Canada should uphold international law and not recognize Kosovo

BEXAMINER Canada should uphold international law and not recognize KOSOVO
Fri Feb 22, 2008 9:56 am (PST)
http://www.thebarrieexaminer.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=912781

BARRIE EXAMINER (CANADA)

EDITORIAL

Canada should uphold international law and not recognize Kosovo

Posted By SCOTT TAYLOR

Posted 5 hours ago

Last weekend, the streets of Kosovo were flooded with citizens celebrating a
unilateral declaration of independence by ethnic Albanian Prime Minister
Hashim Thaci. This much-anticipated announcement formally severed all
official ties between the disputed province and the rest of Serbia, thereby
creating Europe's newest state.

The United States was the first to recognize Kosovo's independence, with
U.S. President George W. Bush sending his congratulations to Thaci from a
stop in Tanzania. The United Kingdom, Germany and France were quick to
follow suit, and with these big powers on board, the Albanian Kosovars
popped the champagne corks.

For people only paying casual attention to this long-simmering Balkan hot
spot, Thaci's declaration of independence may indeed be viewed as a joyous
occasion. In fact, most Canadians may be forgiven if they thought this whole
matter was resolved back in the summer of 1999.

After a 78-day bombing campaign, NATO had negotiated a ceasefire agreement
with the Serbian government. Under the terms of UN Resolution 1244, Serbian
security forces would withdraw from Kosovo, and under NATO military
supervision, the 800,000 Albanian Kosovar refugees who had fled the fighting
would be repatriated. The Albanian guerrillas - known as the Kosovo
Liberation Army (KLA) - were to be disarmed and demobilized by NATO troops,
who would also ensure the safety of Kosovo's 200,000 ethnic Serb civilians.

Resolution 1244 made it very clear that under the UN Charter, Kosovo would
remain the sovereign territory of Serbia. Over the past nine years, NATO has
failed to uphold its part of the bargain. The KLA was never disarmed; they
were simply formalized into the Kosovo Protection Corps.

With Serbia unwilling to relinquish the sovereignty of this province - the
religious heartland of the Serbian people - there was no legal way to push
independence through the UN Security Council.

Up until 1998, the U.S. State Department regarded the KLA as a terrorist
organization. The KLA's assassinations and bomb attacks against government
officials led to a heavy-handed Serbian military crackdown. At this point
the Americans changed horses and decried the Serb reprisals rather than the
terror provocations of the KLA. Under U.S. pressure, an ultimatum was issued
by NATO to Serbia in February 1999, and the KLA was suddenly legitimized as
freedom fighters.

By March 24 of that year, when the deadline expired without Serbia's
compliance, NATO began bombing Kosovo and Serbia.

Putting recent history aside, the fact remains that Kosovo is simply not
viable as an independent country. It is a landlocked, mountainous province,
not quite twice the size of Prince Edward Island, with a population of two
million. The unemployment rate stands at 50 per cent; for those working the
average annual income ranges around $2,400 CDN a year. Prostitution and
illegal drugs form the major pillar of Kosovo's economy, with the other main
infusion coming from the annual foreign donations of approximately $600
million.

The red and black flag they wave is the Albanian flag, not Kosovar. And as a
result of the ongoing violent attacks against non-Albanians in the province,
this is now one of the most ethnically-cleansed territories in all of
Europe.

Prime Minister Thaci is a former ruthless KLA warlord who called himself
"Snake" and the commander of the Kosovo Protection Corps is Agim Ceku, who
made a notorious name for himself as a war criminal in Croatia.

Given the rotten foundation upon which Kosovo intends to build its own
independent state, I think Canada would be well advised to uphold the UN
Charter in this instance, and to respect the rule of international law.

Scott Taylor reported from inside Serbia and Kosovo during the 1999 bombing
campaign and has made more than 20 subsequent visits to the region.

JPOST Kosovo's stark warning

JPOST Kosovo's stark warning
Fri Feb 22, 2008 8:52 am (PST)
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1203605149058&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

JERUSALEM POST (ISRAEL)

Column One: Kosovo's stark warning

Caroline Glick , THE JERUSALEM POST Feb. 21, 2008

Kosovo's US-backed declaration of independence is deeply troubling. By
setting a precedent of legitimizing the secession of disaffected minorities,
it weakens the long-term viability of multi-ethnic states. In so doing, it
destabilizes the already stressed state-based international system.

States as diverse as Canada, Morocco, Spain, Georgia, Russia and China
currently suffer problems with politicized minorities. They are deeply
concerned by the Kosovo precedent. Even the US has latent sovereignty issues
with its increasingly politicized Hispanic minority along its border with
Mexico. It may one day experience a domestic backlash from its support for
Kosovar independence from Serbia.

Setting aside the global implications, it is hard to see how Kosovo
constitutes a viable state. Its 40 percent unemployment is a function of the
absence of proper economic and governing infrastructures.

In November, a European Commission report detailed the Kosovo Liberation
Army's failure to build functioning governing apparatuses. The report noted
that "due to a lack of clear political will to fight corruption, and to
insufficient legislative and implementing measures, corruption is still
widespread... Civil servants are still vulnerable to political interference,
corrupt practices and nepotism." Moreover, "Kosovo's public administration
remains weak and inefficient."

The report continued, "The composition of the government anti-corruption
council does not sufficiently guarantee its impartiality," and "little
progress can be reported in the area of organized crime and combating of
trafficking in human beings."

Additionally, the prosecution of Albanian war criminals is "hampered by the
unwillingness of the local population to testify" against them. This is in
part due to the fact that "there is still no specific legislation on witness
protection in place."

The fledgling failed-state of Kosovo is a great boon for the global jihad.
It is true that Kosovar Muslims by and large do not subscribe to radical
Islam. But it is also true that they have allowed their territory to be used
as bases for al-Qaida operations; that members of the ruling Kosovo
Liberation Army have direct links to al-Qaida; and that the Islamic world as
a whole perceived Kosovo's fight for independence from Serbia as a jihad for
Islamic domination of the disputed province.

According to a 2002 Wall Street Journal report, al-Qaida began operating
actively in Kosovo, and in the rest of the Balkans, in 1992. Osama bin Laden
visited Albania in 1996 and 1997. He received a Bosnian passport from the
Bosnian Embassy in Austria in 1993. Acting on bin Laden's orders, in 1994
his deputy, Ayman Zawahiri set up training bases throughout the Balkans
including one in Mitrovica, Kosovo. The Taliban and al-Qaida set up drug
trafficking operations in Kosovo to finance their operations in Afghanistan
and beyond.

In 2006, John Gizzi reported in Human Events that the German intelligence
service BND had confirmed that the 2005 terrorist bombings in Britain and
the 2004 bombings in Spain were organized in Kosovo. Furthermore, "The man
at the center of the provision of the explosives in both instances was an
Albanian, operating mostly out of Kosovo... who is the second ranking leader
of the Kosovo Liberation Army, Niam Behzloulzi."

Then, too, at its 1998 meeting in Pakistan, the Organization of the Islamic
Conference declared that the Albanian separatists in Kosovo were fighting a
jihad. The OIC called on the Muslim world to help "this fight for freedom on
the occupied Muslim territories."

Supporters of Kosovo claim that as victims of "genocide," Kosovar Muslims
deserve independence. But if the Muslims in Kosovo have been targeted for
annihilation by the Serbs, then how is it that they have increased from 48%
of the population in 1948 to 92% today? Indeed, Muslims comprised only 78%
of the population in 1991, the year before Yugoslavia broke apart.

In recent years particularly, it is Kosovo's Serbian Christians, not its
Albanian Muslims, who are targeted for ethnic cleansing. Since 1999,
two-thirds of Kosovo's Serbs - some 250,000 people - have fled the area.

The emergence of a potentially destabilizing state in Kosovo is clearly an
instance of political interests trumping law. Under international law,
Kosovo has no right to be considered a sovereign state. Even UN Security
Council Resolution 1244 from 1999, which the KLA claims provides the legal
basis for Kosovar sovereignty, explicitly recognizes Serbian sovereignty
over Kosovo.

For Israel, Kosovo's US-backed declaration of independence should be a
source of alarm great enough to require a rethinking of foreign policy.
Unfortunately, rather than understand and implement the lessons of Kosovo,
the Olmert-Livni-Barak government is working actively to ensure that they
are reenacted in the international community's treatment of Israel and the
Palestinians. Today, Israel is enabling the Palestinians to set the
political and legal conditions for the establishment of an internationally
recognized state of Palestine that will be at war with Israel.

By accepting the "Road Map Plan to a Two-State Solution" in 2004, Israel
empowered the US, the EU, Russia and the UN, who comprise the international
Quartet, to serve as judges of Palestinian and Israeli actions toward one
another. In November 2007, at the Annapolis conference, the
Olmert-Livni-Barak government explicitly empowered the US to "monitor and
judge the fulfillment of the commitment of both sides of the road map."

That these moves have made Israel dependent on the kindness of strangers was
made clear this week when Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni instructed Israel's
ambassadors to launch a campaign to convince the international community
that Israel and the Palestinians are making great strides in their
negotiations toward the establishment of a Palestinian state. Livni's move
was precipitated by growing European and US dissatisfaction with the pace of
those negotiations and by reports from the meeting of Quartet members in
Berlin on February 11. There all members voiced anger at the slow pace of
negotiations and opposition to Israel's military actions in Gaza, which are
aimed at protecting the western Negev from rocket and mortar attacks.

The US representative at the Quartet's meeting, Assistant Secretary of State
David Welch, reportedly told his colleagues, "First, we must not allow the
suicide bombing in Dimona and the shooting on Sderot to affect the
negotiations."

Welch reportedly added, "It is also important to us that neither the
Palestinians in Gaza nor the Israelis in Sderot are hurt. Also, we must
continue to strengthen Mahmoud Abbas and Salaam Fayad."

Moreover, Ran Koriel, Israel's ambassador to the EU, reportedly warned Livni
that the Russians are pushing for the re-establishment of a Fatah-Hamas
government. Several EU states, including France, are reconsidering their
refusal to recognize Hamas.

If Israel had not empowered the Quartet generally and the US specifically to
determine whether the PA and Israel are behaving properly, a European or
Russian decision to recognize Hamas would have little impact. But given
their role as arbiters, Quartet members can take punitive action against
Israel if it fails to comply with their wishes. The Quartet can replace
international law in determining who can assert sovereignty over Gaza, Judea
and Samaria and how Israel can exercise its own sovereignty. And so, Livni
is reduced to begging them not to recognize Hamas.

Once the US decided in 1999 to commit its own forces to NATO's bombing of
Serbia and subsequent occupation of Kosovo, the jig was up for Serbian
sovereignty over the area. The fact is, NATO forces in Kosovo were deployed
for the express purpose of blocking Serbia from exercising its sovereignty
over Kosovo, not to prevent violence between the Kosovars and the Serbs or
among the Muslims and Christians in Kosovo. That is, NATO deployed in Kosovo
to enable it to gain independence.

And if US or NATO forces are deployed to Gaza or Judea and Samaria, they
will not be there to protect Israelis from Palestinian terror or to prevent
the areas from acting as global terror bases. They will be there to
establish a Palestinian state.

Failing to understand the meaning of Kosovo, the Olmert-Livni-Barak
government refuses to understand this point. Indeed, the government is
actively lobbying NATO to deploy forces in Gaza. Just as it wrongly hoped
that UNIFIL forces in south Lebanon would fight Hizbullah for it, so today,
the Olmert-Livni-Barak government insists that NATO forces in Gaza will
fight Hamas for it.

If applying the lessons of UNIFIL to Gaza is too abstract for the
Olmert-Livni-Barak government, Israel has experience with EU monitors in
Gaza itself to learn from. Wrongly assuming that the Europeans shared
Israel's interest in preventing terrorists and weapons from entering Gaza,
Israel requested that EU monitors set up shop at the Rafah terminal linking
Gaza to Egypt after Israel withdrew from the border in 2005. Yet whenever
confronted by Fatah and Hamas terrorists, rather than fight the EU monitors
flee to Israel for protection. And its monitors' experience with Palestinian
terrorists taking over the border has never caused the EU to question its
support for Palestinian statehood.

Then, too, since the US, EU, UN and Russia all consider Gaza, Judea, Samaria
and Jerusalem to be one territorial unit, it is not surprising that Israel's
request for NATO forces in Gaza has been greeted by a US plan to deploy NATO
forces in Judea and Samaria. If NATO forces in Gaza would do nothing to
secure the border with Egypt or to fight terrorists and would scuttle
Israeli operations in the area, NATO forces in Judea and Samaria would not
simply prevent Israel from protecting its citizens who live there. They
would also prevent Israel from taking action to prevent the Palestinians
from attacking central Israel and asserting control over the border with
Jordan. And yet, as The Jerusalem Post reported this week, Israel is
conducting talks with the US regarding just such a NATO deployment.

What the Serbs made NATO fight its way in to achieve, Israel is offering
NATO on a silver platter.

Not surprisingly, Abbas's adviser and PA propaganda chief Yasser Abd Rabbo
reacted to Kosovo's declaration of independence by recommending that the
Palestinians follow the example. Abd Rabbo said, "Kosovo is not better than
us. We deserve independence even before Kosovo, and we ask for the backing
of the United States and the European Union for our independence."

For its part, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government has responded to Kosovo's
declaration of independence with customary confusion. But the lessons of
Kosovo are clear. Not only should Israel join Russia, Canada, China, Spain,
Romania and many others in refusing to recognize Kosovo. It should also
state that as a consequence of Kosovo's independence, Israel rejects the
deployment of any international forces to Gaza or Judea and Samaria, and
refuses to cede its legal right to sovereignty in Judea, Samaria, Gaza and
Jerusalem to international arbitration.

A postmodern declaration

Kosovo's sovereignty is a fiction: real power lies with EU officials backed by western firepower

• 
  John Laughland
  
• 
  The Guardian,
  
• Tuesday February 19 2008

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This article appeared in the Guardian
on Tuesday February 19 2008 on p30 of the Comment & debate section. It was last updated at 00:04 on February 19 2008.

There seemed to be no immediate
consequences when, in 1908, Austria annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina. Vienna
was in clear violation of the 1878 Treaty of Berlin, which it had
signed and kept Bosnia in Turkey, yet the protests of Russia and Serbia
were in vain. The following year, the fait accompli was written into an
amended treaty. Six years later, however, a Russian-backed Serbian
gunman exacted revenge by assassinating the heir to the Austrian throne
in Sarajevo in June 1914. The rest is history.

Parallels between
Kosovo in 2008 and Bosnia in 1908 are relevant, but not only because,
whatever legal trickery the west uses to override UN security council
resolution 1244 - which kept Kosovo in Serbia - the proclamation of the
new state will have incalculable long-term consequences: on
secessionist movements from Belgium to the Black Sea via Bosnia, on
relations with China and Russia, and on the international system as a
whole. They are also relevant because the last thing the new state
proclaimed in Pristina on Sunday will be is independent. Instead, what
has now emerged south of the Ibar river is a postmodern state, an
entity that may be sovereign in name but is a US-EU protectorate in
practice.

The European Union plans to send some 2,000 officials
to Kosovo to take over from the United Nations, which has governed the
province since 1999. It wants to appoint an International Civilian
Representative who - according to the plan drawn up last year by Martti
Ahtisaari, the UN envoy - will be the "final authority" in Kosovo with
the power to "correct or annul decisions by the Kosovo public
authorities". Kosovo would have had more real independence under the
terms Belgrade offered it than it will now.

Those who support the
sort of "polyvalent sovereignty" and "postnational statehood" that we
already have in the EU welcome such arrangements as a respite from the
harsh decisionism of post-Westphalian statehood. But such fictions are
in fact always underpinned by the timeless realities of brute power.
There are 16,000 Nato troops in Kosovo and they have no intention of
coming home: indeed, they are even now being reinforced with 1,000
extra troops from Britain. They, not the Kosovo army, are responsible
for the province's internal and external security.

Kosovo is also
home to the vast US military base Camp Bondsteel, near Urosevac - a
mini-Guantánamo that is only one in an archipelago of new US bases in
eastern Europe, the Balkans and central Asia. This is why the Serbian
prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, speaking on Sunday, specifically
attacked Washington for the Kosovo proclamation, saying that it showed
that the US was "ready to unscrupulously and violently jeopardise
international order for the sake of its own military interests".

In
order to symbolise its status as the newest Euro-Atlantic colony,
Kosovo has chosen a flag modelled on that of Bosnia-Herzegovina - the
same EU gold, the same arrangement of stars on a blue background. For
Bosnia, too, is governed by a foreign high representative, who has the
power to sack elected politicians and annul laws, all in the name of
preparing the country for EU integration.

As in Bosnia, billions
have been poured into Kosovo to pay for the international
administration but not to improve the lives of ordinary people. Kosovo
is a sump of poverty and corruption, both of which have exploded since
1999, and its inhabitants have eked out their lives for nine years now
in a mafia state where there are no jobs and not even a proper
electricity supply: every few hours there are power cuts, and the
streets of Kosovo's towns explode in a whirring din as every shop and
home switches on its generator.

This tragic situation is made
possible only because there is a fatal disconnect in all
interventionism between power and responsibility. The international
community has micro-managed every aspect of the break-up of Yugoslavia
since the EU brokered the Brioni agreement within days of the war in
Slovenia in July 1991. Yet it has always blamed the locals for the
results. Today, the new official government of Kosovo will be
controlled by its international patrons, but they will similarly never
accept accountability for its failings. They prefer instead to govern
behind the scenes, in the dangerous - and no doubt deliberate - gap
between appearance and reality.

· John Laughland is the author of Travesty: the Trial of Slobodan Milosevic and the Corruption of International Justice

jlaughland@btinternet.com

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/feb/19/kosovo.eu

Serbs Press Their Drive to Control Northern Kosovo

---

February
21, 2008

Serbs Press Their Drive to Control
Northern Kosovo

By
DAN BILEFSKY

CABRA, Kosovo
— Serbs in northern Kosovo on Wednesday continued what appeared to be a drive
to force a partition three days after the ethnic Albanian majority declared the
province’s independence from Serbia.

A mob of 300 Serbs wielding
clubs and tools gathered on a road near this small village of ethnic Albanians
in northern Kosovo, prompting NATO to send armored vehicles and tanks to head
them off.

Earlier, ethnic Albanian
police officers, part of Kosovo’s multiethnic police force, were forced out of
the neighboring Serb village, where they were patrolling with fellow Serbs. It
was the latest sign that Serbs in Kosovo, incensed by the declaration of
independence, are trying to assert control over the northern part of Kosovo,
the majority of whose residents are ethnic Serbs.

NATO peacekeeping troops
closed off roads between Serbia and northern Kosovo, and United
Nations police officers guarded checkpoints still smoldering after
they were burned down Tuesday by several hundred Serbs in what the police said
appeared to be an organized operation, The Associated Press reported.

Indicating that the violence
could be a prelude to an effort to force a partition of northern Kosovo, the
Serbian minister for Kosovo, Metohija Slobodan Samardzic, said the destruction
of the United Nations checkpoints was in line with Serbia’s policies. “It might
not be pleasant, but it is legitimate,” he said, adding that Serbia would be
seeking to enlarge its operations in northern Kosovo, where it provides
education, culture and health services to the ethnic Serb population.

In Mitrovica, a northern
Kosovo city that is divided between Serbs in the north and ethnic Albanians in
the south, 3,000 demonstrators marched to the bridge dividing the communities,
chanting, “We won’t give up Kosovo!” The daily protest, begun this week, starts
precisely at 12:44 p.m., in reference to United
Nations Security Council Resolution 1244, under which Serbia insists
that it still has sovereignty over Kosovo under international law.

Capt. Bertrand Bonneau, a
spokesman for NATO’s 16,000-member peacekeeping force in Kosovo, said the
peacekeepers were under orders to maintain security in all of Kosovo, including
the north, and would not tolerate any action by either side that undermined
this goal.

The European
Union on Wednesday formally began a program that will bring 1,800
police officers and judges to Kosovo to help administer its affairs. The move
provoked criticism from Russia, which has supported the Serbs in opposing an
independent Kosovo. Pieter Feith, the European Union’s special envoy, appealed
to Serbs, who consider the mission an occupying force, to stop demonstrating.

But European diplomats,
speaking on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to
discuss the subject for attribution, expressed worries that Kosovo’s Serbs
could provoke ethnic Albanians, undermining whatever collective Serbian and
Albanian authority remained in northern Kosovo, and entrenching Serbian control
so that de facto partition became a political reality.

“The Serbs appear intent on
provoking an Albanian reaction and to make the international community’s
mission here impossible, but we will not allow legal partition,” said one
senior European Union diplomat.

But another European diplomat
said that if Serbs pursued de facto division, “there is not a lot that could be
done.”

The political temperature in
Cabra, an agricultural village of about 70 ethnic Albanian families, has
particular resonance because it was here in March 2004 that three ethnic
Albanian boys drowned under mysterious circumstances, prompting Albanians to
riot across Kosovo.

As the Serb protesters
gathered on the road outside the village Wednesday, local ethnic Albanians
vowed they would stay to ensure that northern Kosovo remained in ethnic
Albanian hands. Children wearing T-shirts with Albanian flags gathered to
observe the peacekeepers’ tanks parked at the edge of the town.

“This is my land, and we must
stay here to show Serbia that this is Kosovo,” said Zuka Ilir, an unemployed
28-year-old. “But we are afraid. We don’t know what will happen.”

Xhevadet Beka, a 26-year-old
engineer, added: “I will stay here and fight if I have to. For now we put our
faith in NATO, the E.U. and the United States. But we are very, very afraid
that the Serbs will try and take over northern Kosovo, and it is impossible. We
will not allow it.”

Kosovo was placed under
United Nations administration in 1999, after NATO intervened to halt repression
by the Serbian leader, Slobodan
Milosevic, of ethnic Albanians, who make up 95 percent of the
population. Yet the northern part of Kosovo — 15 percent of its territory —
remains under de facto Serbian control.

The Serbian leader of Kosovo,
Nebojsa Radulovic, demanded Wednesday that the border between Serbia and
Kosovo, sealed on Tuesday by NATO troops to keep militants from crossing into
Kosovo, be reopened or “the Serbs will continue with the protests, with
consequences we cannot predict.”

Germany, meanwhile, joined
the United States, France, Britain and seven other countries in recognizing
Kosovo, calling Kosovo’s independence a necessary measure to stabilize the
Balkans. Austria and Norway said they also were planning to recognize Kosovo’s
sovereignty.

The Serbian foreign minister,
Vuk Jeremic, addressed the European
Parliament in Strasbourg, France, warning that diplomatic relations
with countries that recognized Kosovo would be damaged. “This is going to have
an impact on our future progress to European Union membership,” he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/21/world/europe/21kosovo.html?ex=1204174800&en=6b7a9a517e416f9e&ei=5040

'Independent' Kosovo: A threat, not a country

'Independent' Kosovo: A threat, not a country

________________________________________
Posted: February 20, 2008
1:00 am Eastern

© 2008
By James George Jatras
Abraham Lincoln was fond of asking the rhetorical question: "If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have? Five? No, calling a tail a leg don't make it a leg."
That pretty much sums up the recent unilateral declaration of independence by Albanian Muslims in the Serbian province of Kosovo. Several countries, disgracefully led by the United States, have recognized Kosovo. Major media have hailed creation of the "world's newest country." But calling Kosovo a country doesn't make it one.
Serbia has denounced the move as the illegal creation of a "separatist entity" on its sovereign territory and has handed down criminal indictments against several of the top Albanian Muslim leaders. Now under way is a sharp global competition to see which governments will recognize Kosovo and which will not. Under heavy pressure from the U.S. State Department, most European countries will meekly comply. Some, like Cyprus with its Turkish-occupied north and Spain with its Basque separatist movement, will not.
In short, an action State Department bureaucrats touted as "settling Kosovo's status" has resulted in anything but. Outside of Europe, the picture is even fuzzier. Russia will reject Kosovo's independence, and expected to take the same line are China, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, South Africa, Brazil and many others. Russia will veto any effort to extend Kosovo membership in the United Nations.
Any sovereign state with restive ethnic or religious minorities would recognize Kosovo at its own peril. What Washington seeks to inflict on Serbia today could be the fate of the American southwest tomorrow. Israel, in particular, is closely pondering its next move. While loath to anger Washington, Jerusalem must consider that a Kosovo precedent could, absent any negotiated agreement, prompt proclamation of a Palestinian state, to be recognized by Arab and Muslim regimes. The same precedent could apply to heavily Muslim areas such as Galilee and the Negev within Israel's formal borders.
At a special press briefing, outgoing Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns – who is often mentioned as a possible secretary of state under a Democratic administration – hailed support for Kosovo from the Organization of the Islamic Conference and Muslim governments. Happily claiming that a "vastly majority Muslim state" has been carved out of Serbia, a European Christian country, Burns said: "We think it is a very positive step that this Muslim state, Muslim majority state, has been created today."
Burns' remarks reflect a desperate hope by the Bush administration that displays of American pro-Islamic favoritism in the Balkans and support for a Palestinian state (its domination by Hamas notwithstanding) will buy the good will of hostile devotees of the "religion of peace and tolerance." Their gratitude is manifest in the jihad terror plot to attack Fort Dix, N.J., where four of the six defendants are Albanian Muslims from the Kosovo region. The offenders' presence in the United States – three of them illegal aliens and one brought to the U.S. by the Clinton administration as a refugee, another example of "gratitude" – stems from the fact that a broadly based support network for the terrorist "Kosovo Liberation Army," KLA, has been allowed to operate with impunity in the New York-New Jersey-Pennsylvania area, raising funds and collecting weapons, not to mention peddling influence with American politicians.
Meanwhile, Christian Serbs in Kosovo are bracing for the worst. "We are all expecting something difficult and horrible," said Bishop Artemije, pastor of Kosovo's Orthodox Christians. "Our message to you, all Serbs in Kosovo, is to remain in your homes and around your monasteries, regardless of what God allows or our enemies do."
The bishop's flock has good reason to fear. Far from the usual claims that NATO stopped a humanitarian catastrophe in Kosovo in 1999, the past nine years have seen a slow-motion genocide in progress against the province's Christian Serbian population under the nose of the U.N. and NATO, and at times with their facilitation. Two-thirds of the Serbian population already has been expelled and have not been able to return safely to their homes, along with similar proportions of other groups (Roma, Gorani, Croats and all the Jews). Over 150 churches and monasteries have been destroyed, with crosses and icons of Christ attracting particular vandalistic rage, a testament to Kosovo Albanians' supposed secularism and pro-Western orientation.
Hundreds of new Saudi-funded mosques fomenting the extreme Wahhabi doctrine have sprung up. Kosovo is visibly morphing from part of Europe into part of the Middle East. In contrast to Under Secretary Burns' cheerleading, former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton has warned: "Kosovo will be a weak state susceptible to radical Islamist influence from outside the region, with the support from some Albanians, in other words, a potential gate for radicalism to enter Europe." If allowed to consolidate, an independent Kosovo would become a way station toward an anti-American, anti-Israel, anti-Christian "Eurabia."
Around the world, jihad terror usually goes hand-in-hand with organized crime. Kosovo is the perfect case in point. The supposed authorities of the would-be state are themselves kingpins in the Albanians Mafia, whose network extends throughout Europe and has a significant presence in New York City. Besides all the international aid dumped down the Kosovo rat hole, or carted off by corrupt officials, the only real "industry" is crime: drugs (heroin from Afghan opium), slaves (kidnapped women and children from Moldova, Ukraine and other countries brought in for local "service" – there are lot of lonely international bureaucrats in Kosovo – or shipped off into Europe), and weapons (the missile that hit the U.S. Embassy in Athens in 2006 and the explosives used in the London and Madrid train bombings came through Kosovo).
What will happen now in Kosovo? It would be up to the KLA and their supporters to decide whether to kick off a new cycle of violence by attacking Serbs who refuse to submit to their "authority." Serbia in fact has been beefing up its legitimate state institutions in areas where Serbs are concentrated, which the Albanians have threatened to shut down as – believe it or not – illegal separatist structures. We will see if the political violence unleashed by the act of recognition will be matched by physical violence on the ground. Meanwhile, Serbia will undertake undisclosed countermeasures to undermine the illegally declared KLA- and Mafia-ruled entity and force resumption of negotiations to achieve a valid settlement. Let us hope they succeed.
With a stoke of his pen, President Bush, by heeding the State Department's bad advice to recognize a supposedly independent Kosovo, has triggered the perfect international storm: shattering the principle of the territorial integrity of sovereign nations, encouraging violent separatists worldwide, provoking a needless confrontation with Russia and other countries, boosting the jihad terrorist and organized crime threat to Europe and America, and creating conditions for a human rights and religious freedom nightmare. In terms of far-reaching consequences, it may the worst blunder of his presidency. Which is saying a lot

http://www.pressonline.co.yu/vest.jsp?id=30322&sectionId=37

A postmodern declaration

Kosovo's sovereignty is a fiction: real power lies with EU
officials backed by western firepower

• John Laughland
  
• The Guardian,
  
• Tuesday February 19 2008

There seemed to be no immediate consequences when, in 1908,
Austria annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina. Vienna was in clear violation of the 1878
Treaty of Berlin, which it had signed and kept Bosnia in Turkey, yet the
protests of Russia and Serbia were in vain. The following year, the fait
accompli was written into an amended treaty. Six years later, however, a
Russian-backed Serbian gunman exacted revenge by assassinating the heir to the
Austrian throne in Sarajevo in June 1914. The rest is history.

Parallels between Kosovo in 2008 and Bosnia in 1908 are relevant, but not
only because, whatever legal trickery the west uses to override UN security
council resolution 1244 - which kept Kosovo in Serbia - the proclamation of the
new state will have incalculable long-term consequences: on secessionist
movements from Belgium to the Black Sea via Bosnia, on relations with China and
Russia, and on the international system as a whole. They are also relevant
because the last thing the new state proclaimed in Pristina on Sunday will be
is independent. Instead, what has now emerged south of the Ibar river is a
postmodern state, an entity that may be sovereign in name but is a US-EU
protectorate in practice.

The European Union plans to send some 2,000 officials to Kosovo to take over
from the United Nations, which has governed the province since 1999. It wants
to appoint an International Civilian Representative who - according to the plan
drawn up last year by Martti Ahtisaari, the UN envoy - will be the "final
authority" in Kosovo with the power to "correct or annul decisions by
the Kosovo public authorities". Kosovo would have had more real independence
under the terms Belgrade offered it than it will now.

Those who support the sort of "polyvalent sovereignty" and
"postnational statehood" that we already have in the EU welcome such
arrangements as a respite from the harsh decisionism of post-Westphalian
statehood. But such fictions are in fact always underpinned by the timeless
realities of brute power. There are 16,000 Nato troops in Kosovo and they have
no intention of coming home: indeed, they are even now being reinforced with
1,000 extra troops from Britain. They, not the Kosovo army, are responsible for
the province's internal and external security.

Kosovo is also home to the vast US military base Camp Bondsteel, near
Urosevac - a mini-Guantánamo that is only one in an archipelago of new US bases
in eastern Europe, the Balkans and central Asia. This is why the Serbian prime
minister, Vojislav Kostunica, speaking on Sunday, specifically attacked
Washington for the Kosovo proclamation, saying that it showed that the US was
"ready to unscrupulously and violently jeopardise international order for
the sake of its own military interests".

In order to symbolise its status as the newest Euro-Atlantic colony, Kosovo
has chosen a flag modelled on that of Bosnia-Herzegovina - the same EU gold,
the same arrangement of stars on a blue background. For Bosnia, too, is
governed by a foreign high representative, who has the power to sack elected
politicians and annul laws, all in the name of preparing the country for EU
integration.

As in Bosnia, billions have been poured into Kosovo to pay for the
international administration but not to improve the lives of ordinary people.
Kosovo is a sump of poverty and corruption, both of which have exploded since
1999, and its inhabitants have eked out their lives for nine years now in a
mafia state where there are no jobs and not even a proper electricity supply:
every few hours there are power cuts, and the streets of Kosovo's towns explode
in a whirring din as every shop and home switches on its generator.

This tragic situation is made possible only because there is a fatal
disconnect in all interventionism between power and responsibility. The
international community has micro-managed every aspect of the break-up of
Yugoslavia since the EU brokered the Brioni agreement within days of the war in
Slovenia in July 1991. Yet it has always blamed the locals for the results.
Today, the new official government of Kosovo will be controlled by its
international patrons, but they will similarly never accept accountability for
its failings. They prefer instead to govern behind the scenes, in the dangerous
- and no doubt deliberate - gap between appearance and reality.

· John Laughland is the author of Travesty: the Trial of
Slobodan Milosevic and the Corruption of International Justice

jlaughland@btinternet.com

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/feb/19/kosovo.eu

Play it again, Adolf -- Danke, Deutschland

"Thank
You Germany!"

2008/02/18

PRISTINA/BELGRADE/BERLIN

(Own
report) - Sunday, after Berlin's years of preparations, the South-Serbian
province, Kosovo, declared its secession in violation of international law.
Kosovo is "independent" of Serbia, declared Hashim Thaci, the Prime
Minister of the Provincial Administration in Pristina. The German government
intends to recognize the secession soon. Berlin will thereby be participating
in the violation of the UN Charter and other valid legal norms, just as the
German police and judicial officers, who will be dispatched to Kosovo within
the framework of a so-called EU mission. Their deployment will be without a
valid, internationally recognized legal basis and will therefore constitute an
illegal occupation. The objective is to establish an informal protectorate,
while keeping its nationalist forces in check. Kosovo's secession is the
preliminary finale of a policy seeking the parcelization of the Balkan states
along the lines of allegiance, which began with Berlin's recognition of the
Croatian secession. Each of the EU states, after brief hesitation, joined this
policy and along with Washington, militarily attacked what was left of
Yugoslavia in 1999. Since that time, Berlin has been fostering the Kosovo
nationalists, whose representatives in Pristina are designated as the bosses of
organized crime. One of them is the current Prime Minister Thaci. On the murals
celebrating Thaci's proclamation of secession, one reads "Thank You
Germany!"

With
yesterday's proclaimed secession the provincial administration in Pristina has
concluded what Berlin has been preparing for years - at first with covert
secret service support for the KLA, then with participation in the military
aggression against Yugoslavia in March 1999 and finally within the framework of
the UN Administration in Pristina (UNMIK) (german-foreign-policy.com reported
[1]). The secession of Serbia's southern province was carried out in violation
of the UN Charter - guaranteeing all UN member states the sovereignty and
territorial integrity - and in disregard of the decisions taken by the UN
Security Council. Most significant is the Resolution 1244 explicitly
reconfirming to Belgrade the integrity of its sovereign territory. The German
government intends to recognize the secession soon and demands that all EU
member states do the same. Berlin thereby proves once again that it is the
driving force behind a growing degeneration of international law, blatantly exalting
the despotism of power to the highest principle of foreign policy.

Fantasy

With
the aid of fantasy the foreign ministry seeks to cover up the German
government's renewed breach of international law. In its statement before the
Foreign Relations Committee of the German Parliament, the ministry alleged that
the guarantees of Serbia's sovereignty and integrity, laid down in UN
Resolution 1244, refer merely to a "transitional government" in
Kosovo and does not preclude secession. A reading of the text proves this
audacious fabrication to be groundless. According to the Foreign Ministry, the
UN Resolution - except for the guarantees for Serbia's sovereignty and
territorial integrity - is still in force, so as not to jeopardize the
legitimacy of NATO's and the EU's deployment, because if the resolution were no
longer valid, it would mean that the western countries' occupation of Serbian
territory would be dependant upon the "invitation" of their Kosovo
vassals in Pristina, an embarrassing dependency that Berlin and Washington
would like to avoid.[2]

Precedence

This
ludicrous approach that degrades UN Resolutions to non-binding suggestion
lists, from which one can pick and choose to apply clauses at preference, meets
open contradiction even within the entourage of the Foreign Ministry. Warnings
of incalculable counter-measures are being heard. "Unilateral
interpretations of Security Council Resolutions constitute (...) cases of
precedence that, under other circumstances, can be turned against the western nations,"[3]
a member of the Foreign Ministry's Council of International Jurists wrote in a
newspaper article.

Decree

German
legal arbitrariness can also be seen by the way the decision was taken to
dispatch a so-called police and judicial mission to Kosovo. In spite of massive
pressure from Berlin, six EU member states are still rejecting the secession,
because their own sovereignty is threatened by separatists. With the refusals
of Spain, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and Cyprus to actively support
the new "EU-mission", the modalities for decision making were changed
without further ado and the dispatching of 2000 police and judicial officers
was virtually taken by decree. In Brussels one could hear concerning the
decision-making, that the dispatching had been proposed and "formally
adopted" when the time-limit for lodging an objection - at midnight on
Saturday - had expired without a veto from an EU member state. With this new
voting technique, final approval becomes superfluous. Berlin had made it clear
that it would accept a veto under no circumstances. To demonstrate its
determination, Germany had already chosen its first 63 police officers for the
"mission" before the time-limit had expired.[4]

Impunity

Amnesty
International has recently published a report on its research concerning the
"police and justice mission" being conducted in the name of the
United Nations, but also under western control. The conclusions are devastating
for the numerous -among them also German - police and judicial officers who have
been deployed in Kosovo since 1999. According to Sian Jones, Amnesty
International's researcher on Kosovo, "hundreds of cases including
murders, rapes and enforced disappearances have been closed, for want of
evidence that was neither promptly nor effectively gathered" by the UN
Mission. There is persistent "impunity" for war crimes and crimes
against humanity in the southern Serbian province claiming to be an independent
state and about to be recognized by Germany.[5] According to Amnesty „no
progress is ever made", quite the contrary, the situation has worsened in
recent months. Amnesty International "urges the UN not to undertake any
similar international justice missions in the future until effective steps have
been taken to ensure that none of the extensive flaws identified in this report
are repeated."[6]

Networks

The
current Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci is among those persons whose past
could shed light on what Amnesty considers "extensive flaws".
Washington and Berlin's close ally proclaimed the southern Serbian province's
"independence" in Pristina yesterday. If the UN police and judicial
officers would have accomplished their mission, Thaci would have been brought
to trial long ago. Already in 1997, Serbian judges had sentenced him to ten years
in prison - for several murders. "Thaci had ordered liquidations within
his own ranks," two former KLA fighters report about their former
leader.[7] In the eyes of the German Foreign Intelligence Service
(Bundesnachrichtendienst), the current Prime Minister is one of the heads of
the Kosovo Mafia and a sponsor of a "professional killer".[8] A
survey commissioned by the German Bundeswehr asserts that "in intelligence
circles" Thaci "is considered to be 'far more dangerous'" than
Ramush Haradinaj, who is indicted for war crimes [9], "because the former
KLA leader has an extensive international criminal network at his
disposal."[10]

Last
Question

With
the Kosovo declaration of secession, that, in violation of international law,
has granted criminals their own state, German efforts to achieve the
disempowerment of its traditional opponent, Serbia, has attained its objective.
Belgrade has lost the control over most of the territory of what had formerly
been Yugoslavia, has been deprived its access to the sea and is surrounded by
hostile states. On the other hand, through a new war against Belgrade and the
break-up of Serbian territory, Berlin was able to successfully reassert its
claim as hegemonic power in Southeast Europe. With yesterday's declaration of
secession, according to the German government, the "last remaining open
question concerning the disintegration process of Yugoslavia (...) has been
resolved."[11]

[1]
see also Neuer
Vasall, Imperial
Consummation, Teil
der Verwaltung, A
Sort of Resurrection for Yugoslavia, Die
Herren des Rechts, Paketlösung,
Abmontiert,
Sieger
im Kalten Krieg, Selbstbestimmung,
Die
zweite Welle, Dayton
II, Mit
kreativen Tricks, Angelpunkt,
Countdown
and Kooperationsraum.

[2] Die Argumentationen entstammen einem Papier des Auswärtigen Amts mit dem
Titel "Kosovo. Resolution des Sicherheitsrates 1244 (1999) und eine evtl.
Unabhängigkeitserklärung des Kosovo".

[3] Kein Recht auf Abspaltung; Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 14.02.2008

[4] EU entsendet Polizisten und Juristen in das Kosovo; Reuters 16.02.2008

[5] amnesty international legt neuen Kosovo-Bericht vor; www.amnesty.de

[6] Kosovo (Serbia): The challenge to fix a failed UN justice mission;
www.amnesty.org

[7] "Die Schlange" greift nach der Macht im Kosovo; Die Welt
28.01.2006

[8] Jürgen Roth: Rechtsstaat? Lieber nicht!; Die Weltwoche 43/2005

[9] see also Political
Friendships and Heldenfigur

[10] Operationalisierung von Security Sector Reform (SSR) auf dem Westlichen
Balkan; Institut für Europäische Politik 09.01.2007. See also Aufs
engste verflochten

[11] Erklärung zur Entscheidung des Parlaments im Kosovo; Presse- und
Informationsamt der Bundesregierung 17.02.2008

 http://www.german-foreign-policy.com/en/fulltext/56134

NATO-UN record is bad news for Canada

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8019

Warning: NATO-UN
record is bad news for Canada

James
Bissett, a former Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia

Global Research, February 6, 2008
Globe and Mail, Toronto John Manley's Afghan report focuses rightly on the willingness of our NATO allies to send additional combat troops to Kandahar as a condition of our remaining in Afghanistan, but there is a broader issue for Canadians: the poor track record of NATO and the United Nations in bringing peace, order and good governance to the countries they have occupied after a military intervention. The most obvious example is Kosovo. It has been almost nine years since UN Resolution 1244 brought an end to the NATO bombing of Slobodan Milosevic's Serbia. That resolution, which laid down the parameters for the future of Kosovo by providing for a functioning civil society with democratic institutions, called for the return of all refugees and the disarming of the Kosovo Liberation Army, provided for a limited number of Serbian security forces to patrol Kosovo's borders and to guard Christian holy places, and reaffirmed Serbia's sovereignty over Kosovo while guaranteeing the Albanian community a high degree of local autonomy. It was a blueprint for success. Sadly, none of the provisions of 1244 were fulfilled by NATO and the UN. Under the watchful eyes of 40,000 NATO troops and UN officials, the Albanians were allowed to expel almost all of the non-Albanian population from Kosovo and to destroy 150 Christian churches and monasteries. Notwithstanding billions of dollars in development aid, Kosovo remains the poorest area of Europe. There is massive unemployment, the per capita income is $1,600 a year and infant mortality is the highest in Europe. It has become a "black hole" where crime, corruption and violence flourish. Kosovo is a small territory in southern Serbia, less than twice the size of Prince Edward Island; it has a population of about two million. Yet, after eight years of occupation, NATO and the UN have proved incapable of bringing law and order. In other words, they have made a mess of it. Afghanistan is a vast and mountainous country about the size of Alberta. It has a population of 32 million with a long history of resisting foreign invaders. NATO forces, now numbering 15,000, are facing a fanatical enemy determined to force them to withdraw, and even though these forces are supplemented by 28,000 U.S. soldiers, it is doubtful that any military force is large enough to bring peace and stability to the country. The Kosovo failure should serve as a warning that NATO and the UN are institutions ill-equipped to carry out the multifaceted task they have taken on in Afghanistan. The Manley report has pointed out that UN personnel in Kabul suffer from a "lack of leadership, direction and effective co-ordination from UN headquarters in New York." That is nothing new: Mismanagement has been a chronic problem characterizing UN operations everywhere. An added problem is that NATO itself is an organization that has not yet found its role in a post-Soviet world. When it was founded in 1949, it was designed as a purely defensive group with two goals: Defend the West from any possible Soviet attack; and uphold the principles of the UN Charter while never using, or threatening to use, force in the resolution of international disputes. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO lost one of its primary reasons for existence. The second reason - to act in accordance with the UN Charter's principles - was seen by some NATO members as an inhibiting factor in dealing with issues involving human-rights abuses or rogue states. The turning point for NATO came with its military intervention in Kosovo allegedly for humanitarian reasons. The bombing of Serbia was done in violation of the UN Charter and NATO's Article 1. During the bombing campaign, in April of 1999, on the occasion of NATO's 50th birthday, Bill Clinton announced a new "strategic concept" for NATO. The new role essentially meant the alliance could and would intervene wherever and whenever it felt necessary to preserve peace and security. Its days as a purely defensive organization had ended. As with any multinational organization, NATO has become difficult to manage. Its new role is not clearly defined, and decision-making is slow and cumbersome. Not all of its members are enthusiastic about the Afghan mission, where the chances of success are slim and the cost in blood and gold may become prohibitive. Others see it as a multinational facade to mask the unilateral aims of the Bush administration. This is not a formula for success. Like it or not, Canada must fulfill its NATO obligations. But let us be clear about what those obligations are and the price we pay to fulfill them. James Bissett is a former Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia
James Bissett is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by James Bissett

The Immorality of Moral Universalism

The Immorality of Moral Universalism

From the desk of John
Laughland on Wed, 2008-02-13 17:14

Pas de
liberté pour les ennemis de la liberté! No liberty for the enemies of liberty has
always been the revolutionary principle, ever since Saint-Just (“The Angel of
the Terror”) pronounced the phrase in Paris in 1793. Because Islam is now
widely seen as an existential threat to liberal values the speech by the Archbishop
of Canterbury last week, saying that the introduction of sharia law was
both inevitable and desirable, and that idea of a sovereign state with a single
law for all was “problematic” because it is not pluralist and tolerant enough,
has inevitably caused a storm.

The speech
did not come entirely out of the blue. For many decades now, clerics including
in the Catholic church have espoused nothing but a tepid brew of secular
left-liberalism. People used to say that the danger of people believing in
nothing was that they would start to believe in anything. But as Paul Gottfried
argued some years ago in his excellent book, Multiculturalism
and the Politics of Guilt, the secularist project merely causes
theological forms of behaviour to erupt into the political realm, often in a
particularly nasty and deformed way. When priests stop talking about morality,
other people start talking about it instead.

This was
illustrated on 12th February in a
speech by the British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband. He called the
speech “The Democratic Imperative”, perhaps an unconscious allusion to “the
categorical imperative,” the centrepiece of the moral philosophy of the man who
did most to introduce secularism and to banish God from the public realm,
Immanuel Kant. Miliband’s view is that the democratic states of the world have
a moral duty to intervene, including with military force, to support democracy
around the world.

Miliband’s
debt to Kant is very great, since he invokes the concept of moral universalism,
but it is perhaps greater to his mentor, Tony Blair, who advocated the same
thing at the height of the Kosovo war in 1999, in his speech entitled “The Doctrine of the
International Community” and greater still to Leon Trotsky and V. I. Lenin,
the men for whom his
grandfather fought in the Red Army, and who, like Miliband, also believed
in enforcing world revolution by military might.

The Foreign
Secretary marshalled three arguments which, he said, are counter-arguments to
“the democratic imperative”. Although he claimed to demolish each one in turn,
he in fact failed to address the single most important counter-argument to
interventionism and its claim that promoting democracy is “moral”, namely that,
on the contrary, interventionism is deeply immoral.

This is not
difficult to show. Kosovo is about to declare its independence. Naturally there
will be a lot of crowing about how the NATO war of 1999 was fought for
universal values and about how it therefore showed the rightness of
interventionism. Yet you do not have to accept that the original war was evil
(as I believe it was) to see that the subsequent administration of the province
has been catastrophic. As Matthias Brügmann reported in Handelsblatt on
2nd February (“Das
Scheitern der Welt” – “The World’s Failure”), and as I know from my own
bitter experience, Kosovo is a hell-hole. The United Nations administration
there has ruthlessly sacrificed its own institutional self-interest to that of
the Kosovo people; it has consumed tens of billions of dollars without
providing for any of the basics for civilised life – there is no proper
electricity supply and there are power cuts all the time; and the place is run
by the Mafia, the former KLA leader Hashim Thaci having been Prime Minister since
2007. Unemployment is nearly universal and the place is a sump of corruption
and violence. What is moral about that?

Anyone
interested in reading more on this would do well to consult the terrible
indictment published in 2006 by two well-meaning former officials in the UN
administration in Kosovo, Iain King and Whit Mason, Peace
at any price: How the world failed Kosovo. Even the European
Commission’s annual progress report on candidate states admits, Kosovo
government is “weak an inefficient” while corruption remains “widespread” [pdf].

I have written elsewhere about the
immorality of supporting the independence of Kosovo while denying it to
Flanders, Northern Cyprus, Republika Srpska, Transnistria or any of the other
numerous territories around the world which do not want to belong to the states
they are in. David Miliband says that one of his ideological enemies is Realpolitik,
but what other word can there be for supporting the independence of those
countries you like, while denying it to those you do not?

The only
other possible word which describes such an approach is “double standards” and
these are the opposite of moral. Yet they are precisely what another
interventionist, Robert Cooper, once wrote (in The Post Modern State and the
World Order were what should guide the foreign policy of the West: “We need
to get used to the idea of double standards. Among ourselves, we operate on the
basis of laws and open cooperative security. But when dealing with more
old-fashioned kinds of state outside the post-modern continent of Europe, we
need to revert to the rougher methods of an earlier era – force, pre-emptive
attack, deception.”

Similar
theories have been advanced, for instance, by Robert Kaplan, another
interventionist, in his apology for brutalism, Warrior
Politics: Why Leadership demands a Pagan Ethos.

On one
level, Miliband’s and Blair’s invocation of morality in justification of
horrible acts of war is simply the sign of a psychotic personality – what one
Iraq expert called to advise the then Prime Minister before the invasion of
Iraq, “a strange combination of moral fervour and cynicism”. At a deeper level,
however, I believe that double standards and hypocrisy are the inevitable
results of any policy based on abstract, universal values. Appeals to universal
values will always lead to hypocrisy because values cannot be apprehended in
the abstract, only in the concrete. The only way to appreciate the value of
something is by comparing it to something else.

We need to
renew, therefore, with the ancient tradition of justice and morality,
formulated by Cicero and Aristotle and transfigured by St. Thomas Aquinas,
according to which justice is the administration to each of his deserts. It is
the role of the state to establish such deserts and administer such justice,
but, more profoundly, it is the role of the polis to provide a forum in
which such values can be publicly apprehended and judged. The state is also the
forum by which accountability for the wielding of power is ensured:
international power, by contrast, is structurally unaccountable because there
are literally no mechanisms by which decisions are subjected to any sort of
democratic scrutiny or approval.

Miliband’s
approach, therefore, is to deny the state its noble role of providing a forum
for the establishment of value, and, in the name of an morality which is as
capricious as it is abstract, to argue for nothing less than the right to wield
power without responsibility.

http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/2964

EU “EULEKS” Poised for Nazi Style Blitzkrieg on Kosovo

EU “EULEKS” Poised for Nazi Style Blitzkrieg on Kosovo

11.02.2008

Source:

URL: http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/103989-eueulekskosovo-0

Unwanted, unwelcome, illegal, illegitimate, the EU mission is poised to make a Nazi style blitzkrieg into Kosovo to broker the Sudetenland Germans, I mean Albanian mafia criminal terrorists, for an unprecedented, unparalleled post World War 2 land grab, tearing away for the first time the land of a sovereign European state in violation of all norms, all agreements, the UN Charter and UN Resolution 1244...the first time for such an occurrence since the UN was founded to prevent such a thing from happening again after the horror and devastation of bloody warfare throughout Europe. The Treaty of Rome establishing a European Economic Community was signed 1957. In the 1950s, the leaders of six European countries (France, Belgium, the Federal Republic of Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands) agreed to integrate their economic policies and raw material production through several treaties. The Preamble of the Treaty of Rome outlines the objectives to improve the living conditions of individuals, to promote education and to strengthen peace and liberty. The Maastricht Treaty on European Union led to the creation of the European Union. The Maastricht Treaty created new levels of inter-governmental cooperation with the European Union by establishing the “Three Pillars” of the EU. Pillar One incorporates the founding treaty mentioned above, addressing the single European market and a variety of social policies. Pillar Two addresses the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy. Pillar Three addresses cooperation in Justice and Home Affairs. The Maastricht Treaty affirmatively states that Member States confirm "their attachment to the principles of liberty, democracy and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms and of the rule of law" as well as their "attachment to fundamental social rights." Article 6 (2) as amended by the Amsterdam Treaty reads “The Union shall respect fundamental rights, as guaranteed by the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms… Although the EU was ostensibly established with the expressed aim to protect peace, stability and respect for established frontiers…it is doing the exact opposite. It is promoting war, utter and total lawlessness, violence, inequality, injustice and the tearing asunder of a European state in order to promote mafia criminal narco terrorists and people traffickers who have and will continue to use the province as a base from which to launch violence, terror, prostitution and more and more bloody conflicts. Largely due to its part in the Balkans, the living conditions of all ethnic groupings have deteriorated and peace and liberty have been denied to hundreds of thousands of people, especially Serbians and other Kosovo minorities such as Jews, Roma, Turks and other groups. In Kosovo, unemployment is rampant and massive. Without cash flows coming from the empire, the criminal regime established by NATO, the US and EU would not be able to survive despite its main means of extraordinary economic opportunity: drug and people trafficking, wanton theft, murder for hire and revenge killings. The EU is actually anti-democratic: it raises interest groups and lobbyists while EU commissioners function without accountability to nearly a half a billion people. The EU consults with itself as it thinks it is the only one talking sense. The European Convention, the body which met to draw up the European Constitution, made a great show of inviting submissions from “the people.” Nearly 200 organizations were asked for their opinion. Every one of these organizations was reliant on the EU for its funding. Key documents for the Kosovo invasion are being adopted in Brussels for the mission's arrival there. In the space of just a few days, two important documents came before the Union, which, if adopted, will give the mission the “green light” to go to Kosovo. They do not specify when the mission to Kosovo will start. Rather, that it should last 28 months, with the possibility of an extension. The mission will be financed by the European budget, and the first 16 months alone will cost EUR 205mn. It is stated that the aim of the mission, to be called EULEKS, more properly they should call it Wehrmacht or Stormtroopers or SS or Einsatzgruppen…is to promote democracy, economic development and stability in Kosovo. For different reasons, Belgrade and Pristina view the mission as being the architect of the province’s independence. The 30-page document that represents the basis for establishing the mission does not contain a single word referring to status. And that is no wonder because the EU has absolutely NO authority to occupy historic, sacred Serbian land. Serbia is not a member of the EU, but Serbia is by many standards the most genuine democracy and example of European values on the entire Continent. Additionally, an illegal and unrecognizable Albanian Kosovo will NEVER be able to meet any EU standards for freedom, democracy or economic development in the foreseeable future. Director of the Swiss Institute of Federalism Thomas Fleiner says that the UN resolution on the Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija gives no legal basis to the EU's mission plans. "The EU has made it clear that it is sending a mission as part of preparations for the independence of Kosovo, which would constitute a violation of Resolution 1244 article 10," said Fleiner, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Freiburg. The Swiss expert pointed out that Resolution 1244 also requires "the full cooperation of FRY (Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) in its implementation," or that "one of the partner parties responsible for implementing the solution prescribed by the resolution is FRY, or its legal successor Serbia." "That means that all matters relating to the implementation of the resolution have to be done in cooperation with the chief partner—Serbia. Once Kosovo province becomes an illegal independent state, states that are supposed to cooperate in the implementation of the resolution will no longer have a partner with whom they can cooperate." Meanwhile, the Russian ambassador to Belgrade Aleksandr Alekseyev has said that the EU mission can come to Kosovo only via a Security Council resolution. Asked if Russia was prepared to give the “green light” to the arrival of such a mission in the Security Council, Alekseyev replied that “I think it would be a big mistake if the secretary-general gave some sort of sign that could be interpreted as a “green light” for sending a mission to Kosovo.” Asked what Moscow could do should Brussels go ahead with sending the mission, he replied, “Our two countries have already moved from ‘coordinated’ to common policies. You can rest assured that we will, in common contact, find a way of responding to this challenge,” said Alekseyev. As far as a unilateral declaration of independence was concerned, should it happen, the ambassador said that a Security Council session should be called immediately, and that it “was obliged to take decisions to render that declaration null and void.” His response to a journalist’s statement that Russia would never recognize Kosovo was unequivocal: “You can rest assured of that.” The EU’s determination to meddle in what is strictly an internal Serbian matter further demonstrates that the EU in its stated purposes has been an utter failure except for the army of super rich Eurocrats whose only intention in allowing this gross injustice is enrichment of the empire and certain corporations, entities and individuals. Who among the Eurocrats would like to step forward and proclaim himself the new Hitler of the Fourth Reich also known as the European Union? The EU is seeking to fulfill the dreams and aspirations of Herr Hitler, the first powerful European to propose a Greater Albania among aliens in the heart of Europe. Albanian thugs, war criminals and drug lords (not even the ordinary common Albanian citizen who was frequently seen running towards Serbian troops for protection from these criminal elements) now will profit as direct descendents of Hitler’s great friends and allies during that miserable, bloody war. All this while they already have a state of their own called Albania. The EU, acting exactly like Hitler and his Stormtroopers, does so at its own peril and sadly at the peril of the entire European continent it purports to secure. Lisa KARPOVA PRAVDA.Ru USA/CANADA

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http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/11-02-2008/103989-eueulekskosovo-0

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