Serbs lash out at Ottawa

http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/347701

TORONTO STAR (CANADA)

Serbs lash out at Ottawa

TheStar.com - Canada - Serbs lash out at Ottawa

TARA WALTON/TORONTO STAR

Thousands of ethnic Albanians rally in Queen's Park in Toronto yesterday
afternoon after Kosovo's parliament proclaimed independence, a decade after
a bloody separatist war with Serbia.

Envoy sees trouble looming with Quebec as Canada recognizes Kosovo's
independence

March 19, 2008

Allan Woods
Ottawa Bureau

OTTAWA-Canada's decision to recognize Kosovo's independence will set a
dangerous precedent should Quebec sovereignists ever win a referendum,
Serbia's ambassador to Canada warns.

Dusan Batakovic, expressing his anger over Ottawa's controversial decision,
said Canada has shown disrespect for Serbia's constitution, for United
Nations resolutions and international law with its decision to back the
breakaway republic, which unilaterally declared its independence from Serbia
a month ago.

By the end of the week, Batakovic will return to Belgrade as a sign of
Serbia's displeasure with Ottawa.

Batakovic said yesterday the Kosovo decision could come back to haunt
Canada.

"Imagine that Quebec, for instance, proclaims independence in the same way
that Kosovo did, unilaterally. Would Ottawa then recognize Quebec as an
independent country?" he asked. "How would it react if other countries,
without notifying Ottawa, recognize an independent Quebec?"

Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier, announcing Canada's position
yesterday, said the strife that preceded Kosovo's separation from Serbia
makes it a "unique case" with which Quebec sovereignists can draw no
parallels.

"The unique circumstances which have led to Kosovo's independence mean it
does not constitute any kind of precedent," Bernier said.

He noted that many of Canada's allies have recognized Kosovo, bringing
Ottawa's decision into line with a "new international reality."

Serbia will today deliver a diplomatic note of protest to the Canadian
government charging that Ottawa is violating United Nations Security Council
Resolution 1244, a legally binding document that, according to Batakovic,
defines Kosovo as part of Serbia. The 1999 UN resolution sets out the terms
for the international intervention in Kosovo to end fighting.

Canada was part of a NATO force that intervened militarily in Kosovo in 1999
to stop Serbian attacks on the civilian population. Kosovo, which is 90 per
cent ethnic Albanian, has not been under Serbian control since the NATO
force moved in after massive air strikes.

A UN mission has governed Kosovo since, but Serbia, backed by Kosovo's
Serbs - who make up less than 10 per cent of the population - refuses to
give up the territory.

Opposition parties agreed with the government that there was a significant
difference between the situation in Kosovo, prompted by a civil war and the
campaign of ethnic cleansing almost a decade ago, and that of Quebec, where
grievances are primarily cultural.

Liberal foreign affairs critic Bob Rae said it is irresponsible to suggest
the situation in the Balkans sets a precedent for Canada. "It would be wrong
for anyone to suggest any such thing," he said.

But sovereignists are taking heart at the international support for Kosovo's
independence, and some observers say Canada's recognition could form an
important part of the dossier for Quebec separation should a referendum
succeed.

Because Kosovo declared independence without first consulting the Serbian
government, Quebecers would similarly have no obligation to consult Ottawa
before separating, the argument goes.

"Certainly this can be used as an instrument in a range of arguments that
can be presented by the sovereignists, that the federal government has
recognized the legitimacy of this kind of process ...," said University of
Montreal professor Pierre Martin.

Quebec has held two referendums on separation, in 1980 and 1995. Both have
failed to come up with the majority support of Quebecers.

In the aftermath of the near defeat of the federalists in the 1995
referendum, Liberal unity minister Stéphane Dion, now the party leader,
drafted the Clarity Act setting out the terms and conditions that would
govern secession from Canada. It was passed into law in 2000, but has never
been tested.

In 1999, the Supreme Court said Quebec has no right under the Constitution
or under international law to unilaterally secede.

While Dion is reviled by separatists in his home province, he backs Kosovo's
independence because of its bloody history and because NATO has been
enforcing a buffer zone between Serbia and Kosovo.

Included in the 30 countries that have now recognized Kosovo are the United
States, the United Kingdom, France and Australia.

- With files from The Canadian Press

A Second Look at Kosovo

http://www.nysun.com/article/73213

NEW YORK SUN (USA)

OPINION

A Second Look at Kosovo

BY EUGENE KONTOROVICH

March 19, 2008

Kosovo's succession from Serbia, while winning applause in Washington and
Europe, is a grave defeat for international law and international order.

Kosovo's independence did not come about unassisted. This summer, America
and Europe went to the United Nations Security Council seeking authorization
and legitimacy for partitioning Serbia between the Serbs and secessionist
Albanians. The Security Council refused to authorize the carve-up of an
existing country along ethnic lines - consistent with the international
rejection of dividing Iraq into three ethnic states.

Having failed to win Security Council approval, America and Europe simply
indicated to the Kosovars that they could announce independence anyway.
Serbia of course, cannot resist the succession militarily, as Kosovo has
been held by NATO troops since 1999. Thus the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization is providing the vital military cover for Kosovo's
independence. Kosovo did not simply tear itself away from Serbia. It was
conquered from the Serbs by NATO and the West, and handed over.

So America makes a pitch to the Security Council, gets rejected, and then
does what it was going to do anyway. Sound familiar?

The defiance of international law dates back to NATO's original intervention
in Kosovo in 1999. Responding to Serb abuses against the ethnic Albanians in
the region, NATO launched a campaign of aerial bombardment against Serbia.
The Security Council also refused to authorize this action, and
international lawyers widely agree that despite its humanitarian motives,
NATO's war was completely illegal. Further, since even small military
casualties could spoil public support of a poorly-understood war, the
bombing was carried out from high altitudes to minimize military causalities
at the expense of greater collateral damage.

The Serbian military was finally kicked out of Kosovo, and an incipient
ethnic cleansing halted. NATO forces secured the province. On NATO's watch,
the Albanians turned the tables, perpetrating ethnic cleansing on the Serbs,
a large proportion of whom were chased out of the province through murders,
church burnings, and pogroms. With their security forces barred from the
province by NATO, the Serbs, who are a majority in Serbia but a minority in
the Kosovo province, were powerless to defend themselves. NATO deserves the
credit for stopping the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo's Albanians, but must
bear at least some responsibility for the ethnic cleansing of the Serbs.

The Kosovars invoke the international law principle of self-determination.
They constitute 90% of the population in the region, having bolstered the
ratio by evicting most of the Serbs, gypsies, and any other minority who
lived there.

Yet self-determination is no guarantee of independence. The Tamils in Sri
Lanka, the Russians in Transdniester/Moldova, the Kurds in Turkey, Syria,
Iraq, and Iran; Uighurs in China, Chechens in Russia, and similar groups in
dozens of other countries also predominate in a particular region, and have
made massive and violent efforts to win self-determination.

Yet in all these cases, the policy of the West is either indifference or
outright opposition to succession. It seems self-determination is a
principle of very selective application. Indeed, the Serbs in Kosovo are
actually a majority in one well-defined enclave; they themselves wish to
succeed, but the new Kosovar government will hear nothing of Serb
self-determination within Kosovo.

An important ingredient of Kosovo's success in achieving self-determination
seems to be their constant threats of violence. The Kosovar prime minister,
a former leader of an armed rebel movement, often warned of "dangers" and
"unforeseeable consequences" if the province were not allowed to succeed.
With 16,000 NATO troops in the area, the last thing Europe wanted was an
insurgency that could become a jihad-magnet.

As a result, NATO and America have become parties to the carve-up a
sovereign state that they subdued by force. To say that this goes against
the core principles of the U.N. Charter is an understatement. For
international law, the entire process is a string of humiliations. The
Security Council comes out looking like a joke; the right of
self-determination looks like it depends on the product of a group's
ruthlessness and proximity to Europe; peacekeepers are hostages; and
sovereignty is trumped by the threat of terror.

Mr. Kontorovich is a professor at Northwestern University Law School,
specializing in international and constitutional law.

Serbia, Kosovo, the US and the UN

http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/55684

AMERICAN CHRONICLE (USA)

Serbia, Kosovo, the US and the UN
Dr. George Voskopoulos

March 18, 2008

The recent crisis in Kosovo has taken by surprise only those who are not
aware of the problems south-eastern Europe has faced in the post-Cold War
era. It should be ana-lyzed on different levels with a view to providing
answers to specific questions refer-ring to statehood, stability and the
United Nations system.

First, the unilateral declaration of independence on the part of a Serbian
province, whose vast majority is populated by ethnic Albanians, sets the
dilemma originally set in the early post-Cold War era of setting priorities
between stability and human rights. It is obvious here that priority was
given to human rights although recent history has shown that any solution
that does not support territorial stability is destined either to fail or
produce undesired side-effects such as the revolt of ethnic Serbs in
northern Kosovo.

Once again it is obvious that out-of-system interference by powerful actors
has trig-gered reactions and threatens stability and peace in the region.
Kosovo has been an historic symbol for Serbs ever since the Ottoman era
consequently territorial changes could not be accepted by ethnic Serbs. The
violation of human rights in the region during the Milosevic era provided
the desired by separatists, nationalists and former warlords ground for
establishing an independent statelet that lacks basic sustainability
criteria such as a democratic system of governance, lack of the rule of law
and a par-liamentary system that will allow Serbs to express themselves.

The issue here refers to what this new state can add to the Balkan conundrum
and what our expectations are from its leadership. First current Albanian
leaders in Kos-ovo were part of the belligerents that caused turmoil in the
region. It was the Ameri-can government that had labeled them terrorists in
the recent past. A drastic change of mood led to a second evaluation and
offered them support in becoming the acknowl-edged leaders of a state,
epicenter of a number of illegal activities in the region namely drugs,
weapons and human trafficking. Second, the solutions could not be ac-cepted
by Belgrade because Serbs were not offered substantial carrots.

On the contrary, the country was territorially mutilated without receiving
an alterna-tive. To those who have studied the region and lived there it is
obvious that a weak Serbia, a wish materialized in sequences by foreign
interference, is not a step towards stability and intra-Balkan cooperation.
It leads Serbia to total isolation, assists nation-alism, deprives it of
incentives to cooperate with the world community and drives it to political
instability. Belgrade holds the key to regional stability and peace in
south-eastern Europe and this was evident in the 1990s crises. It triggers
once again dreams of greatness and territorial expansionism on the part of
nationalists. These could be used by any powerful intruding actor who would
decide to reactive south-east Euro-pean tectonic plates.

Finally, the decision to support a unilateral declaration of independence
overlays the normative, regulatory role of the UN, a policy supported by
those who envisage a post-UN world order based on power. Eventually it was
the very same policy many condemned when they reacted to S. Milosevic regime
and its tactics. In the future the decision may activate pockets of
instability, although naïveté suggests that it is a sui generis case.

The Balkans once again has become the battleground of great power
competition. Russia is moving in using its energy policy and its traditional
ties with the Slavs, while the US is reacting by turning it into a NATO
fortress.

The only sustainable solution is to advance a human right regime delinking
human rights from territorial issues and border changes. The long
inaugurated effort to weaken Serbia and turn it into a minor player in the
region has jeopardized efforts to stabilize the Balkans and incorporate
Belgrade into the euro-Atlantic core.
__,_._,___

Kosovo: Worst still to come

http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?id=18772

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND SECURITY NETWORK (SWITZERLAND)

Kosovo: Worst still to come

As Serbia tries to prove that Kosovo Albanians and Serbs cannot live
together, the Kosovo Serbs embark on a peaceful boycott, but an incident in
Mitrovica leaves one UN policeman dead and hundreds injured, Anes Alic and
Igor Jovanovic report for ISN Security Watch.

By Anes Alic and Igor Jovanovic for ISN Security Watch (18/03/08)

Rioting in the divided town of Kosovo Mitrovica has left one Ukrainian UN
policeman dead after suffering fatal injuries in clashes with Serb
protesters following a Kosovo Serb attempt to take over a court house in the
city.

In Kosovo, it is not at all difficult to foment unrest and create
atmospheric incidents to prove that the two groups cannot live in harmony.
It is in the interest of Serbian authorities to show to the world that
Kosovo Albanians and Kosovo Serbs cannot coexist peacefully; while it is now
in the interest of Kosovo Albanian authorities to prove the opposite.

The most recent incident in the northern city of Kosovska Mitrovica, divided
by Serbs and Albanians, illustrates these points well.

More than 100 Serb employees of the local court, including judges, entered
the court building last Friday after three weeks of peaceful protests,
demanding to be returned to their offices.

They had been driven out of their offices in August 1999 and replaced by
international staff and ethnic Albanians who had quit their jobs during the
rule of Slobodan Milosevic. The Serbs have continued to work within the
Serbian Justice Ministry system, but from their private homes and premises.
The international community in Kosovo had earlier announced that this
parallel judicial system was soon to be suspended.

The government of Kosovo demanded that the United Nations Mission in Kosovo
(UNMIK) evict the "hooligans" from the court. UNMIK turned to the Serbian
government to restore order, calling on Belgrade not to "interfere in Serb
areas of the new state." Serbian authorities in Belgrade have denied any
involvement in the incident.

The siege of the court reached its climax on Monday when some 100 UN police
troops stormed the court and retook control from the Kosovo Serbs.

The action triggered mass protests by the Serbs, during which at least two
UN vehicles were set on fire and police used tear gas to disperse the crowd.

According to media in Belgrade, at least 70 Kosovo Serbs were injured in the
process. International sources say at least 30 UN and NATO troops sustained
injuries.

The UN police backed by NATO troops were forced to withdraw from Serb areas
of Mitrovica after being attacked by demonstrators while a UN convoy was
transporting some 50 detained protesters from the court.

International troops were also injured in an explosion, thought to have been
caused by a hand grenade. Machine gun fire was later heard.

Action plan
In December 2007, two months prior to Kosovo's declaration of independence,
the Serbian government adopted an action plan that was to be put in place
after Kosovo authorities announced the province's secession. One of key
notes from the plan was the strengthening of links with Serbs living in the
northern Kosovo enclaves by taking back the authority they lost there in
1999.

The action plan was labeled a state secret, hence its details were never
revealed in public. Now, however, it is certain that a portion of the plan
referred to the strengthening of Serbia's institutions in Kosovo, especially
in the north where the most compact Serb enclaves are located. This area is
physically close to Serbia and is home to some 40,000 of the remaining
120,000 Serbs in Kosovo.

But Serbia is seeking only the de facto partitioning of Kosovo: After all,
should it win an official partition of northern Kosovo, it would lose
approximately 80,000 Serbs who live south of the Ibar River, practically
surrounded by Albanians.

If Serbia agreed to the partitioning of Kosovo, it would mean abandoning
those people, along with numerous important churches and monasteries south
of the Ibar. As such, Belgrade will fortify its position in northern Kosovo
and as much as possible in the enclaves south of the Ibar.

In the meantime, and perhaps with this in mind, reports say that hundreds of
Kosovo Serb families from those south Ibar enclaves have begun selling their
homes and settling in northern Kosovo and in Serbia proper.

Unconfirmed reports from ethnic Albanian sources claim that Kosovo Serb
paramilitary groups have been using scare tactics to force Kosovo Serbs in
the south to relocate to the north to make partitioning feasible.

Tricky transfer
Since Kosovo declared unilateral independence on 18 February, Serbia has
advocated taking control of the Serb enclaves in the province, which have
been under UNMIK protection since 1999 and are not set to be transferred to
the new independent Kosovo institutions.

Serbia is calling for the implementation of UN Resolution 1244, which it
believes guarantees the country's sovereignty and territorial integrity. The
Kosovo Serbs still hold authority in health care, local self-government and
energy in these enclaves.

Milan Ivanovic, head of the Serb National Council of northern Kosovo, the
most powerful Kosovo Serb organization, told ISN Security Watch that the
Serbian government should have started taking over authority in the north
much sooner.

"That is the only option, because the Serbs from northern Kosovo and south
of the Ibar River do not want to accept the institutions run by the
Albanians on behalf of the phantom and false state of Kosovo," Ivanovic
said.

Commenting on the potentially negative reaction from the Kosovo Albanians to
the Serbs' initiative, Ivanovic said that at the moment one should not worry
too much about potentially causing violence, but should insist on firmly
advocating the necessity of the Serbian state's presence in Kosovo.

"The Albanians have been very convincing before the international community
with the policy of threats and violence, unlike the servile official Serbian
policy, which had even before the unilateral declaration of independence
made it clear that our response would be peaceful, and that we would defend
our integrity and sovereignty only with diplomatic means," Ivanovic said.

However, Momcilo Trajkovic, leader of the Serb Resistance Movement, which
comprises the Serbs living south of the Ibar River and in the enclaves, is
dissatisfied with the Serbian government's moves regarding the takeover of
institutions.

"It is difficult to assess the government's tactics, as few people are
familiar with the details of the action plan. Such activities might lead to
the partitioning of Kosovo, but they might also be linked to positioning in
the north, aimed at better control of the situation in the territory south
of the Ibar," Trajkovic says.

He also said that a policy favoring the division of the province would be
ill-advised because 65 percent of the remaining Serbs are located south of
the Ibar River and partitioning would expose them to Albanian attacks.

"Partitioning would be disastrous for Serbs living in enclaves. The essence
of our battle is not in northern Kosovo, but south of the Ibar. That is
where our historical monuments are, the symbols of our statehood and
culture, but I fear that the government wants Serbia to stretch from
Subotica [in the north] to Kosovska Mitrovica [also in the north] in the
future," he said.

Trajkovic also criticized Belgrade's decision to give 80 percent of the
financial aid meant for all of Kosovo's Serbs to representatives in the
north, without consulting enclave leaders.

The internal boycott
So far, Kosovo Serbs have taken several major steps that indicate what their
future tactics will be.

It seems they are nearly unanimous in boycotting Kosovo institutions, saying
that life under ethnic Albanian rule is impossible.

Some 300 Serb policemen in the Kosovo Police Service (KPS) refused to take
orders from their superiors and are demanding that they remain part of the
UNMIK police chain of command, as they did before Kosovo's declaration of
independence. They were then suspended and handed in their weapons and
uniforms peacefully.

There are about 800 Serbs in the KPS, some 10 percent of the overall
service, which is in proportion with the population of Kosovo; around 400
Serb policemen in the north have remained under UNMIK command, and therefore
are not rebelling; some 50 people have taken sick leave or vacations, hence
they are still officially members of the KPS; and some 100 workers at the
Lipljan prison are demanding that Serbia resolve their status because or
they will quit their jobs.

In another case, the Serbian railway company, Zeleznice Srbije, tried to
take over the railroad in northern Kosovo in early March. That part of the
railroad, on the Lesak-Zvecan route, is very important because it links
northern Kosovo with the Serb enclaves in the central part of the province.

Despite attacks on trains in the past, this is believed to be the safest
means of transport for the Kosovo Serbs inside Kosovo and to Serbia proper.
Since UNMIK has dismissed Belgrade's attempt, the railroad has been
inoperative.

"If no agreement is reached with UNMIK, an impasse will occur, which will
neither allow UNMIK to start organizing traffic by force, because it lacks
the manpower, nor the Serbian railway company to operate," Zeleznice Srbije
General Manager Milanko Sarancic recently told Belgrade media.

Even Serb members of Kosovo parliament and government are boycotting those
institutions. Prior to the declaration of independence, there were 10 Serb
members of parliament and two in the government, the constitutionally
guaranteed seats for them, even though Kosovo Serbs boycotted the elections.
All of them froze their mandates after the 18 February declaration of
independence.

However, all Kosovo Serbs employed in Kosovo's public services, such as
municipalities, schools and the health-care system, are being delegated and
paid by Serbian government, and their salaries are double those of their
colleagues in Serbia proper.

Rough ride for EU
Belgrade is fighting its battle on another front by refusing to acknowledge
the European mission (EULEX), and pledging its cooperation only to UNMIK,
which arrived in Kosovo in line with UN Security Council Resolution 1244.

Following the official example, Kosovo Serb civilians are also cooperating
only with UNMIK and KFOR, and not with the EU mission (which has not been
positioned in northern Kosovo) or the Pristina institutions.

The EU is putting tremendous pressure on UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to
mark the end of UNMIK's mission and invite EULEX to take over. However, the
secretary-general is also facing an intense drive from Russia and other
countries that have sided with Belgrade, which leaves UNMIK on the field.

Last week, the EU admitted that the takeover of authority would require more
than the initially planned 120 days. Some members of the EU even think it
would be wise for UNMIK to remain in the Serb enclaves.

"The situation is still volatile, particularly north of the river Ibar, in
northern Kosovo," the chairman of the EU Council of Ministers Dimitrij Rupel
told a press conference at the end of the meetings of the Council of
Ministers in Brussels last week.

Rupel said UNMIK should take control of a border between Serbia and Kosovo.
The Slovenian foreign minister admitted that the planned transition between
UNMIK and EULEX would take longer and will require more effort.

Peter Feith, the international civilian representative in Kosovo, says that
his mission is not coming to Kosovo to establish a NATO state, adding that
it is politically impossible to admit a mistake and go back to the previous
state of affairs.

In a 12 March interview for the Serbian Vecernje Novosti daily, Feith said
his first impression after coming to Kosovo was "it could have been worse,"
adding that the worst was perhaps still to come.

The EU envoy went on to say that the EU mission would attempt to be as
"invisible" as possible, adding that it was necessary for the Kosovo cabinet
to assume power. In addition, he stressed that if Pristina tried to endanger
the Serb community in Kosovo, he would not hesitate to use his powers, even
if that meant dismissing and banning the violators of the rules.

Anes Alic, based in Sarajevo, is ISN Security Watch's senior correspondent
in Southeastern Europe and the Executive Director of ISA Consulting.

Igor Jovanovic is ISN Security Watch's senior correspondent in Serbia and
Kosovo. He is based in Belgrade.

Kosovo spurs more Greater Albania dreams

Encouraged by Kosovo’s independence, Albanians in
Macedonia are now discussing ambitious plans for a new country made up of
Albania, Kosovo, large parts of Macedonia and part of Ipiros in Greece.

If you walk down the streets of Skopje, the capital city of Macedonia, the
signs and the language is Slavic.



But if you drive just 25 kilometres on, it appears to be a completely different
country where the language and tradition is Albanian and the religion is Muslim
- that’s Tetovo. In 2001, civil war broke out there between Albanian and Slav
populations. Nowadays it’s more peaceful.



Small restaurant owner Agim Berzati says Albanians are treated as second-class
citizens in a country where they make up at least 30% of the population. He’s
Albanian and the food he serves up is traditional kebab and shishlik alongside
Turkish coffee.



”We are born here and deserve equal rights. Macedonians don’t give us equality.
I don’t feel they treat us with respect. There were lots of things we fought
for and were promised in 2001, but nothing has been implemented,” he
complained.



But what has changed though is Kosovo’s declaration of independence. For
Mustafe Hasani it was the dream of a lifetime. He spent a month in prison for
his political activities and for years he’s donated part of his salary to
developing an independent Kosovo.



”We only want an ethnic Albania, for all the Albanians in all the countries
to get together. Now is the end of protest and war. Now we Albanians have to
get educated and then we’ll get what we want. Albania is like our mother,
Kosovo is our father,” Hasani thinks.



What many Albanians want is a greater Albania that incorporates the country Albania,
Kosovo, big parts of Macedonia and part of Ipiros, which is in Greece.



Tailor Shahin Osmani, Albanian who has lived all his life in Tetovo believes a
greater Albania is inevitable and will happen once the country becomes part of
the European Union:



”There will be a time of great Albania in the future, maybe after thirty
years. History repeats itself, and if we get into the European Union, borders
will be eliminated. We’ll be free and it’ll be like having a greater Albania”.



But it’s not a certainty that Macedonia will join the European Union, largely
because Greece objects to it using the name Macedonia.







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http://www.russiatoday.ru/news/news/21950

Kosovo: once again a political pawn

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/michael_boyle/2008/03/kosovo_once_again_a_political_pawn.html

GUARDIAN (UK)

COMMENT IS FREE

Kosovo: once again a political pawn
Michael Boyle

March 11, 2008 1:30 PM

In the last few weeks, it has become increasingly clear that Kosovo's
declaration of independence on February 17 did not settle the matter once
and for all. The newly independent Kosovo is a tense place, roiling with
ethnic incitement in its predominantly Serbian north and struggling to
survive amid rumours of a potential partition. Worse still, it is a pawn in
two overlapping political games: first, between the US, EU and Russia and
second, between its ethnic Albanian Kosovo leadership and the Serbian
government.

The first thing that should be clear is that nobody walks out of this mess
with clean hands. That Kosovo would have to be independent was probably
inevitable. The campaigns of ethnic cleansing led by Slobodan Milosevic
expelled nearly 800,000 people from Kosovo (nearly 90% of the population),
and killed - according to an American bar association estimate - nearly
10,000 people. It's hard to imagine that the Kosovo Albanians who returned
to the province after this assault in 1999 could ever imagine themselves
again being part of Serbia, no matter how democratic it became or how much
minority protection it offered.

But that does not mean that all of the players can absolve themselves of
responsibility for this crisis. Both the US and the EU deserve a fair amount
of blame for tabling UN resolution 1244 in 1999, which promised to resolve
Kosovo's status at some unspecified future point. This "kick the can down
the road" approach might have worked if it was tied to a clear strategy to
get Serbia to accept Kosovo's independence. But it was rather an attempt to
gloss over a nearly intractable issue, while minimising the political
consequences for the political leadership at the time. This left the
successors of Clinton and Blair with a ticking time bomb and no particularly
compelling options for how to defuse it.

What has emerged now - a declaration of independence which makes even
European states that fought to protect Kosovo uneasy - is evidence of this
lack of strategic forethought. Recognising the independent Kosovo may have
been the least bad option, but it certainly did not need to happen with the
level of political cost that it incurred.

The European Union should also not congratulate itself on its behaviour in
Kosovo. While it has played an important role in state-building and in
deploying peacekeepers and police to prevent the outbreak of violence, it
nevertheless held on to the hopes of a negotiated settlement with Belgrade
for too long and proved reluctant to play hardball with Serbia.

For example, the EU could have made Serbia's admission into the European
Union conditional on its peaceful acceptance of a negotiated independence
for Kosovo. But this was a bridge too far for the EU, due to internal
opposition by its members, and thus it spent years experimenting with
unworkable proposals for things like "conditional independence".

Its preference for a negotiated settlement may have increased the political
shocks after independence happened. The EU-backed Athissari plan, which
promised a quasi-independent status for Kosovo, was a compromise, but one
which was fundamentally unacceptable to both Pristina and Belgrade. It was,
essentially, another "kick the can down the road approach" and in avoiding
the issue it may have magnified the severity of the political reaction from
Albanians and Serbs alike.

Moreover, when independence happened, the EU appeared to be caught almost by
surprise and, astonishingly, insisted on no common policy for the legal
recognition of Kosovo among its members. This has meant we have a new state
recognised by only some of the states in the regional organisation it wants
to join.

At the time of UNSCR 1244, Russia was happy to accept this sleight-of-hand,
to end the war and to rein in Milosevic's Serbia before the situation got
out of hand. But today we are dealing with a very different Russia: a surly
but resurgent power that resents the American and European posturing about
the democratic future of Kosovo. The Russia that Putin built is more than
happy to keep the Kosovo issue in play just to dish some humiliation back to
the US and the EU.

Keeping Kosovo as an issue in play has also paid off financially and
politically for Russia. Russia capitalised on its backing of Serbia and by
cutting several deals over gas and oil with Belgrade and then by suddenly
repositioning itself as the champion of international law against rogue
secessionist states. This is either ironic or cynical, because Russia is
simultaneously using the Kosovo precedent to openly flirt with the idea of
recognising Georgia's breakaway republic, Abkhazia, just to settle some old
scores. No matter how much it protests that Kosovo's independent was a
dangerous precedent, it is hard to escape the conclusion that Russia has
benefited most from this bungled affair.

Both Belgrade and the Kosovo Albanian government in Pristina have also been
playing games with the Kosovo problem. On top of allowing rioters to attack
the US embassy, Belgrade has formally rejected the independence of Kosovo,
and instructed its 120,000 citizens to cut off all ties with the government
in Pristina. It has also fomented the dreams of a "soft partition" where the
Serbian community lives apart from its Albanian neighbours, without
specifying how this would happen or how exactly how this impoverished and
vulnerable community should sustain itself once it happens. Beyond denial,
what positive future is Belgrade offering the Kosovo Serbs once independence
is an established fact?

In a sign of how messy things are getting, the Kostunica government
collapsed yesterday, as the prime minister dissolved the government due to
concerns that his coalition partners are insufficiently committed to "the
battle to preserve Kosovo". This is a clever move: first to reconstitute the
government in May with hardliners who will make the Kosovo issue their top
priority, and secondly to exploit the divisions in the EU by forcing it to
clarify how it can admit both Serbia and Kosovo, given that some EU member
states do not recognise the partition and some do. It promises only a bigger
headache for the EU in the years to come.

Finally, the Kosovo Albanian government in Pristina cannot be absolved of
its responsibility for this mess. During the period after the war, the
interim Albanian government often turned a blind eye to reprisal attacks
against Kosovo Serb civilians (often allegedly by KLA splinter groups) and
watched with indifference as Serbs, Roma and other minorities were expelled,
trapped and harassed in enclaves. Now Pristina claims the moral high ground,
with Agim Ceku calling on the international community to stand up to Serbian
extremists to protect Kosovo's freedom.

While Pristina has every right to protect itself, it will need to recognise
the legitimate security concerns of the Kosovo Serbs and starts taking
serious measures toward providing them with jobs and a future in the new
Kosovo. Pristina will get nowhere by insisting on the purity of its moral
position while remaining blind to the sins of the KLA or to the needs of its
most vulnerable.

What we see in Kosovo at the moment is not an example of careful statecraft
at the level of great power politics, nor of considered and reasoned attempt
at reconciliation between Albanians and Serbs. The Kosovo situation is a
mess because its independence has become a bargaining chip in a series of
overlapping games for political power. All of these games are conducted at
the expense of the Albanian and Serbian citizens of Kosovo, who would
certainly trade them for some kind of hope for their future.

letters@guardian.co.uk

Government Falls in Belgrade

http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/?p=529

Government Falls in Belgrade

by Srdja Trifkovic

Far from indicating Serbia's readiness to cower into the vivisection
kennel, Tadic's victory on February 3 was the last chance for the U.S. and the
EU to stop the Kosovo trainwreck. Both Washington and Brussels decided to play
va banque instead. Serbia's resulting anger against the West will translate
into the well-deserved demise for the DS and other "pro-Western
democrats" at the parliamentary election on May 11.

*************************

The collapse of Serbia's government on Saturday was unsurprising and
necessary. Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica finally stated what we've known
for months: that his coalition government "has no united policy any more
on an important issue related to the future of the country, on Kosovo as a part
of Serbia." The immediate cause of the split was the refusal of two
pro-Western parties in the coalition to support Kostunica's position that
Serbia would only seek to be integrated into the EU if it can be so in its
entirety, including Kosovo.

The underlying causes of the rift are complex. Their explanation requires
semantic clarity that is absent among Western analysts of Balkan affairs and
their Serbian colleagues alike. Thirteen years of Slobodan Milosevic's rule in
Serbia have left many ugly marks on the political and cultural scene of the
country. One of them, of a secondary order yet illustrative of the
country's mood, is the reluctance of participants in Serbia's public discourse
to use certain eminently useful words, such as "conspiracy," and
"treason." [ ... ]

In reality there had been many full-bloodied conspirators, enemies,
and traitors among the Serbs' foes throughout the 1990s. In 1993, for
instance, Bill Clinton actively conspired with the mullahs in Tehran to smuggle
arms to Bosnia's Muslim mujaheddin, in blatant violation of the very UN
resolution which the United States had proposed a year earlier. Albright's
brutal ruse at Rambouillet in February 1999, executed with all the subtlety of
Reinhardt Heydrich or Zia ul Haq, was a conspiracy against peace par
excellence. Its perpetrators were Serbia's enemies in the
technical, rather than ideological, sense of that term.

A semantically precise description of political events is the prerequisite
for their proper understanding and analysis. We need those words to explain
accurately and adequately what has been going on in connection with Kosovo over
the past few months.

THE CONSPIRACY

In the final quarter of 2007 we've witnessed a coldly premeditated
conspiracy by the United States administration to prevent any possibility of
compromise in Kosovo. Earlier statements by various U.S. officials, from Mr.
Bush and Ms. Rice down, that Kosovo's independence was "inevitable"
and that it would be achieved "one way or another" (June-July 2007)
were a classic case of policy makers actively torpedoing a diplomatic outcome
they dislike - and then claiming that the failure of "diplomacy" had
been preordained, and therefore an imposed solution was necessary.

This same trick was played by then-U.S. Ambassador in Belgrade, Warren
Zimmermann, when he actively sabotaged the Bosnian peace accord brokered by the
Portuguese Presidency on behalf of the EU in early 1992. Zimmermann flew
post-haste to Sarajevo to tell Alija Izetbegovic that the U.S. would support
him if he were to renege on this agreement. The rest is history: Izetbegovic
followed American advice, thereby igniting the Bosnian civil war. Zimmermann,
his masters at Foggy Bottom, and the White House all share the responsibility
for the bloody results.

The present American conspiracy over Kosovo went far beyond engineering the
failure of diplomatic efforts. It was focused on getting the EU to follow the
Diktat from the Potomac. The doubters were to be cajoled, threatened, maligned
as Russian stooges, or otherwise press-ganged into submission. As
Slovenian analyst Tomaz Mastnak noted in the latest issue of Foreign Policy in Focus, this behind-the-scenes collusion
revealed two violations with regard to Kosovo:

The United States, with Slovenian assistance, sought to circumvent the
European political process - not to speak of the UN. And Kosovo itself, by
unilaterally declaring independence, violated international law. These two
violations - of a political process and of the rule of law - will come back to
haunt Europe and the United States in the coming months and years.

Slovenia plays a disproportionately important role in this story, Mastnak
explains, because it assumed the European Union presidency on January 1, 2008.
A week before, on Christmas Eve 2007, a top official of the Slovenian Ministry
of Foreign Affairs, its Political Director Mitja Drobnic, had a meeting in
Washington with Daniel Fried, assistant secretary of state for European
affairs, his deputy Rosemary DiCarlo, and Judy Ansley, NSA senior director for
European affairs. An internal Slovenian report of this meeting was leaked to
the Slovenian daily Dnevnik and the Belgrade daily Politika and
published on January 25. Their authenticity was beyond doubt, causing the
immediate resignation of Mr. Drobnic.

According to Drobnic's minutes, the Americans presented a list of demands,
including "a mention of Iraq and rogue states, such as Iran, Burma, and
Syria" in the US-EU declaration at the forthcoming summit in Ljubljana.
Regarding Kosovo, the conversation was a careful orchestration of the timetable
for independence. Drobnic asked for help with obtaining the UN Secretary
General's statement in support of sending the European Security and Defense
Policy mission to Kosovo, "since some EU member states have difficulties
with making the decision to send the ESDP without the UN agreement." Fried
responded that "the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon is under the pressure
of the Russian Federation and thus in a difficult position," but the U.S.
had assurances that the UN was not going to put restrictions on the sending the
mission. Washington, he explained, "will help the UN Secretary General in
the case of difficulties with the Russian Federation, while [Slovenia] has to
achieve within the EU the sending of the ESDP in the shortest time."

As Mastnak points out, the decision to send the ESDP mission to Kosovo was
of key importance for the United States, since it was effectively replacing the
UN mandate over the province with the EU mandate. In pushing that decision
through, Fried was clear: "one can ignore the critical positions and
statements of the Russian Federation and Serbia." His deputy Rosemary
DiCarlo noted that it would make sense if "the session of the Kosovo
Parliament, in which they pass the declaration of independence, were to be on
Sunday, since this way the Russian Federation would not have the time to call
for the UN Security Council. In the meantime, the first recognitions would
already have happened."

Fried further told the Slovenes that "the US is drafting the
constitution with the Kosovars" and that the situation on the ground was
"promising." Fried added, "The US hoped that the Kosovars would
not lose confidence in themselves, because that would mean that the US will
lose its influence."

Both by the formal and substantive criteria, the U.S. Kosovo policy in
general and Daniel Fried's behavior in particular is a classic case of
CONSPIRACY: the pursuit of illegal and illegitimate objectives through secret
association with other plotters. Mr. Fried's manner of a mastermind telling his
Euro-underlings how to stage a heist offers far more incontrovertible evidence
of conspiratorial culpability than, say, the Hague "Tribunal's"
accusation against Milosevic or Seselj that they had forged a conspiracy for
the creation of a "Greater Serbia."

The US-EU plot is not aimed only at Serbia, Russia, and those EU members
that oppose Kosovo's independence. Let us recall that Swedish foreign minister
and former premier Carl Bildt declared last December that the EU should seek to
maintain a "mere appearance" of respect for international legality.
In reality the trans-Atlantic Kosovo conspiracy is directed against the very
foundations of the global legal and political order, and therefore against
peace as such. This is a capital crime par excellence under the
Nuremberg Rules.

THE TRAITORS' SWAN SONG

There is no more overtly inimical act in international relations than taking
territory away from one nation for the benefit of another. Throughout history
it has been a perfectly legitimate casus belli. Accordingly, the proponents of
Kosovo's independence are stricto sensu Serbia's enemies, just as the
proponents of the Munich Diktat in September 1938 were the enemies of the
Czechs. Accordingly, Under-Secretary of State Nicholas Burns - Daniel Fried's
boss - "explained" why UNSC Resolution 1244 did NOT prevent
Kosovo's secession in terms worthy of a Ribbentrop or Molotov:

The language referring to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the
Former Republic of Yugoslavia is mentioned in the resolution's preamble, not in
any of its legally operative language. In other words, while UNSCR 1244 aimed
for a negotiated agreement, it did not prejudge the ultimate outcome and did
not legally require a negotiated agreement.

By this standard of "legality" this world is a Hobbesian jungle in
which the life of small nations that do not obey the will of Messrs Burns,
Fried, and their ilk, is nasty, brutish, and short. By allowing its Kosovo
policy to be shaped by these dysfunctional bureaucrats and recognizing the
monster of its own creation, the United States government - the
Conspirator-in-Chief - has declared itself as an enemy of Serbia in the purely
value-neutral sense, just as the proponents of a "free" Chechnya are objectively
Russia's enemies. This is the context needed to understand the motives of
demonstrators who damaged an auxilliary wing of the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade
just over two weeks ago.

Within Serbia there are prominent "pro-Western" political leaders
and top-level state officials belonging to the "reformist" and
"pro-European" parties who have coordinated their domestic political
strategies with the likes of Messrs. Burns and Fried, and their Euro-ilk. By
any normal, i.e. non-ideological yardstick they are guilty of treason:
of criminal disloyalty manifest in actions that undermine or jeopardize the
interests of their nation and state. There is ample prima facie evidence of
such culpability among Tadic's coterie. The recent presidential elections, for
example, were called on December 12, 2008, by the Democratic Party without
prior agreement among coalition partners - but in agreement with, and the
approval of, Washington and Brussels.

Contrary to Mr. Burns' stated expectation of "a period of
stability" after Kosovo's declaration of independence, the U.S. policy has
destabilized the Balkans and divided the world. The good news is that the
polarization will finally debunk the myth of the "International
Community." If about a half of all sovereign states, accounting for more
than two-thirds of the world's population, are not on board with the United
States on this issue - intense pressure, threats and promises notwithstanding -
the result will be a long-overdue and welcome loss of face and credibility by
the global-hegemonist "foreign policy community" inside the Beltway.

Mr. Burns' confident expectation that, after some passing anger, Serbia
would "take its place in the European Union in the future and in a better
relationship with NATO and as a friend of the U.S." is as absurd as his
"legal opinion" on UNSC Resolution 1244. The flames in the U.S.
embassy in Belgrade were easy to put out, but the country's anger is deep and
the people's resentment of America abiding.

President Boris Tadic's narrow victory (51 percent) in the second round of
the presidential election on February 3 was entirely due to his claim that, as
a pro-Western reformist, he could obtain less brutal treatment for Serbia from
Brussels and Washington than his "nationalist" opponent. But Mr.
Burns et al misinterpreted his victory as a sign that the Serbs were throwing
in the towel. (Oh yes, had Tomislav Nikolic of the Serbian Radical Party won,
they would have said that their scenario should be applied because Serbia
proved herself to be irredeemably nationalist . . . )

Far from indicating Serbia's readiness to sling into the vivisection kennel,
however, Tadic's victory was the last chance for the U.S. and the EU to stop
the train wreck. The anger against the West will translate into the
well-deserved electoral demise for Tadic's Democratic Party at the
parliamentary election on May 11.Kosovo will linger on for a few years, as an
expensive albatross costing American and European taxpayers a few billion a
year. It will continue developing, not as a functional economy but as a black
hole of criminality and terrorism. The ever-rising and constantly unfulfilled
expectations of its unemployable multitudes will eventually turn -
Frankenstein's monster-like - against the entity's creator.

Government Falls in Belgrade

http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/?p=529

Government Falls in Belgrade

by Srdja Trifkovic

Far from indicating Serbia’s readiness to cower into the vivisection kennel,
Tadic’s victory on February 3 was the last chance for the U.S. and the EU to
stop the Kosovo trainwreck. Both Washington and Brussels decided to play va
banque instead. Serbia’s resulting anger against the West will translate
into the well-deserved demise for the DS and other “pro-Western democrats” at
the parliamentary election on May 11.

The collapse of Serbia’s government on Saturday was unsurprising and
necessary. Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica finally stated what we’ve known
for months: that his coalition government “has no united policy any more on an
important issue related to the future of the country, on Kosovo as a part of
Serbia.” The immediate cause of the split was the refusal of two pro-Western
parties in the coalition to support Kostunica’s position that Serbia would only
seek to be integrated into the EU if it can be so in its entirety, including
Kosovo.

The underlying causes of the rift are complex. Their explanation requires
semantic clarity that is absent among Western analysts of Balkan affairs and
their Serbian colleagues alike. Thirteen years of Slobodan Milosevic’s rule in
Serbia have left many ugly marks on the political and cultural scene of the
country. One of them, of a secondary order yet illustrative of the
country’s mood, is the reluctance of participants in Serbia’s public discourse
to use certain eminently useful words, such as “conspiracy,” “enemy,” and
“treason.”

Those words have a clear meaning and semantic utility, but they are
suspect in today’s Serbia (no less than the word Volksgemeinschaft is
suspect in Germany) because they have become associated with the spirit of
Milosevic’s era. Having been over-used and abused by his domestic propaganda
outlets to malign his foreign foes and domestic political rivals alike, they
are considered unclean. The legal, rhetorical, and moral weight of those three
words was devalued by Milosevic and his inept media bosses no less than the
country’s currency was devalued by his Weimar-style hyperinflation.

In reality there had been many full-bloodied conspirators, enemies,
and traitors among the Serbs’ foes throughout the 1990s. In 1993, for
instance, Bill Clinton actively conspired with the mullahs in Tehran to smuggle
arms to Bosnia’s Muslim mujaheddin, in blatant violation of the very UN
resolution which the United States had proposed a year earlier. Albright’s
brutal ruse at Rambouillet in February 1999, executed with all the subtlety of
Reinhardt Heydrich or Zia ul Haq, was a conspiracy against peace par
excellence. Its perpetrators were Serbia’s enemies in the
technical, rather than ideological, sense of that term.

A semantically precise description of political events is the prerequisite
for their proper understanding and analysis. We need those three words to
explain accurately and adequately what has been going on in connection with
Kosovo over the past few months.

THE CONSPIRACY

In the final quarter of 2007 we’ve witnessed a coldly premeditated
conspiracy by the United States administration to prevent any possibility of
compromise in Kosovo. Earlier statements by various U.S. officials, from Mr.
Bush and Ms. Rice down, that Kosovo’s independence was “inevitable” and that it
would be achieved “one way or another” (June-July 2007) were a classic case of
policy makers actively torpedoing a diplomatic outcome they dislike - and then
claiming that the failure of “diplomacy” had been preordained, and therefore an
imposed solution was necessary.

This same trick was played by then-U.S. Ambassador in Belgrade, Warren
Zimmermann, when he actively sabotaged the Bosnian peace accord brokered by the
Portuguese Presidency on behalf of the EU in early 1992. Zimmermann flew
post-haste to Sarajevo to tell Alija Izetbegovic that the U.S. would support
him if he were to renege on this agreement. The rest is history: Izetbegovic
followed American advice, thereby igniting the Bosnian civil war. Zimmermann,
his masters at Foggy Bottom, and the White House all share the responsibility
for the bloody results.

The present American conspiracy over Kosovo went far beyond engineering the
failure of diplomatic efforts. It was focused on getting the EU to follow the
Diktat from the Potomac. The doubters were to be cajoled, threatened, maligned
as Russian stooges, or otherwise press-ganged into submission. As
Slovenian analyst Tomaz Mastnak noted in the latest issue of Foreign Policy in Focus, this
behind-the-scenes collusion revealed two violations with regard to Kosovo:

The United States, with Slovenian assistance, sought to circumvent the
European political process - not to speak of the UN. And Kosovo itself, by unilaterally
declaring independence, violated international law. These two violations - of a
political process and of the rule of law - will come back to haunt Europe and
the United States in the coming months and years.

Slovenia plays a disproportionately important role in this story, Mastnak
explains, because it assumed the European Union presidency on January 1, 2008.
A week before, on Christmas Eve 2007, a top official of the Slovenian Ministry
of Foreign Affairs, its Political Director Mitja Drobnic, had a meeting in
Washington with Daniel Fried, assistant secretary of state for European
/affairs, his deputy Rosemary DiCarlo, and Judy Ansley, NSA senior director for
European affairs. An internal Slovenian report of this meeting was leaked to
the Slovenian daily Dnevnik and the Belgrade daily Politika
and published on January 25. Their authenticity was beyond doubt, causing the
immediate resignation of Mr. Drobnic.

According to Drobnic’s minutes, the Americans presented a list of demands,
including “a mention of Iraq and rogue states, such as Iran, Burma, and Syria”
in the US-EU declaration at the forthcoming summit in Ljubljana. Regarding
Kosovo, the conversation was a careful orchestration of the timetable for
independence. Drobnic asked for help with obtaining the UN Secretary General’s
statement in support of sending the European Security and Defense Policy
mission to Kosovo, “since some EU member states have difficulties with making
the decision to send the ESDP without the UN agreement.” Fried responded that
“the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon is under the pressure of the Russian
Federation and thus in a difficult position,” but the U.S. had assurances that
the UN was not going to put restrictions on the sending the mission.
Washington, he explained, “will help the UN Secretary General in the case of
difficulties with the Russian Federation, while [Slovenia] has to achieve
within the EU the sending of the ESDP in the shortest time.”

As Mastnak points out, the decision to send the ESDP mission to Kosovo was
of key importance for the United States, since it was effectively replacing the
UN mandate over the province with the EU mandate. In pushing that decision
through, Fried was clear: “one can ignore the critical positions and statements
of the Russian Federation and Serbia.” His deputy Rosemary DiCarlo noted that
it would make sense if “the session of the Kosovo Parliament, in which they
pass the declaration of independence, were to be on Sunday, since this way the
Russian Federation would not have the time to call for the UN Security Council.
In the meantime, the first recognitions would already have happened.”

Fried further told the Slovenes that “the US is drafting the constitution
with the Kosovars” and that the situation on the ground was “promising.” Fried
added, “The US hoped that the Kosovars would not lose confidence in themselves,
because that would mean that the US will lose its influence.”

Both by the formal and substantive criteria, the U.S. Kosovo policy in
general and Daniel Fried’s behavior in particular is a classic case of
CONSPIRACY: the pursuit of illegal and illegitimate objectives through secret
association with other plotters. Mr. Fried’s manner of a mastermind telling his
Euro-underlings how to stage a heist offers far more incontrovertible evidence
of conspiratorial culpability than, say, the Hague “Tribunal’s” accusation
against Milosevic or Seselj that they had forged a conspiracy for the creation
of a “Greater Serbia.”

The US-EU plot is not aimed only at Serbia, Russia, and those EU members
that oppose Kosovo’s independence. Let us recall that Swedish foreign minister
and former premier Carl Bildt declared last December that the EU should seek to
maintain a “mere appearance” of respect for international legality. In reality
the trans-Atlantic Kosovo conspiracy is directed against the very foundations
of the global legal and political order, and therefore against peace as
such. This is a capital crime par excellence under the Nuremberg
Rules.

THE TRAITORS’ SWAN SONG

There is no more overtly inimical act in international relations than taking
territory away from one nation for the benefit of another. Throughout history
it has been a perfectly legitimate casus belli. Accordingly, the proponents of
Kosovo’s independence are stricto sensu Serbia’s enemies, just as the
proponents of the Munich Diktat in September 1938 were the enemies of the
Czechs. Accordingly, Under-Secretary of State Nicholas Burns - Daniel Fried’s
boss - “explained” why UNSC Resolution 1244 did NOT prevent Kosovo’s secession
in terms worthy of a Ribbentrop or Molotov:

The language referring to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the
Former Republic of Yugoslavia is mentioned in the resolution’s preamble, not in
any of its legally operative language. In other words, while UNSCR 1244 aimed
for a negotiated agreement, it did not prejudge the ultimate outcome and did
not legally require a negotiated agreement.

By this standard of “legality” this world is a Hobbesian jungle in which the
life of small nations that do not obey the will of Messrs Burns, Fried, and
their ilk, is nasty, brutish, and short. By allowing its Kosovo policy to be
shaped by these dysfunctional bureaucrats and recognizing the monster of its
own creation, the United States government - the Conspirator-in-Chief - has
declared itself as an enemy of Serbia in the purely value-neutral sense, just
as the proponents of a “free” Chechnya are objectively Russia’s
enemies. This is the context needed to understand the motives of demonstrators
who damaged an auxilliary wing of the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade just over two
weeks ago.

Within Serbia there are prominent “pro-Western” political leaders and
top-level state officials belonging to the “reformist” and “pro-European”
parties who have coordinated their domestic political strategies with the likes
of Messrs. Burns and Fried, and their Euro-ilk. By any normal, i.e.
non-ideological yardstick they are guilty of treason: of
criminal disloyalty manifest in actions that undermine or jeopardize the
interests of their nation and state. There is ample prima facie evidence of
such culpability among Tadic’s coterie. The recent presidential elections, for
example, were called on December 12, 2008, by the Democratic Party without
prior agreement among coalition partners - but in agreement with, and the
approval of, Washington and Brussels.

Contrary to Mr. Burns’ stated expectation of “a period of stability” after
Kosovo’s declaration of independence, the U.S. policy has destabilized the
Balkans and divided the world. The good news is that the polarization will
finally debunk the myth of the “International Community.” If about a half of
all sovereign states, accounting for more than two-thirds of the world’s
population, are not on board with the United States on this issue - intense
pressure, threats and promises notwithstanding - the result will be a
long-overdue and welcome loss of face and credibility by the global-hegemonist
“foreign policy community” inside the Beltway.

Mr. Burns’ confident expectation that, after some passing anger, Serbia
would “take its place in the European Union in the future and in a better
relationship with NATO and as a friend of the U.S.” is as absurd as his “legal
opinion” on UNSC Resolution 1244. The flames in the U.S. embassy in Belgrade
were easy to put out, but the country’s anger is deep and the people’s
resentment of America abiding.

President Boris Tadic’s narrow victory (51 percent) in the second round of
the presidential election on February 3 was entirely due to his claim that, as
a pro-Western reformist, he could obtain less brutal treatment for Serbia from
Brussels and Washington than his “nationalist” opponent. But Mr. Burns et al misinterpreted
his victory as a sign that the Serbs were throwing in the towel. (Oh yes, had
Tomislav Nikolic of the Serbian Radical Party won, they would have said that
their scenario should be applied because Serbia proved herself to be
irredeemably nationalist . . . )

Far from indicating Serbia’s readiness to sling into the vivisection kennel,
however, Tadic’s victory was the last chance for the U.S. and the EU to stop
the train wreck. The anger against the West will translate into the
well-deserved electoral demise for Tadic’s Democratic Party at the
parliamentary election on May 11.Kosovo will linger on for a few years, as an
expensive albatross costing American and European taxpayers a few billion a
year. It will continue developing, not as a functional economy but as a black
hole of criminality and terrorism. The ever-rising and constantly unfulfilled
expectations of its unemployable multitudes will eventually turn -
Frankenstein’s monster-like - against the entity’s creator.

Dr. S. Trifkovic, Foreign Affairs Editor

CHRONICLES: A Magazine of American Culture

http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/?cat=4


www.trifkovic.mysite.com

Serbs under siege

http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080308/EDITORIAL/188730052/-1/RSS_EDITORIAL&template=nextpage

The
Washington Times

8
March 2008

Letters
to the Editor

Serbs under siege

Sami Repishti's letter Thursday is an insult to Kosovo history. A real
genocide of the Serbs is taking place. Serbs were a simple majority of Kosovo
for hundreds of years until the Holocaust, when Albanian Nazis liquidated tens
of thousands of Serbs and expelled more than 150,000 people. Josip Broz Tito
forbade their return after the war and gave their land to the Albanian Nazis
who had fought for Hitler. In the past five years, 155 ancient Serbian churches
have been destroyed under the noses of 17,000 NATO troops.

When Mr. Tito granted autonomy to Albanians in 1974 without a vote of the
Yugoslav people, the Albanian authorities banned the Serbian language, fired
Serbs from their jobs and collected and burned more than 2 million books on
Serbian history, religion and culture. For Mr. Repishti to pretend that
Albanians were victimized by the Serbs is an appalling rewriting of the facts
and reveals the extent to which the facts are distorted through propaganda,
which exploits Western ignorance of Balkan history. Nearly 40 percent of the
Albanians in Kosovo are illegal aliens who crossed the border from Albania into
Kosovo.

Mr. Repishti does not mention that more than 400,000 Albanians fled into
Serbian-dominated regions of Macedonia and Montenegro and that 90,000 Albanians
fled to Belgrade into the arms of Mr. Milosevic and their Serbian enemies.

What is immoral about the Repishti letter is the implication that it is
acceptable to cleanse 300,000 Serbs, to destroy 155 of their ancient churches
and to punish Serbs by amputating their religious heartland just because
someone thinks they do not deserve equal human or legal rights. Serbs also
deserve justice for their victimization under Albanian terrorism.

WILLIAM DORICH

Los Angeles

As Goes Serbia, So Goes Israel?

As Goes Serbia, So Goes
Israel?



By Victor Sharpe



Oil has a peculiar smell. It has been described as a stench, which assails the
nostrils. But it does much more than irritate the membranes in the human nose.
It greases the machinery of geo-politics and lubricates the revenge and envy
that nation states harbor towards each other. It makes and destroys states and
peoples and befouls humanity. It is still a necessary evil, but much of this
black gold happens by fate to lie under the sands of the Arab Middle East and
thus morphs into a terrible weapon wielded by Arab despots and Islamo-fascist
fanatics.



The insane rush to create Kosovo, yet another Muslim state in the heart of the
Balkans, is testament to the curse of oil. Ever ready to enrich their
economies, the Europeans and the United States combine to appease and placate
the Arab kings, Emirs, and assorted dictators. The price demanded by the Saudis
and the Gulf States is a steep one; namely to pave the way for more and more
Muslim influence throughout the world and hostility to Israel.



The Saudis pour billions of their petrodollars into Europe and North and South
America in order to build lavish mosques where Wahhabi imams propagate
extremist forms of Islam. European and American universities hold out their
begging bowls to receive Arab money and in return help facilitate the spread of
anti-Israel and anti-Western falsehoods masquerading as Middle East studies.



The recent phenomena of the so-called sovereign funds are instruments through
which European and American financial institutions receive desperately needed
infusions of Arab money to bail themselves out of their own greed and monetary
shortcomings. And the financial help bestowed upon them comes with strings thus
adding yet another layer of Arab and Muslim pressure.



Islamist influence grows with every passing day. Facts are being created on the
ground, which are changing the demographics and national characteristics of one
European state after another. And it is in Europe that Arab oil is driving the
creation of a Muslim state that will become a radical Islamist beachhead and
threaten what is left of Christian Europe. In time it will inevitably become a
springboard for terror into the United States itself.



The U.S. State Department’s Nicholas Burns has now congratulated the Kosovars
in obtaining their independence from Serbia. This is a betrayal of the Serbian
people and will leave a disfiguring scar upon the United States for years to
come. For the Serbian people, the province of Kosovo is their very ancestral
heartland. The long suffering Serbs are now forced to witness the witless and
perfidious Western powers ripping away Serbia’s heart while their hated ethnic
Albanian and Muslim historical enemies take possession of it. The Serbs, in
fact, call Kosovo their “Jerusalem.” That is how holy they consider their lost
homeland.



And we must realize that Israel, too, is threatened by the same evil created by
Arab oil. The Palestinian negotiators all confirm that Jerusalem is up for
grabs and that Ehud Olmert, Israel’s Prime Minister and Tzippi Livni, the
Foreign Minister are in advanced negotiations to give away parts of Judaism’s
eternal holy city, Jerusalem.



Under U.S State Department pressure, the Israeli government is negotiating the
dismemberment of the Jewish ancestral heartland of Judea and Samaria and we
must witness with growing fear that what has happened to the brave and ill
served Serbian people will also happen to Israel.



President Bush has said that before his term of office expires this year, he
will preside over the re-division of Judaism’s holy city of Jerusalem and the
creation of a Muslim state called Palestine within the Jewish biblical
heartland. Although Serbs living in enclaves within Kosovo are not yet being
forced to leave, the price of creating a Muslim Palestinian state is the
expulsion – the ethnic cleansing – of all Jews from its proposed territory. In
other words, it is even worse for the Jews as a new Arab state called Palestine
will be judenrein. And this unthinkable outrage will be sanctioned by President
Bush and the United Nations.



There are striking similarities between the Serbs and the Jews. Serbia lost its
province of Kosovo after being defeated in battle by the Muslim Turks at the
Field of Blackbirds on June 13th 1389. Like the Jews, who in their 2,000 years
of exile dreamed of restoring their ancient land and their holy city of
Jerusalem after losing it to the Romans, so too the Serbs dreamed of Kosovo and
wove their folk music and national identity around the lost Serbian heartland.



During the late 1990s when President Clinton and his Secretary of State
Madeline Albright, launched a disgraceful war against the Serbs, the Serbian
Deputy Prime Minister, Draskovitch said of Kosovo: “Our faith was born there,
as was our language, our nationhood, our pride. It is incumbent upon us to
defend Kosovo, even if we all die.”



His words were uttered as American bombers, repainted in NATO colors, bombed
Serbia for several months inflicting some 3,000 civilian deaths and destroying
all the bridges over the Danube River in Belgrade. This was not America’s
finest hour but is now largely dead and buried by the mainstream media.



The same mainstream media rarely, if ever, tells us about Serbia’s passion
during the many centuries leading up to the present and latest shameful act of
the West. When Serbia was part of Yugoslavia, it was the Serbs who fought alone
and unaided against the German divisions; fighting them to a standstill. No other
people in occupied Europe achieved that remarkable and heroic feat.



Croatia allied itself with Hitler and established a Nazi state. The Croatians
exterminated hundreds of thousands of Serbs and tens of thousands of Jews. If
you visit the Yasenovatz death camp in Croatia, you will find Jews and Serbs
buried there together in mass graves.



The anti-Jewish Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini, who spent many days
with Hitler in his Berlin bunker plotting the destruction of Mandatory
Palestine’s Jewish population, encouraged the Bosnian Muslims to form several
SS divisions who carried out mass murders and deportations of Jews to the
German death camps.



Serbia emerged from the Second World War with the distinction of defeating the
German invasion and inflicting severe losses on the German army. But the Serbs
paid a terrible price, losing nearly 2,000,000 dead or some 12% of their
population. The Serbian partisans, who included many Jewish fighters, were able
to save thousands of Jews from death at the hands of the Croatian, German and
Bosnian murderers.



During the Balkan Wars of the 1990s, the Croatians expelled some 250,000 Serbs
from their homes in the Krajna district. As soon as the Muslims in Kosovo
received autonomy in 1974, they drove out 400,000 Serbs. At the same time a
vast influx of ethnic Albanians flooded over the border to take the place of
the disinherited Serbs.



The Serbian people have been reduced to only 10% of their original population
in Kosovo. Ethnic cleansing against the Serbs began long before the Western
press ran their lurid stories of Serbian ethnic cleansing against the Bosnian
Muslims. Predictably, the mainstream press ignored the earlier attacks by the
Muslims against the Serbs, which first led to the war.



The lesson for Israel is that foreign powers have conspired to strip the
expendable Serbs of their ancestral homeland and give it to the Muslims. In
doing so, these same western powers believe that by placating and ingratiating
themselves with the oil rich Arab and Muslim world they enrich their own
economies. After all, Serbia does not possess any known oil reserves.



Israel, too, is bereft of meaningful reserves of oil. It too is thus
expendable. The pressure upon Israel to give away its own ancestral, historic,
spiritual and biblical heartland in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) grows
relentlessly and insidiously.



Sadly and tragically, there exists no Israeli government or leader at this
critical time with the intestinal fortitude and spiritual certitude to
adamantly and resolutely resist the cynical and perfidious machinations of
western leaders. Israel desperately needs a leader who can talk to the world as
Draskovitch once spoke for the Serbian people. Instead Olmert, Livni and Barak
call for NATO to patrol the border with Gaza, monitor Judea and Samaria and,
heaven forbid, oversee a divided Jerusalem.



Carloline Glick, writing in the Feb 23, 2008 edition of the Jerusalem Post sums
up the Israeli government’s terminal confusion thus: “What the Serbs made NATO
fight its way in to achieve, Israel is offering NATO on a silver platter.” She
adds, “... 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.”



Serbia must be supported by all who still cherish morality over expediency.
Historical correctness must in all such cases trump so-called political
correctness. As goes Serbia, so goes Israel.



Neither nation deserves to become victim to the international greed for black
gold and the attendant groveling acceptance by oil-importing states to the
demands of the oil producing dictatorships and Islamic theocracies. Indeed, the
stench from corrupting oil that permeates the international corridors of power
makes the very angels in heaven gag.

---

Source: Exclusive article submitted by the author, an IHC Featured Writer



Copyright © Victor Sharpe 2008



Edited by IHC staff, www.infoisrael.net



Published 2 March 2008

Enslaved by freedom

Enslaved by freedom Kosovo's scandalous 'independence' has driven another nail in the coffin of a deeply discredited United Nations and proved its complicity in the return of naked 18th century colonialism. Nations with oil, gas, or other prized commodity may gear up for 'free trade' exclusively with Western corporates; Western military presence to protect freedom as in Iraq; or, self-determination of the kind that carved Christian East Timor out of Muslim Indonesia to become a virtual colony of Australian oil majors. Muslim Kosovo, wrenched out of Christian Serbia, has both oil and gas. Further, Catholic-Protestant imperialists have triumphed over Eastern Orthodox nations that once took to Communism; hence also Moscow's anger. China has shown its displeasure by rebuking Taiwan for recognising Kosovo; India's shameful silence is explicable only by the dominance of UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi over the present regime. This will nullify Congress's efforts to woo the Muslim community for, as former envoy MK Bhadrakumar says, only three of the 60-member Organisation of the Islamic Conference have recognised Kosovo. The Islamic world is becoming conscious of its continuing humiliation and exploitation by Western imperialism, which has an unmistakable racist edge. None of the non-White peoples who converted to Christianity to the extent of becoming Christian nations (The Philippines, South Africa, East Timor, to name only a few) enjoy genuine sovereignty or status in the international community. Kosovo is a link in a 737-strong chain of American military bases in 130 countries. Journalist Pepe Escobar says, in an Asian Times article, Kosovo's tragedy has its genesis in the trans-Balkan AMBO pipeline and Camp Bondsteel, the largest American base in Europe after the Vietnam War. It exposes how ugly corporates ensure compliance with their interests across successive administrations. It was Democrat President Bill Clinton who falsely demonised the Serbs and used NATO to get over the lack of a UN mandate, just as Republican President George W Bush later leapfrogged over the UN to colonise Iraq. The Euro-Americans moved to fragment Yugoslavia with the fall of the Soviet Union in the early-1990s. During the 1991 bombing of Iraq, Mr Clinton sponsored separatist movements in Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia; imposed crippling economic sanctions on Yugoslavia; and, pushed NATO forces into the region. The US also armed the Right-wing UCK (Kosovo Liberation Army), though Kosovo was not a Yugoslav republic, but part of Serbia. Washington's 'free' Press carried grim (fairy) tales of Serbian genocide against Albanian Muslims (remnants of the Ottoman Empire). The UCK controlled the opium and heroin trade from Afghanistan-Pakistan through the Balkans to Western Europe, earning over $ 1.1 billion for weapons. There is also a rich trade in prostitution. British intelligence trained the UCK in northern Albania, while Turkish and Afghan instructors taught them guerrilla tactics. Al Qaeda, too, had links with the UCK and Osama bin Laden visited Albania in 1994. As nationalist Yugoslavia resisted Western pressures, America unleashed 78 days of intensive bombing, including the use of depleted-uranium bombs. On June 3, 1999, NATO occupied Kosovo. President Slobodan Milosevic was kidnapped and taken for trial to The Hague, where he died in March 2006, apparently of a heart attack. Meanwhile, Ms Carla Del Ponte, chief prosecutor, International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, assisted by forensic experts of 17 NATO countries, discovered that there was no genocide, no mass graves, only 2,108 bodies belonging to all nationalities and mostly victims of NATO bombing! Unashamed, Serbia's tormentors placed Kosovo under a UN mission in 1999, through Security Council Resolution 1244. Real power vested with the mission of the European Union -- NATO was security guarantor; it slept over the hideous ethnic cleansing of 250,000 Serbs and Romas (gypsies). The regions' rich industrial resources were forcibly privatised and sold to giant Western multinationals. Halliburton took over the strategic oil and transportation lines of the entire region along with the security of Camp Bondsteel, the American military base. Ms Sara Flounders, co-director, International Action Center, says the UN played a shameful role in Kosovo. In June 2005, then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed ex-Finnish President Marti Ahtisaari as special envoy to negotiate Kosovo's final status. He was also chairman emeritus of the International Crisis Group, a private body funded by multi-billionaire George Soros, who sponsored the 'coloured' revolutions in former Soviet Baltic Republics. The ICG favours NATO intervention and open markets for the US and the EU; its board included two key US officials complicit in bombing Kosovo: Mr Zbigniew Brzezinski and Gen Wesley Clark, then NATO supreme commander and now military adviser to Ms Hillary Clinton. The Ahtisaari report submitted to new UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in March 2007 was understandably a command performance. It proposed an International Civilian Representative (read viceroy) appointed by US-EU to oversee Kosovo, with power to overrule any actions or annul any laws by local authorities. The Representative would control customs, taxation, treasury and banking. The EU would set up a European security and defence policy mission and NATO an international military presence, which would control foreign policy, security, police, judiciary, all courts and prisons. Mr Bhadrakumar says the deployment of NATO forces without a UN mandate is equivalent to projecting NATO as a global political organisation. It is pertinent that Security Council Resolution 1244 kept Kosovo within Serbia. But Kosovo is ultimately about the $1.1 billion Albanian Macedonian Bulgarian Oil Corp pipeline, to be completed by 2011. Registered in the US, the firm will get oil brought from the Caspian Sea to a terminal in Georgia and then by tankers through the Black Sea to the Bulgarian port of Burgas, and relay it through Macedonia to the Albanian port of Vlora. Mr Clinton's NATO war was to secure Vlora's strategic location. The oil is to be shipped to Rotterdam in The Netherlands and refineries on the US west coast, avoiding the congested Bosphorus Strait and Aegean and Mediterranean seas. The AMBO project conforms to US Vice-President Dick Cheney's American energy security grid. Halliburton via subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root, built Camp Bondsteel near the Macedonian border in southern Kosovo. It is also a place where prisoners can be held indefinitely without formal charges or lawyers. As things now stand, Yugoslavia is destroyed; Iraq seems headed the same way. Sectarian religious violence is endemic, and Turkey is playing along with the US for a share of Kurd oil (Kirkuk). © CMYK Multimedia Pvt. Ltd. http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnist1.asp?main_variable=Columnist&file_name=jain%2Fjain136.txt&writer=jain

Kosovo: A New Versailles? Tomaz Mastnak | March 7, 2008 Editor: John Feffer
Foreign Policy In Focus
The torching the U.S. embassy in Belgrade was a violent sideshow during the massive peaceful demonstrations against Kosovo’s declaration of independence in the Serbian capital on February 18th. Few approved of these thuggish acts, either in Serbia or in the wider world. But the vandalism distracts from more significant facts about the Belgrade demonstrations and the Kosovo declaration that sparked them. The U.S. embassy was not a random target; nor was it the only target. Protesters had already marched toward the U.S. embassy on the first day of the protests. When police blocked their way, they headed instead toward the Slovenian embassy, which was not guarded, and vandalized it. That was not a random target either. It is not difficult to understand why the protesters directed their anger at both the United States and Slovenia. Government officials of the two countries have made it sufficiently clear during the past year that they actively support the independence of Kosovo. But public anger, particularly in Serbia, has escalated over a report of a December meeting between U.S. and Slovenian officials that was published in January both in Slovenia’s capital, Ljubljana, and in Belgrade. The publication caused furor in Slovenia, outrage in Serbia, and disappointment among the EU political elite. The document was not meant for the public, but the public did not fail to note the clearly stated American political agenda it contained and the role of Slovenia in its execution. This behind-the-scenes collusion revealed two violations with regard to Kosovo. The United States, with Slovenian assistance, sought to circumvent the European political process — not to speak of the UN. And Kosovo itself, by unilaterally declaring independence, violated international law. These two violations – of a political process and of the rule of law – will come back to haunt Europe and the United States in the coming months and years. The Slovenian Role Slovenia plays a disproportionately important role in this story because it assumed the European Union presidency on January 1, 2008. A week before, on December 24, a meeting between representatives of the State Department and the Slovenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs took place in Washington D. C. Taking part in the talks were, on the Slovenian side, the Political Director of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Mitja Drobnic and the Ambassador to the United States Samuel Zbogar, and on the American side, Daniel Fried, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, his deputy Rosemary DiCarlo, and Judy Ansley, NSA senior director for European affairs. An internal report of this meeting from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was leaked to the Slovenian daily Dnevnik, which published it on January 25. A copy was also obtained and published simultaneously by the Belgrade paper Politika. The published excerpts make it clear that the talks touched upon a number of issues but mainly focused on Kosovo. The American officials presented a list of demands to their Slovenian counterparts. For example, the Slovenian diplomats were informed of the text of the declaration from the joint US-EU summit scheduled to take place in Ljubljana in June. “We would also like to have a mention of Iraq and rogue states, such as Iran, Burma, and Syria,” the U.S. officials demanded. “President Bush is also worried about the situation in Cuba and Venezuela. He is convinced that support for the opposition in Cuba (just like in Georgia and Ukraine) can bring positive results. The US policy toward Cuba is not a regime change but a desire for democratic transition after Fidel Castro’s death. In the declaration from the EU-US summit, they would also like to have a mention of Cuba and Venezuela. They also want the declaration to mention terrorism and non-proliferation.” As to Kosovo, the conversation was a careful orchestration of Kosovo’s timetable for independence. Daniel Fried praised Slovenian Foreign Minister Rupel and stated that “it is beyond doubt that the solution of the status is a fact, which will happen under the leadership of Slovenia.” Mitja Drobnic asked for help with obtaining the UN Secretary General’s statement in support of sending the European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) mission to Kosovo, “since some EU member states have difficulties with making the decision to send the ESDP without the UN agreement.” Fried responded that “the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon is under the pressure of the Russian Federation and thus in a difficult position.” He informed his interlocutors that the United States had assurances that the UN was not going to put restrictions on the sending of the ESDP mission to Kosovo. The United States, he explained, “will help the UN Secretary General in the case of difficulties with the Russian Federation, while RS [the Republic of Slovenia] has to achieve within the EU the sending of the ESDP in the shortest time.” The decision to send the ESDP mission to Kosovo was of key importance for the United States, since it was replacing the UN mandate over Kosovo with the EU mandate. In pushing that decision through, Fried was clear: “one can ignore the critical positions and statements of the Russian Federation and Serbia.” Rosemary DiCarlo noted that it would make sense, if “the session of the Kosovo Parliament, in which they pass the declaration of independence, were to be on Sunday, since this way the Russian Federation would not have the time to call for the UN Security Council. In the meantime, the first recognitions would already have happened.” Fried encouraged Slovenia to be the first to recognize Kosovo. The United States expected that although six EU member states would hold back recognition at least 15 out of the 27 member states would recognize Kosovo and that would be sufficient. He also noted that the United States would be among the first to recognize Kosovo. He told the Slovenes that “the US is drafting the constitution with the Kosovars” and that the situation on the ground was “promising.” Fried added, “The US hoped that the Kosovars would not lose confidence in themselves, because that would mean that the US will lose its influence.” Serbian Reactions In Serbia, when notes of this meeting were published, the Minister for Kosovo, Slobodan Samardzic, denounced the American administration’s pressure on Slovenia. He regretted that the American superpower was attempting to force EU member states into violations of international law and that Slovenia and the EU were allowing themselves to become instruments for the realization of American interests. He was wrong about the U.S. pressure on Slovenia. The Slovenian Foreign Ministry under Rupel was all too willing to oblige. But the rest of Samardzic’s points seemed to hold currency within the EU. The Austrian Press Agency characterized Slovenia’s EU presidency as scandalous and Rupel’s views as dissonant even within his own government. Der Standard reported a “sharp conflict” in a meeting of EU foreign ministers, where the Slovenian Foreign Minister reportedly was criticized for putting American interests first. This scenario for Kosovo’s independence bears the hallmarks of “New American Century” misadventures. In Kosovo, the United States has one of its largest military bases, Camp Bondsteel. The human rights envoy of the Council of Europe, Alvaro Gil-Robles, described it a few years ago as a “smaller version of Guantánamo.” Since Romania and Poland have now been censored by the EU for their role in the secret CIA prisons and rendition flights, a new destination might be necessary in the region. More importantly, Camp Bondsteel is set to become the new home for U.S. air operations, moving them from the Aviano base in Italy, where the recklessness and accidents caused by U.S. pilots have worn down the patience of the locals. Kosovo is closer to the Middle East, which has more than one advantage. And Camp Bondsteel also completes the encircling of the Russian western border. If Kosovo were to remain an UN protectorate, the United States would have less of a free hand there. As an EU protectorate, however, Kosovo will offer the United States more room to operate freely. As an independent state dependent upon U.S. support, Kosovo will probably not refuse to sign bilateral agreements with the United States on the status of forces. Kosovo’s declaration of independence is a declaration of independence from Serbia. But this alone does not make Kosovo an independent sovereign state. There is a strong whiff of parody in the coordinated action by which a state declares its independence and other states send in missions to create that state. The EU is sending in 1,800 lawyers, judges, police, and administrators, who are replacing the UN mission and whose task it is to set up Kosovo’s “institutions, legal authorities and agencies for law enforcement as well as other executive responsibilities.” The head of the operation, which is to “base Kosovo on the rule of law,” that is, to build a law-abiding and law-enforcing state there, will be French General Yves de Kermabon. Dutch diplomat Peter Feith, who will head up the International Civilian Office, will have the power to overturn legislation and sack Kosovo officials. KFOR, the NATO-led Kosovo force, will stay, which means that 16,000 foreign soldiers will be stationed in Kosovo. Annex 11 to the Ahtisaari plan, the implementation of which was zealously advocated by the United States, gives NATO military supremacy over Kosovo. (In the week following the declaration of independence, when tensions rose on the border with Serbia, U.S. and French troops restored order.) Economically, the EU plans to spend 330 million euros by 2010, in addition to the 2 billion euros it has already spent. From 1999, following the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, Kosovo was a UN protectorate. With the declaration of independence, it has become an EU protectorate that can be more easily shaped by U.S. policy. In real terms, not much has changed. As a commentator in Politika stated: “Neither did Albanians gain much more than they already had, nor did the Serbs lose much more than they had already lost.” So, if not much was gained or lost, why does Kosovo’s declaration of independence matter? International Law It matters, first, because the declaration of Kosovo independence is a breach of international law. A unilateral change of borders – that is, a change that is not based on agreement of all concerned – violates one of the basic principles of the UN charter. Serbia is clearly opposed to this move. If the declaration of Kosovo independence is predicated on the limitation, or loss, of Serbian de facto sovereignty over the region following NATO’s 1999 military intervention, then the change of borders has been accomplished by military means. That runs against both the letter and the spirit of the post-World War Two international legal order. To argue that violations of human rights, such as those committed by Serbia in Kosovo in the 1980s and 1990s, can be the basis on which to erect a new state both lacks legal precedent and confuses law with morality. And when it comes to morality in this context, it is a morality of double standards and selective righteousness, in view both of global politics and of the human rights abuses visited on the Serbian minority in Kosovo. One could quarrel over the interpretation of UN Security Council resolution 1244, as opponents and advocates of Kosovo independence do, but the unilateral nature of the declaration of independence effectively violates international law. That this argument has been raised by states that fear their own separatist movements does not detract from the argument itself. If the rule of law is considered supreme, it is irrelevant whether abiding or protecting the law is in a state’s own interest. Historically, the closest parallel in the 20th-century Balkans to Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence was the declaration of the Independent State of Croatia, the notorious NDH, under the tutelage of Nazi Germany during World War Two. Then, as now, the military superpower of the day constructed a state to its own liking and in its own interest. It did so with the collaboration of local politicians, to the relief of parts of the population, and in the interest of the world war it was fighting. In regard of the more recent history, the declaration of the independence of Kosovo is the continuation of the same type of politics that characterized Serbian oppression, repression, and crimes in Kosovo — the continuation of the politics of might, illegality, and lawlessness. U.S. arbitrariness rather than the will of the people was the constitutive force of the independent state of Kosovo. The UN was conspicuously pushed aside and ignored. Also ignored were the interests of the neighbors and the countries of the broader Balkan region, most of whom oppose the independence of Kosovo. Ignored as well, and in a rather insulting way, was Russia, which for better or worse has played a role in the region for a considerable time. Finally, ignored were the Serbs. The unilateral decision to declare the independence of Kosovo was carried through in a way to ensure that Serbia will for the time being experience no catharsis, no facing and overcoming of the legacy of the criminal wars of the 1990s. Instead, this decision does the opposite by inflaming the very same pathology that drove Serbia and Serbs into those wars in the first place. Has the United States engineered a new Versailles that will in turn generate future wars? Tomaz Mastnak, a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus (www.fpif.org), is is director of research in the Institute of Philosophy, Scientific Research Center of the Slovene Academy of Sciences, and a fellow of the Critical Theory Institute at the University of California at Irvine. He is the former director of the Office of the Alliance of Civilizations of the United Nations.