the most difficult conditions too… When I was elected the President, I knew that I was assuming responsibility for the most difficult solutions, and I am aware of all the risks… “

Aren’t you involved in deceiving the public as well when you say that you will not accept an imposed solution, since, unfortunately, Serbia may be imposed a solution, whether it accepts it or not?

“When I say that I will not accept an imposed solution, I express my political principle that I want to fully fight against any imposed solution. I do that with proposals which are possible and feasible. If I said that I would not accept an imposed solution without saying what I want, then I would seek an alibi for my next political post and would not really fight against an imposed solution. There is no dilemma: any, even the most unfavourable solution, must be carefully analyzed, but we must fight with all political means to defend our legitimate state and national interests.”

NIN

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