March 28, 2007

Kosovo: The shocking hand of UN imperialism

28.03.2007      Source:      URL:http://english.pravda.ru/world/europe/88705-kosovoimperialism-0

UN Special Envoy for Kosovo ignores centuries of history, disregards deep-rooted nationality issues and insults the psyche of the Serb Nation by declaring that the only solution for Kosovo is independence. After years of drawing lines on maps, the international community goes back to imperialist practices, this time rubber-stamped by the United Nations Organization.

Now that Ban Ki-Moon has accepted the report drawn up by the UN Special Envoy for Kosovo, Martti Ahtisaari, in which he unilaterally imposes the Final Solution for this Serbian Province - full independence – the writing seems on the wall. For the international community, little does the Battle of Kosovo Polye mean – this, the rallying cry which formed first the heart, and later the hearth, of the Serbian nation.

One hopes that Martti Ahtisaari never once complained about Finland’s historical relations with its neighbours, Sweden and Russia. One hopes that those who support his Final Solution would also not disapprove of parts of their countries being carved off and integrated in their neighbours’ territory.

Practically every European nation has or had a frontier dispute which wars were fought over, and due to the same type of imperialistic, intrusive and meddlesome practices, most African nations continue to have the same disputes today. The result of this was an appeal by the UNO itself to respect the frontiers which history and time had drawn up.

It was the UNO which called on its members to accept the international frontiers which this organization presents as inviolable. Where, then, is the logic in carving Kosovo out of Serbia and giving it to ethnic Albanians, when many only went there in the first place because of its higher standard of living – not because it was Albanian, but precisely because it was Serbian.

What right has the international community to dismember the Serbian nation in this way, after the outrage committed against the forces of Slobodan Milosevic (before he was illegally kidnapped and imprisoned), when all he was trying to do was keep terrorists (UCK) out of his country?

How wonderful for the people of Kosovo that they are to have ludicrous characters like Big Bird and the Cookie Monster walking their streets. Cultural imperialism following military adventurism, criminal and murderous colonialism following the most blatant example of foreign intrusion into a region where the international community was never asked to come.

Kosovo is, was, has always been and shall always be, the heart of the Serbian nation. When will the international community learn its history lesson, stop drawing lines on maps and messing up people’s lives?

Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY

PRAVDA.Ru

March 25, 2007

Independent Kosovo a Muslim mafia state

Independent
Kosovo a Muslim mafia state

March 18, 2007 -- Kosovo Albanian military and police is under complete
control of the notorious Muslim Albanian mafia and if Kosovo becomes independent,
the mafia will have an unprecedented total control, from the top to the
underground, says Marko Nicovic, former Chief of Belgrade police and an
expert on mafia crimes in the Balkans.

"At the last congress in Phoenix in Arizona where I participated last
October, the final conclusion of the congress was that 90% of all financial
support of terrorist action in the world comes from drug dealing, and if
you have on the other side the Albanian mafia, it is connected with all
of these activities," says Nicovic.

Over 40% of the world heroin smuggling is controlled by the Albanian
mafia, and only in the US, 30% of heroin is sold by the emerging Albanian
Muslim mafia cartel.

The international recognition of Kosovo will strengthen the drug cartelization
that is already taking place through arranged marriages between Muslim
Albanian families in Kosovo and the drug producers in Afghanistan, Pakistan
and Iran says Marko Nicovic.

Nicovic warns that the Kosovo Albanian familial chains with Muslim drug
families in the Golden Crescent will be impossible to penetrate by the
law enforcement. 

"When I was appointed Chief of Police in 1983 it is the first time that
I met the power of the Albanian mafia. I warned my colleagues in the West
that it will be hard to penetrate because all family is involved in smuggling
and that makes very difficult for undercover agents to penetrate this structure,"
says Nicovic.

Arranged marriages between Kosovo Muslim drug families with ones in
Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan is the emerging horizontal integration of
the heroin supply from the producers there to the suppliers in Kosovo and
only family members will be allowed into this inner sanctum of drugs and
terror.

"It will be the very big problem for the Western countries especially
now when Kosovo is almost independent. After that European countries will
have our Columbia in Europe," says Nicovic. "It will be the first time
in history that mafia has its own country."

Nicovic says that large amount of the Albanian mafia money is invested
into political activities such as lobbies that advocate independence for
Kosovo.

"That lobby would organize the structure that would include, for example,
some Congressman, some journalist, some analysts, institutes, foundations...
for the project of an independent Kosovo," says Nicovic.

Richard
C. Holbrooke, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, on the left,
enjoying company with a Kosovo Albanian Florin Krasniqi, a weapons smuggler
from New York pictured in the middle, and Wesley Clark on the right at
a political fundraiser for John Kerry.

"Albanian mafia knows where the money is... money is in the western
countries," says Nicovic. "The main damage will be in the western countries
because they make money in the West not in Kosovo."

Statistics published by the UN that is administering Kosovo says that
unemployment among Kosovo Albanians is at 75% yet Kosovo is undergoing
a construction boom.

"If you have 75% unemployed yet many new buildings, new shops, construction
everywhere, where from has that money come," asks Nicovic.

"Osama bin Laden had in Albania a construction company which made drug
activities with construction companies in Kosovo. These extreme Muslims
will be the trouble for the West... and West will be provoked to investigate
what was done in Kosovo when a terrorist attack is clearly connected with
Albanian mafia," says Nicovic.

An appointed UN envoy, Marti Ahtisaari, has submitted his plan to the
UN on the status of Kosovo where he suggests that independence for the
province should be the solution.

UN decision on the status of the province is expected this year.

March 18, 2007 serbianna (c)

Russia's Sane Position on Kosovo

Russia's
Sane Position on Kosovo

By
Michael
Averko

March
22, 2007

Russian
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov firmly stated that any solution to the Kosovo
conflict must be agreeable to both sides. Russia's UN Ambassador Vitaly
Churkin correctly noted how some of his Western peers have disrespected
UN Resolution 1244 governing Kosovo. Recent Russian diplomatic action on
the disputed south Serb province confirms how many in the West continue
to misread Kremlin desires. In some Western circles, Russia was expected
to cave in to the idea of granting Kosovo independence. Russia's position
isn't yet etched in stone. However, at this late stage of Kosovo negotiating,
one can't overlook how Russia has if anything become more resolute in securing
a settlement on agreeable terms with Serbia.

 

During the presidency of Vladimir Putin - Russia is experiencing economic
growth and a new found confidence in its post Cold War world role. Nations
on the rebound often become more assertive in their foreign policy agendas.
For example: the US displayed a more muscular foreign policy during and
after Ronald Reagan's presidency; after America experienced a brief geo-strategic
decline following its debacle in Southeast Asia.

 

Contemporary Russia isn't the same as the one of the last decade when
Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote (in Foreign Affairs Magazine) of that country
possibly breaking up into several nations. Some might recall the pathetic
backtracking of the Russian troop deployment to Kosovo at the end of the
NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999. That clumsy move saw
Moscow back down from an engagement in Kosovo to counter NATO's presence.

 

Lavrov and Churkin are hardened no nonsense diplomats, with an active
background in former Yugoslav matters. During Boris Yeltsin's presidency,
Churkin represented Russia in the Contact Group of outside powers monitoring
the Bosnian Civil War. At the time, Lavrov was his country's UN ambassador
to many discussions on former Yugoslav issues.

 

In his prior role as UN ambassador, Lavrov was very much involved with
UN Resolution 1244. He's fully aware of how certain Western governments
have attempted to leapfrog over that document.

 

When looked at in its entirety, 1244 isn't a directive for Kosovo becoming
independent.

 

- It specifically states that Kosovo is a part of Yugoslavia. 
Serbia is internationally recognized as the successor state to Yugoslavia. 
In Communist and post Communist Yugoslavia - Kosovo was part of the Serb
republic.

- 1244 calls for a return of refugees, as well as of Serb military and
government bodies to Kosovo.  This has yet to happen.

- In legalese, the 1244 clause about taking into "full consideration"
the unsigned Rambouillet diktat isn't a green light for independence. It
simply means that aspects of Rambouillet can perhaps be considered. Prior
to the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, the Clinton Administration and Kosovo
Albanian nationalists wrote a clause in Rambouillet which would've (if
signed) permitted Kosovo to vote on independence after three years from
the accord's signing. I specifically recall noted American University law
professor Paul Williams bragging about his having written that segment
on Geraldo Rivera's MSNBC cable news show. No one questioned Williams'
objectivity as a then adviser to the Kosovo Albanian nationalist leaders.
Madeleine Albright was quoted as having said that Rambouillet was written
in a way that was unacceptable to the Serbs. An obvious pretext for starting
the war that was to be.

- The "final outcome" status for Kosovo is stated towards the end of
1244. It relates to how Kosovo should be governed as a part of Serbia.
What other logical way can be otherwise suggested when the very same document
recognizes Kosovo as part of Serbia, while stating that refugees, Serb
government and military bodies should all return to that province?

 

Bill Clinton's UN Ambassador Richard Holbrooke leads a pack of Democratic
Party affiliated foreign policy politicos advocating Kosovo independence.
They argue how Kosovo will become more violent if independence isn't granted.
Is this rational not a blueprint for encouraging violence elsewhere by
effectively saying that peaceful means will not get the same consideration?
Why should independence be granted to a group threatening  violence?
Isn't such an acquiesce a support for law of the jungle principles?

 

Holbrooke claims that Kosovo is the "special case" for independence
unlike some other disputed former Communist bloc territories. On this point,
Lavrov can easily outdo him by noting how Trans-Dniester has a much better
case for independence than Kosovo.

 

The lines have been drawn. Other nations have expressed sympathy with
the Russian and Serb position. At the same time, the vestiges of neo-liberal
and neo-conservative antipathy towards Serbia remains a strong guiding
factor in American foreign policy. The art of diplomacy seeks a middle
course to such a dispute. This would lead one to believe that a compromise
of sorts could be in the works. Writing in The Washington Times (March
20), former Serbian Unity Congress President Michael Djordjevich sees the
possibility of a partition of Kosovo.

 

Bosnia, in a way, already serves as a precedent for such an arrangement
and in this case it means that the Bosnian Serb republic "Republika Srpska"
(RS) has a greater case for independence than Kosovo. The signed Dayton
Accords governing Bosnia states that each of the two established Bosnian
entities can establish their own parallel relationships with other states
after a four year period from the document's signing in 1995. Unlike Kosovo:
in RS, there's no noticeable ethnic violence, with many refugees having
returned to its territory.

 

What’s really spooky about all of this is how Anglo-American mass media
outlets at large haven't fully explained all of the valid particulars related
to opposing Kosovo's independence. This kind of a "free press" makes it
easy for officialdom to hustle policies like the "humanitarian" bombing
of Yugoslavia.

 

Russia and America have a number of common interests. Why risk a betterment
in Russo-American relations by supporting a faulty premised Kosovo independence?

Michael
Averko is a New York based independent foreign policy analyst and media
critic. His commentary has appeared in the Action
Ukraine Report, Eurasian
Home, Intelligent.ru,
Johnson's
Russia List, Russia
Blog, The
New York Times  and The
Tiraspol Times.

March 23, 2007

Opening Pandora's Box in Kosovo?

Opening Pandora's Box in Kosovo?

By Yevgeny Primakov, member of the Russian Academy of Sciences

 

A few days ago, I returned from Belgrade, where I had attended the jubilee, 150th session of Serbia's Chamber of Commerce, a partner organization of the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. My visit to the Serbian capital gave me an opportunity to meet with many people. I had informal, extensive contacts with both President Boris Tadic and Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica. Russian Ambassador Alexander Alekseyev, well informed about the situation in and around Serbia, also offered some interesting insights.

My general impression from what I saw and heard is that Kosovo is the central issue for Serbian society today. I don't think that everyone, primarily in Washington, understands just how deeply ingrained this problem is in the minds of the Serbs. Aware of this mood (no one in the Serbian leadership can possibly ignore it), both Kostunica and Tadic categorically reject independence for Kosovo.

Some Western politicians may have hoped that President Tadic would put EU membership above Serbia's territorial integrity. That did not happen.

Today, the two Serb leaders are opposed to the plan proposed by Martti Ahtisaari, the UN secretary general's special envoy for Kosovo. As the Serbian president told me, this plan is not based on compromise: It provides for the separation of Kosovo, turning 15 percent of Serbia's territory into an independent state. I understand there are three main points in the position of the Serbian leadership.

First, a fundamental solution to the Kosovo problem should be based on the preservation of the province's de jure status as part of Serbia with maximum independence [autonomy] rights.

Second, this position does not mean that Serbia is turning its back on the West. According to Kostunica, the country's course toward integration into Europe [the EU] is still on. However, this course should not impede relations with Russia. According to Tadic, Serbia has three foreign policy priorities: rapprochement with the European Union, the United States, and Russia.

Third, the Serbian leadership (and I would like to stress this especially) is striving to continue negotiations with the Kosovo Albanians, harmonize positions and achieve a compromise formula that would be acceptable to both sides. The submission of the Ahtisaari plan in its present form to the UN Security Council is viewed as a completely unacceptable option.

The impression I got from my meetings in Belgrade is that not all negotiating avenues have been exhausted yet. I have often heard the question: Why act in such haste in dealing with this complex, long-standing problem? Unsurprisingly, many see "PR moves by the U.S. administration" behind this haste.

After leaving office, President Bush will go down in history not just with an "Iraq stigma" but also with victory in the Balkans, meaning that the air strikes on Belgrade eight years ago were not in vain: As a result, Serbia has attained democracy, while all those who sought independence have acquired it; and now Kosovo, with its Albanian population, is also in the process of acquiring it, which only shows that the approaches and actions by the Bush administration were correct.

This PR campaign comes at a heavy price to the Serbs.

Belgrade is especially worried by a possible outbreak of violence against Kosovo's Serbian minority.

As President Tadic said, "we cannot and will not fight against NATO, but this does not diminish our concern about the situation in Kosovo."

While I was in Belgrade, Richard Holbrooke made a statement, predicting that delay in resolving the Kosovo issue would lead to more bloodshed.

"This is not an analysis, but a scenario," a senior Serb government official said. "As soon as Washington issues a threat to the Kosovo Albanians, to the effect that in the event of anti-Serb violence they would lose Western support once and for all, everything will return to normal in Kosovo." But will Washington ever do that?

I do not agree with this take on Holbrooke, who I know very well. Furthermore, this scenario seems to be absolutely not in the U.S. interests. Should, God forbid, the scenario be played out, many questions are bound to arise. One of them will be as follows: NATO forces and police have been deployed in Kosovo for the past eight years, therefore this entire international operation, initiated by the United States, has failed to establish stability in the province? Or, another question: If anti-Serb violence is possible even in the presence of international forces, what will be in store for the Serbian minority should Kosovo gain independence?

Finally, I would like to draw attention to yet another problem. Once Kosovo is granted independence, the Bosnian state, created with so much difficulty, could start coming apart at the seams. It cannot be ruled out that centrifugal trends will reemerge and start picking up pace. Bosnian Serbs could start gravitating toward Serbia, while a similar trend among Bosnian Croats with respect to Croatia could result in their secession from the Croatian-Muslim federation in Bosnia. In this situation, Bosnian Muslims will perforce reach out to independent Kosovo, which will further radicalize politics. Under the Ahtisaari plan, Kosovo will not join other states, but then others could join Kosovo.

All of this requires thinking.

http://english.mn.ru/english/issue.php?2007-11-8

Why NATO really smote the Serbs

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20070322.COSERBIA22/TPStory/

Comment

Why NATO really smote the Serbs

JAMES BISSETT

March 22, 2007

This weekend marks the eighth anniversary of the U.S.-led NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. The implications of that action are still with us.

The onslaught that began March 24, 1999, continued for 78 days, causing an estimated 10,000 civilian casualties and inflicting widespread damage on the country's infrastructure. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization's unprecedented attack against a sovereign state was done without United Nations authority and in violation of the UN Charter and international law.

It also set a dangerous precedent: It transformed NATO from a purely defensive organization into a powerful alliance prepared to intervene militarily wherever it chose to do so. And it paved the way for the unilateral U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Bill Clinton and other NATO leaders justified the bombing on humanitarian grounds. It was alleged that genocide was taking place in Kosovo and that Serbian security forces were driving out the Albanian population. Later, it was disclosed there was no genocide in Kosovo. (Of course, the outcome appears to be an independent quasi-state of Kosovo, as shall be recommended next week to the UN Security Council.) Before the bombing, several thousand Albanians had been displaced within Kosovo as a result of the fighting between Serbian security forces and the Kosovo Liberation Army. But nearly all of the Albanians who fled Kosovo did so after the bombing began. The real ethnic cleansing came after Serbian forces withdrew and more than 200,000 Serbs, Roma, Jews and other non-Albanians were forced to flee; more than 150 Christian churches and monasteries have since been burned by Albanian mobs.

The bombing had little, if anything, to do with humanitarian concerns. It had everything to do with the determination of the United States to maintain NATO as an essential military organization. The fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the withdrawal of Warsaw Pact armies had called into question NATO's reason for existence. Why was such a powerful and expensive military organization needed to defend Western Europe when there was no longer any threat from Soviet communism?

The armed rebellion by the terrorist Kosovo Liberation Army provided Washington with the opportunity needed to demonstrate to Western Europe that NATO was still needed. So, it was essential to convince the news media and the public that atrocities and ethnic cleansing were taking place in Kosovo.

This was done with relative ease by a campaign of misinformation aimed at demonizing the Serbs and by assertions by Mr. Clinton, Tony Blair and other NATO spokesmen that hundreds of young Albanian men were "missing" and that mass executions and genocide were taking place in Kosovo. Compliant journalists and a credulous public accepted these lies.

In April, 1999, at the peak of the bombing, Mr. Clinton gathered NATO's political leaders in Washington to celebrate the alliance's 50th birthday.

The party was used as a platform for Mr. Clinton to announce a new "strategic concept" -- NATO was to be modernized and made ready for the new century. There was no reference to defence or the settling of international disputes by peaceful means or of complying with the principles of the UN Charter. The new emphasis would be on "conflict prevention," "crisis management" and "crisis response operation."

Usually when a treaty is to be amended or changed, it must be approved and ratified by the legislatures of the contracting states. This was not done with the North Atlantic Treaty. It was changed by an announcement from the U.S. president, with little or no debate by the legislatures of member countries. It may well be that NATO should be in a position to intervene militarily in the internal affairs of another country, but it surely is essential that the ground rules for such intervention be in accordance with the UN Charter and only after concurrence of member states. NATO should not become a convenient political "cover" to justify the use of military power by the United States.

James Bissett was Canada's ambassador to Yugoslavia from 1990 to 1992.

March 21, 2007

“Kosovo is not unique. There is the Republic of Northern Cyprus” – expert opinion

“Kosovo is not unique. There is the Republic of Northern Cyprus” – expert opinion

Read it in Russian

REGNUM publishes an opinion of an eminent expert on the post-Soviet space who chose to remain undisclosed, on the situation around the “Kosovo precedent” and possibilities of its application to the practices of the post-Soviet unrecognized states – Transdniestria (Transdnestr), Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Nagorno Karabakh.

“The failure of the plan of ‘Kosovo issue settlement’ proposed by the official Turkish lobbyist Ahtisaari – with whose biasness only the pro-American players candidly put up – could scare only those who, contrary to reality, were convinced that they would subdue Serbia, deceive Russia, lull Kosovo, and satisfy the anti-European US game.

The truth is that any, any decision on the fate of the really existing Kosovo is a catastrophic trap for the west. For any, any acting and approved in all aspects of sovereignty status of Kosovo is a progress and desired goal for the post-Soviet space. Even the formula ‘independence minus the UN’ intended for Kosovo, that is, the formula of granting a real status WITHOUT solving the problem with Serbia (or something similar) – presents the level of powers for the post-Soviet self-determined states that has already destroyed, and will destroy further yet, Moldavia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. Naïve are those who think that some decision on the status of Kosovo will be applicable for the countries of the former USSR. Kosovo already exists, and the precedent does not depend on senseless intelligentsia’s reflections of ‘crisis groups’ of all sorts.

Kosovo is not a unique precedent. There is de facto recognized by the NATO countries – Turkey, Great Britain, France, the USA – as well as by Azerbaijan, Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. And this example does not depend on the follies of Ahtisaari. The precedent is comprehensively created by Turkey and Azerbaijan. And the whole mankind has no other choice than to follow the example. Get ready.”

Permanent news address: www.regnum.ru/english/798723.html

March 11, 2007

Serbia Press: Kosovo plan, trap; no exit

Serbia Press: Kosovo plan, trap; no exit

Sun, 11 Mar 2007 19:43:51

A day after the last talks on the future of Kosovo seemingly failed, Serbian press said the West was wrong believing that it can resolve the Serbian-Albanian issue with a "take it or leave it approach."

"Playing the card of pragmatism, of an estimate that the Serbs can make less trouble than the Albanians, is a sign of lacking political skill and a trap without an exit," Belgrade daily Politika wrote in an editorial on Sunday

"The Albanians now live in five different states and a bad solution provides material for new conflicts in the Balkans," it wrote.

The paper sharply criticized NATO and the U.S. for supporting the majority Albanians' bid for Kosovo's independence.

"When NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer says in Belgrade 'we'll protect the Serbs in Kosovo,' we are of course satisfied. But as far as I can remember, NATO was founded to protect the territorial integrity of member-states," it added.

"I actually expected to hear that NATO would protect the state of Serbia, a prospective member," the commentator added. "Or will Serbia become the first exception to that rule?"

After the talks between Serbia and Kosovo's ethnic Albanians on the future of the breakaway province failed Saturday, the UN envoy in the issue, Martti Ahtisaari, is expected to send his plan for the future of Kosovo to the UN Security Council in late March.

The Albanians signaled acceptance of the plan, which sees in the future the supervised graduation to independence for Kosovo.

Kosovo has been a NATO protectorate since 1999 when the NATO-led international forces launched a bombing campaign in the area to drive out Serbian troops responsible for the killing of over 10,000 native Kosovars and displacing one million others.

MA/AVA

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=2295 />

March 08, 2007

UN plan for Kosovo faces a rocky future

International Herald Tribune

UN plan for Kosovo faces a rocky future

By Nicholas Wood

Thursday, March 8, 2007

VITINA, Kosovo: Hajriz Jakupi, a former guerrilla who fought the Serbs, is not happy with the international proposal that is meant to bring lasting peace to this region, even though Kosovo would get the trappings of a state — a flag, an army and the right to seek international recognition.

It is the quid pro quo that angers Jakupi: that the relatively few Serbs living in Kosovo would have control over expanded areas that would include Albanian villages, including his own, which lies just outside this town.

"It's an offense," Jakupi said, raising his voice. "It is our territory, it is our land." He was speaking of the ethnic Albanians who would become a minority in the municipality he comes from but are a large majority overall in Kosovo.

How fighters like Jakupi behave in the next months will be crucial to the success of the UN-designed plan. For now, he said, he will express his opposition "in a peaceful manner."

Serbian leaders rejected the UN plan Thursday while ethnic Albanians accepted it, diminishing hopes of a compromise before the proposal reaches the UN Security Council, The Associated Press reported from Belgrade. Ethnic Albanian and Serbian leaders held separate meetings in Kosovo's capital, Pristina, and in Belgrade to discuss the amended proposal drafted by the chief UN envoy, Martti Ahtisaari.

The calculation of the United Nations was that people like Jakupi and his colleagues in the Kosovo Liberation Army would accept the deal, since it gives the Albanian population considerable independence, although with a dose of international supervision.

If they do so, the United Nations will hope to scale back a multibillion-dollar exercise that it has been engaged in for nearly eight years, tying down thousands of peacekeeping troops. The proposals, which have taken more than a year to draw up, were expected to go to the UN Security Council for a vote by June.

But there are worries that things could go wrong, and not only among people like Jakupi who have been quick to fight before. Jakupi, 35, leads a group of former fighters from the Kosovo Liberation Army, which waged an insurgency against Serbian security forces from 1997 to 1999, a conflict that took 10,000 lives and ultimately pushed NATO to intervene. Some of his colleagues were at the center of two other insurgencies, in Macedonia and southern Serbia, in 2001.

And Serbia is loath to lose Kosovo, a province it has controlled for most of the 20th century and regards as central to its history and identity. Many Serbs in Kosovo are weighing whether to move out. There also are worries that Serbia will simply hold on to the part of Kosovo where Serbs are a majority, splitting the province and not recognizing the new arrangements.

A senior UN official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said of the Serbs: "My fear is that they would consider some kind of partition. That would cause great concern."

The United Nations and NATO have never been able to exert dominance in that northern region. Yet the authorities say little has been done to prevent such a partition within Kosovo.

That could provoke renewed conflict, senior UN officials and regional analysts warned, from armed ethnic Albanians determined to retain Kosovo's current boundaries.

"If independence is not recognized, I think people will take up arms," Jakupi said. "It is the minimum we can accept. This is what our heroes gave their lives for in the war."

Even if things go well, international and local officials said ethnic divisions would not permit the quick exit of peacekeepers and administrators that the international community hopes for.

Europe and the United States will need to act as arbitrators in a divided and economically backward region for years, according to this view, having some oversight over the new government and an ability to amend laws and dismiss public officials.

Kosovo has been run by the United Nations since June 1999, after a 78-day NATO-led bombing campaign forced out the Serbian security forces who had been accused of committing atrocities against ethnic Albanians.

Years later there is little doubt among UN officials that their tenure should come to an end, allowing the European Union to take the lead (although with far fewer responsibilities than the United Nations had) and with most decision-making powers in the hands of a new Albanian-led government.

Ethnic Albanians are impatient to control their affairs and have taken their anger out on UN soldiers. Protests are frequent in Pristina, most recently on Saturday, when several thousand people marched by the UN headquarters shouting "UN out."

Under the proposals drafted by Ahtisaari, the UN would be replaced by a European Union-led mission with limited powers and Kosovo would enjoy considerable autonomy.

Controls would be put in place to protect minorities. Serbian areas would control their own affairs in health and education in five new municipalities that could get financing from the Serbian government. The European Commission has allocated €120 million, or nearly $160 million, over three years to help minority communities.

For the Serbs, "this is attractive, if they engage," said Torbjorn Sohlstrom, the EU official in charge of planning for the next administration.

But Serbia's record of engagement in Kosovo suggests that ordinary Serbs may not engage as EU officials might wish.

For six years Belgrade has pressured Serbs living in Kosovo not to cooperate with international or Albanian institutions in Kosovo, often by docking pay or cutting pensions. Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica of Serbia, a nationalist, has said his government will never recognize an independent Kosovo.

"It will be very hard to implement if the Serbian government is against it," said Oliver Ivanovic, one of a handful of Serbian politicians who take part in Kosovo's institutions, dominated by ethnic Albanians.

Alex Anderson, director of the International Crisis Group, a political research group active in the Balkans, said, "If you have Belgrade trying to undermine it, the Albanians may regard the status settlement as a big burden."

Others worry about how the proposals will be carried out. Kim Vetting, an adviser on security issues with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which works alongside the UN mission here, said: "Here we are just a few months from settlement day and we don't know how or what to do. How do we maintain control there?"

Notes:

International Herald Tribune Copyright © 2007 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com

March 02, 2007

Swallowing the Balkans

Swallowing the Balkans

By Ryan Malone

March 2007

/>One advantage to having Romania and Bulgaria in the European Union, according to the European Commission, is that both countries will be able to help strengthen the EU’s foreign policy and security policy: Romania as a bridge to the east, and both as interfaces with the Balkan region.

That second point is particularly interesting given Europe’s history with the Balkans. Stratfor made this observation: “With Romania and Bulgaria joining the European Union … the Balkans are nearly surrounded by EU member countries, meaning the European Union will have to address rising tensions and instability in southeastern Europe” (Dec. 29, 2006).

Consider these “rising tensions.” Serbia, for example, stripped of its former republics and geopolitical relevance thanks to European intrusion, now stands at the threshold of a political revolution. When Serbia held its national parliamentary elections in January, the pro-West, pro-EU Democratic Party garnered enough votes to form a coalition government that excludes the Serbian Radicals. This gives Serbia the opportunity to pursue EU membership. EU officials said, shortly after the election, that Belgrade “could begin accession talks as soon as” the coalition government was formed. Those were the words of Erhard Busek, spokesman for the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe, stating that Serbia had a better chance than Turkey of gaining EU membership (EUbusiness.com, January 23).

Also, with the Serbian Radicals sidelined—a party opposing the independence of Kosovo—the barriers to Kosovo breaking away have fallen. This makes way for the EU to cement its hold on Kosovo. It is now planning to have its police force take over security operations from NATO troops. This will be the EU’s biggest security operation ever in Kosovo, involving not only policing, but also institution building.

Meanwhile, in Bosnia, the United Nations is supposed to hand power over to the national government this spring, when European forces are set to withdraw from the country. No one quite knows how successfully the deadlocked government (split among Muslims, Croats, Serbs) will function on its own.

Added to that is the possible energy crisis into which the EU has purposefully plunged the Balkans. To be an EU member, Bulgaria—the Balkans’ biggest electricity supplier—had to shut down two functional nuclear reactors that violated the EU’s strict safety regulations. This means Sofia will lose up to _‚_10 billion in export revenues and face possible increases in energy imports and shut-down costs; at the same time, electricity may become more scarce and costlier. It will “destroy the delicate energy balance in a region that continues to be economically and politically unstable” (Deutsche Welle, Dec. 28, 2006).

But have no fear. Europe is poised to address these “rising tensions.”

The EU’s increased presence in the Balkans through Romania’s and Bulgaria’s accessions has coincided with Germany’s six-month presidency of the EU. Stratfor asserts, “Whether or not Germany likes it, these Balkan issues have fallen in its lap. Keeping the Balkans from returning to its previous chaos, then, could become Germany’s unintended presidential legacy” (op. cit., emphasis ours).

Unintended? Hardly. Germany and the Vatican were at the helm of slicing and dicing the Balkans in the first place. Back when Germany stood firm in recognizing Croatia and Slovenia, the New York Times said the incident “underscored Germany’s growing political power within the 12-nation European Community” and that “it marked the single most visible demonstration of that power since reunification of the two Germanys …” (Dec. 16, 1991). In his booklet The Rising Beast, editor in chief Gerald Flurry called Yugoslavia the first victim of World War III, just as Czechoslovakia was the first of the Second World War.

As Stratfor maintained only a few years back, “Germany is seeking to reassert itself at the center of Europe, and the Balkans play a big part in that strategy. It is an area where Germany can expand its military reach without frightening either itself or its neighbors. Berlin also would like to build on its ties with Slovenia, Croatia, Albania, Bosnia and Bulgaria to pull both southern and Eastern Europe under its wing as the EU expands” (March 6, 2002).

How interesting is the timing of Germany’s presidency, along with the accession of two large Balkan countries, while the former Yugoslav republics stand at political crossroads. It won’t be long before these countries, now surrounded by the EU—and essentially vassal states of it—join a united Europe.

/>

February 28, 2007

Lies of the vigilantes

Lies of the vigilantes

The Srebrenica ruling punctures the false claims that underpin the doctrine of intervention

John Laughland

Wednesday February 28, 2007

The Guardian

Slobodan Milosevic was posthumously exonerated on Monday when the international court of justice ruled that Serbia was not responsible for the 1995 massacre at Srebrenica. The former president of Serbia had always argued that neither Yugoslavia nor Serbia had command of the Bosnian Serb army, and this has now been upheld by the world court in The Hague. By implication, Serbia cannot be held responsible for any other war crimes attributed to the Bosnian Serbs.

Article continues

The allegations against Milosevic over Bosnia and Croatia were cooked up in 2001, two years after an earlier indictment had been issued against him by the separate international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at the height of Nato's attack on Yugoslavia in 1999. Notwithstanding the atrocities on all sides in Kosovo, Nato claims that Serbia was pursuing genocide turned out to be war propaganda, so the ICTY prosecutor decided to bolster a weak case by trying to "get" Milosevic for Bosnia as well. It took two years and 300 witnesses, but the prosecution never managed to produce conclusive evidence against its star defendant, and its central case has now been conclusively blown out of the water.

The international court of justice (ICJ) did condemn Serbia on Monday for failing to act to prevent Srebrenica, on the basis that Belgrade failed to use its influence over the Bosnian Serb army. But this is small beer compared to the original allegations. Serbia's innocence of the central charge is reflected in the court's ruling that Serbia should not pay Bosnia any reparations - supplying an armed force is not the same as controlling it. Yugoslavia had no troops in Bosnia and greater guilt over the killings surely lies with those countries that did, notably the Dutch battalion in Srebrenica itself. Moreover, during the Bosnian war, senior western figures famously fraternised with the Bosnian Serb leaders now indicted for genocide, including the US general Wesley Clark and our own John Reid. Should they also be condemned for failing to use their influence?

However, Monday's ruling is about far more than Milosevic. Ever since the end of the cold war, the US and its allies have acted like vigilantes, claiming the right to bomb other countries in the name of humanity. The Kosovo war was the most important action taken on this basis and, as such, the curtain-raiser for Iraq. Fought, like the Iraq war, without UN approval, it was waged partly because the international community felt it should have intervened more robustly against Yugoslavia over Bosnia. It now turns out that Serbia was not in control in Bosnia after all. The ruling therefore punctures a decade-and-a-half of lies in support of the doctrine of military and judicial interventionism.

The ICJ, indeed, operates on a radically different philosophy of international relations than that which inspires the ICTY. Unlike the ICTY, the ICJ is not a criminal court and claims no power of constraint over states. Its jurisprudence is based on the anti-war sovereignty-based philosophy of the Nuremberg trial and the UN charter. In the international system, born out of the second world war, war is illegal except in a very restricted cases. States have no right to attack other states, not even on human rights abuse claims. This position is based on the understanding that there are no war crimes without war, and that war always makes things worse.

Mere anarchy was loosed upon the world when the cold war ended and the US sought to create a unipolar world system by destroying the old one. After the 1991 Iraq war, the US and Britain claimed the right to bomb Iraq to protect the Kurds and Shias, which they did for 12 years. Nato bombed the Bosnian Serbs in 1995 and Yugoslavia in 1999. The ICTY, created in 1993, operates on the basis of this doctrine of interventionism, which has come to its ghastly conclusion in the bloodbaths of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Created and controlled by the Great Powers, the ICTY, like its sister courts for Rwanda and the new international criminal court, corrupts the judicial process for political ends, the most important of which is to support the US's supposed right to act as the world's policeman. The new ICC, created by Britain, also seems to operate on the basis that white men do not commit war crimes: its prosecutors are currently investigating two local wars in Africa while turning a blind eye to Iraq. Only when that hideous strength which flows from the hypocrisy of interventionism is sapped, will the world stand any chance of returning to lawfulness and peace.

· John Laughland is the author of Travesty: the Trial of Slobodan Milosevic and the Corruption of International Justice jlaughland@btinternet.com

February 27, 2007

Serbs tell America: Hands off Kosovo

Serbs tell America: Hands off Kosovo

By Matt Robinson

Reuters

Tuesday, February 27, 2007; 12:59 PM

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Some 15,000 Serbs protested outside
the U.S. embassy in Belgrade on Tuesday to denounce a
Western-backed plan to give independence to the Albanian
majority of Serbia's breakaway Kosovo province.

Some carried banners urging "Russia, Use Your Veto" to
block the proposal at the United Nations Security Council.
Cardboard cut-outs of Russian President Vladimir Putin and
Chinese leader Hu Jintao bobbed above the crowd.

Serb civil servants in Kosovo, who answer to Belgrade, were
given the day off and schools were closed so that all who
wanted to could travel to the capital for the protest. Dozens
of buses made the eight-hour round trip from Kosovo.

"Kosovo is the foundation and soul of Serbia," Kosovo Serb
political leader Milan Ivanovic said from a stage opposite the
embassy. "We appeal to the world not to carve up Serbia."

Serbs and Albanians are holding final talks in Vienna on
the plan by former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari. He wants
to send the blueprint to the U.N. Security Council in late
March.

But veto holder Russia repeated its skepticism on Tuesday.

"Frankly, we are worried at the absence of any desire to
meet the legitimate concerns of Belgrade," Foreign Minister
Sergei Lavrov said of the plan at a news conference in Moscow.

"The contents of the plan lead one to think that the
authors ... took as a starting point the inevitability of
Kosovo's independence regardless of Belgrade's views."

DEEP DIVISIONS

The Kosovo demonstration, backed by the ultranationalist
Radicals and the party of Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav
Kostunica, took place a day after the International Court of
Justice ruled in a landmark case that Serbia was not guilty of
genocide in the 1992-95 Bosnia war.

The verdict in The Hague threw a spotlight on the deep
divisions in Serbia over its role in the bloody break-up of
Yugoslavia in the 1990s, in which Serb forces under the late
President Slobodan Milosevic committed most of the atrocities.

Many Serbs deny this. The sense of vindication claimed by
nationalist parties who say Serb forces behaved no worse than
their wartime adversaries is likely to reinforce their
determination to oppose a U.N. plan to give Kosovo
independence.

The United Nations and NATO have run Serbia's cherished
province since 1999, when Western allies bombed Serbia to force
it to withdraw its troops and police who killed some 10,000
civilians in their crackdown on an Albanian guerrilla uprising.

The province's 90 percent Albanian majority say it will
never accept Serb rule again, and the West says there is no
viable alternative to granting them self-determination.

But Belgrade and the 100,000 Serbs still living in Kosovo
oppose the plan and there is no guarantee the province will not
be plunged once more into violence before its status is
settled. The plan should go to the U.N. Security Council in
March.

February 24, 2007

Russian FM says no deadline for Kosovo status talks

RIA Novosti

22/02/2007 16:11 BERLIN, February 22 (RIA
Novosti) - Russia's foreign minister said Thursday a UN envoy for talks
on Kosovo should not set a deadline for a final decision on the status
for Serbia's Albanian-populated region.

Marti Ahtisaari, who has proposed that the Balkan province be given
an internationally supervised sovereignty, has said talks are to end by
March 10 after which the matter will return to the UN Security Council.

"It is not up to him to decide whether there is still time for
making a decision or not," Sergei Lavrov told a news conference after a
meeting with his German counterpart, Frank-Walter Steinmeier. "Mr.
Ahtisaari has been fulfilling a UN task, which is to mediate between
the parties in the Kosovo conflict."

Lavrov also reiterated that Russia would not try to impose any decisions on Kosovars.

"A decision on Kosovo can only be adopted by the parties involved in
the dispute themselves, nobody can impose it on them. Anyway, Russia
will not be part of any such scheme," he said.

Belgrade and Pristina held talks on Ahtisaari's proposal in Vienna Wednesday, but no breakthrough was made.

Belgrade has rejected proposals to give independence to the region,
which has been under a UN protectorate since 1999 after U.S. air raids
conducted to end alleged ethnic cleansing by Serbian troops.

Serbian authorities say they are willing to grant Kosovo broad autonomy, but will never let the province secede from Serbia.

Albanian leaders have said Kosovo's independence is the only option for them.

Lavrov also said only provisions in the UN Kosovo resolution benefiting the Albanian population had been implemented thus far.

"It is no secret that the return of refugees to Kosovo and those
ethnic minorities displaced has not taken place except for a minor
group. 90% of Serbs, Gypsies and other minorities who once lived in
Kosovo cannot return," he said.

The provision on a limited Serbian police force and border guards has not been implemented at all, the minister added.

Russia, a traditional ally of fellow Slavic Serbia and a veto
wielding Security Council member, has been opposed to internationally
backed plans to grant sovereignty to Kosovo, also arguing it would set
a precedent for the breakaway regions in the former Soviet Union it is
believed to support: Georgia's Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and
Moldova's Transdnestr.

February 19, 2007

Three Arguments Agains Kosovo Independence

Three Arguments Agains Kosovo Independence

By Yevgeny Primakov, member of the Russian Academy of Sciences

/>Astory published in [MN #5] offered an in-depth analysis of a plan for Kosovo presented by Martti Ahtisaari, special envoy of the U.N. secretary general and former president of Finland.

The document, drawn up on the basis of Ahtisaari's numerous trips to Belgrade and Pristina, as well as a number of meetings with statesmen from different countries, skirts the issue of Kosovo's independence. At the same time, however, it provides essential trappings of a sovereign state - the emblem, the flag, the anthem, as well as an issue of special importance, the right to join international organizations - including the U.N., the EU and NATO.

Serbia took a sharply negative view of the plan. The position of Kosovo's Albanians, however, is not so negative because U.S. and some West European politicians are telling Pristina that the proposal will lead to Kosovo's formal separation from Serbia and that the province will eventually become an independent state. This status, they say, is a foregone conclusion: the plan is a bona fide road map to independence, but it cannot be granted right away. Amid such statements, demonstrations in Pristina against the plan resemble a means of pressuring the Serbs and the world community as a whole to embrace the plan - or else.

What is to be done in this situation, given the extremely complex nature of the problem at hand and its obvious implications for other conflicts in various parts of the world, not to mention global relations?

There are several factors that need to be taken into account if a compromise solution is to be achieved.

Kosovo and Metohia are considered to be the Serbs' native and ancestral land, a land where their civilization, culture and identity evolved. The Serbian Constitution, recently adopted in a nationwide referendum, calls Kosovo an inalienable part of Serbia. Kosovo's formal secession from Serbia - not a compromise solution acceptable to the Serbian side - will sharply strengthen the positions of the country's radical forces.

The Albanians have also lived in Kosovo for centuries. As a result of the standoff between the Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo, not least with the use of force, ethnic Albanians account for 90 percent of the province's population. Under Josip Broz Tito, Kosovo had an autonomy status as part of Yugoslavia. Following the disintegration of Yugoslavia, Kosovo's Albanians created their own parliament (Skupstina) that in 1990 passed a law on the province's independence. That did not lead, however, to its breakaway from Serbia; rather a de facto diarchy was established in Kosovo. Ibrahim Rugova, elected "president" of Kosovo, adhered to a moderate position, specifically during negotiations with Belgrade.

There was a handful of advocates for Kosovo's independent status outside the province. In 1996, as Russian foreign minister, I met with the Albanian foreign minister at a U.N. General Assembly session in New York. He told me that his country (even his country - Ye.P.) only saw a solution to the Kosovo problem within the borders of Yugoslavia. A similar position was recorded in a number of documents adopted by the Contact Group, comprising Russia, the U.S., Germany, the U.K., and France. The Group's first statement on Kosovo was adopted on September 24, 1997 with my participation. The resolution was based on the assumption that the Kosovo problem was Yugoslavia's internal affair. We subsequently revisited the Kosovo issue on numerous occasions, but the general consensus was that Kosovo is not an independent state entity. The debate between myself and former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright proceeded along the following lines: "Kosovo is part of Yugoslavia" (Albright) and "Kosovo is part of Serbia" (myself). Whatever the case, both the U.S. and Russia considered Kosovo to be a "part" of another state. Furthermore, the U.S. State Department put the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which was using force to drive the Serbs out of Kosovo, on a list of terrorist organizations.

But starting in 1998, the situation began to turn around. There is no need to mention the rest of the story - it is well known. Its main distinguishing feature was that it was not diplomacy, not politics, but NATO that had become the principal player on the Yugoslav scene. The situation did not change when the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) formally took over, creating "provisional self-government" and conducting [parliamentary] elections that were boycotted by the Serb population. Nor did anything change for the better when international military and police forces were brought into Kosovo - a total of 16,500 servicemen from NATO member countries.

Today, the Serbs have become second-rate citizens, exposed to constant pressure from Kosovo Albanians who are determined to evict even the tiny number of Serbs that remain in the province.

What now? There are two scenarios. One is to treat the Ahtisaari plan as a basis for serious negotiations between the parties involved, even if this requires considerable time. It may be recalled that the Cyprus and Irish problem has been debated for decades. This is not to suggest that the Kosovo crisis should be allowed to drag on. But is a forcible settlement, infringing on the interests of the Serbs, really the best method of maintaining stability in the region? Jumping the gun can be as dangerous as marking time.

The second option is to use the Ahtisaari plan as a basis for a U.N. Security Council resolution. This line of action is favored by the U.S. It is acting in haste, apparently without assessing the possible fallout of this haste. But if it is drafted by the U.S. and other Western countries, I believe that Russia should veto a resolution recognizing Kosovo's independence. The U.S. must understand Russia's motives.

I would like to mention three.

First, granting Kosovo independence could reopen interethnic armed conflicts in the post-Soviet area that required so much effort to extinguish - between Georgia and Abkhazia, Georgia and South Ossetia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and Moldova and Transdnestr.

According to Condoleezza Rice, she often told her Russian interlocutors that Kosovo "may not be a precedent." But can this proposition be used as a policy basis? I do not think so. Kosovo's secession from Serbia is a special case: The attempt is being made to separate an autonomous republic from a state with internationally recognized borders. But the secession of an autonomous republic from a state must be approved by the state's entire population. I am afraid that Kosovo's secession from Serbia will fuel separatism in Europe, among other regions.

Second, granting Kosovo independence could affect the state structure of the Balkans, which is more or less well balanced today - not immediately, of course, but gradually eroding the system of the existing state borders.

Third, Russian public opinion. Fortunately, gone are the days when it could be simply ignored. Today - I will not go into the historical, traditionalist or purely psychological factors - it is strongly on the side of the Serbs who have, in addition, suffered more than others in the Balkans over the past few years.

I am asking Condoleezza Rice, with whom I used to have good business contacts and, I hope, still have a friendly relationship, to pay attention to these motives. Clearly, they far outweigh the desire of the U.S. administration to achieve at least one success story in settling a crisis.

http://english.mn.ru/english/issue.php?2007-6-7

February 17, 2007

In Defence of Kosovo’s Serbs

17, 2007

In Defence of Kosovo’s Serbs

There must be no return to ethnic cleansing in the Balkans

It is eight years since Nato halted Slobodan Milosevic’s persecution of Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians, in an onslaught that emptied and torched villages, killed about 100,000 and forced almost a million to flee. Returning Albanians turned on their persecutors, killing 1,000 Kosovan Serbs; 200,000 left the province, never to return. Kosovo became a UN protectorate, administered and policed by foreigners, including a 17,000strong Nato contingent whose thankless job has been to hold the ring between two embittered communities, 90 per cent of them Albanian and 10 per cent Serb.

Morally, the Albanians have a strong case for full independence — provided that the Serbs among them are properly protected from physical danger and economic discrimination. Legally, Kosovo is a province of Serbia, which argues that to give the territory independence would be an attack on Serbia’s territorial integrity, and thus a violation of the UN Charter.

Politically, the vital thing is to prevent Kosovo, where ancestral memories of conflict reach deep into medieval history, from becoming, once again, the tinder-box of the Balkans. So the UN and Nato put Kosovo’s future on hold until a compromise could be reached that all parties were prepared to accept.

The idea was reasonable; but because compromise is not a word in the Albanian and Serbian vocabularies, it was not feasible. Eight years on the remaining Serbs, heavily dependent on subsidies from Belgrade, live in segregated enclaves, protected by Nato troops, from which most do not dare to emerge. Continued assaults on their ancient churches intensify their fears for the future. The Albanians retort that the Serbs cut themselves off by choice, dealing only with Belgrade, and that they should blame Mr Milosevic, not their Albanian compatriots, for their present plight. The risk of conflict is almost as high as it was when Kosovo was taken under Nato’s wing.

Doing nothing is no longer an option. Kosovo could erupt if Albanian demands continue to be shunted into the “too difficult” file; meanwhile, much of Western Europe quietly hopes the remaining Serbs will ethnically cleanse themselves.

On behalf of the UN, Martti Ahtisaari, the former Finnish President and a veteran of Balkan negotiations, has come up with a plan for a form of Kosovan independence, supervised by the EU. The word does not appear, but Kosovo would have the trappings of statehood, including its own army and the right to join international organisations. The plan goes too far for the Serbians and not far enough for the Kosovans. They meet next week in Vienna for supposedly “final negotiations”. No one expects progress. The buck then passes to the Security Council, where Russia could use its veto.

This plan offers Serb communities considerable autonomy. They would be unwise to refuse. But they need better guarantees, equal citizenship and opportunities. An incentive to good faith would be an offer, made now, of EU membership for both Serbia and Kosovo, if they jointly ensure the welfare of all Kosovans. So bold a step would be out of character for the EU. But it could hold the key to a durable Balkan peace.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/leading_article/article1398161.ece

February 10, 2007

Russia raises prospect of UN veto on Kosovo

Russia raises prospect of UN veto on Kosovo

09.02.2007 - 18:08 CET | By Andrew Rettman

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Russia has made clear it will veto any UN security council resolution that proposes Kosovo independence without Serb agreement, adding it would favour a confederation between Belgrade and Pristina instead to help soothe separatist tension in the Western Balkans and beyond.

"If it is a negotiated solution, Russia will not oppose it. But if it is an imposed solution, Russia will oppose it," Russia's EU ambassador Vladimir Chizhov told EUobserver on Thursday (8 February). "Russia may not be happy even with a negotiated solution because of its impact on other parts of the world."

"If a negotiated solution based on something different from independence is found then it makes Kosovo a positive precedent - it's hard to speculate, maybe a loose confederation, a union or whatever," he added. "But if there is an imposed solution based on independehttp://www.euobserver.com/onm/onm_news2.phtml?aid=23468nce, it will serve as a negative precedent."

The remarks come after UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari last week presented a draft blueprint for Kosovo's future that puts the UN-administered region on the road to statehood, with talks between Belgrade - which has condemned the plan - and Pristina to take place in Vienna on 21 February.

The Kosovo issue will ultimately be decided by a new UN security council resolution in the next few months, with Russia and China holding vetos at UN level and with the other veto powers, the US, the UK and France broadly in favour of giving Pristina the independence it craves.

Ravaged by ethnic conflict just eight years ago, Kosovo continues to see skirmishes between its ethnic Serb minority and ethnic Albanian majority in a situation that risks plunging Europe back into the darkest period in its recent history and causing ripples in disputed territories around the world.

"Whether you or I like it or not, Kosovo will serve as a precedent for others," Mr Chizhov said, outlining a "concentric circle" effect that could see future calls for independence by ethnic Albanian enclaves in Serbia's Presevo Valley, parts of Macedonia and Montenegro as well as by the Serb community in Bosnia.

"Then if you look further afield, people in Transdniestria [Moldova], South Ossetia [Georgia], Abkhazia [Georgia], Nagorno-Karabakh [Azerbaijan], not to mention Northern Cyprus...would say they have more reasons to claim independence than Kosovo," the ambassador went on.

"What about Quebec? And if you look to the other side of the planet, what about Taiwan? This is a concern for another member of the permanent security council [China]," he said, adding there is "no sense of inevitability" about Kosovo's independence in Moscow today. "The Ahtisaari proposals...might change."

The Russian ambassador also criticised the EU and US' excessive focus on the sensitivities of Kosovo Albanians and the safety of international peacekeepers, suggesting the west is neglecting the rights of the Serb nationalist camp - associated in the EU with Slobodan Milosevic's bloody crackdown against ethnic Albanians in 1998.

"You cannot count on a solution that requires difficult choices for one side and easy choices for the other," Mr Chizhov said. "Everybody is afraid of the Kosovo Albanians going ballistic, but nobody is talking about what the Serbs might do."

"Let's face it: UN resolution 1244 [which currently governs Serbia-Kosovo relations] has been implemented only partially, only those parts that favour Kosovo Albanians," he explained, giving the example of a UN mandate for a contingent of 999 Serb soldiers to guard Serb holy sites in Kosovo "which never materialised."

EU seeks ways to placate Serbia

Meanwhile, EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels on Monday will discuss the possibility of re-starting EU integration talks with Serbia despite Belgrade's non-compliance with the UN war crimes tribunal in the Hague, which has demanded the hand-over of fugitive general Ratko Mladic.

UN prosecutor Carla del Ponte last week urged the EU not to re-engage with Belgrade until Mladic is in the dock, in a line championed by the Netherlands at EU level. But an increasing number of EU states is swinging toward giving Serbia a sweetener to improve the chances of Mr Ahtisaari's plan.

"We won't necessarily follow her advice," a senior EU diplomat told EUobserver on Friday, before questioning Ms del Ponte's judgment, saying she is prone to "mood swings" and "maybe focusing on Mladic too much."

http://euobserver.com/24/23468

February 06, 2007

Kosovo needs a balanced solution

[Comment] Kosovo needs a balanced solution

06.02.2007 - 17:43 CET
| By Jan Kubis

EUOBSERVER / COMMENT – Slovakia is one of the 15 members of the UN
Security Council deciding on whether or not the new Kosovo status plan
presented by Maarti Ahtisaari will be adopted and, if so, along what
lines.

The UN special envoy's plan represents an open proposal but its author
has already indicated that he has no intention of entering into lengthy
negotiations with the two parties, but rather intends to conduct
consultations, limited in time, on certain aspects of the deal.

The process is set to culminate with the adoption of a new Security
Council resolution, which is a prerequisite for the EU to step in and
take over responsibility from the UN in Kosovo and for the presence of
KFOR in the area to continue.

No new resolution, however, could lead to a set of unilateral acts whose direction is impossible to control.

Several factors will influence Slovakia's position and priorities as we
enter into the final act of the Kosovo drama and as we hear more about
the Ahtisaari plan.

Slobodan Milosevic's liquidation policy towards Kosovo Albanians caused
their exodus from Kosovo and prompted a NATO-led military intervention
while the UN Security Council Resolution 1244 then placed Kosovo under
interim UN administration.

However, this move fell short of preventing the exodus of Serbs from
Kosovo, most of whom never returned to the region. This was followed by
the building of democratic institutions and several elections, often
with the participation of Kosovar Serbs, followed by their boycott of
the newly elected institutions.

Now the economy is in dire straits and unemployment rates are extremely
high. The omnipresent ethnic tension is aggravated by occasional fatal
incidents. This situation calls for massive civilian and military
engagement by the international community.

The status quo has ceased to be sustainable. While in 1999 Kosovo was
faced with a number of different scenarios, the course of events
gradually lead to a single one remaining today.

Under the supervision of the UN Security Council and the Contact Group,
steps have been taken since 1999 to reinforce the de facto autonomy of
Kosovo and its independence from Serbia.

Serbia has no intention of agreeing to Kosovo's independence. A certain
part of Slovakia's public as well as of its political forces support
this stance since they see the matter as a separation of a territory
against the will of the state.

However, Slovakia's public is equally aware of the fact that in order
to attain its aim Belgrade is offering Kosovo unprecedented, almost
absolute autonomy under the principle of minorities' collective rights
– which is a model based on the principle that we deem unacceptable.

The situation leaves open very few alternatives, none of which seems
appealing. There is no ideal solution to it. Nevertheless, our first
and foremost interest lies in a future solution that will enhance
peace, stability and prosperity in the Balkans.

The outcome must not be a victory for one party and a defeat and
humiliation of the other one. It must reflect reality, yet at the same
it has to aim at providing a European perspective to the entire region.

Therefore, today, EU member states must come together and unite both in
finding a solution for Kosovo and in promoting a European perspective
for Serbia, while giving some concessions.

This is our responsibility towards our national interests, but also
towards our partners in the EU and our allies in NATO. Slovakia is in
its second year on the UN Security Council and this month we also hold
its presidency. Through our position on the issue of Kosovo, we must
show that our country is mature enough to shoulder such responsibility.

The author is Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Slovak Republic.

February 05, 2007

Kosovo's independence drive kindles ethnic fears

International Herald Tribune

Kosovo's independence drive kindles ethnic fears

By CRAIG S. SMITH

Sunday, February 4, 2007

MITROVICA, Kosovo

Thuggish Serbian "bridge watchers" still maintain their vigil on the north side of the Ibar River here, ready to punish any ethnic Albanian who dares to cross the unofficial boundary between Serbian and ethnic Albanian territory in Europe's unfinished war.

Kosovo, still officially a province of Serbia, is bitterly divided between Serbian enclaves, including a large chunk of the north, and the rest of the territory, which is overwhelmingly ethnic Albanian. Now, as the United Nations nudges Kosovo toward what it calls "final status" and Belgrade calls independence, many of northern Kosovo's Serbs are threatening to break away.

"Northern Kosovo will secede," warned Oliver Ivanovic, a moderate Serbian politician here. Mr. Ivanovic says he has been warning the United Nations, NATO, the European Union and the United States that, nearly eight years after a NATO bombing campaign drove the Serbian Army and other security forces out of Kosovo, it is still too early to settle the status of the disputed territory. "Kosovo's independence will leave no space for the moderates to act."

Secession by northern Serbs could provoke Albanian reprisals against Serbian enclaves elsewhere in Kosovo, warn Serbs and Albanians alike, and could destabilize a still fragile region full of ethnic slivers separated from their homelands.

Kosovo, which is more than 90 percent ethnic Albanian, has struggled since the early 20th century to free itself from the dominance of Belgrade. With the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s the fight began anew, but Serbia resisted fiercely.

The war was marked by atrocities on both sides and a horrific cycle of "ethnic cleansing," as the formerly mixed Serbian and ethnic Albanian populations pulled apart. Nearly 10,000 ethnic Albanians died as well as many Serbs. Thousands more, mostly ethnic Albanians, remain missing.

It ended with NATO's intervention in 1999, and the province has been administered by the United Nations ever since.

[A United Nations mediator, Martti Ahtisaari, presented his proposals for Kosovo's final status to officials in Belgrade and Pristina on Friday, but the two sides remained far apart. The Serbian president, Boris Tadic, immediately rejected the plans as a prelude to independence while Kosovo Albanians — who with the United States' blessing have said they will accept nothing less than independence — welcomed them. The continued standoff suggested that the intended end may instead be a prologue to another difficult chapter in a troubled history.]

Most of the Kosovo Serbs insist that they will never accept an independent Kosovo. Even if the government in Pristina does hoist a new national flag, they say, they will fight to recover the province that Serbs still consider their cultural heartland — the cradle and, in 1389 at the hand of the Turks, the grave of their great medieval empire.

"It would create a situation like Iraq or Lebanon here in Serbia," said Milan Ivanovic, a doctor at Mitrovica's hospital and head of Kosovo's hard-line Serbian National Council (no relation to Oliver Ivanovic). He cited the Christian reconquest of Moorish Spain and France's eventual recovery of the Alsace-Lorraine region from Germany as models. "We would fight to get Kosovo back with all legitimate means."

Kosovo Albanians and their international supporters hope that a high degree of autonomy in Serbian areas with guarantees for the protection of Serbian rights and strict international oversight will eventually persuade Serbs in the territory to accept an Albanian-led government in Pristina.

"Hopefully, with independence, a local Serb leadership will emerge to address the needs of the Serbs within the Kosovo system," said Muhamet Hamiti, an adviser to Kosovo's president, Fatmir Sejdiu.

Some moderate Serbian politicians are already willing to work within a Kosovo national system, even if their political support in the Serbian community is small.

But Serbian enclaves, particularly northern Kosovo, still operate under Serbian national authority and draw most of their financial support from Belgrade, raising questions about how Pristina could enforce sovereignty over Kosovo Serbs without coercive actions that would risk provoking more violence.

Nowhere is the divide as clear as in the region around this northern city. A United Nations-financed train that links the rest of Kosovo's Serb enclaves with the north carries Serbs and Albanians alike until it reaches the Mitrovica station south of the river. There, even the Albanian conductor gets off. Only Serbs ride on for another 15 minutes across an iron railroad bridge to the end of the line.

"I'm not brave enough to go up there," the conductor said, watching the train pull away. "I survived the war. I don't need another challenge."

Cars carry Serbian license plates and the economy still operates on the Serbian dinar even though the Albanian areas of this long-disputed territory, now administered by the United Nations, long ago converted to the euro. Serbia's Ministry of Education in Belgrade has even set up what it calls the "University of Pristina, Temporarily Located in Mitrovica."

"How can they force us to accept independence?" asked Dr. Ivanovic, the Serbian politician, who like many people working for Serbian institutions in Kosovo's Serbian enclaves is paid an above average salary by Belgrade as a reward for his loyalty.

While many people see fixing Kosovo's eventual independence as the last chapter of Yugoslav disintegration, Serbs see it as the dismemberment of their homeland.

The province, ringed by snowy mountains and populated with great colonies of inky rooks that gave it its name (kos means blackbird in Serbian), is home to the Serbian Orthodox Church's most sacred sites.

"This is the spiritual center of the Serbian Church," said Sister Dobrila, a nun at the monastery of the Patriarchate of Pec, which was built around a richly frescoed Byzantine church from the 13th century that holds the tombs of Serbia's medieval archbishops.

She noted that western Kosovo, the site of the monastery, is called Metohija in Serbian, which means "church land." "It's sacred territory," she said.

Even the birds, which swarm over Pristina to settle in its trees at night, are woven into the nationalist myth. According to Serbian folklore, the birds are the souls of the dead from the 14th century battle of Kosovo, in which a Serbian-led Christian army sought to stop the Ottoman advance — an advance whose legacy is the nominally Muslim Albanian majority in the province today.

The common analogy given to Americans, imperfect but pertinent in the emotions it stirs, is the notion of secession by Florida or New Mexico, if the Spanish-speaking populations in those states became a majority. The analogy is imperfect because few Americans, most of whom are already long separated from their cultural roots, have as deep an emotional connection to place as many Europeans have.

That is why Europe, understanding the violence of such emotions, is not united behind the United Nations plan. Countries facing their own secessionist movements — Spain with the Basques, Romania with ethnic Hungarians, and Russia with Chechens and peoples of other rebellious territories — are skeptical of what they see as an American effort to jam a solution into place so Washington can turn its attention elsewhere.

"A forced solution is not a solution," said Marko Jaksic, head of the Democratic Party of Serbia and widely regarded as the most powerful politician in Mitrovica.

International Herald Tribune Copyright © 2007 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com

February 04, 2007

Will Kosovo Independence Hurt Stability?

Eastern Europe January 31, 2007, 1:25PM EST text size: TT

Will Kosovo Independence Hurt Stability?

The UN's plan for the territory's gradual independence will trouble Serbia and other Balkan states, but fears of war or political strife are much exaggerated

by Tihomir Loza

Now that the UN Kosovo envoy, Martti Ahtisaari, has presented his proposal for the territory's future status to the "contact group" of international overseers, there is little doubt that Kosovo is going to become independent. Not immediately, though. Ahtisaari's report will not be published before he presents it to Belgrade and Pristina on 2 February. Most leaks accompanying his 26 January meeting with the group (the U.S., Russia, France, the U.K, Italy, and Germany), however, spoke of a mechanism enabling Kosovo to gradually take control of its own affairs and seek membership of international institutions.

This would then create conditions for the Kosovo government to declare independence, which would in turn enable those countries wishing to do so to recognize Kosovo as an independent state. In this way the Western powers, all of whom favor independence, would avoid having to go through the UN Security Council where Russia and possibly even China may block any resolution taking Kosovo away from Serbia.

This kind of a script for Kosovo's endgame is going to let all hell break loose in the Balkans, according to many mainstream media outlets in the West. Kosovo's Albanian majority will just freak out—and likely take their frustration out on the local Serbs—when they officially learn that Ahtisaari is not giving them instant independence; what's more, the proposal doesn't even seem to venture to say the independence word.

But as Ahtisaari's proposal will actually provide for Kosovo's independence in the near future, it is going to aggravate the Serbs in Serbia as well. And the Serbs are "still obsessed with the issue," so much so that their parliamentary elections earlier this month "revolved around it [Kosovo], giving the ultra-nationalist Radical party... a victory," to quote just one of many such news reports and opinions. What will the Serbs actually do? One never knows with them, suggests one columnist gravely, but expert opinion offered on the subject included warnings that the Serbs might even attempt to retake Kosovo.

The trouble does not stop there. There is also this place called Bosnia, where a very nationalist local Serb leader is said to have threatened to call a referendum on independence of the Serb part of the country in case Kosovo becomes independent, a prospect that promises yet more instability, warns the international press.

Luckily, there are far fewer reasons to be nervous about the Balkans right now. The Kosovo Albanians are very unlikely to repeat the violence of March 2004, when independence-demanding mobs attacked Serbs, their property and historic monuments throughout the province. Contrary to some popular assumptions, the Kosovo Albanians are not wild political animals who fly into raging fits every time they are denied immediate gratification of their desires. The March 2004 violence was not spontaneous. It was organized and sanctioned by people inside or close to Kosovo's leading political parties. Those people succeeded in painting a realistic picture for the international community of what they are capable of doing in case they don't get what they are asking for.

The situation is now radically different. To start with, the Kosovo Albanians are undoubtedly getting independence, though not as quickly as some of them might have hoped. Second, while the threat of Albanian mob violence has been an important element in all international calculations about Kosovo, the international security forces in the province are now far better prepared for such an eventuality, so that anyone entertaining the idea would think twice before giving the go-ahead. And all the signs in Pristina are that the Kosovo Albanian leaders understand full well that all they are required to do now is behave themselves for a change.

The chances of a Serbian military invasion of Kosovo in the foreseeable future are precisely zero. To start with, there will be significant international military presence there for many years to come. More importantly, there is very little to suggest that drumming up support for another war over Kosovo is even a remotely realistic possibility. There are even fewer signs that anyone is really going to try to do so. The Serbian elections did not revolve around Kosovo. In fact, the democratic parties, which together won a decisive victory, had all explicitly ruled out ever using military means to keep Kosovo inside Serbia.

It may be worth recalling here that, unlike the wars in Croatia and Bosnia, Serbia's Kosovo adventure in 1998–1999 could hardly be described as a popular war. One reason it went as far as it did is that it just wasn't unpopular enough to gather sufficient resistance among the Serbs.

More than anything else, the Serbs have been pretty confused about Kosovo for a couple of generations now. The reality of a lost demographic battle has dawned on the nation very gradually, with some able to grasp it decades ago, others taking it on board only recently. The bottom line is that those who believe Serbia could and should ever again rule the lives of Kosovo Albanians are now a minority, not a tiny one, not an insignificant minority, but a pretty powerless minority for sure.

It does not follow from this that the Serbs should be able to accept Kosovo's independence easily. The Kosovo most of them now have in mind is not so much a real land with real people going on about their everyday lives. Their Kosovo works primarily as an emotional entity that links them with their past. The ethnic Serbs who refuse to leave Kosovo as well as the numerous artifacts that this emotional entity relates to, however, are physically anchored—and guarded by international troops 24/7—in the territory of that real Kosovo. Obviously, the two cannot be separated and that's what the Kosovo issue is now largely about.

An important element in the Serbian rejection of Kosovo's independence will be the popular lack of respect for Albanians among the Serbs. Ethnic Albanians were close to the bottom of an unspoken yet omnipresent food-chain among the former Yugoslavia's ethnic groups, a rating list whose top was occupied by often antagonistic but largely mutually respecting—if not always respectful—Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. To reward the Albanians, who are still often disdained and ridiculed as backward by the region's nationalists, with something as shiny as an independent new state, on top of the one that they already have in Albania, just doesn't and will not soon make any sense to ordinary Serbs.

Now that Kosovo's independence is officially mapped out, does any of this mean a major destabilization of Serbia is on the cards? Definitely not. Yes, the formation of the next government may be slowed down as the more nationalist part of the democratic bloc does its expected ritual dance around Ahtisaari's proposal to express its alleged disgust and shock. Even small protests in front of some Western embassies in Belgrade shouldn't be ruled out. Anything more than that would be a shock, though. To be sure, Serbia may not recognize Kosovo's independence for many years and it may sulk and start asking for compensation, but it won't go to war, nor will its reform process suffer significantly because of developments in Kosovo.

As for Bosnia, there won't be any immediate Kosovo-related trouble there either. Republika Srpska Prime Minister Milorad Dodik never actually said that he would call a referendum on independence if Kosovo broke away from Serbia. He only spoke of such a referendum as a possible reaction to what he sees as attempts by Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) leaders in Sarajevo to use illegitimate means to impose their will on Bosnia's Serbs and Croats. Dodik first raised the issue last year when Montenegro proclaimed its independence, which he supported. As for linking the future of Bosnia and Kosovo, Dodik did say that secession by Kosovo could encourage similar logic across the region, including among the Bosnian Serbs. Last week, he warned his constituents, however, that his government won't hesitate to use force against anyone in Republika Srpska seeking to exploit the expected public dissatisfaction with Ahtisaari's proposals.

While no immediate destabilization of any part of the region should be expected, it is less clear what the long-term effects of Kosovo's independence will be on Macedonia and Montenegro. Both countries have large ethnic Albanian minorities. The big unknown here is whether an independent Kosovo as the biggest prize of them all will relax Albanian attitudes and put a stop to any future secessionist aspirations or whether it will encourage them.

Tihomir Loza is a deputy director of TOL....

http://www.businessweek.com/print/globalbiz/content/jan2007/gb20070131_949333.htm

February 03, 2007

On Road to Kosovo Independence, a Warning: Go Slow

The New York Times

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February 4, 2007

On Road to Kosovo Independence, a Warning: Go Slow

By CRAIG S. SMITH

MITROVICA, Kosovo, Jan. 29 — Thuggish Serbian “bridge watchers” still maintain their vigil on the north side of the Ibar River here, ready to punish any ethnic Albanian who dares to cross the unofficial boundary between Serbian and ethnic Albanian territory in Europe’s unfinished war.

Kosovo, still officially a province of Serbia, is bitterly divided between Serbian enclaves, including a large chunk of the north, and the rest of the territory, which is overwhelmingly ethnic Albanian. Now, as the United Nations nudges Kosovo toward what it calls “final status” and Belgrade calls independence, many of northern Kosovo’s Serbs are threatening to break away.

“Northern Kosovo will secede,” warned Oliver Ivanovic, a moderate Serbian politician here. Mr. Ivanovic says he has been warning the United Nations, NATO, the European Union and the United States that, nearly eight years after a NATO bombing campaign drove the Serbian Army and other security forces out of Kosovo, it is still too early to settle the status of the disputed territory. “Kosovo’s independence will leave no space for the moderates to act.”

Secession by northern Serbs could provoke Albanian reprisals against Serbian enclaves elsewhere in Kosovo, warn Serbs and Albanians alike, and could destabilize a still fragile region full of ethnic slivers separated from their homelands.

Kosovo, which is more than 90 percent ethnic Albanian, has struggled since the early 20th century to free itself from the dominance of Belgrade. With the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s the fight began anew, but Serbia resisted fiercely.

The war was marked by atrocities on both sides and a horrific cycle of “ethnic cleansing,” as the formerly mixed Serbian and ethnic Albanian populations pulled apart. Nearly 10,000 ethnic Albanians died as well as many Serbs. Thousands more, mostly ethnic Albanians, remain missing.

It ended with NATO’s intervention in 1999, and the province has been administered by the United Nations ever since.

[A United Nations mediator, Martti Ahtisaari, presented his proposals for Kosovo’s final status to officials in Belgrade and Pristina on Friday, but the two sides remained far apart. The Serbian president, Boris Tadic, immediately rejected the plans as a prelude to independence while Kosovo Albanians — who with the United States’ blessing have said they will accept nothing less than independence — welcomed them. The continued standoff suggested that the intended end may instead be a prologue to another difficult chapter in a troubled history.]

Most of the Kosovo Serbs insist that they will never accept an independent Kosovo. Even if the government in Pristina does hoist a new national flag, they say, they will fight to recover the province that Serbs still consider their cultural heartland — the cradle and, in 1389 at the hand of the Turks, the grave of their great medieval empire.

“It would create a situation like Iraq or Lebanon here in Serbia,” said Milan Ivanovic, a doctor at Mitrovica’s hospital and head of Kosovo’s hard-line Serbian National Council (no relation to Oliver Ivanovic). He cited the Christian reconquest of Moorish Spain and France’s eventual recovery of the Alsace-Lorraine region from Germany as models. “We would fight to get Kosovo back with all legitimate means.”

Kosovo Albanians and their international supporters hope that a high degree of autonomy in Serbian areas with guarantees for the protection of Serbian rights and strict international oversight will eventually persuade Serbs in the territory to accept an Albanian-led government in Pristina.

“Hopefully, with independence, a local Serb leadership will emerge to address the needs of the Serbs within the Kosovo system,” said Muhamet Hamiti, an adviser to Kosovo’s president, Fatmir Sejdiu.

Some moderate Serbian politicians are already willing to work within a Kosovo national system, even if their political support in the Serbian community is small.

But Serbian enclaves, particularly northern Kosovo, still operate under Serbian national authority and draw most of their financial support from Belgrade, raising questions about how Pristina could enforce sovereignty over Kosovo Serbs without coercive actions that would risk provoking more violence.

Nowhere is the divide as clear as in the region around this northern city. A United Nations-financed train that links the rest of Kosovo’s Serb enclaves with the north carries Serbs and Albanians alike until it reaches the Mitrovica station south of the river. There, even the Albanian conductor gets off. Only Serbs ride on for another 15 minutes across an iron railroad bridge to the end of the line.

“I’m not brave enough to go up there,” the conductor said, watching the train pull away. “I survived the war. I don’t need another challenge.”

Cars carry Serbian license plates and the economy still operates on the Serbian dinar even though the Albanian areas of this long-disputed territory, now administered by the United Nations, long ago converted to the euro. Serbia’s Ministry of Education in Belgrade has even set up what it calls the “University of Pristina, Temporarily Located in Mitrovica.”

“How can they force us to accept independence?” asked Dr. Ivanovic, the Serbian politician, who like many people working for Serbian institutions in Kosovo’s Serbian enclaves is paid an above average salary by Belgrade as a reward for his loyalty.

While many people see fixing Kosovo’s eventual independence as the last chapter of Yugoslav disintegration, Serbs see it as the dismemberment of their homeland.

The province, ringed by snowy mountains and populated with great colonies of inky rooks that gave it its name (kos means blackbird in Serbian), is home to the Serbian Orthodox Church’s most sacred sites.

“This is the spiritual center of the Serbian Church,” said Sister Dobrila, a nun at the monastery of the Patriarchate of Pec, which was built around a richly frescoed Byzantine church from the 13th century that holds the tombs of Serbia’s medieval archbishops.

She noted that western Kosovo, the site of the monastery, is called Metohija in Serbian, which means “church land.” “It’s sacred territory,” she said.

Even the birds, which swarm over Pristina to settle in its trees at night, are woven into the nationalist myth. According to Serbian folklore, the birds are the souls of the dead from the 14th century battle of Kosovo, in which a Serbian-led Christian army sought to stop the Ottoman advance — an advance whose legacy is the nominally Muslim Albanian majority in the province today.

The common analogy given to Americans, imperfect but pertinent in the emotions it stirs, is the notion of secession by Florida or New Mexico, if the Spanish-speaking populations in those states became a majority. The analogy is imperfect because few Americans, most of whom are already long separated from their cultural roots, have as deep an emotional connection to place as many Europeans have.

That is why Europe, understanding the violence of such emotions, is not united behind the United Nations plan. Countries facing their own secessionist movements — Spain with the Basques, Romania with ethnic Hungarians, and Russia with Chechens and peoples of other rebellious territories — are skeptical of what they see as an American effort to jam a solution into place so Washington can turn its attention elsewhere.

“A forced solution is not a solution,” said Marko Jaksic, head of the Democratic Party of Serbia and widely regarded as the most powerful politician in Mitrovica.

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