December 29, 2005
Kosovo minister's statement on Serb return is "supreme cynicism"
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Thursday, December 29, 2005
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US Strike on the Chinese Embassy Was "Decapitation Attempt"
US Strike on PRC Embassy Was "Decapitation Attempt"
Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy. Alexandria: Nov/Dec 2005.Vol.33, Iss. 11/12; pg. 3, 1 pgs
Highly-placed NATO sources have confirmed the reason behind the US air strike - with three Tomahawk cruise missiles - against the Embassy of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in Belgrade, (then) Yugoslavia, on May 7, 1999. The then-Clinton Government of the United States said at the time that the strike was accidental, due to faulty maps and intelligence, but this has been disproven by the NATO sources.
The NATO sources told Defense & Foreign Affairs that the attack was based on intelligence that then Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic was to have been in the Embassy at the time of the attack. The attack, then, was deliberately planned as a "decapitation" attack, intended to kill Milosevic.
The London Observer, on October 19, 1999, had said that the attack had been deliberate, noting: "... Politiken newspaper in Denmark and Ed Vulliamy cites senior military and intelligence sources in Europe and the US stating that the embassy was bombed after its NATO electronic intelligence (ELINT) discovered it was being used to transmit Yugoslav army communications.
"Supportive evidence is provided by three other NATO officers - a flight controller operating in Naples, an intelligence officer monitoring Yugoslav radio traffic from Macedonia and a senior headquarters officer in Brussels.
"All three say they knew in April that the Chinese embassy was acting as a "rebro" (rebroadcast) station for the Yugoslav army. The embassy was also suspected of monitoring NATO's cruise missile attacks on Belgrade, with a view to developing effective countermeasures."
The Clinton Administration blamed the attack on inaccurate intelligence information provided by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), alleging that the three missiles, which landed in one corner of the PRC embassy block, had been meant to target the Yugoslav Federal Directorate for Supply and Procurement (FDSP). US Defence secretary William Cohen said at the time: "One of our planes attacked the wrong target because the bombing instructions were based on an outdated map." Sources within the US National Imagery and Mapping Agency reacted with anger at the allegation that their mapping had been at fault.
Moreover, it was clear that Clinton appointee George Tenet, the CIA Director at the time, was involved in the deception operation built around the failed assassination attack.
There was widespread disbelief of the US Clinton Administration claim that the attack was "accidental", but no accurate background information as to why the attack against the Embassy was scheduled. The rationale cited by The Observer was not the true cause of the targeting.
In July 1999, then-CIA Director Tenet testified in Congress that out of the 900 targets struck by NATO during the three-month bombing campaign, only one was developed by the CIA: the PRC Embassy.
Copyright International Strategic Studies Association Nov/Dec 2005
Reprinted with Permission.
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Thursday, December 29, 2005
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December 28, 2005
The Black Birds of Kosova
The Black Birds of Kosova
Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. - 12/27/2005
The real war over Kosovo hasn't even started yet. When NATO finishes coercing Yugoslavia into submission, when the smoke clears and the charred remains of corpses and houses cleared - then the real conflict will erupt. It will be a conflict between moderate Albanians (as represented by Ibrahim Rugova) and radical Albanians (the outlandish Maoist-Islamist admixture represented by the KLA). And it will be bloodier by far.
This is because this new type of war can never be decided, not even by way of weapons. It is a clash of cultures, a battle enjoined by civilizations. And it cuts across the Kosovars as sharply as it separates the West from Yugoslavia. Thus the Kosovo war will be continued by the Kosovar themselves because they, too, are culturally split along the same inflamed lines (Liberal versus Non-liberal). "But, surely" - you would say - "there is nothing new about THIS". But there is.
In the past, nations or clusters of nations or tribes went to war ONLY in order to protect national or tribal or group interests. More food, more space, control over important lines of transport and communications, access to markets, women (to ensure reproduction), the elimination of a foe or a potential foe, loot, weaponry - hard, cold interests underlied all armed conflicts.
Culture and religion were used as fig-leaves to disguise the true nature of wars. The colonial wars of the 18th and 19th century were ostensibly fought with the aim of educating the savages, converting them to the right religion and bestowing upon them the blessings of civilization. Mineral wealth, routes of transport, strategic vantage points - were all presented as secondary afterthoughts or side benefits. This is the way it was presented to the public. The truth, of course, was absolutely the opposite.
The Kosovo conflict is the first war in history where WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). Europe in general and NATO in particular have no interests in the godforsaken piece of land known as Kosovo and Metoxhia. It is not strategically located (it is all but inaccessible). It is poor (except some minerals of which there is a world glut). It is not strictly "European". It is partly Moslem and allied with the likes of Iran, Osama Bin Laden and Albania. It involves a small number of people (1.8 million). Operation Allied Force is NOT about the defence or furthering of self-interests. It is about conflicting cultures.
The West is trying to impose its culture - liberal and capitalist - upon other societies. Whenever popular opinion (even if expressed democratically and peacefully) does not conform to Western values - the West does its best to undermine the choice as well as the chosen. The West's definition of a legitimate regime is very peculiar and not very rigorous logically. A legitimate regime is one chosen by the people providing its values are Western values or closely conform to them. All other regimes - no matter how strongly upheld by free public opinion - are not legitimate, even illegal and can be deposed and disposed of with moral impunity. Khomeini came to power on the crest of a wave of unprecedented popular support and he supplanted a cruel and corrupt dictator. Milosevic was freely elected by a majority wider than Clinton's. In Algeria and Turkey freely elected Islamists governments were toppled (or prevented from taking office, in the case of Algeria) by the army with the West's enthusiastic though mute consent. This "Allende Syndrome" is in play now in Kosovo.
It is politically very incorrect, I am sure, to say that only a small minority of humans adhere to Western values (and most of the adherents only pay lip service to them). Human rights are an alien concept in Africa and the Balkans. Individualism is an alien - even repulsive - concept in China, Japan and most of South East Asia. Competition is a value derided in most parts of the world. Income disparity and the toleration of abject poverty as an inescapable consequence of capitalism (the "Anglo-Saxon Model") is rejected even in Continental Europe itself. Freedom of Speech is much more curtailed in France than in the USA. Privacy is less respected in the USA than in France. Western values are not universal even in the West.
The nations and societies of the Balkans are used to solving their problems by employing ethnic cleansing, armed brutality, suppression of civilian population and decimation of the elites of the enemy. This is not a value judgement. It is a statement of historical fact. Bulgaria has done it to its Turkish citizens as late as 1995. It used to be the same (and much worse) in Western Europe until 1945. Nations - like human beings - have a growth trajectory. It cannot be hastened or imported. It must grow from within, by integrating experiences, including painful and traumatic ones. Peaceful co-existence often follows and is the result of a devastation so great that no other alternative but peaceful co-existence is left. Any foreign intervention serves only to exacerbate the situation by increasing the number and intensity of inter-ethnic grudges. The seeds of the current conflict in Kosovo were sown by the Ottoman Turks as early as 1912. Foreign interventions tend to boomerang in the Balkans. Actually, they boomerang everywhere. Ask Israelis how they fared in the Lebanese quagmire.
The West should have respected the Balkanian way of conducting their affairs and resolving their differences. It should have left them to slaughter each other in peace. These are young nations (having been freed from all foreign occupation only as late as 1945 after centuries of subjugation). They need to learn from their OWN experiences. They need to reach the point of exhaustion beyond which there is only peaceful co-existence. Violence solves nothing, on the contrary, it just reinforces the Balkanian conviction that he who carries the big stick has justice on his side.
But how did this apparent transition from interest-wars to culture-wars transpire?
Indeed, the transition is only apparent. The key is the transformation of culture from something ethereal and transcendent - to a strong self-interest as any other. Once culture became an asset to protect, cultural wars were certain to erupt. Thus, it is still self-interest at the basis of it all but this time the self-interest protected and furthered is cultural dominance and hegemony.
It started rather innocuously and inadvertently. The Americanization of the world was perceived to be the historical equivalent of the Pax Romana. This was a false analogy. The Pax Romana was rampant pluralism. The Pax Americana is rampant homogeneity.
Then the West (notably America) suddenly realized the economic dividends on cultural homogeneity (for instance as evident in various forms of intellectual property - movies, music, software, TV, internet). Culture - the oft neglected step-sister of economics - became an INDUSTRY. A money spinner. It was well worth the West's while not only to sell mass produces culture to homogenized markets - but to make sure that these markets were peaceful, stable, accessible and free. If necessary, this was to be secured by force.
Paradoxically, in this age of moral relativity and political correctness - the West is ASHAMED to admit that this is a cultural war where one of the parties is trying to impose its cultural values on the other for utterly utilitarian reasons. Instead, the war is presented as a matter of national interest of the OLD TYPE.
But then what IS the OLD TYPE of the national interest of the USA, Europe, EU and NATO?
Isn't it the preservation and immutability of existing borders?
The suppression of irredentist and separatist movements?
The abolition of terror?
The prevention of large scale dislocations of endemic populations?
And if so, wasn't the best way to ensure all the above - to allow Milosevic to cruelly and ruthlessly eradicate the KLA and intimidate the local population into submission?
Hasn't the West adopted these very tactics (of encouraging local bullies to suppress and even eliminate local restive populations) in Latin America in the 70's and 80's and in Africa in the 60's and 70's?
Didn't the West (wisely) turn a blind eye on China, Russia, Israel, Iraq (prior to 1990) and others only recently when they did to their population what Milosevic did not dare to do to his?
The Kosovo war - it is clear - is contrary to any conceivable OLD TYPE self-interest of the West. It costs the West dearly and will cost it even more - and not only in monetary terms. The loss of prestige, moral standing, world support, economic resources, world trade (the blocking of the Danube) far outweighs any possible rendition of the old school "national interest". It is the protection and propagation of the West's culture that is at stake, replete with human rights, civil rights, capitalism, individualism and liberalism. It is a defining war - not only militarily (the future of NATO) but also culturally (the identity of the future global market). Poor Milosevic, look what he got himself into.
Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He served as a columnist for Central Europe Review, PopMatters, Bellaonline, and eBookWeb, a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory and Suite101.
Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government of Macedonia. Sam Vaknin's Web site is at http://samvak.tripod.com
You can download 22 of his free ebooks in our bookstore
http://www.globalpolitician.com/articleshow.asp?ID=1513&cid=3
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Wednesday, December 28, 2005
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Balkans Paradise for Al Qaeda
HoustonChronicle.com -- http://www.HoustonChronicle.com | Section: World
Dec. 27, 2005, 9:33AM
Terrorists said to be getting aid in Balkans
Crime gangs that control the smuggling routes are making their infiltration easier
By GREGORY KATZ
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle Foreign Service BELGRADE, SERBIA - A hidden alliance between terror networks and organized crime gangs that control heavily used smuggling routes in the Balkans is making it easier for terrorists to infiltrate Western Europe, according to law enforcement officials and intelligence experts.
In addition, prosecutors in Serbia believe that in some cases the money earned by people traffickers is used to support terrorist activities in Europe, which has been hit by several major terrorist attacks in the last two years, with many others prevented by police raids.
A key problem is lax border controls throughout the region. Many borders, such as the one between Romania and Serbia, are wide open to gangs that smuggle people, heroin and goods.
Europe's battle to contain the spread of international terrorism has been hobbled by such porous borders, which each year allow tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants to enter. So many people are sneaking into Europe that authorities admit they do not know exactly who resides in their countries, complicating the effort to prevent more terrorist attacks.
"This is a paradise for al-Qaida," said Marko Nicovic, former police chief in the Serbian capital Belgrade and a director of the International Narcotic Enforcement Officers Association. "For Europe, it can be a disaster at any time because the authorities don't know who is there and they don't know who is who. The attacks in Madrid and London showed that."
Traveling freely
Once illegal migrants reach Serbia overland from Eastern Europe, police say they can easily cross into Bosnia and then Slovenia, thus entering the European Union. At that point, they can take advantage of weak or nonexistent border controls to travel freely to France, Spain, Germany and other countries on the continent. Police officials believe that most of the migrants are law-abiding people looking for work, but they caution that the migration gives terrorist gangs a way to move sleeper cells into the West while also fueling tensions between Western Europe's Muslims, the fastest growing minority on the continent, and the rest of society.
These tensions surface in a number of ways: the deadly attacks on transit systems in Madrid and London, intense rioting in France, death threats against secular politicians in the Netherlands, and legal battles over the right to wear Muslim scarves and headgear to public schools.
While smuggling gangs are using Serbia as a transit point, some Muslim militants seems to have established a base in neighboring Bosnia.
Officials warn that several hundred militants who came to Bosnia to fight on behalf of Muslims there during the war in the 1990s have remained in the country to attack the West.
In October, police in Bosnia uncovered an apparent plot to blow up the British Embassy and found a large cache of weapons and explosives along with propaganda vowing to retaliate for the U.S.-and-British-led invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.
A Swede and a Dane were also arrested in that raid, and there were follow-up arrests in Sweden that suggested the Bosnian extremists had operational ties to Western Europe, investigators said.
Disturbing pairing
Magnus Ranstorp, a specialist at the Swedish National Defense College who testified before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, said the presence of Islamic militants inside Bosnia makes it an attractive gateway into Europe for terrorists.
"They came in ten years ago, that was the first warning signal, it was the embryo of what became al-Qaida in Europe," he said. "The Iranians are supporting activity there, and the Balkans have become the crossroads where we see the merger of Islamic extremist groups who reach out to organized crime groups."
Ranstorp said well-established organized crime networks in the region provide the terrorist gangs with routes for people smuggling and with phony identification documents.
"People being smuggled in add to the security threat," he said. "Most are economic migrants but hand-in-hand with that are people in organized crime who allow terrorism to be possible. They move in the same circles and need the same things. If you want to tackle terrorists, you have to tackle the supporting environment, the organized crime rings and the human trafficking rings."
The migrants enter Europe in many ways. Some travel on land through Serbia and the other countries of the former Yugoslavia.
Others take trawlers or dilapidated fishing boats across the Mediterranean bound for southern Spain or Italy. Still others simply fly into the continent's many hub airports.
'New generation of jihadis'
A large number of immigrants formally apply for political asylum in their new countries, giving them the right to a legal review that can take years. Others destroy their identity documents, making it difficult for authorities to determine their nationality. Many come from predominantly Muslim countries like Morocco, Pakistan and Afghanistan where jihadis committed to waging holy war against the West are active. This sentiment has grown in ferocity since the United States and Britain invaded Iraq two years ago, according to analysts and enforcement agents.
"There is clear, unmistakable evidence that the level of terrorist activity that has killed and injured people has soared to unprecedented levels since we invaded Iraq," said Larry Johnson, a former CIA agent and State Department counter-terrorism specialist now working in the private sector.
"Iraq is creating a new generation of jihadis looking for places to live in Europe," Johnson said, "and they have this festering resentment that is usually at the core of terrorism. They will take up residence with existing communities or form new ones in Europe.
"It doesn't augur for a great future."
Serbian investigators maintain they have uncovered a prime example of the cozy relationship between terrorism and people smugglers. It involves a Bangladeshi suspect believed by prosecutors to be making more than $150,000 per week bringing people into Western Europe through clandestine routes.
Training camps in Bosnia
Mioljub Vitorovic, the Serbian special prosecutor for organized crime cases, said he believes, but cannot prove, that some of this money was being paid to support the families of suicide bombers who have carried out attacks in Europe. He also believes a number of jihadis from Bangladesh have gathered at training camps inside Bosnia. The prosecutor complained that the suspect, whom he declined to name, appears to have some high-level protection because he has been able to flee whenever police are closing in.
Prosecutors in several countries are gathering evidence about the gang, he said.
"This is a huge case involving Sri Lankans, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, and the whole region is looking for the leader of the operation, who is this Bangladeshi," Vitorovic said. "He was involved during the Bosnian war and he's using his connections to bring people across the borders. We have information about the money he is making. This is from listening to his mobile phone conversations."
He said he had warned intelligence officials in Western Europe about the threat posed by this people-smuggling operation but was ignored.
That changed, he said, after the July 7 suicide attacks on London's transit system, carried out by British Muslims linked to overseas groups, revealed how dangerous the situation had become.
"Now they are paying much more attention to the situation here," he said.
'Using all channels'
Serbian Border Police concede they are outmanned and outgunned in the losing battle against well-organized smugglers.
"It's very easy for them to cross the Danube," said Col. Dusan Zlokas, chief of the Serbian Border Police. "We need more boats, we need radar, we need thermal imaging, we need binoculars with night vision, we need everything. We don't have the technical capacity to provide border security."
He cited the arrest in Serbia in March of a Moroccan accused of taking part in the deadly 2004 attacks on the Madrid train system that killed nearly 200 people as proof that international terrorists are using Serbia as a transit point.
"The biggest number of recruited terrorists is coming from this illegal immigrants community," he said. "It is a very vulnerable society and easy to recruit in. For sure, this jeopardizes Western Europe and the U.S.
"This is the crossroads of the trade in illegal immigrants, weapons and drugs and no one can say terrorists cannot pass. They are using all channels."
gregory.katz@chron.com
HoustonChronicle.com -- http://www.HoustonChronicle.com | Section: World
This article is: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/world/3549171.html ######
Outside the Beltway
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
Balkans Paradise for Al Qaeda
By James Joyner
The Houston Chronicle's Gregory Katz has a disturbing report from Belgrade that the combination of loose borders and powerful organized crime syndicates have made the Balkans "a paradise for al-Qaeda."
A hidden alliance between terror networks and organized crime gangs that control heavily used smuggling routes in the Balkans is making it easier for terrorists to infiltrate Western Europe, according to law enforcement officials and intelligence experts. In addition, prosecutors in Serbia believe that in some cases the money earned by people traffickers is used to support terrorist activities in Europe, which has been hit by several major terrorist attacks in the last two years, with many others prevented by police raids.
A key problem is lax border controls throughout the region. Many borders, such as the one between Romania and Serbia, are wide open to gangs that smuggle people, heroin and goods. Europe's battle to contain the spread of international terrorism has been hobbled by such porous borders, which each year allow tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants to enter. So many people are sneaking into Europe that authorities admit they do not know exactly who resides in their countries, complicating the effort to prevent more terrorist attacks. "This is a paradise for al-Qaida," said Marko Nicovic, former police chief in the Serbian capital Belgrade and a director of the International Narcotic Enforcement Officers Association. "For Europe, it can be a disaster at any time because the authorities don't know who is there and they don't know who is who. The attacks in Madrid and London showed that."
Once illegal migrants reach Serbia overland from Eastern Europe, police say they can easily cross into Bosnia and then Slovenia, thus entering the European Union. At that point, they can take advantage of weak or nonexistent border controls to travel freely to France, Spain, Germany and other countries on the continent.
Police officials believe that most of the migrants are law-abiding people looking for work, but they caution that the migration gives terrorist gangs a way to move sleeper cells into the West while also fueling tensions between Western Europe's Muslims, the fastest growing minority on the continent, and the rest of society. These tensions surface in a number of ways: the deadly attacks on transit systems in Madrid and London, intense rioting in France, death threats against secular politicians in the Netherlands, and legal battles over the right to wear Muslim scarves and headgear to public schools.
While smuggling gangs are using Serbia as a transit point, some Muslim militants seems to have established a base in neighboring Bosnia. Officials warn that several hundred militants who came to Bosnia to fight on behalf of Muslims there during the war in the 1990s have remained in the country to attack the West.
In October, police in Bosnia uncovered an apparent plot to blow up the British Embassy and found a large cache of weapons and explosives along with propaganda vowing to retaliate for the U.S.-and-British-led invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. A Swede and a Dane were also arrested in that raid, and there were follow-up arrests in Sweden that suggested the Bosnian extremists had operational ties to Western Europe, investigators said.
Magnus Ranstorp, a specialist at the Swedish National Defense College who testified before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, said the presence of Islamic militants inside Bosnia makes it an attractive gateway into Europe for terrorists. "They came in ten years ago, that was the first warning signal, it was the embryo of what became al-Qaida in Europe," he said. "The Iranians are supporting activity there, and the Balkans have become the crossroads where we see the merger of Islamic extremist groups who reach out to organized crime groups."
[...]
A large number of immigrants formally apply for political asylum in their new countries, giving them the right to a legal review that can take years. Others destroy their identity documents, making it difficult for authorities to determine their nationality. Many come from predominantly Muslim countries like Morocco, Pakistan and Afghanistan where jihadis committed to waging holy war against the West are active. This sentiment has grown in ferocity since the United States and Britain invaded Iraq two years ago, according to analysts and enforcement agents.
"There is clear, unmistakable evidence that the level of terrorist activity that has killed and injured people has soared to unprecedented levels since we invaded Iraq," said Larry Johnson, a former CIA agent and State Department counter-terrorism specialist now working in the private sector. "Iraq is creating a new generation of jihadis looking for places to live in Europe," Johnson said, "and they have this festering resentment that is usually at the core of terrorism. They will take up residence with existing communities or form new ones in Europe. "It doesn't augur for a great future."
Scary stuff. We've already seen some of the fruits of this, with the bombings in London and Madrid. As the piece makes clear, European leaders are finally awakening to the problem. It may, however, to be too late to undo the damage.
Related:
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Wednesday, December 28, 2005
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December 27, 2005
Kosovo Conditional independence
Kosovo: behind-the-scenes hard talk begins (ISN Security Watch)
As both formal and informal behind-the-scenes talks about Kosovos future status begin, the member countries of the powerful Contact Group seem to have reached a consensus that Kosovo should be granted conditional independence.
By Tim Judah in London and Paris for ISN Security Watch (24/12/05)
Though UN officials have recently announced that talks concerning the status of Serbias UN-administered province of Kosovo would begin in earnest in January, ISN Security Watch has learned that much of the real work is already being done behind the scenes, with intense discussions between key countries involved in the region and Serbian and Kosovo Albanian leaders.
Over the past few weeks, a series of meetings, both formal and informal, have taken place in key capitals - including the Serbian capital, Belgrade, and the Kosovo capital, Pristina - as diplomats attempt to shape a deal for Kosovo, bolstering the work being done by former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, who has been chosen to head the UN-led status negotiations.
Since the end of the Kosovo war in 1999, the province of some two million people has been under the jurisdiction of the UN, though it legally remains a part of Serbia. Its population is over 90 per cent ethnic Albanian. They have made it clear they want nothing less than full independence for Kosovo.
Serbia's official position is that Kosovo can have ' more than autonomy but less than independence.
Members of the Serbian negotiation team, Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica and President Boris Tadic, had proposed earlier this month that Kosovo be divided into Albanian and Serbian areas.
According to the Serbian plan, the Albanian areas would be self-governing and independent in all but name, while the Serbian ones would remain linked to Belgrade and the Serbian flag would fly once again on Kosovos frontiers.
In parallel to this, the Serbian leadership has also decided that it would be most advantageous to argue their Kosovo case along legal lines - that is to say that Kosovo is de jure part of Serbia and thus its international frontiers cannot be changed without Serbias consent.
However, Kosovos Albanian leaders are demanding that the province be given full independence in recognition of their right to self-determination.
Over the last few weeks, there have been several meetings - including one between the Contact Group, which was set up to coordinate policy during the Balkan wars in the early 1990s, and Ahtisaari - which have yielded significant results. While Ahtisaari is now the official Kosovo mediator, real power lies with the countries of the Contact Group.
There appears to be a considerable unity of purpose among the Contact Group members. France and the US, for example, so often at loggerheads over the past few years, have no major disagreement over Kosovo. Russia, too, has been described by diplomats as extremely cooperative over Kosovo. If Serbian leaders were hoping to find backing from the traditionally friendly Russians there is no evidence thus far that they will get it.
Representatives of the Contact Group countries have decided that the best solution for Kosovo is that it be given so called conditional independence.
This means that the sovereign link with Serbia will be broken but that restrictions on Kosovos independence will remain for a transitional period. These could include, for example, no army and awarding reserve powers to a representative of the international community. The result would be a slimmed down and more focused version of the model that exists in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is effectively governed by the international communitys High Representative, who has sweeping powers.
Diplomats who have talked to ISN Security Watch, on condition of anonymity, say the only disagreement among the Contact Group members is over speed and tactics.
We all know, more or less, where we are going but we just have to be careful of the language used in public, one source said.
At the moment, officials from Contact Group countries say publicly that what they want is an agreement made between and mutually acceptable to Serbs and Albanians. Yet, privately, everyone knows that Serbs and Albanians will never be able to agree on the status of Kosovo.
France is less willing to openly say that the Contact Group countries are in favor of conditional independence because it fears that to do so might prompt the Serbs to withdraw from talks before they have even properly started.
By contrast, the British believe that the sooner the I word (for independence) is pronounced, the more flexible the Albanians will become. The British theory, according to informed sources, is that given a guarantee that independence (conditional or otherwise) is coming, the Albanians will be more amenable to granting the Kosovo Serbs concessions such as extensive decentralization.
As to whether moving Kosovo towards independence might provoke a nationalist radicalization of Serbia, one source in favor of moving faster rather than slower, simply sums up the Serbian dilemma as one of Belarus or Brussels. That is to say that Serbia has a choice between renewed isolation or continuing along its current path towards European integration.
It is clear to Serbian leaders that US policymakers have little sympathy for the Serbian efforts to keep Kosovo. However, what is unclear is that there appears to be no compelling reason (other than realpolitik,) as to why the US should favor independence for the Kosovo Albanians but oppose it for Iraqi Kurds, for instance.
Serbs have looked for support in meetings in Moscow and with the French. The Russians, while promising Serbian leaders that they would oppose anything Belgrade does not agree with, say in private talks with their western counterparts that they will not oppose conditional independence for Kosovo.
France then was perhaps the last best hope for the Serbian leadership, but here too, in a series of meetings this month, the Serbs have been disappointed. According to ISN Security Watch sources, the Serbs were told that France would support Serbian interests but that those interests had to be realistic. Holding on to Kosovo, in any form, was not considered realistic.
In public and private, the Serbs are now pursuing different lines of attack. Predrag Simic, Serbia and Montenegros ambassador to France and a member of the Serbian Kosovo negotiating team, evokes the situation leading up to the Second World War to argue against independence for Kosovo.
In 1938, he says, the Western powers, fearful of Hitler, accepted his demand to annex the Sudetenland, the predominantly German inhabited area of Czechoslovakia. But this appeasement brought neither peace nor security to Europe.
However, in private, according to western diplomatic sources, Serbian President Tadic is exploring a more flexible agenda. He wants any settlement to secure the future of the Kosovo Serbs and wants to try and steer proponents of conditional independence into making sure that if this cannot be avoided then, at least for the foreseeable future, Kosovo will have no army or highly symbolic seat at the UN.
But Western diplomats are fearful of what they call the disaster scenario, which foresees the talks failing to gain traction and hardliners on either side opting for violence.
The disaster scenario sees either Serbian or Albanian hardliners provoking an exodus from the Serbian enclaves in Kosovo. There are some100,000 Serbs in Kosovo, of which 30,000 live in the solidly Serbian north, while the rest are scattered in enclaves in central and southern Kosovo.
Albanian hardliners could decide to attack the enclaves and provoke the flight of the Serbs there, so as to prevent the areas from becoming autonomous regions that would remain, in their view, like Serbian claws in a future independent Kosovo.
By contrast Serbian hardliners could seek to provoke a Serbian exodus from the enclaves in a bid to solidify the Serbian population of the north. Their hope would be that many years down the line the de facto partition that already exists along the Ibar river would one day be recognized as the international frontier between the part of Kosovo that Serbia managed to save and the Albanian part, which would be independent.
It is precisely because they want to avert such a disaster scenario that the diplomats are now talking intensively to the Serbs and Albanians and among themselves.
Indeed, the message diplomats are now delivering to the Kosovo Albanians might come as a surprise to some. According to one source, the Albanians have been warned not to let hardliners provoke violence, but they have also been told that since conditional independence is the aim, The talks are not about the status of Kosovo. What they are really about then, is negotiating the status of the Serbs in Kosovo, the source said.
Tim Judah is the author of Kosovo: War and Revenge and The Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, both published by Yale University Press.
Source: ISN Security Watch
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Tuesday, December 27, 2005
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News Fixing
AN APPEAL TO REASON
R.K.Kent
G.M. Books of Los Angeles has just published and released Peter Brock’s powerful and devastating book which takes a very close and intimate look at the trees and the forest. Its title is Media Cleansing: Dirty Reporting – Journalism and Tragedy in Yugoslavia. While the major media in the U.S. and Western Europe continue to repeat endlessly that the “massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and BOYS by ‘the Serbs’ at Srebrenica” constitutes the only “case of ‘genocide’” in Europe since WWII, Brock shows that the claim is built like a house of cards. Poke SERIOUSLY at any angle and the claim collapses. The numbers are, to say the least, highly suspect. Actual findings, even years after l995, do not support them.
All kinds of researchers, in teams and individually, have arrived at a host of major doubts about this constantly repeated claim even before Brock’s new book. The context of the event alone, based on factual and verified information, exposes the claim as a methodical, structured and manipulative adjunct to an end or ends that have transcended an initial propaganda phase.
It managed to hide (a) that there was a civil war ongoing in Eastern Bosnia, involving the entire district of Srebrenica;
(b)that a SYSTEMATIC extermination and ethnic cleansing of near-by Serb villagers.---men, women and children-- had been going on even before Srebrenica became, by U.N. mandate, a “safety zone,” inhabited only by “unarmed civilians;”
(c)that this old silver-mining town was, in fact, used by well armed Bosnian Muslims, led by a warlord named Nasir Oric, to liquidate all the near-by Serbs by terror and mayhem, DOCUMENTED BY ORIC HIMSELF;
(d)that Oric and up to about 5,000 of his men, forewarned from Sarajevo, fled to the Bosnian Muslim stronghold of Tuzla, days before the Bosnian Serb Army took Srebrenica ;
(e)that the allegation of “genocide” with which General Ratko Mladic is being charged, could not stand in any real court of law because he put the Muslim elderly, women and children of Srebrenica into buses and sent them to Tuzla, in sharp contrast to the real GENOCIDE carried out by Oric;
(f)that while Oric has been running a disco for U.S. G.I.s in Tuzla, under no indictment by the Hague “Tribunal” until recently (for “mistreating prisoners”) Mladic is wanted by it as a major “war criminal” for having committed “genocide” at Srebrenica;.
(g)that the U.S.under a NATO cosmetic umbrella had the command and put into action its preponderant personnel and weapons systems to wage a 78-day purely punitive air war against a defenseless Serbia, without the Congressional declaration of war mandated by the Constitution and causing over 3,000 civilian death plus a damage to Serbia’s infrastructure, governmental and private properties estimated at the low of $20 and high of $40 billion;.
(h)that the punishment exceeded by far the non-existent SERIE of “sins” into which “the Serbs” are being marched, with sticks and carrots, to accept “collective guilt” because some ethnic Serbs committed egregious crimes in an egregious tripartite fratricide heavily assisted via the classic “”Balkanization” by foreign powers of our own moment in time, some with an attested pedigree .in repetitive invasions, civilized savageries and undergoing an acute historical amnesia.
Given all that plus the latest and decidedly irrefutable work by Brock it is difficult to understand the unending flow of political venom against present-day Serbia from our powerful Solons who have inducted the U.S. Congress into additional, this time economic, threat of punishments if Mladic and Karadzic are not delivered by Serbia to the Hague Tribunal, by 31st May 2006. Since the International “Community” has constructed an international boundary between Serbia and Bosnia, Belgrade cannot send troops into Bosnia to “capture” Mladic. If foreign requests were to be put to Syria to deliver Bin Laden to the U.S. one could only laugh at them. But, the analogy is symmetric. It is also doubtful that Karadzic is still in any ex-Yugoslav space. This turns the demand to Serbia into either a “fait accompli” to punish since it cannot be met or, else, borders on the irrational..
#######
The Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) Canada
News Fixing
By Dimitri Diamant
December 26, 2005
Many know that price fixing by the largest competitors in any industry is against the law. Stories have been told of top execs meeting in hotel rooms in order to fix such industry-wide prices, nothing written down, not even on slips of paper.
Lately, there seems to be an ominous trend towards something similar that could be described as News Fixing.
Proper journalistic standards require that the most authoritative sources that are available be referred to, and there should be confirmation; but are there an increasing number of circumstances where such proper journalistic standards are not being followed? This situation suffers from even more aggravation due to the well known concentration of major news source outlets into fewer and fewer hands, so that now, only a handful of media CEOs can make it clear to all journalists that the quality and reliability of news sources can be fudged.
One serious example of this practice would be an alleged massacre that all journalists dutifully always describe as the worst since World War II. This would be the alleged massacre that may have taken place in Srebrenica, Bosnia in July, 1995.
What are the sources for this story? When News Fixing takes place, we see that all journalists, for example, from television, whether presenting the news or conducting interviews with pre-selected guests, always rigidly preach from exactly the same hymn book, News Fixing, almost as though the top level CEO is always looking over their shoulder. Is this the free press?
Whenever any noted journalist is constrained to provide a source for the Srebrenica story, they always immediately refer to the International Committee of the Red Cross, the ICRC, Geneva, Switzerland, but without any further elaboration whatsoever. Is this their only source, as vaguely as it is presented, for a story as singularly important as this?
It is possible to delve into the statements made by the ICRC at that time with regard to Srebrenica. The most authoritative source would be an interview granted to Junge Welt (Young World), a Berlin newspaper, www.jungewelt.de . This newspaper was founded at the time of the DDR, continues to publish during the subsequent fifteen years of the Federal Republic, and their editorial policy would continue to be critical of the dissolution of Yugoslavia, a country that was founded in 1920 by Woodrow Wilson. This authoritative interview was granted to Junge Welt on August 30, 1995 by an official spokesperson from the ICRC headquarters, Geneva, Switzerland. A pertinent excerpt from this interview, granted by a Mr. Pierre Gaultier of the ICRC, would be as follows:
"All together we arrived at the number of approximately 10,000 [missing from Srebrenica]. But there may be some double counting... Before we have finished [weeding out the double counting] we cannot give any exact information. Our work is made even more complicated by the fact that the Bosnian government has informed us that several thousand refugees have broken through enemy lines and have been reintegrated into the Bosnian Muslim army. These persons are therefore not missing, but they cannot be removed from the lists of the missing (...) because we have not received their names."
Other sources, including the original ICTY indictment issued by Richard Goldstone, accurately describe these thousands of men as armed fighters, which is why Mr. Gaultier refers to them as "refugees" reintegrated into the "army". Some of these armed fighters, eighteen or nineteen years of age, are now described by all journalists as boys.
Thus, from this interview, we see that thousands did reach, on foot, essentially the town of Tuzla. The remaining thousands are said to be missing, not massacred. However, instead of relying on this authoritative source, all journalists, if pressed, will refer instead to an idle speculation by a Red Cross field worker, with the last name of Barry, who once said that "5,000 have simply disappeared". Now, one has to think cleverly for a moment to see that the word "disappeared" is not the same as "massacred", and the disappearances of thousands more or less took place in the direction of the town of Tuzla, and then on from there into the Muslim, Islamic army. Today, in 2005, ten years later, six thousand such bodies have yet to be found by zealous, well funded professional gravediggers hired by the ICTY, and that would be because missing, and even disappearing, is not the same as massacred.
Returning to the subject of news source reliability, why do all journalists, at the direction of their CEO's, always refer to Barry instead of Mr. Gaultier? The ruminations of a lone, low-level ICRC field worker are a far cry from an authoritative interview granted by an official spokesperson from the ICRC headquarters at Geneva, Switzerland.
What has been the position of the ICRC since then? No doubt, from national contributors, they have eventually felt the need to conform with the uniform Srebrenica story. However, on July 26, 2005, about a month before the Junge Welt interview, and some days after the alleged massacre of July, 1995, the ICRC issued the following news release, four paragraphs altogether, only the fourth and last paragraph presented in its entirety:
26-07-1995 ICRC News 30
Bosnia-Herzegovina: ICRC action in enclaves crisis
"More than 1,000 civilians - most of them women and children - have fled the fighting that is now raging in the north of the Bihac enclave to seek refuge with relatives in the town of Cazin. ...
"At the start of the crisis affecting the enclaves, the ICRC set up a special tracing service in Kladanj, on the Tuzla air base and in the various places where displaced persons have gathered, to try and locate people separated from their families or reported missing. ...
"Emergency teams of medical personnel and water supply experts, stationed by the ICRC at the Kladanj checkpoint and in the Tuzla area, stand ready to take action in the event of a fresh influx of displaced people from Zepa and its surroundings. ...
"Since the fall of the Srebrenica enclave, the ICRC has not succeeded in gaining access to individuals detained by the Bosnian Serb forces. It is relentlessly pursuing its approaches to the authorities in charge, which have publicly pledged, on several occasions, to respect the Geneva Conventions. So far they have not honoured their commitments, and the ICRC is deeply concerned about the plight of all those whom it is unable to protect."
The Srebrenica enclave is mentioned last, and there is no mention of a major massacre.
Concluding, price fixing is supposed to be against the law, and News Fixing ought to be seriously frowned upon, if only this were possible.
The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=1640 <http://www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=1640>
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Srebrenica 'killings' video
http://www.srpskapolitika.com/video/Srebrenica.html
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Tuesday, December 27, 2005
0 Comments
December 26, 2005
Serbs' general Mladic in talks about surrendering to war crimes tribunal
Serbs' general Mladic in talks about surrendering to war crimes tribunal
By Daniel Howden
Published: 26 December 2005
Ratko Mladic, the top war crimes fugitive from former Yugoslavia, is in talks with the security services about surrendering, a former Belgrade police chief says.
The wartime Bosnian Serb general was driving a hard bargain, insisting on financial security for his helpers and family and amnesty for those who sheltered him, Marko Nicovic told Mina, the Montenegrin news agency.
No one in the government was available for comment.
Belgrade is under intense pressure to hand over the remaining war crimes fugitives, including Mladic and his political leader Radovan Karadzic, or be halted on its path to join the European Union and Nato.
A peaceful surrender of Mladic is crucial for the government because if police or guards were hurt while arresting the former general it could affect the government's popularity, Mr Nicovic said.
"The topic of negotiations is certainly also what the general will say in The Hague," Nicovic said. Mladic knew all about the former Yugoslav army's involvement in the Balkan wars, he said.
The report comes days after Serbia's war crimes prosecutor, Vladimir Vukcevic, said the authorities were on to a number of people who were in contact with suspects indicted for war crimes and warned them they would be criminally prosecuted if they continued to help runaways in any way.
Karadzic and Mladic have been charged with genocide for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Muslims and the siege of Sarajevo, which claimed more than 10,000 lives during the 1992-95 war in Bosnia.
Serbia's Interior Minister, Dragan Jocic, repeated on Friday that arresting the remaining fugitives was the priority of the police, as well as the state and military intelligence services.
Six indicted UN war crimes suspects are still at large, all of them Serbians or Bosnian Serbs, including Karadzic and Mladic.
Serbia delivered 13 war crimes suspects to the tribunal this year, the last one in April. Western officials have told Serbia they wanted to see more action and not just promises.
Ratko Mladic, the top war crimes fugitive from former Yugoslavia, is in talks with the security services about surrendering, a former Belgrade police chief says.
The wartime Bosnian Serb general was driving a hard bargain, insisting on financial security for his helpers and family and amnesty for those who sheltered him, Marko Nicovic told Mina, the Montenegrin news agency.
No one in the government was available for comment.
Belgrade is under intense pressure to hand over the remaining war crimes fugitives, including Mladic and his political leader Radovan Karadzic, or be halted on its path to join the European Union and Nato.
A peaceful surrender of Mladic is crucial for the government because if police or guards were hurt while arresting the former general it could affect the government's popularity, Mr Nicovic said.
"The topic of negotiations is certainly also what the general will say in The Hague," Nicovic said. Mladic knew all about the former Yugoslav army's involvement in the Balkan wars, he said.
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article335068.ece <http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article335068.ece>
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Monday, December 26, 2005
0 Comments
Kosovo�s Moment of Truth
http://kosovareport.blogspot.com/2005/12/kosovos-moment-of-truth.html
Kosovo report
December 25, 2005
Kosovo’s Moment of Truth
By Tim Judah
(Survival vol. 47 no. 4 Winter 2005–06 pp. 73–84)
For the last six years Kosovo has been run as protectorate of the United Nations. That chapter of its history is now coming to an end. Very soon – probably at least by December 2005 – talks should begin on the future status of this territory bitterly disputed between Serbs and Albanians. It is widely expected that, against the wishes of the government in Belgrade, Kosovo will be granted some form of ‘conditional independence’. Exactly what this means remains to be seen.
The roots of the Kosovo conflict lie in the fact that more than 90% of its two million people are ethnic Albanians.1 That Kosovo, within anyone’s living memory, has always had a high preponderance of Albanians made it a particular political problem within Yugoslavia. Since 1999, however, the link with Serbia has, in all but de jure terms, been severed. The likelihood that it can be restored seems fanciful to say the least.
In 1989 Serbia, under Slobodan Milosevic, abolished Kosovo’s autonomy. During the major Yugoslav wars in Croatia and Bosnia, Kosovo stayed quiet. In 1998, however, a guerrilla war broke out. Events escalated until NATO’s 78-day bombing campaign over what was then still known as Yugoslavia. After a period of frantic diplomacy Milosevic surrendered, Serbia pulled its forces out of Kosovo and much of the local administration collapsed. They were replaced by the UN and a NATO-led force called KFOR. This arrangement was blessed by UN Security Council Resolution 1244, which provided the legal basis for the current situation in Kosovo. The resolution recognised the territorial integrity of what was then called the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and instructed what was to become the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) to promote, ‘pending a final settlement … substantial autonomy and self-government in Kosovo taking into full account … the Rambouillet Accords’.
The ill-fated Rambouillet meeting outside Paris preceded NATO’s bombardment of 1999. The Serbian side did not agree to the text it was asked to sign, one reason being that this document had foreseen that Kosovo’s future would, after three years, be decided ’on the basis of the will of the people’. The Serbs argued that since the Albanians were in favour of inde¬pendence, this phrase could only mean that they would lose their southern province, which they regard as the cradle of their civilisation. Thus, at its very heart, Resolution 1244 contained a contradiction – pitting the Kosovo majority’s right to self-determination against the equally valid legal prin¬ciple of the territorial integrity of states. Up to now it has been possible to avoid resolving this contradiction. Today, however, in the words of UNMIK head Søren Jessen-Petersen, Kosovo is facing ’its moment of truth’.
Since 1999 Kosovo has changed beyond recognition. The first and most obvious change is that there are no longer any Serbs in any of Kosovo’s major urban settlements, bar north Mitrovica, which is a divided city. The end of Serbian rule culminated in the flight and ethnic cleansing of large numbers of Serbs (and Roma), very few of whom have returned. Today one-third of the estimated 100,000 Serbs who remain in Kosovo live in Mitrovica and the overwhelmingly Serbian-inhabited north of Kosovo, which is contiguous with Serbia. The rest live in enclaves scattered throughout the rest of the province. Some of these need 24-hour military protection, as do Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries. Economically, Kosovo remains extremely weak and unemployment high, though reliable figures are hard to come by. Average wages are now around €200 a month and many families depend on remittances from the large Kosovo diaspora living and working abroad, especially in Western Europe.
Since 1999, the UN has set up a government structure in Kosovo. Powers are gradually being devolved to elected bodies and their ministries. Most Serbs boycott these institutions, either at the behest of the authorities in Belgrade or because they believe that on those occasions when they did participate, they were simply used in an Albanian effort to deceive the outside world into believing that a real multi-ethnic society was being built in Kosovo. The boycott is controversial, however. Some Serb leaders believe they have lost more than they have gained by staying outside of Kosovo’s structures.
In December 2003 UNMIK, together with the government of Kosovo, promulgated a list of so-called ‘Standards’ against which Kosovo’s progress could be measured, covering everything from rule of law to minority rights. At the same time the UN and other diplomats – adopting the slogan ‘Standards before Status’ – made clear that the issue of Kosovo’s final status was not on the agenda for the immediate future. In November 2003, however, the ‘Contact Group’ of main outside powers announced that if all went well, by the middle of 2005 a comprehensive review of standards would open the way for talks on the future status of the province. The irony is that talks may soon begin not because things went well, but because they went disastrously wrong. In March 2004 riots broke out in which some 4,000 Serbs and Roma were driven from their homes and 19 killed. It became starkly clear that the status quo was untenable and, if there was a new upsurge in violence, UNMIK might even collapse. Immediately after the riots UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called in a diplomat with considerable Balkan experience to lead an inquiry into what had caused them. The insights of this diplomat, Norwegian ambassador to NATO Kai Eide, helped convince Annan and many others that dangerous stagnation had set in; the only way to avoid a new conflagration was to give the impression that Kosovo was somehow moving forward and was not doomed to remain forever a forgotten, poverty-stricken corner of Europe.
Kosovo’s Albanian leaders either quickly understood, or were made to understand by diplomats and the foreign leaders that they met, that the riots had been disastrous for their international image. In December 2004, following elections, a new government came to power headed by former Kosovo Liberation Army commander Ramush Haradinaj. With much force and skill, Haradinaj moved to get Kosovo to live up to the Standards and even to reach out to the Serbs. Being a skilful premier was not enough, however, to stop allegations about his past catching up with him. In March 2005 he was indicted by the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in The Hague for war crimes dating back to 1998. With much dignity he resigned and departed but, contrary to expectations, Kosovo remained calm. In part this was because Albanian leaders understood that, if angry Kosovars began rampaging once again, the prospect of the comprehensive review would clearly diminish. This time they played their cards well and in June Kofi Annan invited Kai Eide back to begin the review.
Eide delivered his report on 4 October. Annan passed it on to the Security Council three days later, saying he accepted its recommendations. ‘The time has come’, said Annan, ’to move to the next phase of the political process.’ He added that he now intended to ’initiate preparations’ for the appointment of ‘a Special Envoy to lead the future status process.’ At the time of writing it was widely expected that he would choose Martti Ahtisaari, the former Finnish president who played a key role in securing Milosevic’s agreement to the terms which ended NATO’s bombardment of Yugoslavia in 1999.
Eide’s most important point was that talks on the future status of Kosovo should begin. He was not asked to say what he thought the final status of Kosovo should be and, significantly, he uses the words ‘future status’ rather than ‘final status’. This implies, and indeed Eide in places explicitly says, that international involvement in the contested province will continue for many years. ’The international community must do the utmost to ensure that whatever the status becomes it does not become a “failed†status’, he writes. ’Entering the future status process does not mean entering the last stage, but the next stage in the process.’
Progress in meeting the Standards as a whole has been uneven, Eide says: ’regrettably, little has been achieved to create a foundation for a multi-ethnic society’. Talks should nevertheless begin, he says, because the momentum and expectations have built up; ’having moved from stagnation to expecta¬tion, stagnation cannot be allowed to take hold’.
Some of Eide’s recommendations may be carried out whatever the result of status talks. The EU, he argues, should play a prominent role, especially in police and judicial matters. NATO, too, will have to stay, with at least some contribution from the US ‘in order to provide a visible expression of [America’s] continued engagement’. Certain elements of the international presence in Bosnia should be copied for Kosovo. These include the role of the ‘high representative’, currently Britain’s Paddy Ashdown, who exer¬cises huge powers and can fire any elected official in Bosnia. In Sarajevo, Ashdown holds a kind of hybrid position – both ‘high representative’ of the intervening powers and international community, vaguely defined, but also the EU’s special representative to Bosnia. Eide suggests a similar arrangement for the post-UNMIK era in Kosovo: a high represenative with extraordinary powers in the field of inter-ethnic relations, but who is also ‘firmly anchored’ in the EU.
Regarding Kosovo’s Serbian minority, Eide argues in favour of an ’ambi¬tious decentralisation plan‘ which would give Kosovo Serbs competences ’in areas such as police, justice, education, culture, media and the economy’. He also recommends that what he terms ’protective space’ should be created around Serbian Orthodox religious sites and institutions and that ways should be found to place them ‘under a form of international protection’. He adds: ‘it is important not only to protect individual sites as cultural and religious monuments, but also living communities’.
Albanian and Serb reactions to the Eide report were mixed. Albanian leaders reacted exuberantly to the fact that it had recommended that talks begin, but initially said little about the content of the report. Although giving praise where praise was due, the report was largely damning about corruption and the majority’s treatment of the Serb minority. Reactions in Serbia were on the whole positive, although not without criticisms. If the Standards had not been met, asked some, then why was Eide recommending that talks begin? To a great extent this was empty rhetoric, since by the time the report was issued Belgrade and Pristina were already readying themselves for talks, or at least were supposed to be.
As late as June 2005, on the Serb side a degree of denial still prevailed. Officials in Belgrade described Serbia’s policy as anticipating that Kosovo could have ‘more than autonomy, but less than independence’. What this meant was unclear. Some officials, such as Aleksandar Simic, an adviser to Premier Vojislav Kostunica, said that this meant that although being autonomous, the future Kosovo would send back deputies to the parliament in Belgrade and play a full role in running the whole country.13 Serbia has a population of 7.5 million, as against some 2m for Kosovo. The forcible reincorporation of such a large number of implacably hostile Albanians into the Serbian body politic seemed so far from reality or in the interests of a stable Serbia that one could only wonder: had Serbian strategists, unable in the past six years to visit Kosovo at will, simply lost any grasp of the reality there?
By autumn 2005, however, a more realistic concept of what was possible was emerging. Sanda Raskovic-Ivic, the head of the Serbian government’s Coordination Centre for Kosovo, was saying that she envisaged the province having full autonomy in the judicial, executive and legislative fields but that defence, foreign affairs and sovereignty would remain in the hands of Serbia. Dusan Batakovic, a historian and diplomat with a deep knowledge of Kosovo, and now advisor to Serbian President Boris Tadic, elaborated on this: he did not expect that the Albanians would want to return to parliament in Belgrade, though this option remained. He also said that, in preparing for talks, he was gaming various scenarios of what might happen.
It seems unlikely that the Serbian idea of ‘more than autonomy but less than independence’ will gain support amongst the big powers who will help arbitrate Kosovo’s fate. However, the new position, despite the occasional nationalistic outburst, is expressed in the mild language of compromise; the Serbs claim they are trying to find a happy median between the Albanian desire for self-rule and their desire to defend Serbia’s territorial integrity. In private, some senior Serbian leaders say they believe that ‘conditional independence’ for Kosovo is inevitable, but they will nonetheless put up a fierce rearguard struggle to prevent it. No Serbian leader wants to go down in history as the one who lost Kosovo, so if this rearguard action succeeds in staving off independence during their watch – which is conceivable, if unlikely – they will regard the talks as a success.
In Pristina, preparations for talks lag far behind those of Belgrade. Publicly, everyone from President Ibrahim Rugova to Premier Bajram Kosumi says that they are willing to talk with the Serbs about everything except independence, which is non-negotiable. Pristina’s position, in other words, is the mirror image of Belgrade’s. This position is understandable from their point of view, but what seems alarming is the lack of prepara¬tion for any succession issues, in light of the experience of the rest of the former Yugoslavia. Since 1999, for example, Serbia has not paid pensions to Albanian workers who had paid their contributions like other Yugoslav citizens. When Kosovo Albanian negotiators demand this money, the Serbs will retort that they have paid the interest on Kosovo’s interna¬tional debt for the last six years.
Indeed, diplomats in Pristina fret that the main Kosovan leaders are simply unprepared for talks and have been lulled, by talk of ‘conditional independence’, into a false sense of security. They do not seem to appreciate the threat, from their point of view, of the preparations being made by the Serbs.15 Indeed, Albanians recently were outraged when the International Telecommunications Union failed to quickly accede to a request from UNMIK to allot Kosovo an international direct-dialling code separate from Serbia’s. This was thanks to deft diplomacy on the part of Serbia, although the issue has not yet been finally settled.
Some skilled people will be at the coming talks, as part of a team already selected by Rugova. But the question is whether there are enough of them. The two best men on the team, not being major political figures, have the least clout. One is Blerim Shala, the editor of the daily Zeri, who has been asked to coordinate the team’s working groups; the other is Veton Surroi, the publisher and now leader of the small opposition party Ora. The rest of the team leave room for concern, quite apart from personal antipathies within the group. Nexhat Daci, the speaker of parliament, is widely regarded by diplomats who deal with Kosovo as an old-style, inflexible demagogue and by opposition leaders as unacceptably authoritarian. Next is Bajram Kosumi, the likeable but weak premier who succeeded Ramush Haradinaj. A whiff of scandal hangs over his premiership following allegations of corruption which appeared in the press. President Ibrahim Rugova is the best-known international symbol of Kosovo and his authority is unmatched. However, he has lung cancer and nobody knows how his health will hold up over the next few months. If he dies or is incapacitated soon this will provoke a major political upheaval as rival camps, which are already emerging, fight for the leadership of his Democratic League of Kosovo, the largest single party in Kosovo. His demise could also fatally weaken the Kosovo Albanian negoti¬ating team, as the others fight for a leadership role. Finally there is Hashim Thaci, the leader of the opposition Democratic Party of Kosovo, who used to be the political leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army. All these men, bar Daci, participated in the Rambouillet negotiations.
At the time of writing the Eide report was awaiting examination by the Security Council. According to diplomatic sources, once this stage has been passed and Ahtisaari or someone else has been selected to lead the talks, three deputies – from the US, EU and Russia -- will be chosen. A period of shuttle diplomacy will begin, perhaps in December, and at some point in early 2006 the team could retire to write a draft agreement. While working groups of Serbs and Albanians may go over certain individual questions, the main negotiators will not yet meet. Indeed, a proposal which had been floated behind the scenes in late summer for a formal opening of talks was quashed on the grounds that both sides would then be obliged to state positions publicly, which would later reduce their room for manoeuvre and flexibility. According to Veton Surroi, a realistic scenario foresees the Serb and Albanian main negotiating teams summoned to meet around May 2006 ‘in a castle in Austria’. In January Austria takes over the presidency of the EU.
What happens next is impossible to predict. One scenario outlined by a senior diplomatic source foresees that the Serbian team will fight hard to make sure that the agreement contains all possible safeguards for the Kosovo Serbs, acknowledging its own interests and in institutionalising international protection for Serbian Orthodox monasteries and churches.18 Having achieved this, the Serbs could then refuse to endorse the plan because it also points the way to Kosovo’s independence. Reluctantly, perhaps, the Albanians would then be compelled to accept more in terms of Serbian rights in Kosovo than they would have done otherwise, but under international pressure they might see such concessions as the price of independence.
At the same time Serbia’s leaders, none of whom want to take responsibility for losing Kosovo, could claim that, at this point and having fought as hard as possible, Kosovo was taken away from Serbia. Since Serbia did not give its consent, it will not recognise the emerging state and hence, as far as it is concerned, its status could (theoretically,) be reversed at a later date. If this is in fact how the situ¬ation develops, this Serb position will, sooner or later, have to be modified, if only as the price of EU membership – as recent quarrels over Turkey and the question of its recognition of Cyprus have demonstrated.
It is impossible to know in advance what the UN-led negotiating team might propose. But since the widespread assumption is that it will be some form of ‘conditional independence’, it is worth examining what this could mean. In broad terms it would certainly mean adopting some of the recom¬mendations discussed by Eide, but more specifically it may well be that the negotiators are guided by the blueprint of the International Commission on the Balkans. This independent group, which issued its report in April 2005, was chaired by former Italian Premier Giuliano Amato, and for the most part included people either from or with a deep knowledge and experience of the Balkans. They proposed that Kosovo should move towards independence in four stages. The first, ‘de facto separation of Kosovo from Serbia’, seems to describe the current situation. The second is called ‘independence without full sovereignty’, which is described as meaning that Kosovo is an independent entity but not yet a sovereign state and one in which the international community ‘reserves powers in the fields of human rights and minorities’ – a theme which was echoed by Eide. The third stage is called ‘guided sovereignty’, and would ‘coincide with Kosovo’s recognition as a candidate for EU membership’ and in which the international community would lose its reserve powers which would be replaced by ‘influence through the negotiation process’. The fourth and final stage is called ‘full and final sovereignty’, and is marked by the ‘absorption of Kosovo into the EU and its adoption of the shared sover¬eignty to which all members are subject’.
The Serbs hope that it will not come to this, and with skilful diplomacy they might stand a slim chance of at least making the technical status of Kosovo somewhat vaguer and more drawn out than that described above. For this they would probably need vigorous support from Russia, however, and according to diplomatic sources the Russians have already decided to betray the Serbs.20 For the benefit of the Serbian press, Russian diplomats say that they will not accept any solution for Kosovo which is not endorsed by Belgrade, but to Western diplomats they are saying precisely the oppo¬site. It has always been widely assumed that Russia, citing the precedent of Chechnya, would oppose Kosovo’s independence. Now, however, three things seem to have happened. In 2003 Russian troops were withdrawn from the Balkans. This has dramatically lowered Russia’s diplomatic leverage in the region. Secondly, Russian diplomats have concluded that there is no realistic way to reconnect Kosovo and its hostile population to Belgrade. Thirdly, they have concluded, and indeed told visiting foreign ministers, that as far as they are concerned the question of precedent could be used to their advantage. That is to say, they are noting that if Kosovo can secede from a sovereign state, then the same argument can potentially be applied in areas of the former Soviet Union where they have interests, specifically Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia and Trans-Dniester in Moldova.
China is unlikely to resist the independence of Kosovo if Russia does not, although this cannot be taken for granted. While China has never taken an active role or even interest in the Balkans, it did veto the continuation of a UN peacekeeping force in Macedonia in 1999. The Serbs might succeed in persuading China that independence for Kosovo would set a dangerous precedent for Taiwan or even Tibet. Whatever the repercussions for Tibet, Serbian politicians argue that if Kosovo is granted some form of independence this would destabilise the region in a way they could not control. They argue, for example, that if they cannot prevent the loss of Kosovo, Serbia might succumb to a renewed wave of angry nationalism and the Radical Party, led by Vojislav Seselj, now on trial in The Hague on war-crimes charges, might come to power. This is conceivable. The Radicals are already the largest party in parlia¬ment, although they are not in government. Outside of Serbia’s borders, the Serbian argument runs, Kosovo’s independence would embolden Albanian nationalists in Macedonia, thus perhaps prompting the disintegration of that state, with its large Albanian minority. The Serb part of Bosnia would again raise its wartime demand to secede and join Serbia.
Diplomats who follow the region are of course well acquainted with this line of argument, which played a decisive role in the EU’s decision in October to begin talks with Serbia on a Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA). Diplomats openly said that they decided not to let the outstanding issue of Ratko Mladic, the fugitive Bosnian Serb wartime commander wanted by the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal, stand in the way of the opening of negotiations. They are hoping that the good news of the conclusion of an agreement next year may help counteract the simultaneous bad news of the loss of Kosovo and likely secession of Montenegro from the loose federation which currently links it to Serbia.
Albanians counter these arguments about radicalisation in Serbia with the argument that, unless they get independence, it is certain that hardliners will again resort to arms; in the ensuing uprising KFOR and representa¬tives of the international community present in Kosovo will be targeted. UN vehicles are already targets of the occasional bomb.
In the shorter term there is another threat. Over the last few months, Albin Kurti, a 30-year-old former student leader and political prisoner, has been organising young people across Kosovo. Studying the techniques used by those who organised the overthrow of former regimes in Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine, Kurti wants to ready his people to come out in protest against the talks on Kosovo’s future status.
Kurti says that talks, by their very nature, aim at compromise and there can be no compromise on Kosovo’s independence. He fears that what he calls Kosovo’s ‘corrupt’ politicians might yet buckle on this if put under pres¬sure. He argues that talks with Serbia should only take place when Kosovo is already independent and thus can sit at the table as an equal. His slogan – ‘No negotiations! Self Determination!’ – already decorates walls across Kosovo but his strength is, as yet, untested. If, however, at some point in the near future or during talks one of the Albanian leaders, for example Hashim Thaci, decided to ‘play the Kurti card’ and swing his support behind him then the outcome would be not only unpredictable but in such an unstable and highly charged situation a fresh wave of anti-Serbian ethnic cleansing similar to that of March 2004 might break out.
Diplomats who deal with Kosovo all repeat the mantra that they have no preconceived agenda, beyond wanting to prohibit the physical partition of Kosovo or a possible future union with Albania, and that they want Serbs and Albanians to reach agreement on the territory’s future among themselves. All of them know, however, and admit in private, that the likelihood of this happening is nil. This is why ‘conditional independence’ is their aim. As to the fear of violence and instability, the most honest of them will admit that their fear of radicalisation in Serbia is simply less than their fear of an Albanian uprising. As to the question of the probable eventual recog¬nition of the new state, they argue that while it would be preferable for this to be done via the Security Council, especially in light of the fact that Kosovo is now under UN jurisdiction, if Russia or China prevented this another route would have to be found. After all, the UN Security Council played no role in the recognition of the other states which emerged from the former Yugoslavia. According to Richard Caplan, in the likely case of Serbia opposing Kosovo’s recognition, ‘there will be ample opportunities for lawyers on both sides to exploit what is a rather ambiguous case’. Realities on the ground will be decisive. ‘Here, I think, politics will trump law.’
posted by KosovoReport @ 4:44 PM 0 comments
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Monday, December 26, 2005
0 Comments
December 25, 2005
New book on US destruction of Yugoslavia
New book on US destruction of Yugoslavia
Workers World - Dec 29, 2005 issue
http://www.workers.org/2005/world/milosevic-1229/
New book gives different view of U.S. destruction of Yugoslavia
By Paddy Colligan
"The Defense Speaks for History and the Future: Opening defense
statement at The Hague by President of Yugoslavia Slobodan Milosevic
with an introduction by Ramsey Clark" published by the International
Action Center, 2005. 120 pp. $19.95
Does this sound like a book to miss? Well, even if you do buy it,
would you let it languish on your bookshelf, without reading it? If
you followed either course of action, you would miss out on a
remarkable document. In fact, you would be react ing precisely as U.S.
administrations from Bush Sr. to Clinton to Bush Shrub have planned.
The demonization of Presi dent Milosevic has been so thorough that
even those on the side of the working class may not expect him to be
the source of historical insight. This is a pity, as he has been a
major political figure for many years in Yugoslavia, a once
significant workers' state.
This remarkable little book gives a lucid overview of the complex
history of the Balkans from World War II to the present. It includes
an analysis of the roots of the tragic inter-ethnic violence and the
way inter-imperialist rivalries have played out in the (now) former
Yugoslavia. At times it is quite detailed and examines arguments
primarily familiar to those who have closely followed the region's
political twists and turns. More often it offers difficult to find and
valuable background information that makes the region comprehensible.
Often books that are translations are awkward and convoluted. Not this
book. It is an excellent and authoritative translation of Milosevic's
opening statement, which he delivered in Serbo-Croatian before the
fraudulent International Criminal Court for the former Yugo slavia.
The writing is clear and even elegant. It is an achievement that
Milosevic was able to produce this in his isolated incarceration in
Scheveningen Prison in The Hague.
Part of Milosevic's opening statement reads, "An untruthful, distorted
picture of what happened in the territory of the former Yugoslavia was
created in internation al public opinion over a long period of time
with clear political intentions. These charges represent an
unscrupulous mani pulation of lies, a perversion of law, a defeat of
morals, and an extreme distortion of history. Everything has been
turned upside down in order to shield from responsibility those who
are truly responsible for the tragic events, to render the wrong
judgments and to draw the wrong conclusions about the nature and
background of the war against Yugoslavia."
It is worth our time to read Milo sevic's book so we can more fully
understand what the U.S. has done to Yugo slavia--this scenario of
systematically demonizing, dismantling and destroying countries that
won't do Washington's bidding continues to be the modus operandi of
U.S. governments.
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: w...@workers.org
Subscribe wwnews-subscr...@workersworld.net
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Sunday, December 25, 2005
0 Comments
Balkan's North-South Independence Blues
Xinhua : Macedonian president says borders must be established before Kosovo status talks
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200512/24/eng20051224_230472.html
Commentary and Analysis:
* Kosovo: behind-the-scenes hard talk begins
(by Tim Judah)
http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?ID=14024
* Kosovo 'domino effect’ no longer genuine issue
(by Igor Jovanovic )
http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?id=14030
Hungarian tricolour adopted by ethnic Hungarians in Serbia
http://calibre.mworld.com/m/m.w?lp=GetStory&id=177416881
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Sunday, December 25, 2005
0 Comments
December 24, 2005
New book on US destruction of Yugoslavia
New book on US destruction of Yugoslavia
Workers World - Dec 29, 2005 issue
http://www.workers.org/2005/world/milosevic-1229/
New book gives different view of U.S. destruction of Yugoslavia
By Paddy Colligan
"The Defense Speaks for History and the Future: Opening defense
statement at The Hague by President of Yugoslavia Slobodan Milosevic
with an introduction by Ramsey Clark" published by the International
Action Center, 2005. 120 pp. $19.95
Does this sound like a book to miss? Well, even if you do buy it,
would you let it languish on your bookshelf, without reading it? If
you followed either course of action, you would miss out on a
remarkable document. In fact, you would be react ing precisely as U.S.
administrations from Bush Sr. to Clinton to Bush Shrub have planned.
The demonization of Presi dent Milosevic has been so thorough that
even those on the side of the working class may not expect him to be
the source of historical insight. This is a pity, as he has been a
major political figure for many years in Yugoslavia, a once
significant workers' state.
This remarkable little book gives a lucid overview of the complex
history of the Balkans from World War II to the present. It includes
an analysis of the roots of the tragic inter-ethnic violence and the
way inter-imperialist rivalries have played out in the (now) former
Yugoslavia. At times it is quite detailed and examines arguments
primarily familiar to those who have closely followed the region's
political twists and turns. More often it offers difficult to find and
valuable background information that makes the region comprehensible.
Often books that are translations are awkward and convoluted. Not this
book. It is an excellent and authoritative translation of Milosevic's
opening statement, which he delivered in Serbo-Croatian before the
fraudulent International Criminal Court for the former Yugo slavia.
The writing is clear and even elegant. It is an achievement that
Milosevic was able to produce this in his isolated incarceration in
Scheveningen Prison in The Hague.
Part of Milosevic's opening statement reads, "An untruthful, distorted
picture of what happened in the territory of the former Yugoslavia was
created in internation al public opinion over a long period of time
with clear political intentions. These charges represent an
unscrupulous mani pulation of lies, a perversion of law, a defeat of
morals, and an extreme distortion of history. Everything has been
turned upside down in order to shield from responsibility those who
are truly responsible for the tragic events, to render the wrong
judgments and to draw the wrong conclusions about the nature and
background of the war against Yugoslavia."
It is worth our time to read Milo sevic's book so we can more fully
understand what the U.S. has done to Yugo slavia--this scenario of
systematically demonizing, dismantling and destroying countries that
won't do Washington's bidding continues to be the modus operandi of
U.S. governments.
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: w...@workers.org
Subscribe wwnews-subscr...@workersworld.net
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Saturday, December 24, 2005
0 Comments
What remains to be done in the Balkans
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/index.php?id=P2582
Antiwar.com
Blog
December 23, 2005
UNMIK Boss Gives Up on Human Rights for Kosovo
Marek Antoni Nowicki, ombudsmen for Kosovo, is notable for being one of the very few international officials to have remained in the UN mission there from the very beginning. But now he's on the way out, reports ADN Kronos.
He's also remarkable for being one a very few officials who consistently has stood up for the rights of the people of Kosovo, reminding a disinterested outside world of the chronic problems faced by the province's minorities. And Nowicki has not been afraid to criticize the UN administration for its failings, either.
During his tenure, Nowicki was one of the few UNMIK officials to win the respect and trust of all of Kosovo's ethnic communities because he did a rare thing: he listened to their problems. He was impartial. He tried to help the voiceless common people when the state or other groups treated them unfairly. Most fundamentally, he was respected because he was an international, and not from one of the rival ethnic groups.
You can read his interview with Balkanalysis.com here.
This is why, without being self-aggrandizing, Nowicki wisely noted that "the situation is likely to get worse unless the international community appoints a new human rights watchdog," according to the ADN Kronos report.
However, UNMIK boss Soren Jessen-Petersen - an avowed friend of the murderous war criminal Ramush Haradinaj - has decided to replace Nowicki by granting "human rights supervision to local ethnic Albanian authorities, a move that Novicky considers premature."
At the same time Jessen-Petersen, who has "wide arbitrary powers in the province," has decided, contrary to the UN's mandate and Kosovo's legal status, that he will create "Kosovo justice and police ministries, under majority ethnic Albanians’ control."
Anyone who thinks that granting human rights protection responsibilities to a partisan ethnic group widely feared (for good reason) by another has got to be smoking something very potent indeed.
And anyone who thinks that the same people who helped mastermind the March 2004 anti-Serb pograms can be trusted to exercise their duties responsibly and fairly is either deluded or a delighted supporter of full ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.
To sum up, it is all too clear that the UNMIK is looking to save its own hide from local Albanians who perceive it as an obstacle to independence. By placing the courts, the cops and the human rights observers in the latter's hands, they are paving the way for a fait accompli- the removal of all minorities from Kosovo, which will render moot the idea of a "negotiated solution," leaving Belgrade with nothing to protect save a heritage without a remaining population. And the UNMIK staff is making sure there will be no one left to call them on it, while they can move on to another high-paying job with a similar institutional protection from accountability somewhere else in the world. These people are truly reprehensible.
######
Goldberg: US will keep supporting Kosovo (dailies)
All daily newspapers cover the meeting that US Head of Office Philip Goldberg had yesterday with Assembly Speaker Nexhat Daci. Zëri quotes Goldberg on the front page as saying that the US will be with Kosovo during the process of status resolution. On the other hand, Koha Ditore reports that Goldberg is disappointed over the non-inclusion of Kosovo Serb representatives in the Assembly. “One of my greatest disappointments ever since I came here is that the majority of Serb representatives have not attended the sessions of the Assembly,” he said.
Koha Ditore also quotes Goldberg as saying that in 2005, the Assembly has played a strong and constructive role in passing laws, which was necessary to enable work in standards implementation.
In Epoka e Re Goldberg is quoted as saying that 2005 is a historical year for Kosovo.
Assembly Speaker Daci said that the most essential thing is that Kosovo is on the right path toward status resolution and has the needed international support. ######
http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2005/12/22/opinion/edkalin.php
International Herald Tribune
What remains to be done in the Balkans
Walter Kälin THURSDAY, DECEMBER 22, 2005
GENEVA GENEVA Ten years after the Dayton accord brought an end to the worst fighting Western Europe had witnessed since the World War II, there is much to celebrate. Peace has come to the Balkans, and the insidious results of ethnic cleansing have largely been reversed. Two and a half million refugees and internally displaced persons have returned to their homes, at least half to areas where they are an ethnic minority.
Nevertheless, the scars of war are far from healed. Much remains to be done before the Dayton accords can truly be considered a success. As the UN secretary general's representative on the human rights of internally displaced persons, I recently undertook a mission to the region. I left with mixed feelings.
In Croatia, many houses and apartments have been returned to their original owners. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, economic and political ties have been growing among Muslim, Croat and Serb communities, and almost all property has been restored to its rightful owners. Serbia and Montenegro have made huge efforts to accommodate the remaining 500,000 refugees and almost 250,000 displaced persons, straining their already faltering economies.
But some of the emotional scars I witnessed may be too deep to heal.
I met survivors of the Srebrenica massacre. They had returned to the villages close by, but many looked far older than their years, and without hope or courage for their future.
In Northern Mitrovica, in Kosovo, I visited Roma camps that had been hastily erected in areas that proved to be poisoned by lead. Three years after the first tests, the inhabitants had still not been evacuated, although the environment constitutes a serious threat to their health and to the lives of their children.
People from different ethnic groups still discriminate against each other. Throughout the Balkans, returnees can still expect prolonged and unjustifiable delays in having their houses connected to water and electricity. They are discriminated against when applying for jobs and are denied access to pension funds and the state health system.
Too little is done so that returnees' children can go to a school in their own language. In many places the police are perceived as biased. National and religious symbols are not used to create unity but to feed divisions and insecurity among minorities. And the overburdened and cumbersome judiciary systems are not able to enforce a strong rule of law.
The failure, moreover, to bring to justice thousands of people suspected of war crimes, in particular Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, who helped orchestrate ethnically motivated mass expulsions, continues to cast a pall over the progress made and has done nothing to reduce fears and insecurity.
There are still almost 500,000 internally displaced persons as a result of the Balkan wars. Thousands live miserably in ramshackle collective centers or "informal settlements" that were never intended to become permanent housing. Many of them have no place to go and are incapable of living on their own.
The international community has wound down its financial and political support for the region. There are no funds left to rehabilitate living conditions and find solutions for the most vulnerable among the refugees and internally displaced. There are no means to give 5,000 survivors the psycho-social care that would make their lives less of a living hell.
Several steps are needed urgently in the Balkans. First, there must be an immediate, concerted effort to find solutions for the most vulnerable people still in collective shelters - particularly the Roma in Northern Mitrovica.
Second, help must be extended to those who prefer to integrate locally, so that they have access to jobs and public services.
Third, efforts must be made to better inform displaced persons and minorities about their rights, to simplify administrative rules so they can claim their entitlements, and to halt discriminatory practices against them.
Fourth, donor governments and the World Bank should be encouraged to invest in rebuilding schools, health facilities, housing and other infrastructure, so that displaced persons and returnees begin to lead normal lives.
Finally, all crimes and acts of violence against the displaced and those returning must be investigated and prosecuted. Only then will the promise of Dayton be fully realized.
(Walter Kälin is the representative of the UN secretary general on the human rights of internally displaced persons)
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Saturday, December 24, 2005
0 Comments
December 11, 2005
Why NATO bombed Serb TV
Why NATO bombed Serb TV
The Spectator (UK)
December 06, 2005
Did George W. Bush make a tasteless gag about bombing al-Jazeera? Did Tony Blair dutifully laugh? How could two leaders of the free world think it appropriate to jest about whacking pesky Arab journos while a nation Iraq burned under their watch? These are the questions being asked by British journalists who are shocked by rumours of a conversation that allegedly took place between Bush and Blair in April last year. I have a different question: why do these journalists seem more outraged by this President's alleged scurrilous aside about bombing a TV station than they were by an earlier president's actual bombing of a TV station?
Six years ago President Bill Clinton sent cruise missiles to destroy a TV studio and knock off some media workers, and it was no joke. At 2.20 a. m. on 23 April 1999, at the height of the Kosovo campaign, the Nato alliance led by Clinton and Blair destroyed the headquarters of Radio Television Serbia (RTS) in central Belgrade. The missiles destroyed the entrance and left at least one studio in ruins. More than 120 people were working in the building at the time; 16 were killed and another 16 were injured all of them civilian workers, mostly technicians and support staff.
The BBC's John Simpson described seeing 'the body of a make-up artist lying in a dressing room'. That was 27-year-old Yelitsa Munitlak, burned to death in the small room where she applied make-up to the station's newsreaders. She was so badly disfigured that her body could be identified only by the rings she was wearing. One of the RTS technical team, trapped between two collapsed concrete blocks, had to have both his legs amputated at the scene. He died later in hospital.
Today journalists wonder whether Blair laughed at Bush's joke about al-Jazeera, or perhaps even talked the President out of a serious 'plot' to bomb the Arab channel.
Never mind all that. Here is what Blair said after the targeted killing of media workers in Yugoslavia: the media 'is the apparatus that keeps Slobodan Milosevic in power and we are entirely justified as Nato allies in damaging and taking on those targets'.
He was backed by Clare Short, who today poses as an anti-war warrior but who six years ago was Blair's cheerleader-in-chief for bombing Yugoslavia. After the attack on RTS she said, 'The propaganda machine is prolonging the war and it's a legitimate target.' Tell that to the family of Yelitsa Munitlak.
To add insult to grotesque injuries, Nato officials later tried to deny that they had purposefully targeted a studio packed with civilian workers, instead claiming they had meant to bomb the TV transmitter next door. Yet according to the final report of the UN committee to review the Nato bombing campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, 'Nato intentionally bombed the central studio of the RTS broadcasting corporation.' And as Amnesty International pointed out, 'intentionally directing attacks against civilian objects is a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court'.
How did British journalists react to this 'war crime'? Not very honourably; certainly with far less rage than they have directed against Bush and Blair for their alleged chat about al-Jazeera. Some in the media who supported the Kosovo campaign kept shtoom about the attack. The broadcasting union Bectu did not even comment on it.
There was almost a celebratory tone in the Guardian's initial coverage of the bombing of RTS. In its first report on the attack (written by Martin Kettle and Maggie O'Kane, both of whom supported 'punishing' the Serbs) the paper repeated Nato's justifications for the attack without question: 'Nato targeted the heart of . . . Milosevic's power base early today by bombing the headquarters of Serbian state television, taking it off the air in the middle of a news bulletin.' It failed to say how camera operators, soundmen and makeup girls were central to Milosevic's 'power base'. Some journalists criticised the bombing of RTS not because it was criminal but because it provided a 'gift to Nato's critics'; in short, it made their 'good war' look bad.
There were honourable exceptions to all this. The National Union of Journalists, for example, vigorously opposed the attack. But too many journalists tried to squeeze this bombing of media workers into their view of the Kosovo campaign as a 'humanitarian' war. Yet the idea that you can burn to death a make-up girl in the name of 'humanitarianism'
is surely as perverse if not more so than the thought of Bush and Blair talking about bringing freedom to Iraq (which presumably includes freedom of speech) while talking about blowing up journalists.
By: Brendan O'Neill
http://www.spectator.co.uk/article_archive.php?id=7013&issue=2005-12-03
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Sunday, December 11, 2005
0 Comments
December 07, 2005
Interview with Serbian President Boris Tadic
NIN, 01/12/2005
By Dragan Bujosevic
Interview w/Serbian President
Boris Tadic
“Elections – Now!”
After the two new disputable mandates “reallocated” within G17 Plus, do you regret that you did not first insist on elections and then on resolving the Kosovo problem?
“I am the President of Serbia and the state issues are for me older than those with party dimensions. But, I consider that it is very important that we have political stability for the extremely difficult Kosovo talks, and it would be good to have a government which enjoys support from the majority of the Serbian citizens.”
This Government is now supported by only 15% of the voters.
“The legitimacy of the Government obtained at the 2003 elections is shaken. As a reminder, the key objection that this Government had in regard to the previous one was that a government supported by 25% of the voters had no legitimacy.”
You think that elections should be organized first, and then we should embark on the story about Kosovo’s future?
“I think that would be the best and most useful solution, since the negotiating team should have full power, and full legitimacy. I am certain, on the other hand, that the current Parliament’s composition does not correspond to the mood of the electorate. However, there is a legal way of slating elections, and therefore, the ruling coalition undertakes responsibility for its alarmingly insufficient legitimacy among the people… The current Government stays in power at any cost by, in my opinion, violating the law. But, we are expecting a court decision.”
Although you have told the Blic daily that the elections are not necessary as long as the Kosovo talks are in progress, the DS deputy leader Gavrilovic said a couple of days earlier: elections first.
“Let me clarify that. At the final stage of the Kosovo talks, elections would not be useful. In am certain that for conducting the coming Kosovo talks with full strength and full legitimacy, the elections would be most efficient just at this moment. However, it is not up to me, but the Government and the Parliament, to decide on that.”
Don’t you think that the electorate is totally confused when you first say that the Government snatches mandates, and they you form a negotiating team with it? If they are thieves, then they are thieves?
“The Constitution does not oblige me only to send messages to my voters and those who support my politics, it also obligates me to send clear messages to all the Serbian citizens. I am obliged to cooperate both with the Government and the Parliament, to a smaller extent… However, as the Serbian President, I am also obliged to point at all the violations of the Constitution and law, while fighting, within the law and only with political means, and not by legal or physical violence. I am convinced that this Parliament is rump, and has a big problem regarding its own legitimacy. The Serbian President was elected by the direct will of the citizens, while all the other representatives of the citizens were elected indirectly on party tickets. The citizens do not know who their representatives in the Parliament are, and the situation in Serbia would be far more stable if the MPs were elected directly by the citizens, if we had a majority electoral system, and if the citizens had a recall mechanism for these MPs, like they have for the President of the State.”
Have you proposed to PM Kostunica to call for elections?
“I proposed that both to him and other leaders of the ruling coalition, with one firm stance – that after the early elections, a government of the democratic forces and with full legitimacy should be formed. The response was that it would not be useful at the moment.”
The minority Government is now going to make such important decisions on Serbia’s future?
“I do not understand such political logics. It may lead to temporary and illusive peace, but essentially leads to the disintegration of political processes. The Government resorts to two arguments to defend itself from early elections. One is that early elections would bring the Radicals to power, and the other is that elections are not necessary, considering that the Kosovo talks are already on the agenda. Thus, the inability of the ruling coalition regarding the fight against the radicalization of Serbia is taken as an argument in the international public against the elections, while on the other hand, the Kosovo talks are used as an explanation why the Government should remain until the end of its mandate. Both arguments are, however, incorrect.”
By entering the negotiating team, you pardoned the Government and enabled it to rule at least for another year?
“No. By entering the negotiating team, I fulfil my constitutional obligation to preserve the sovereignty and territorial integrity of this country. With the Kosovo talks, they are more jeopardized than in any other moment over the past 15 years.”
Did the Democratic Party (DS) accept the Parliament’s Resolution by joining the negotiating team, although it abstained from voting for it?
“No. The Resolution is not a negotiating platform. It is the Parliament’s stance on Kosovo and Metohija (KiM), and it says what Serbia does not want an imposed solution, and that it wants a compromise within the constitutional and legal solutions that were defined by Slobodan Milosevic. The negotiating platform cannot include the latter and that is why the DS and I were against this stance, which has no ground either in the political reality or in the stances of the UN Security Council and the Contact Group, which will make a solution at the end of the talks.”
At the beginning of the talks, you say that the Resolution cannot be applied?
“The Serbian Government and the MPs who voted for it know that. The Resolution was adopted as an explanation or justification before their voters, and less as an expression of a real approach in resolving the KiM problem. My approach is different. I think that Serbia has no reason to deceive itself. The institutions like the Parliament or Government are even forbidden to deceive the citizens over what we will face in KiM. I can guarantee that a solution to KiM will not be found within the constitutional-legal principles set by Milosevic. This can be confirmed by the documents of the UN Security Council, which is in charge of the administration in the Province, as well as by the Contact Group’s documents, and others.”
It is known that the even the State Union is formed against this Constitution, so why are you bothered by the detail of its mentioning in the Resolution?
“It is not a detail, but an essential problem which is decisive for the KiM talks. A difficult discussion is being led in the international community over which principle it will cling to. One principle is that there is no return to the time of before 1999, and the second is that KiM will not be any more part of Serbia. If the international community opts for the first principle, we have some room for negotiations. If the second prevails, then the task of the negotiating team is extremely hard. Therefore, I am saying: there is no return to the situation of before 1999, but we offer a solution to a sustainable, intact KiM with the sovereignty of our country, through creating two entities which will enable coexistence. First of all, I am interested in the survival of the Serbs with the guarantee for institutional connections between the Serb entity and the central institutions in Belgrade. Then come the relations with the ethnic Albanian community, which will be the subject of the forthcoming talks.”
But, The Contact Group has another stance as well – that Kosovo’s borders are unbreakable. Thus, it is independent. EU Commissioner Rehn speaks today with SRSG Jessen-Petersen about Kosovo’s entry into the EU; Kosovo without Serbia?
“There are currently four policies for KiM in Serbia. The first says – we can imagine it as independent. The Second says, without false patriotic emotions, that we would rather lose our lives than Kosovo, while we actually only think of the political ratings at the next elections. The third policy says: we do not accept imposed solutions, either conditional or unconditional independence, but it does not say what we want, and it directly leads to an imposed solution. The fourth policy, which is my policy, says what Serbia wants in KiM. That is the only way to prevent imposed solutions. If we only say what we do not want, we increase the possibility for imposed solutions. We should convince the Contact Group members that Serbia’s long-term interest is in accordance with the interests of the international community and all the Contact Group members. The international community has three principles: there is no return to the situation of before 1999, there is no border change of KiM, and there is no annexation of KiM to any country. In all my international contacts, I keep saying that the principle of inviolability of KiM’s borders is acceptable if the principle of inviolability of Serbia’s and the SCG borders is also applicable. If not, then we have a violation of the basic principles guaranteed by international agreements, which would introduce a legal-political precedent, dangerous not only for Serbia but also for many other countries in the region and the world.”
It has been claimed that you harmonized the Resolution on Kosovo with Kostunica’s office three weeks before its adoption in the Parliament.
“It is true that the two offices adjusted the PM’s speech at the UN SC, and I am behind what Kostunica said there. I did receive the draft resolution from the Premier, and said that I had some objections. During my visit to Israel, the Government consulted some other parties, and while I was in Russia, the Government stated that the Socialists and the Radicals had agreed with the draft which I had not accepted. Upon my return from Moscow, I presented my objections directly to D/PM Labus. After that, the Government held consultations on the document and did not accept my suggestions. I want to stress again that the limitation to Milosevic’s time Constitution is out of reality, and the talks are led to change this constitutional-legal framework for KiM, and every citizen and politician is aware of that. There is not reason to deceive ourselves about that. I do not want to give my vote to some political unreality. If this unrealistic clause had been excluded, the DS would have supported the Resolution, but the DS demonstrates responsibility for what will happen in a couple of months.”
Being dissatisfied with the accord between Kostunica and [SRS deputy leader] Nikolic, you announced your plan on two entity in Moscow as a tit-for-tat?
“Not at all. Before my departure for Moscow, I presented my plan to Kostunica, like I had told him earlier what our negotiating goal should be.”
What was Kostunica’s response?
“That it is in line with the policy conducted so far, and that he will analyse all the consequences of such a negotiating team. Finally, the Government agreed with my proposal.”
It has been speculated in the media that you received an unfavourable scenario from the US, and in accordance with it, you changed your stance, i.e., gave up the Resolution and offered two entities.
“If someone knows about some US scenario, I am requesting him to immediately send it to me. I have not received such a scenario. That the US is in favour of a quick outcome is not a news, at least not in the past ten months. But, Washington officially does not plead for any solution. It is a different issue whether some influential circles in America favour an independent Kosovo. Yes, they do, and not only in the US, but also in most Contact Group member countries, and our public should now that, and we should fight against that with legal, political and diplomatic arguments.”
Was [former CCK head] Nebojsa Covic mentioned as a possible negotiating team member?
“Covic constantly talked about KiM with Kostunica and me, but after a conflict with the Government, he was eliminated. I still think that his place is in the negotiating team.”
One of the team members is Professor Fleiner, whose Government (Switzerland) was the only one to support Kosovo independence. Is that a problem?
“He is a man whose stances are close to the interests of Serbia. I do not know whether the Institute for Federalism, at which he works, is on the Swiss Government’s budget. It would be good to check that.”
Does Slobodan Samardzic [Kostunica’s advisor and negotiating team member] receive a scholarship from the Swiss Government?
“I do not know, and it should be checked. It would not be good if it was so. We must protect the interests of the State and every member of the negotiating team. However, prior to that, I would not question the loyalty to the State of any of its citizen, including Slobodan Samardzic.”
There is a noticeable difference between your plan and the one adopted in the Parliament last March. Your plan does not mention the resettlement of people, there is no territorial continuity, and the entity you mention is rather a political term?
“That is a more realistic solution. At the time when [former Serbian PM] Zoran Djindjic drafted a plan for KiM, and what I am now talking about is essentially that plan, the return of the army and police to the Serb entity was anticipated. Unfortunately, although it is stipulated in UN SC resolution # 1244, it is no longer a reality.”
Can your plan be applied as long as the one adopted by the Parliament exists?
“The Parliament is not participating in the negotiations.”
That is true, but its plan is obliging until it has been annulled?
“My plan is the continuation of what is essential; it is only adjusted to a real situation. After all, that is demanded from politicians who hold specific posts. Today in the world, the disputable issues are not negotiated by nations and parliaments, but by individuals elected by the citizens to negotiate. It is now important that both the Premier and President demonstrate capability of taking responsibility and making strong moves in accordance with our interests. The Premier and President are not supposed to be a mere transmission of the Parliament. The Premier is responsible to the Parliament, and the President, to the people. Our job is to impose sustainable solutions. I am ready for such moves, and I am responsible before the people. I would like to reiterate that I am not responsible for the Parliament’s political moves, although I respect and accept what it passes.”
The Resolution, however, stipulates something else: “Government, you will negotiate, but the decision belongs to the Parliament?”
“That is an expression of politics which does not include individual responsibility, and that is a way of conducting politics that smells of the old time. This is how Milosevic ruled, and he always tried to have the citizens justifying his moves through referenda or the will of the Parliament. I respect the Parliament, but it must also accept the authority of the executive power and the Serbian President. A parliament that wants to be an executive power as well, and not only the legislative power, is a parliament which does not understand its place in a democratic state.”
Does the Resolution include a possibility for the PM, if the talks go wrong, to withdraw from the whole process, saying that he has no mandate, and ask for early elections at which KiM would be the only question?
“No responsible politician would do that. There is nothing easier for a politician than saying: I give up. I asked Tomislav Nikolic what he would do if the country faced an ultimatum regarding cooperation with The Hague tribunal. He said he would resign. I do not accept such political philosophy. If you are elected for some work, you should take the responsibility in the most difficult conditions too… When I was elected the President, I knew that I was assuming responsibility for the most difficult solutions, and I am aware of all the risks… “
Aren’t you involved in deceiving the public as well when you say that you will not accept an imposed solution, since, unfortunately, Serbia may be imposed a solution, whether it accepts it or not?
“When I say that I will not accept an imposed solution, I express my political principle that I want to fully fight against any imposed solution. I do that with proposals which are possible and feasible. If I said that I would not accept an imposed solution without saying what I want, then I would seek an alibi for my next political post and would not really fight against an imposed solution. There is no dilemma: any, even the most unfavourable solution, must be carefully analyzed, but we must fight with all political means to defend our legitimate state and national interests.”
NIN
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Wednesday, December 07, 2005
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Kosovo: Virtual Rebels
TRANSITIONS ONLINE:
Kosovo: Virtual Rebels
by Alma Lama
5 December 2005
TOL
A new armed group threatens violence if Kosovo does not become independent – but are they for real?
PRISTINA, Kosovo | N.K. is a 32-year-old from Decani in western Kosovo who describes himself as being “close†to the masked gunmen of the self-styled Kosovo Independence Army, or UPK. He doesn’t want to see his full name in print.
Pristina media have widely reported that black-clad and masked UPK fighters appeared on some roads in the Peja region, which includes Decani, erecting roadblocks to search cars and check passengers.
As the international community gears to start direct talks between Pristina and Belgrade on the status of the province, the security situation for Kosovo’s minorities remains volatile. Just this past weekend, a bus on its way from southern Kosovo to Belgrade was attacked by someone with a grenade launcher. Luckily, the grenades pierced the bus but did not explode. The incident prompted Kosovo’s UN administration (UNMIK) to raise security measures once again.
OUR FRIENDS FROM THE UPK
N.K., himself a former member of the Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK), smiles and says the UPK “are our friends.†He says they are former UCK members who now feel abandoned by the politicians, including former UCK leaders, amid a very difficult economic situation.
But is the UPK for real? It emerges rather like a ghost from the tales of people with “contacts†to the rebels and investigations by the local police and the NATO-led peacekeepers (KFOR).
Even N.K. thinks the Pristina media are exaggerating a bit when covering his buddies of the UPK. “Decani is a small town, less than five thousand inhabitants, and we know each other very well,†he says, implying that the locals would have a pretty good idea of who’s a member and who’s not.
N.K is unable to say how many people might belong to the UPK, but there seem to be a sufficient number of them to have disturbed the peacekeeping forces in Kosovo. After international forces started overflights with helicopters and unmanned aircraft in the region around Decani and Peja, where some of the fiercest fighting against Serbian forces took place in 1998-1999, the gunmen disappeared from the streets and have since switched to communications through the Internet.
But just because they’ve gone virtual hasn’t made them any less threatening.
On 9 November, the UPK threatened the international community with “events a hundred times more dramatic than those of last March [2004],†when thousands of Serbian houses and historical and religious monuments were destroyed by mobs.
In one of their media statements, the UPK called on the Kosovo assembly to declare independence, or else deputies would have “a hard time in future days.â€
On 16 November, they threatened to launch a military operation on Pristina if independence was not declared immediately. They then seemed to have accepted a resolution passed by the Kosovo parliament the next day which, although it did not declare independence, made clear that independence was the only acceptable outcome of status talks.
The UPK has used similar, though rather less subtle, language with people they stopped on the road.
“We’ll kill all the traitors of the nation and the members of the Kosovo negotiation team if they won’t behave in the right way,†two people wearing military-style uniforms with UPK insignia and black facemasks told D.S., a man from the village of Rogova in Rahovec municipality. The "team" is the Kosovo delegation to the talks on the province’s final status that are about to get under way.
Former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, who is the UN's envoy to the status talks, said last week he hoped direct negotiations can begin early in the New Year.
D.S. said the gunmen stopped him and his nephew in Rogova and forced them to show identity papers. He too doesn’t want his name used because he’s afraid for his safety. “I don’t want any problem with them,†he said.
ONLINE ONLY?
Another source interviewed by TOL had asked a UPK gunman for an interview but was told that the group weren’t interested in giving statements other than those they disseminated on the Internet.
There are good reasons to suspect that the UPK is more of a virtual group than a military formation.
Two years ago, another force called the Albanian National Army also sent threatening communications to politicians via the Internet. But after a short burst of activity the organization seems to have died out.
According to another former UCK rebel from Decani, what is happening in this area is a form of blackmail. “It’s a hidden political issue, nothing else,†he said. “Everything depends on the status of Kosovo; if independence will not be given, the problem [of armed bands] will spread and become very serious,†he said, pointing to what he described as an increasing number of extremists in Kosovo.
KFOR confirmed that armed individuals had been spotted in the Peja region but excluded the possibility they might be part of an organized military group.
The Belgrade daily Vecernje Novosti on 27 October accused Ramush Haradinaj, the former UCK commander of the region and a former Kosovo prime minister currently facing charges at the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, of being behind the mysterious paramilitary UPK, calling him "the sponsor and main ideologue of this terrorist army."
Haradinaj stands accused of crimes against Serbian civilians during the ethnic Albanian rebellion against Belgrade’s rule in 1998-1999. He was released by the ICTY last June, pending trial.
But according to a TOL source in Decani, the armed men in the area are very angry at Haradinaj because he failed to help them after the war.
The UPK appeared on the scene just a few days after an article in the Kosovo daily Koha ditore, in which Mikan Velinovic, a former wrestler and writer of aphorisms, claimed to be the commander of the Serbian Antiterrorist Liberation Movement, or SOAP, a group he claimed had 7,500 members that were unarmed but ready to act if necessary. “Every Serb is a member of this organization, because we are threatened by terrorists,†the paper quoted Velinovic as saying.
Fears are flying high that the opening of status talks will provide incentives for extremists on both sides to make trouble.
Ramadan Qehaja, a security adviser to Prime Minister Bajram Kosumi, is concerned that the situation might be exacerbated by foreign secret services present in Kosovo, especially from Serbia. “Elements of the Serbian Interior Ministry are active in Kosovo, especially in the northern part,†he told TOL, saying that the fact that Kosovo did not have a regular secret service made it very difficult to monitor the presence of other secret services.
Political analyst Shkelzen Maliqi also told TOL that the threat of extremism was a convenient pretext that the sides could use to their advantage, but that the threat by these groups was real. “I fear the organized groups of Serbs and Albanians that are out of control. Serbs especially, because they have much more motivation and discontent. But Albanians at the same time may be determined to get their revenge if there’s a domino effect.â€
For UNMIK spokesman Neeraj Singh, messages, real or fake, like that the UPK delivered to Kosovo's status negotiators are to be expected given what’s at stake in the status talks.
“Despite the comments in the media, the threats, electronic messages, and other forms of pressure, the status of Kosovo will not be decided on the street or through the Internet, neither from Pristina nor from Belgrade,†Singh told a press conference in remarks that were echoed by KFOR commander Giuseppe Valotto.
Alma Lama is a journalist for the public Radio Television of Kosovo and a correspondent for Osservatorio sui Balcani.
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Wednesday, December 07, 2005
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December 04, 2005
The status of Kosovo
| | 
| The status of Kosovo | International Herald Tribune
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2005
| Hashim Thaci argues that Albanians in Kosovo are entitled to independence from Serbia ("My people deserve their independence," Views, Nov. 26). Thaci's main argument for independence is that his Albanian people have suffered so much. But while Slobodan Milosevic's policies were indeed ruthless and indefensible, Thaci's historical account lacks vital elements of Albanian nationalism and separatism, including the fact that Serbs and other minorities in Kosovo have suffered over the last six years. Thaci claims that minorities will be protected in an independent Kosovo. But the percentage of Serbs left in Kosovo has dropped dramatically in recent decades - including the nearly 200,000 Serbs who left the province in the wake of the 1999 war. Thaci was a leading politician at the time. In contrast, Serbia has remained multi-ethnic. The "old nationalism" that Thaci blames on the Belgrade of today is not exactly eradicated in today's Kosovo. The world has about 200 countries and thousands upon thousands of ethnic groups. Should we have thousands of new countries, one for each ethnic group? Thaci mentions Serbian war criminals, but there are indicted Kosovo-Albanian war criminals too. Thaci would like Kosovo to join the European Union with protection from NATO as part of a demilitarized area. The idea of demilitarization is news to us. Jan Oberg, Lund, Sweden Aleksandar Mitic, Brussels Hashim Thaci had the nom de guerre Snake. That, in itself, is very telling. Thaci, a former leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army, which was once branded a terrorist group by the U.S. government, has now apparently morphed into a sage purveyor of advice via your prestigious newspaper. So, what is behind this sudden transformation? It is more than obvious that the ongoing terror tactics against the Serbs and other minorities in Kosovo, perpetrated first by the KLA and then by its successor criminal offshoots, continues to be ignored and disguised by the West's mainstream media and politicians. Why? Because, they have no other way to justify NATO's aggression on Yugoslavia in 1999. If Thaci's people have "earned" sovereignty, then the criteria for independence are murder, mayhem and barbarism. Is Europe ready and willing to embrace an intolerant and terrorist-supported Islamic state in its underbelly? L.M. Milanovich Edmonton, Canada
| | |
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Sunday, December 04, 2005
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December 02, 2005
BALKANS: STAR TREATMENT FOR ACQUITTED KOSOVARS
http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level.php?cat=Politics&loid=8.0.235868612&par=0
ADN Kronos International (Italy)
December 2, 2005
BALKANS: STAR TREATMENT FOR ACQUITTED KOSOVARS
-The verdict will only strengthen “anti-Hague sentiments in Serbia”, argued [Belgrade University professor of international law Vojin] Dimitrijevic, adding that court has demonstrated “partiality in favor of Kosovo Albanians, who turned out to be privileged participants in all these wars”.
Pristina - The Kosovo Albanian language media on Friday gave star treatment to Fatmir Limaj and Isak Musliu, two Kosovo Albanians acquitted by UN war crimes tribunal in the Hague.
The two man were indicted by the International Tribunal for War Crimes in Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on charges of killing civilians in a Kosovo prison camp during ethnic Albanian rebellion against Serbian rule in 1998.
A third man facing the same charges was convicted. The acquittals have been harshly criticised by Belgrade and Serbian leaders in Kosovo who argues that it proves that the tribunal is anti-Serb.
Limaj and Musliu, who operated a prison camp in the village of Lapusnik in which 23 Serb and Albanian civilians, suspected of collaborating with Serbian forces, were killed, arrived in Pristina on Thursday night, greeted by a crowd of their supporters.
They were acquitted by the Tribunal on Wednesday, while a third indictee, Haradin Bala was sentenced to
13 years for killing nine civilians.
Kosovo newspapers celebrated their return in celebratory front page articles and the daily “Koha ditore”, quoted Limaj as saying their release was a “victory for Kosovo, which will surely become independent”.
The two were commanders of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which started a rebellion against the Serbian authorities [which]led to a NATO bombing campaign and forced Serbian troops from the province, which has been under United Nations control since 1999.
“There was no need to go to the Hague to prove the holiness of the war conducted by the KLA,” said Limaj.
He predicted Bala would soon also be freed on appeal.
Meanwhile, Vojin Dimitrijevic, a professor of international law at Belgrade University, until now a staunch supporter of the Tribunal, said that the Hague prosecutors haven’t shown “the usual diligence” in proving Limaj and Musliu guilt.
Furthermore, the “chain of command responsibility” was completely neglected in this case, since Limaj and Musliu, as commanders, were freed while Bala, who was a guard in the prison camp, was convicted.
The verdict will only strengthen “anti-Hague sentiments in Serbia”, argued Dimitrijevic, adding that court has demonstrated “partiality in favor of Kosovo Albanians, who turned out to be privileged participants in all these wars”.
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Friday, December 02, 2005
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George Bush & Tony Blair Forced Clinton to Bomb Serbia!
News Flash: George Bush & Tony Blair Forced Clinton to Bomb Serbia!
November 30, 2005
The Opinion Journal , caught this mind-bender this past weekend:
TV network: That Blair and Bush should have discussed bombing the Al-Jazeera building in Qatar is hardly surprising. They agreed to bomb the headquarters of Serbian television during the Kosovo war.
Well, color us impressed. Who knew President Bush was already conducting foreign policy back in 1999, when he was still governor of Texas?
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Friday, December 02, 2005
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December 01, 2005
War Crimes: Albanians Jubilant, Serbs Alarmed
http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level.php?cat=Security&loid=8.0.235428272&par=0
ADN Kronos International (Italy)
December 1, 2005
WAR CRIMES: ALBANIANS JUBILANT, SERBS ALARMED AT
KOSOVO VERDICT
-The ruling regarding the camp, operated by the Kosovo
Liberation Army (KLA) appears to contradict previous sentences from the same
court which accepted the
principle of responsibility for alleged crimes up the
chain-of-command.
-"[F]reeing Limaj and Musliu "had cost Kosovo
Albanians and their lobbyists 50 million euro".
-"How is it possible that no one in Kosovo is
responsible for the things which are evident?" he [a
Serbian official] added, also referring to events
since the province was put under UN administration,
including an estimated 200,000 Serbs and other
non-Albanians who have fled from Kosovo, three
thousand who have been either killed or are listed as
missing, and the scores of Serbian churches and
medieval monasteries have been destroyed.
-Last month the ICTY acquitted a commander of the
Bosnian Muslim army, Sefer Halilovic, strengthening a
wide spread feeling in Serbia that the Tribunal is
actually politicised and anti-Serb.
Pristina/Belgrade - Kosovo Albanians celebrated with
gunshots and fireworks the acquittal of their
co-nationals, Fatmir Limaj and Isak Musliu, by the UN
war crimes tribunal in the Hague, while Serbs
expressed "shock and consternation".
Limaj, Musliu and a third man - Haradin Bala - were
the first Albanians indicted for crimes during the
1998 Kosovo Albanian rebellion against Serbian rule.
They were accused of operating a prison camp in
Lapushnik, where 23 Serb and Albanian civilians,
suspected of collaborating with Serb forces, were
killed from May to July 1998. The court acquitted
Limaj and Musliu, but convicted Bala, a prison guard,
to 13 years jail.
The International Tribunal for Crimes in former
Yugoslavia (ITCY) panel, headed by Australian judge
Kevin Parker, ruled that "it has not been proven
beyond reasonable doubt" that Limaj and Musliu were
responsible for the killings. The ruling regarding the
camp, operated by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA)
appears to contradict previous sentences from the same
court which accepted the principle of responsibility
for alleged crimes up the chain-of-command.
The ICTY ruling was greeted with celebrations,
fireworks and shooting in the air throughout Kosovo,
and president Ibrahim Rugova deemed it a victory for
justice. "Today's trial justifies the liberation
struggle of Kosovo Albanians against Serbian
occupation, the righteousness of the struggle for
freedom and independence of our country and confirms
the faith in international justice and the Hague
Tribunal," Rugova said.
He expressed the hope that "not all legal
possibilities have been exhausted" for freeing Bala as
well. Other Kosovo Albanian leaders echoed, more or
less, Rugova's words, praising Limaj, a former
political leader, and Musliu as national heroes.
But the reaction from Kosovo Serbs and the government
in Belgrade was predictably different.
Slavisa Petkovic, the only Serb who accepted a
ministerial post in Kosovo prime minister Bajram
Kosumi's government, said that ICTY decision was, "to
put it mildly, scandalous".
Petkovic, who is considered a traitor by many Serbs,
alleged that he had heard in Pristina that freeing
Limaj and Musliu "had cost Kosovo Albanians and their
lobbyists 50 million euro". It was unclear whether his
allegations that the court ruling was not impartial
were a reference to direct lobbying from the Kosovo
Albanians or from other outside sources.
Kosovo Albanians, who form a 1.7 million majority
against some 100.000 remaining Serbs, are demanding
independence in upcoming talks on the final status of
the technically Serbian province, under UN control
since 1999. Petkovic argued the ICTY verdict will only
encourage Kosovo Albanians to use violence to achieve
the goal of independence.
Jovan Simic, an aide to Serbian president Boris Tadic,
said that the verdict "presented a bad picture of the
Tribunal" , recalling that "not one Serb has been
freed" so far.
"How is it possible that no one in Kosovo is
responsible for the things which are evident" he
added, also referring to events since the province was
put under UN administration, including an estimated 200,000 Serbs and other
non-Albanians who have fled
from Kosovo three thousand who have been either killed
or are listed as missing, and the scores of Serbian
churches and medieval monasteries have been destroyed.
Even Belgrade lawyer, Vasilije Tapuskovic, who had
served as a "friend of the court" of the Hague
Tribunal, said expressed consternation over the
acquittal of Limaj and Musliu.
Last month the ICTY acquitted a commander of the
Bosnian Muslim army, Sefer Halilovic, strengthening a
wide spread feeling in Serbia that the Tribunal is
actually politicised and anti-Serb.
Close to fifty Serbs and several Croats have been
sentenced so far for crimes committed in the Balkan
wars of the 1990s.
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Thursday, December 01, 2005
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If you can't shoot the messenger, lock him up
| Opinion- News Analysis
If you can't shoot the messenger, lock him up Siddharth Varadarajan | President Bush's alleged threat to bombAl Jazeerashouldn't surprise us. Ever since the NATO attack on Yugoslavia, the U.S. has looked at the media it can't control as the "enemy." | IF THERE were any doubts about the authenticity of the Daily Mirror story on President George W. Bush wanting to bomb the head offices of Al Jazeera, the British government would appear to have cleared them up by threatening editors with prison if they publish the text of the confidential memo from which the London tabloid sourced its account. After all, if the White House's line about the story being "outlandish" were really true, why on earth would Tony Blair  whose conversation with the American President last April is the subject of the memo  invoke the Official Secrets Act to prevent its publication? I can think of only two reasons, neither of which does Mr. Blair or Mr. Bush any credit. Either the American President did threaten to blow up the Qatar-based Arabic news channel because he was upset at its coverage of U.S. counter-insurgency operations in Fallujah. Or he did not, in which case the British Prime Minister wants to suppress the memo because it records Mr. Bush admitting  or threatening  something even more terrible. Tempting though it is to dismiss the alleged threat against the Arabic broadcaster as a "conspiracy theory" (as Mr. Blair is suggesting) or a "joke" on the part of the U.S. President, there is the unsettling coincidence of Al Jazeera having been hit by American bombs twice before. In November 2001, the channel's Kabul office was hit by a U.S. missile and in April 2003, a `smart' bomb terminated its Baghdad operation with extreme prejudice, killing a journalist, Tareq Ayoub. Even without reading the April 2004 memo, we know from an earlier outburst by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that the Bush administration just doesn't like the upstart broadcaster. They move about on their own in Iraq and refuse to be tied down as `embeds'. They speak the local language. And the footage they show has rather more shock and awe than what the Pentagon is comfortable putting on air. Does this mean the U.S. would deliberately bomb journalists in contravention of the laws of war  and the "freedoms" in whose name Iraq was invaded? Perhaps not, but what NATO did to the Radio Television Serbia (RTS) studios in Belgrade in 1999 suggests this military and moral Rubicon is more easily crossed than one would like to imagine. During the U.S.-led bombing of Yugoslavia, NATO aircraft deliberately bombed the RTS station in Belgrade. Sixteen civilians were killed in the attack that NATO and Pentagon spokesmen defended as an act of military necessity against "enemy propaganda." RTS broadcasts may have been propaganda and Yugoslavia, technically, was NATO's enemy. But RTS was media and the people who worked  and died  for it were entitled to the Geneva Convention's protections from armed attack both as civilians and journalists. The bottom line, however, was that they broadcast things which the U.S. military couldn't control and didn't like. Images of civilians killed or injured by NATO bombings. The same sort of images Al Jazeera was showing out of Fallujah. The only difference is that in those days, the Clinton administration didn't have a Secretary of Defence who went around saying, "We don't do Geneva Conventions here." Contagious intolerance Unfortunately for press freedom, intolerance towards the media is a malignant and contagious disease. One hostile act against journalists quickly begets another. Mr Bush's threat against Al Jazeera quickly led to Mr. Blair's ultimatum to the British media. Slobodan Milosevic did not go after CNN or the BBC, whose NATO correspondent during the war went on to become NATO spokesman after it ended. But had the Yugoslav leader done so and cited a dislike for their "enemy propaganda" as justification, how different would he have been from NATO? Similarly, threatening Al Jazeera makes the terrain in Iraq and elsewhere more dangerous for all journalists because it tells Al Qaeda and their allies that journalists are fair game, that it is okay to kidnap or kill foreign reporters. The slippery slope doesn't end there. President Bush's dislike of Al Jazeera is only an extreme manifestation of the antipathy governments around the world feel towards media coverage that they cannot suppress, spin or control. In the aftermath of 9/11  and the extraordinary perversion of democratic norms this has led to in almost all established democracies  this intolerance is being kitted out with legal and even military teeth. Britain's new anti-terror proposals and Australia's draft anti-terrorism legislation and proposed extensions to the sedition law, for example, both aim to regulate what journalists can and cannot report on pain of imprisonment. Under India's Prevention of Terrorism Act  repealed under public pressure last year  the definition of "providing support" to a designated terrorist organisation was left so vague as to encompass even news reports or opinion pieces. Moreover, as the recent British gag order shows, governments are quite capable of dredging up old, anachronistic laws like the OSA to control the dissemination of information when they find their backs truly up against the wall and when anti-terrorism laws are of no help. Section 5 of the OSA  making it illegal for an unauthorised individual to be in possession of official documents  has rarely been used in Britain and never against journalists. Sometimes, governments don't even need a `compelling' reason to act against the media other than the very existence of laws that can be invoked. In India, the OSA was used by the erstwhile Vajpayee government in 2002 to imprison a senior Kashmiri journalist, Iftikhar Gilani, on the flimsiest of grounds in pursuit of a political vendetta against his father-in-law, the separatist politician Syed Ali Shah Geelani. Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Jose Padilla, the White House torture memos and other dystopic products of the post 9/11 world testify to just how corrosive the war on terror has been for civil liberties and democratic values. We are some way away from the point of no return but if the media were also to fall victim, the prospects for collective recovery would be dim indeed.
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# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Thursday, December 01, 2005
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Kosovo negotiations get off to a rocky start (with James Bisset comment)
Kosovo negotiations get off to a rocky start
There seems little cause for optimism as Serbians and ethnic Albanians refused to budge from their positions
By DOUG SAUNDERS
Thursday, December 1, 2005 Posted at 4:46 AM EST
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
London  With little international publicity and a great deal of pessimism on all sides, the world's most ambitious nation-building campaign got under way this week in the Balkans.
Nobody has ever believed that the United Nations plan to turn Kosovo from an embattled province of Serbia into an independent, multi-ethnic nation would be easy. Those who are attempting to hold Iraq together, for example, point to the expensive and lengthy diplomatic struggle in Kosovo as an example of how such efforts should be managed -- and how impossible they still can be.
Yet as they spoke in the Kosovo capital of Pristina yesterday, surrounded by an unusually heavy phalanx of armed guards, the UN officials struggling to negotiate the province's separation from Serbia are expressing optimism that Europe's latest nation-state could be created some time next year.
The former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, who was appointed by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to lead talks on Kosovo's status, has spent the past week travelling to the capital cities of the Balkan nations in a preliminary round of discussions. He will present his findings in a dinner speech tonight
There seemed to be little cause for optimism as Serbian and Albanian groups refused to budge from their positions this week, most observers said.
On Monday, Mr. Ahtisaari blasted the Serbian government for urging Kosovo's ethnic Serbs to boycott the political process, and criticized its ethnic-Albanian leaders for failing to address Serbian grievances.
"The negotiating parties are still massed in Belgrade and here in Pristina, trying to find a mutual understanding, but their positions haven't changed from five years ago. It's very difficult to say if they will end up moderating when it comes down to actual talks," said Besa Shahini, director of the Kosovar Stability Initiative, a neutral think-tank in Pristina.
"However, this is a period of calm and sanity in both Belgrade and in Kosovo, so everyone has a desire to get things going. The economies of both places are completely dead because of the uncertainty, so people want to get results so they can start working again."
The talks are doubly poisoned. First, they face the history of the region: the slaughter of more than 10,000 Albanian Kosovars during Serbian ethnic-cleansing campaigns that began in 1998, and the retaliatory killing of at least 1,000 Kosovo Serbs by Albanians following the NATO war against Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic in 1999.
As a result, Serbian residents of Kosovo, who are Orthodox Christians and make up one-tenth of its two million people, live in heavily guarded enclaves with almost no contact with the mainly Muslim Albanians, and refuse to participate in the region's elected legislature.
The war's embers keep flaring up. Yesterday, there were angry accusations and threats of violence across Kosovo after two Albanian leaders were acquitted of war-crimes charges at the Hague; that led leaders in Belgrade to accuse the court of partisanship, and to threaten to shut down the talks.
And the talks are equally poisoned by the mixed agenda of international forces in the region.
Many Serbs see hypocrisy in the current international effort to unite Bosnia's ethnic factions while dividing up Serbia into what will effectively be two states, one Serbian and one essentially ethnically Albanian.
But the UN and the European Union still believe that independence is the only way to bring stability to Kosovo, and most international observers, including U.S. leaders, agree.
However, UN officials quietly acknowledge that, if talks get tough, they may end up giving into a Serbian "plan B" in which the Serb-majority northern part of Kosovo, including the city of Mitrovica, would become part of Serbia.
In statements this week, Serb and Albanian parties showed little sign of tolerance.
"The Albanian people of Kosovo will never again risk living under Belgrade's rule," Hashim Thaci, the former Kosovo Liberation Army commander who now runs the Democratic Party of Kosovo, said in a statement on Monday.
And the Serbian government, considered a moderate alternative to the ultra-nationalist parties founded by Mr. Milosevic, has refused to accept any notion of an autonomous Kosovo, at least publicly. Yesterday, Belgrade officials announced their plan for a "free land of Kosovo" that would be controlled by Serbia.
That would not be very different from Kosovo's current status, which is carefully guarded by thousands of UN officials and international peacekeepers.
The road to independence
After 15 years of nationalist independence movements, ethnic slaughter, outright war and peacekeeping operations, what was Yugoslavia until the early 1990s is now five countries at various stages of independence.
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Three years of bloody ethnic war between Bosnian Muslims, Croats and Serbs ended with the 1995 Dayton peace accord. The agreement set up two separate entities, a Muslim/Croat Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Bosnian Serb Republic. Overarching these entities is a central Bosnian government. Ultimate authority, however, rests with the EU-run Office of the High Representative as the country continues toward becoming a viable, peaceful, fully independent state.
Croatia
Croatia declared its independence in 1991, but endured nearly five years of sporadic and often bitter fighting with the Yugoslav People's Army and the army of the internationally unrecognized Republic of Serbian Krajina. The Croatian army prevailed and integration of the separatist territories was completed in 1998 under UN supervision.
Macedonia
Its current borders were fixed shortly after the Second World War when it was recognized as a separate nation within Yugoslavia. Although it is quite diverse, with a majority of ethnic Macedonians but a large population of Albanians as well as Turks, Roma and Serbs, Macedonia seceded peacefully in 1991.
Serbia and Montenegro
Serbia and Montenegro held on to the name Yugoslavia after the breakup until 2003, when its parliament voted to create a new, looser union. The two republics are semi-independent states in an arrangement that is to remain in place until at least 2006, after which the two republics can hold referendums on whether to keep or scrap it.
Kosovo province
In 1998, violence flared in Serbia's province of Kosovo after it was stripped of its autonomy. The Kosovo Liberation Army began an armed rebellion, which was brutally put down by the Serbian army until international forces intervened and the United Nations took over administration. It is now a de facto international protectorate but legally part of Serbia. Its status remains the subject of a bitter dispute between the Albanian majority, which seeks independence, and the minority Serbs.
Slovenia
A stable and independent country, Slovenia is the only former Yugoslav republic to join the European Union and NATO. Its independence was relatively bloodless, aided by Western European recognition of the Slovenes' aspirations and the low proportion of other ethnic groups.
SOURCE: BBC.CO.UK
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Thursday, December 01, 2005
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