April 02, 2007

The last battle of Kosovo may have no winners

The last
battle of Kosovo may have no winners

21:25

02/ 04/ 2007

MOSCOW. (Pavel Kandel for RIA Novosti) - Martti Ahtisaari,
the UN's special envoy for Kosovo, recently submitted his plan on the status of
the Serbian province to the UN Security Council. This signifies the beginning
of the "last battle of Kosovo." Can anyone win it? And if so, what
would victory and defeat mean?

The United States, which, along with NATO and the European
Union, has initiated a speedy process to grant independence to Kosovo, has
expressed support for a draft Security Council resolution based on the
Ahtisaari plan of granting the province internationally supervised sovereignty.

Europeans are divided over the American idea. The EU, which
is working hard to achieve its own unity, fears that any new dispute might
cause it to split apart once again. In addition, Brussels is not prepared to
quarrel with Washington over Kosovo.

A decision to give the EU control over Kosovo for the
transitional period, and to entrust it with the task of stabilizing the
Balkans, was made long ago. But now the EU needs an international mandate,
without which external supervision over Kosovo would not be legitimate and
developments could spin out of control.

Europe is acting out of fear that violence in Kosovo will
flare up again. If anti-Serbian pogroms begin again in that tumultuous
province, Europe will be seen either as a passive observer and sponsor of
violence, or will have to use force against the instigators, thus indirectly
recognizing the futility of its policy in the region and getting a mini-Iraq in
its own backyard.

This explains the EU's attempts to shift responsibility for
potential violence if the Ahtisaari plan is rejected onto Moscow and Belgrade.
Europe is like a corrupt cop who blames the victim, claiming that the bandits
politely asked her to hand over her purse, but she acted
"unconstructively" by refusing to comply with their request.

Serbians are not prepared to calmly accept the loss of a
province that means so much to their national awareness. This makes sense, and
Serbia's arguments are quite justified in terms of international law. The
majority of the Serbian elite does not want to protect Washington and Brussels
from the possible failure of their biased anti-Serbian policy, because such
assistance might provoke a political crisis in Belgrade. Therefore, Serbians
are playing for time and proposing continued talks in a new format.

Russia's representative to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, has put
forth a proposal to evaluate the implementation of Security Council Resolution
1244 and send an investigative mission to Belgrade and Pristina, the capital of
Kosovo. This plan is aimed at changing the issue under discussion so as to
again attract public attention to unsettled problems that nobody is addressing.

However, the battle for the preservation of ineffective
Serbian sovereignty over Kosovo may be a short-lived tactic. In the longer
term, the province is as good as lost for Serbia because it cannot be
re-integrated. Moreover, Kosovo has become a white elephant for demographic,
economic and political reasons.

Given the high birth rate among Kosovo Albanians, the
population density and shortage of jobs in the province, Kosovo, if
re-incorporated into Serbia, would become a source of demographic expansion,
carrying the risk of major changes in the ethnic composition of Serbia.

Serbia would be unable to subsidize the underdeveloped
economy of Kosovo, which was a pocket of ethnic and political conflicts under
tsars and under Yugoslavian dictator Josip Broz Tito alike.

And lastly, Serbia must solve the Kosovo problem in order to
be admitted to the EU.

Therefore, the most it can hope to accomplish is postpone
the solution of that problem until its admission to the EU ceases to be a dim
promise. The most probable compromise stipulates the recognition of Kosovo's
sovereignty on the condition that Serbia retains control of its northern part
and enclaves where its historical and cultural monuments are situated, and the
allocation of substantial compensation to refugees and forced migrants.

The Kosovo problem, however, is not only important to Serbia
and Europe, but could also affect international security.

The Western advocates of independence for Kosovo argue that
the province is a unique case. That argument does not hold water because the
history of the world is made up of a multitude of "unique" cases,
which does not mean they are not interdependent or similar. However, if we
admit that the Kosovo problem is indeed unique, that means we must find a
unique solution to it, such as the division of the province into parts that
will suit both the Kosovo Albanians' striving for self-determination, and the
Kosovo Serbians' desire to retain their homeland and its sacred historic and
religious sites.

These are the underlying principles of Russia's stance on
the issue of Kosovo. By protesting against a decision that is being forced on
Serbia, Moscow will strengthen its prestige both in the Balkans and the rest of
the world. The United States and the EU have not shown the will to compromise
with the other side, and it is counter-productive to give in to a partner who
is not willing to meet you halfway.

Russia could use just about any of the solutions to the
Kosovo problem, as well as a decision to postpone a settlement, to promote its
interests in the former Soviet republics. But would this be constructive?

Washington and Brussels can talk until they are blue in the
face about how the solution to the Kosovo problem will not create a precedent.
It only means that the United States and the EU, while admitting to such a
possibility, will not recognize the legitimacy of similar solutions to similar
problems.

However, the power of precedent does not depend on the will
of even great powers. If Kosovo gains independence, its example will soon have
many followers, from Catalonia and Flanders to Kurdistan, not to mention many
African and Asian countries.

Moscow has warned more than once about the dangerous
consequences of such a decision. It has been suspected of trying to create a
precedent in order to use it to solve conflicts in former-Soviet states.
However, it is not Russia but its opponents who are pushing the problem towards
a dangerous solution.

Pavel Kandel is head of the department of ethno-political
problems at the Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and
do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.

http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20070402/62974760.html

April 01, 2007

West has exhausted diplomatic coercion of Serbia

West
has exhausted diplomatic coercion of Serbia

By
M.
Bozinovich

April
1, 2007

At
an informal meeting of EU foreign ministers in Bremen, Slovakia, Romania
and Greece went smack against the Ahtisaari plan for Kosovo independence
while Spain and Italy expressed reservations about the Kosovo blueprint,
reports EU
Observer.

It is unlikely that only 5 EU states harbor misgivings against Ahtisaari's
proposal and as the initial euphoria designed to convince Kosovo Albanians
that their agenda is being listened to by EU, more countries are expected
to come against Kosovo independence proposal.

Statement by the Spanish Foreign Minister illustrates the underlying
European sentiment.

"When we talk about splitting countries up, the map of Europe could
change every year," Spanish foreign minister Alberto Navarro said.

Viewed as "splitting countries up", Kosovo independence will likely
galvanize those European states who fear loss of their territory. Their
stubbornness in opposition will ultimately win out over those in favor
or are indifferent to border changes.

As for Italy, its silent diplomacy always had a determined, antagonistic
streak to the Kosovo Albanian separatism, overtly suppressed, perhaps because
of Italy's participation in the elite Contact Group but more so because
it has its soldiers on the ground in Kosovo. As far back as the Ramboulliet
talks, Italy was vehemently against Albanian separatism and pressed the
Albanian side to renounce it.

Writes Albright in her memoir: "This created an opening for Italian
Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini, who had always been highly critical of
the KLA. He pressed Taci not only to accept the framework but also to renounce
support for a referendum on independence."

Albright then immediately dismissed the Italians saying that what Dini
was doing "was not fair," and she went out of her way to convince the Kosovo
Albanians that US is on their side, only in order to obtain the Albanian
signature on the deal, so it could bomb the Serbs.

"On the other hand" Albright quotes herself as saying to the Kosovo
Albanian Taci "if you say yes and the Serbs say no, NATO will strike and
go on striking until the Serb forces are out and NATO can go in."

Absent in this statement is any care for the Kosovo Albanian desire
to acquire Serbian territory and Albright's deputy Strobe Talbott affirms
that Kosovo Albanian desires for independence are but a lip service for
the West, used in order to coerce Serbia into the Western fold.

"It was Yugoslavia's resistance to the broader trends of political and
economic reform - not the plight of Kosovo Albanians - that best explains
NATO's war," writes Talbott.

With EU Parliament's resolution affirming its commitment to an independent
Kosovo, then Carl Bildt's threat, repeated by US and British Ambassadors,
that Serbia's EU membership is on hold until it gives up Kosovo, all possible
firepower to diplomatically coerce Serbia to agree to an independent Kosovo
have been exhausted.

"Some Western politicians may have hoped Mr. Tadic would put European
Union membership above Serbia's territorial integrity. That did not happen,"
explains Primakov.

...and unilateralism seems to be off the table as it has been since
during the NATO war on Serbia in 1999.

Again elaborates Albright: "Dismayed at the early setbacks, we examined
the idea of arming the KLA but rejected it as too likely to split the Alliance.
We looked at the proposals for partitioning Kosovo but rejected them as
a legal and security nightmare and a poor precedent for resolving
ethnic disputes."

So we are back to what Russia is saying - that Kosovo independence sets
a precedent - and State Department's insistence that it does not appears
more of a temporary tactical position in order to win one up on the Russians.

To this end then Ahtisaari is being flashed and promoted by the State
Department not in a belief that he is some diplomatic sage but because
he is a useful material to tell the Kosovo Albanians that US used one of
"their guys" in a process, have exhausted all possible ways to coerce Serbia
into signing off on Kosovo's independence, then promptly discard Ahtisaari
praising him to be a great diplomat for whom the victory just eluded him.

This may happen after Contact Group meetings and once we see Ahtisaari
escorted from the diplomatic podium a solution to the Kosovo status can
and probably will be solved.

"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,"
quotes Yevgheni
Primakov a senior Serb government official.

Thoroughly convinced in independence, and with no legal move to improve
their situation, any action by Kosovo Albanians, at this point, cannot
marginally improve their situation. Hopelessness and conviction of invincibility
are but the same because there is nothing that one can do in either situation
that will make it any better.

"I feared that few more cases of Albanians killing Serbs would squelch
European enthusiasm for financial reconstruction of Kosovo," wrote Albright
in 1999.

Remembering that atrocities deemed as precipitating factors for Western
diplomatic and military action in the Balkans have always been accused
of being staged events, it is to be expected that, perhaps soon, Europeans
may decide to pay particular attention to one of these atrocities against
Serbs in Kosovo that occur daily.. and what then will happen to the European
enthusiasm for Kosovo Albanian independence?

Now that a pro-Western government is in Belgrade and Washington, in
particular, is happy of Tadic being the president, Primakov's op-ed alludes
that this arrangement is something that Moscow can live with.

"According to Mr. Tadic, Serbia has three foreign policy priorities:
rapprochement with the European Union, the United States, and Russia,"
writes Primakov.

The real fear in the West then is not that Kosovo Albanians will resort
to violence - after all they have been threatening it for some time - but
whether NATO, EU and US will not be made look fools by an Albanian guerrilla.

If Russia can facilitate this, the solution to Kosovo can quickly emerge.

http://www.serbianna.com/columns/mb/057.shtml

EU splinter group emerges on Kosovo

01.04.2007 - 09:22 CET
| By Andrew Rettman, Ekrem Krasniqi and Lucia Kubosova

EUOBSERVER / BREMEN - A small group of EU states has splintered from
the EU and US position that the UN should swiftly give "supervised
independence."

Slovakia, Romania and Greece raised objections to the so-called
Ahtisaari plan for Kosovo independence at an informal meeting of EU
foreign ministers in Bremen, Germany at the weekend, with diplomatic
sources also saying that Spain and Italy harbour reservations about the
Kosovo blueprint.

"I have underlined - as has been already expressed by the Slovak
parliament - that in further negotiations we have to take into
consideration the legitimate interests of both parties, Belgrade and
Pristina," Slovak foreign minister Jan Kubis told EUobserver on
Saturday (31 March).

"When we talk about splitting countries up, the map of Europe could
change every year," Spanish foreign minister Alberto Navarro said, AFP
reports. Slovakia and Italy are members of the UN's 15-strong security
council group that will decide Kosovo's fate.

The German EU presidency played down the split, which concerns EU
states lying close to Serbia or with separatists of their own, as in
Spain. "I know there are differences between member states," German
foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said. "I don't conclude that
support for the Ahtisaari plan is falling away."

UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari last Monday recommended the UN should give
Kosovo the right to a flag, an army and a constitution as well as the
freedom to apply for membership of international institutions like the
UN and EU, amid a string of safeguards for ethnic Serbs living in the
region.

An EU "special representative" would retain veto powers over certain
Pristina government decisions, with 13,000 NATO troops and up to 1,500
EU police and judicial officers to help keep the peace in a scheme set
to cost the international community €1.5 billion between 2008 and 2010.

The EU and US have officially backed Mr Ahtisaari's plan, with US
diplomat Nicholas Burns calling for a UN security council resolution by
late May. But Serbia and Russia have rejected the idea, with EU top
diplomat Javier Solana adding that China may also have "difficulties"
when it comes to the UN vote.

The EU splinter group's position appears to have points in common with
the Serbian and Russian line, that any Kosovo solution must be a
negotiated one with both Belgrade and Pristina's approval.

Russia has called for a UN fact-finding mission composed of the 15 UN
security council ambassadors or their "number twos or threes" to visit
Kosovo to see if ethnic Serb rights are being upheld in line with
previous UN resolutions, such as the right of return for Serb refugees
who fled during conflicts in the late 1990s.

About 1.8 million ethnic Albanians and 200,000 ethnic Serbs live in
Kosovo, with the biggest Serb community found in the northern Mitrovica
region and the rest living in isolated pockets, such as the small
community centred around the 16th century Serb orthodox Gracanica
monastery, near Pristina.

Level of mistrust is 'huge'

"I have been to some of these places," Russia's ambassador to the EU,
Vladimir Chizhov, told EUobserver on Friday. "There are about 60 people
living [in Gracanica] and Swedish [NATO] soldiers are taking them to
the local market, every day, with armoured personnel carriers...The
level of mutual mistrust is huge."

"What is particularly dangerous is to have a superficial solution, that
could see the real conflict boiling underneath and that could explode
again at some point," he added, saying that Moscow sees the Ahtisaari
plan as a "basis for further negotiations, a bad basis" but not as the
basis of a new UN resolution.

The Russian diplomat suggested the EU and US are moving too fast in a
strategy that risks "serious destabilisation" of the Western Balkans.
"Everybody agrees the status quo cannot last forever. But look at
Northern Ireland, how long it took Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams to sit
at the same table - 30 years, and they speak the same language."

Mr Chizhov also said that Serbia may accept limited autonomy for Kosovo
that would give it the right to join some international institutions,
such as the International Monetary Fund, but not to have a seat at the
UN or its own army.

"I would prefer Kosovo to serve as a positive precedent, should a
solution be found of a tense autonomy, something short of independence,
a confederation or whatever," he said. "[The EU] should be careful not
to rock the boat so much that it turns upside down."

March 31, 2007

A slippery slope for Kosovo

March 31, 2007

Re "Kosovo needs independence, mediator says," March 27

Martti
Ahtisaari, the Kosovo mediator, needs a solid lesson in international
law. The same applies to the U.S. government, which according to the
article "strongly backs independence for Kosovo." The United Nations
would be trampling on its own charter by ripping the province of Kosovo
from Serbia and handing it to those who constitute the majority, i.e.
Kosovo's Albanians.

It should also be noted that 40% of the Albanians who came to Kosovo
over the decades were illegal aliens from Albania who entered Serbia
through its porous border with Albania. Sounds somewhat similar to the
dilemma the United States has with illegal aliens who enter California
from Mexico. So, following the logic of Ahtisaari and the U.S., could
there not be some such future scenario vis-a-vis California?

The U.S. and its NATO allies are recklessly lobbying for the emergence
of an intolerant, ethnically cleansed Islamic state, and in so doing
are ignoring all recognized global constitutional norms and
international law. They began on this slippery slope in 1999 with their
illegal invasion of a sovereign Yugoslavia, which had posed no threat
to the U.S. or to any of the other NATO countries.

LIZ MILANOVICH

Edmonton, Canada

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/letters/la-le-saturday31.4mar31,0,1170769.story

Moscow Mulls Veto

You are at: www.ruvr.ru / Details / Politics

RUSSIAN SUGGESTION GETS WIDE SUPPORT AT THE UN

Chairman
of the UN Security Council, Dumisani Kumalo has said that the Russian
suggestion to send international contact group to Pristina and Belgrade
on a fact finding mission before a decision on the future of Kosovo,
has received wide support among Security Council members.

He said that such a trip was necessary to enable members of the
Council, especially new one not well informed about the Kosovo issue,
find out the true position. Mr. Kumalo also backed the Russian proposal
for a review of the implementation of earlier resolutions and as well
as current security situation in the province. The present predominant
Albanian population in Kosovo is demanding independence.

Last Monday Council members were presented with the plan by U/N
special envoy, Marti Ahtisaari on the settlement of the Kosovo future
status issue The plan proposes granting Kosovo practically independence
status under international control but Serbia is vehemently opposed to
such a plan and Russia has said that solving the Kosovo problem is not
possible without resolving the differences between Pristina and
Belgrade. The country is therefore most likely to use its veto power
should the Security Council endorse the Ahtisaari plan. Speaking on the
issue, chairman of the State Duma international affairs committee,
Constantine Kosachev said:

“We view it as important that both Pristina and Belgrade jointly
accept the plan on the future of Kosovo” “For now there are no human
rights in the province; Serbs forced into exile in the 90s still cannot
go back to their homes; the undue haste in forcing the settlement of
Kosovo future is unacceptable and counterproductive”.

Russian officials have said that since Marti Ahtisaari is to end his
mission soon with the writing of his final report, a new U.N special
envoy should be appointed to continue diplomatic efforts to solve the
Kosovo logjam. A hasty and ill-thought decision on the Kosovo issue
could set a dangerous international precedent capable of making
supporters of such haste to rue the day it was made.

March 29, 2007

A Russian puzzle

What, exactly, is Putin's game in Kosovo?

Ian Traynor

All Ian Traynor articles

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March 29, 2007 8:30 PM | Printable version

The stand-off, in the opinion of a British general, harboured the
risk of starting a third world war between Russia and the west. It was
the summer of 1999 and General Mike Jackson, now retired, was leading a Nato ground force into Kosovo after 11 weeks of Nato bombing had driven the Serbs out.

Serbia's main ally, Russia, was fuming impotently on the sidelines.
Boris Yeltsin and his top military men had been totally against Nato's
first war, refused to supply a UN mandate for the campaign, and then
had to stand by as Tony Blair and Bill Clinton made a case for the use
of force as humanitarianism.

When the war ended and the Nato troops moved to secure Kosovo,
Yeltsin and his chief of staff pulled a fast one. Secretly, Russian
peacekeepers in nearby Bosnia were ordered to make a dash to grab
control of Kosovo's main airport at Pristina. It worked. The Russians
got there before Gen Jackson.

Wesley Clark, the American officer commanding the war, went
ballistic and ordered Jackson and his ground troops to recapture the
airport.

No way, answered the Brit insubordinately. "I'm not going to start the third world war for you."

That was then - the tail-end of the Yeltsin decade. Russia was weak
and demoralised. Eight years later, Vladimir Putin's main claim to his
position is that he has stopped the rot. Russia, he boasts, is back as
a big international player. It will no longer be ignored or pushed
around. And on Kosovo, it's payback time for the humiliation of 1999.

Nursing grudges and making mischief, Russia now stands as the main
obstacle to a peaceful settlement of the Kosovo conflict - redrawing
the borders in the southern Balkans and creating a new, independent
state of Kosovo inhabited mainly by ethnic Albanians but including a
sizeable frightened and hostile Serbian minority afforded extensive
powers of self-government and international protection.

No one knows what Russia wants, what its real aim is, or where it
identifies its genuine interests. To drive a hard bargain? Get a
pay-off somewhere else? It is threatening to veto a new UN security
council resolution needed to mandate the EU's most ambitious ever
mission as the international overseer of Kosovo independence and the
implementation of the independence blueprint drafted by the Finnish
fixer and UN envoy, Martti Ahtisaari.

Ahtisaari laid
his 58-page settlement before the security council in New York this
week and added three pages of recommendations in which he forcefully
used the i-word for the first time. Independence was the only viable
option for security, stability, and lasting peace.

No surprise there. In the crisis of 1999, it was the same Ahtisaari
who went to Belgrade on an emergency mission and persuaded Serbia's
Slobodan Milosevic to back down, creating the scenario for the
insertion of Gen Jackson's troops in Kosovo. Ever since, Ahtisaari has
privately told diplomats engaged in the Balkans, the west has blundered
by failing to move more promptly towards Kosovo independence.

The issue should have been tackled seven years ago, he believes,
rather than being left to fester during years of uninspired UN
administration. Now, much depends on the Russians.

The British, and then the Americans, chair the security council in
April and May and everyone involved thinks the Russians will stonewall
to keep London or Washington from taking the credit for any
breakthrough.

In June, the security council chair falls to Belgium, while Angela
Merkel, the German chancellor, leads two big international summits - of
the EU and of the G-8. Mrs Merkel is proving a very able international
fixer and the hope is she will charm and deliver Putin on Kosovo at the
G-8, while the EU summit rubberstamps the dispatch of some 2,000 EU
officials, policemen, judges, and administrators to Kosovo to act as
midwife to a new country.

This is the optimistic scenario. There's a reasonable prospect of it prevailing.

The alternative is grim. A Russian veto in New York will unleash
diplomatic chaos internationally and violence on the ground in the
Balkans.

The 27 countries of the EU tentatively support the Ahtisaari plan if
it can be implemented. EU and Nato leaders are daily calling for
European "unity", in the full knowledge of how fragile that consensus
is.

Greece, Cyprus, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Hungary, Bulgaria all have
strong reservations about the peace and independence plan. If there is
a consensus in New York and a security council resolution, the European
unity will hold. If not, the European position will buckle, with many
of the Europeans effectively supporting the Russian position and that
of Serbia, which will never volunteer to give up Kosovo.

The Russians are adroit at sowing and exploiting European division,
whether on energy and gas pipelines or missile defence in Europe.
Kosovo offers a further opportunity.

Even if the Europeans support the Ahtisaari plan, many of them do
not support its imposition against the will of Serbia - the only way it
can be implemented.

If the Russians block and the Europeans crumble, the Kosovo
Albanians, fed up waiting, are likely to declare independence anyway
and invite international recognition. The Americans may recognise, the
British follow suit, a few more Europeans, too. EU fissures will be
laid bare. The Serbs may seize on the confusion to partition Kosovo,
grabbing the northern sliver of the province that they already control.
Ethnic cleansing and violence will be inevitable, accompanied by
international disarray.

It is not clear at all what Russia's interest may be in triggering
such mayhem, nor is it clear what interest Russia has in Kosovo at all.
It won't be the third world war, but there is a lot at stake.

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ian_traynor/2007/03/ian_traynor_the_standoff_thoug.html

Forfeiting Nothing

 Forfeiting Nothing

Main Argument for Kosovo's Secession Bogus

by Nebojsa Malic

Despite fierce opposition from Belgrade and Moscow, the UN-designated "mediator" for Kosovo, former Finnish president and ICG board member Martti Ahtisaari submitted his proposal this week to the UN Security Council. Ahtisaari told Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that "supervised independence" was the "only viable option" for the Serbian province, occupied since June 1999 by NATO and administered by a UN mission and a "provisional" ethnic Albanian government.

Washington has declared its ironclad support to Ahtisaari's proposal, rejecting out of hand any further negotiations. According to NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the Alliance also fully supports Ahtisaari.

After a 78-day illegal war, followed by almost eight years of violent occupation, the Empire is finally making a move to separate Kosovo from Serbia. The decision is in line with its systematic violations of international law, NATO and UN charter, the U.S. Constitution, and even the very UN resolution that created a precarious legal cover for the occupation.

What is even worse, the reasoning invoked to justify this criminal act is cynical and duplicitous, bearing no relationship to truth or logic.

Simply Illegal

Jurist, a well-known publication of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, carried a guest column this week, in which Prof. Anthony D'Amato of Northwestern University claimed an independent Kosovo would be a "humanitarian disaster" for the remaining Serbs. D'Amato described Kosovo as having a "Serb-hating majority," and wrote that "a Kosovar-dominated (sic) independent government will lose no time in confiscating the property and rights of the Serbian minority. Some 200,000 Serbs in Kosovo could lose everything they own and maybe their lives."

Of particular interest is this observation, concerning the legality of Ahtisaari's proposal:

"If we remove the diplomatic euphemisms from Mr. Ahtisaari's report, we find that he is essentially arguing that UNMIK has conquered Kosovo! Territory-grabbing by conquest has been illegal since the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, yet somehow the United Nations has done it, according to Mr. Ahtisaari. However, there is nothing in the UN Charter that gives the UN the power to oust an existing government by force, replace it with a United Nations mission created especially for the occasion, and then dissolve the mission and hand sovereignty over the territory to someone else. Acquisition of territory by conquest is simply illegal, whether a state does it or an international organization does it."

Sounds clear enough.

However, D'Amato continues the article by claiming that partition would be a preferred solution, and explains why; to establish at least some legitimacy for the Albanian (or "Kosovar," as he erroneously puts it) cause, he turns to a "human rights argument." Since, he claims, the Albanians were victims of an "unremitting campaign of suppression" by Milosevic, and "crimes against humanity" by the Yugoslav army and police, "the brutality of the Milosevic incursions into Kosovo may be argued as disqualifying Serbia from ever again governing the Kosovars."

Argumentum Ad Atrocitas

This "victim argument" has long been used as justification for NATO's bombing, the subsequent expulsion and persecution of Serbs ("revenge attacks") and others by Albanians, and indeed for claiming the "right" to independence. Supporters of independence have repeatedly claimed that Serbia has somehow "forfeited" its sovereignty through actions in Kosovo in 1999 and before.

As NATO bombs began raining on Serbia and Montenegro in March of 1999, media in NATO countries began manufacturing atrocity stories from the mold perfected just a few years earlier in Bosnia. Refugees, ethnic cleansing, genocide, massacres, rape camps – everything was there. In addition to propaganda injected into the mainstream media by U.S. and other NATO governments, there was also KLA propaganda directly fed to gullible reporters.

Even today, veteran propagandists dutifully repeat the claim that Serb "ethnic cleansing" of Albanians led to the NATO attack. Nothing can be further from the truth. NATO launched the attack in March 1999 after failing to coerce Serbia into accepting an occupation force, during the false negotiations in France. The official justification for the bombing was to force Belgrade to sign the "agreement" presented by the U.S. envoys in Rambouillet. Alleged atrocities are all said to have happened subsequent to the start of the bombing. Indeed, the ICTY indictment against Slobodan Milosevic included only one alleged crime dated prior to March 23, and that was the faux massacre at Racak.

By late 1999, it was obvious that the death toll in Kosovo was much less than the alleged 100,000 – or even the more commonly used 10,000, often falsely qualified as Albanian civilians (That number was actually a wild claim by UK Foreign Minister Geoff Hoon, who sought to justify the bombing.) The total number of bodies exhumed by ICTY's investigators was 2,108, of all ethnicities and with varying causes of death. It is unclear whether that death toll included the numerous Albanians killed by the KLA, the KLA's own substantial casualties, or those of the Yugoslav Army. In any case, horror stories presented as facts in a State Department "report" were later proven false. For example, the "Trepca mines" story was debunked by Wall Street Journal's Daniel Pearl. True, several other mass graves were discovered in the province since 1999. However, the victims buried there were Serbs, so the discoveries quickly faded from memory.

Although many Kosovo Albanians suffered terribly during the KLA insurrection and the NATO bombing, their claim that "Serb atrocities" have earned them the right to independence holds very little water.

Goose and Gander

However, neither the Albanians nor their Western sponsors actually believe the "atrocity argument" on principle. For if they did, and it was universally applicable, they would have forfeited all right to Kosovo themselves!

We could start from the beginning: NATO's war itself was illegal and illegitimate. In the course of the war, NATO pilots targeted civilians and civilian infrastructure. The Alliance naturally claims those were "unfortunate mistakes" and that bombs were dropped "in good faith," yet Gen. Michael Short publicly stated that the campaign was designed to force Belgrade to surrender by terrorizing civilians.

Korisa, Grdelica, Aleksinac, Surdulica – these were just some of the NATO atrocities during the "humanitarian" war of 1999.

Once the government in Belgrade agreed to withdraw from Kosovo and allow the UN to occupy the province (in practice, it was NATO occupation), Albanian separatists began terrorizing Kosovo. Violence against Serbs has been amply documented, in photographs, in print, and on film. It is important to note that Serbs were not the sole victims of Albanian attacks; Roma and other communities in Kosovo have also been exposed to violence, intimidation, extortion and murder.

Here are just some of the more gruesome incidents of anti-Serb violence:

- July 1999: fourteen Serb farmers massacred in the fields near Staro Gracko (graphic photos);

- October 1999: Valentin Krumov, UN official from Bulgaria, slain for "speaking Serbian";

- February 2000: bus carrying Serbs to a cemetery service hit by a missile;

- February 2001: roadside bomb blows up another bus;

- June 2003: brutal slaying of a Serb family in Obilic;

- August 2003: Serb children swimming in the river near Gorazdevac machine-gunned down;

- March 2004: massive pogrom throughout the province targets Serbs; 8 dead, 4500 expelled, several villages razed.

All this was accompanied by systematic destruction of Serbian Orthodox churches, chapels, monasteries and cemeteries.

Albanian separatists and NATO leaders claim that Serbia's violent suppression of the terrorist KLA in 1998-99 merited not only an illegal aggression in response, but also forfeited Serbia's sovereignty over Kosovo. Yet the Albanians have not "forfeited" their right to Kosovo because of systematic terrorism under NATO occupation – they are being rewarded for it by independence!

The Croatian Precedent

Further proof that the "atrocity argument" was made up for the specific purpose of fabricating a reason to separate the occupied province from Serbia and make it into an Albanian state is the absolute absence of any such argument in the case of Croatia, which once had a considerable Serb population.

No "humanitarian" interventionist has ever claimed that atrocities of the Ustasha regime between 1941-1945, in which hundreds of thousands of Serbs perished (Croat and Nazi estimates were over half a million!), somehow disqualified Croatia from sovereignty over territories with majority Serb population that rebelled in 1991? Nor have any of them claimed that Croatia "forfeited" its sovereignty after the ethnic cleansing of Serbs in 1995, following a brutal Croat military incursion that ended the Serb rebellion and "reintegrated" the disputed territories. So how is Kosovo different?

When Croatia engaged in suppression of a Serb rebellion, it was an ally of the United States and NATO, enjoying their full support – military, political, intelligence and diplomatic. When Serbia tried to suppress the Albanian rebellion three years later, the U.S./NATO support was there again – on the side of the Albanians! This is why the same logic does not apply to Krajina and Kosovo, Croatia and Serbia, or even the Serbs and the Albanians. There is no logic here, no principle, no coherent concept of right or wrong – beyond the naked argument of force: whomsoever the Empire supports is a righteous victim, and its enemy an irredeemable villain.

The Final Leap

Empire's pattern of aggression has by now torn the fragile tapestry of international law to shreds. The UN has already lost so much credibility and respect in the world, unable to stop the abuses by the Washington-run "international community," the Ahtisaari Show is but a final nail in its coffin. Over the past fifteen years, many lines have been crossed. Appeasement of NATO and Albanian aggression in Kosovo might just be that last step over the edge, and into the abyss from which what remains of Western civilization may never return.

http://www.antiwar.com/malic/?articleid=10736

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

ANTIC.org-SNN Archive

April 02, 2007

April 01, 2007

EU splinter group emerges on Kosovo

March 31, 2007

A slippery slope for Kosovo

RUSSIAN SUGGESTION GETS WIDE SUPPORT AT THE UN

March 29, 2007

A Russian puzzle

March 28, 2007

March 25, 2007

March 23, 2007

March 21, 2007

March 11, 2007

March 08, 2007

March 02, 2007

February 28, 2007

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